#Beauty Culture

[being-kindrad]

Andrea Dworkin's classic Beauty Hurts diagram from Woman Hating (1974), updated for modern procedures, fifty years later.

A first step in the process of liberation (women from their oppression, men from the unfreedom of their fetishism) is the radical redefining of the relationship between women and their bodies. The body must be freed, liberated, quite literally: from paint and girdles and all varieties of crap. Women must stop mutilating their bodies and start living in them. Perhaps the notion of beauty which will then organically emerge will be truly democratic and demonstrate a respect for human life in its infinite, and most honorable, variety. —Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating (1974)

[aaafeminist]

[ohnoitstbskyen]

Often when people talk about appearance of characters in media, especially that of women, some use an argument along the lines of "Why would I want to look at someone ugly in the games I play/shows I watch/etc.?"

From what I saw, and if I'm not wrong, you prefer to not engage with that kind of argument, but if you absolutely had to, what answer would you give that could have a chance to make those people see and maybe agree with your point?

I mean, the reason why I wouldn't engage with that argument is that it is always, universally, without exception, an argument made in bad faith, by people who are lying when they utter it. And it takes only the briefest examination of reality to determine this.

The argument they pretend to make is that "there is no reason to desire things that are not pleasurable in entertainment," in response to which I present The Concept Of Horror Media, or the success of Jackass, or South Park, or literally any subversive prank show, or sports as a concept, or the genre of tragedy, or the phenomenon of people rubbernecking. I present true crime podcasts and biographies of John Wayne Gacy and Mortal Kombat fatalities, I present unflinchingly earnest documentaries about war and disease, I present cringe comedy, I present the entire online media genre of pimple popper videos.

Human beings desire so much more than beauty, so much more than aesthetic pleasure (and indeed we can take aesthetic pleasure in so much more than beauty). We find entertainment in disgust, horror, fear, revulsion, sorrow, embarrassment, pain and, yes, "ugliness" all the time, and we have done for as long as we have had sentient minds to entertain.

So this argument "why would I want to look at someone ugly in a video game" is simply a lie. It is an argument made in bad faith by people whom I will guarantee you against a bet of real money constantly look at things which are "ugly" for entertainment.

It is a lie, it is a stupid lie, and while I'm sure that many or most of the people who peddle that lie don't realize they are lying when they do it, it remains a lie which isn't worth dignifying with a response.

And anyway, 99% of the time they don't mean "ugly" they mean "woman who I don't find fuckable" or they mean "fat" or they mean "trans" or they mean "queer" or "non-white," they mean someone or some thing which falls into a category which they feel entitled to hate, and they are trying to enforce the normality of that hate.

You cannot logic someone out of a position they didn't logic themselves in to, and there is very rarely anything you can say to these people to make them reconsider. They are reacting emotionally, they are reacting on the impulse towards disgust and hatred, and they will rationalize a lie to excuse it.

[edonee]

"my eyeliner is sharp enough to kill a man"

they are shaking I'm sure

[eclecticwordblender]

i am vehemently against choice feminism but the makeup is art and i do makeup for myself arguments probably did hold true in some capacity like 10 years back. we were doing full faces of visible make up, coloured eyelids, outright identifiable makeup (which males say they don’t like). the beauty gurus were all so different with such varied techniques and makeup looked fun and colourful and artsy. HOW EXACTLY IS THE CLEAN GIRL LOOK ART IN ANY WAY? HOW EXACTLY IS MAKING YOURSELF LOOK UNREAL YET NATURAL NOT FOR THE MALE GAZE?

[shyflowerfem]

It would be so boring if all women looked the same. We are supposed to look different and that is truly beautiful. Trying to look like another woman just diminishes your own uniqueness.

[feministfang]

Beauty culture is extremely normalised to the point women who refuse to conform to beauty standards because they love their natural selves get labelled "pick mes" by none other than self-proclaimed feminists themselves. Patriarchal society has conditioned women to be insecure about each and every feature of their faces or bodies it has deemed as a flaw due to which the idea of a natural looking woman is someone hideous and unattractive for many young women.

These insecure women have build up this one image of a natural female appearance in their minds which they describe as unattractive, and as a consequence, women who naturally do not fit into that unattractive-labelled box get hated on. I am sure we all have encountered at least one gossipmonger in our lives who would assume every woman who does not fit into that box has done something with her face or body because ‘ain’t no way a woman can be naturally beautiful’.

*Woman with rosy cheeks exists* — ‘Oh she must have applied makeup’

*Woman with no dark circles exists* — ‘hey what concealer do you use?’

*Woman with a smooth skin exists* — ‘drop the skincare routine!’

*Woman with big lips exists* — ‘definitely lip filler’

*Woman in her thirties exists* — ‘Botox! Botox! Definitely cosmetic surgery! She doesn’t look like a grandma!’

*Woman loving her natural self exists* — ‘How dare you think you’re not like other girls! Pick me!’

Women get bodyshamed if we do fit into the "ugly-looking" criteria. Women get hated on if we do not. Women are supposed to be hideously flawed if they defy beauty culture. Women with even one less flaw must admit they obey beauty culture. No matter how many times you ditch the beauty standards, you will never escape this nonsense.

I have a message for these insecure clowns:

There is nothing imperfect about you. What’s considered perfect and what’s considered imperfect on a woman is all a patriarchal set up to push us into being weak and desirable for men. Women’s insecurities have risen up along with the rise of feminism to ensure that independent women rejecting traditional gender roles are still submissive and pleasing men. Don’t waste your hard-earned money on expensive cosmetic procedures to look pretty because you are already naturally beautiful. And it doesn’t matter if your natural self is socially desirable or not, women don’t owe beauty to anybody. Please think critically of why you feel insecure about something and why do you even call it a flaw.

But on a strict note, in case you still got time to take out your brain back from the patriarchy’s washing machine, at least refrain from pulling us all down to the level of extreme self-hate where you stand. All women are perfect already. There’s no serious requirement of hiding anything or changing ourselves. But i understand if you cannot relate for now! What you see in others is a direct reflection of yours. But just because you think you are hideous does not mean every woman thinks the same way. Self-love is our only beauty routine so let us love ourselves. 🩷

[femmesandhoney]

i love more women appreciating grey hair because i've always found it so beautiful and seeing older women around me talk about it with fear and anxiety, discussing how they'd dye it, seeing media where the second a woman gets a grey hair they'd shamefully pluck it or dye it away, like it was something literally immutably horrifying happening to their bodies. really made me sad as a child to see, but i love seeing more and more women embrace it and hate having to hide natural changes to their bodies, especially when it's something so lovely.

[woman-for-women]

If it looks degrading when men do it, it’s degrading when women do it too. You’re just used to women being degraded.

Would the Time Person of the year wear sequined spaghetti strap tops or sheer black bodysuits, put on red lipstick, or pose with half their crotch out or arms up behind their head if they were male? If it looks degrading when a man does it, it’s degrading when a woman does it too. You’re just used to women being degraded.

While not every woman is posed like Taylor Swift is in these covers, do you ever see rich and powerful men dressed like this? If wearing revealing clothing, shaving, or wearing makeup is empowering, why don’t the most powerful men in the world do it? Why do the most rich and famous women in the world have to degrade themselves, even when they’re being celebrated?

[scrapnick]

“Do men really like this?”

“Do women really enjoy that??”

Doesn’t matter. Someone thinks you’re ugly as sin and someone saw you once and still thinks about you.

Deal with that as you will.

[worstdykeever]

why are we pretending like this is normal ? this is a video of a 'medical esthetician' wearing these skincare masks that have not been proven to work in public even though it hinders her ability to eat and makes people stare at her. everyone talks about how predatory the makeup industry is, but we forget that the skincare industry is just as bad, if not worse. imagine not being able to eat or enjoy yourself in public just so you,,, don't look old when you're old ? what's the point of having perfect skin if you refuse to ever show it ? this has to be some kind of obsessive/compulsive behavior at this point and it's so saddening to see what misogynistic beauty standards are doing to women.

[womenaremypriority]

My take is that radfems should shift the conversation from “women wear makeup for men, so we should stop wearing it.” This reminds women of how men victim blame them for assault and harassment. It’s also not true on an individual level- most women don’t want male attention at all. It’s for multiple reasons- out of habit, for other women, to look impressionable, etc. If you want to get across to a specific women, and she says something like “I wear it for myself!” Or “I always wear it” or “I feel unfinished without it” ask “why?” Why can’t you stop? And shift the conversation from them to the fact wearing it is pushed us on from childhood, how men don’t wear it despite the fact they also have facial flaws, how it takes up time that adds up, etc.

[edonee]

Women's rejection of the natural aging process/their body changing as they grow up is actually maddening. You don't need to do 17 steps of "skincare" every day. SkinCARE is preventing cancer by applying sunscreen, skinCARE is not applying make-up with tons of potentially harmful ingredients in it. The point of skincare should be to protect your health, not to prevent wrinkles.

Same thing goes for "healthy diets" (aka trying to survive on quinoa seeds and one lettuce leaf a-day like a fucking hamster). News flash: your body needs actual nutrients in order to be healthy.

[gynoids-over-androids]

kinda crazy how incels convinced libfems (mostly gen z) that "pretty privilege" is a thing , that males suffer true discrimination based on their appearane and that "pretty"women are privileged... they really believed this incel shit without thinking that mayyybeee pretty *privilege* doesnt' exist, its just women who avoid punishment of not conforming to beauty standards.

[spiderfreedom]

my suffering is profound and legitimate, yours is frivolous nonsense

Just reading a blogger I like but I had to laugh because she was talking about how beauty practices are bad for women's mental health, and she left a note saying "unlike gender affirming care! gender affirming care improves people's mental health and it's nothing at all like cosmetic practices."

TIL, when an older woman gets botox to remove her wrinkles and avoid facing the inevitability of decline and death, her problem is spiritual/structural and she needs to Do The Work to deprogram her ageism, unlike people with dysphoria, who of course have legitimate claims to cosmetic alteration.

And it is cosmetic - no part of the body that is altered by HRT or SRS or any of the feminization/masculinization surgeries is failing to function or functioning poorly. The problem is with the brain, which perceives the body parts as foreign or undesirable. We may sympathize with someone struggling with such a condition, but that does not change that the body parts being altered were already healthy and the alterations are cosmetic, and the relief being brought about is mental.

But plenty of trans people openly admit that separating body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria is a losing game. Contrapoints's video on "Beauty" (transcript) has the observation that she feels least dysphoric when she is meeting feminine beauty norms:

But I also think that trans people often talk like gender dysphoria is this intrinsic, personal experience that's always 100% valid and never has anything at all to do with the external pressure of beauty standards. But in fact, gender dysphoria is not sealed away in a vacuum away from the influence of societal ideals and norms.  [...] When I try to psychoanalyze myself, I find that my desires to look female, to look feminine, and to look beautiful are not exactly the same, but they're woven together so tightly that it's kind of difficult to untangle them. And the opposite is also true, that for me feeling mannish or dysphoric usually goes along with feeling ugly. I don't have a lot of days where I walk out the house thinking "well, I'm giving femme queen realness, but apart from that I look like absolute shit". 

Max Robinson's book "Detransition," from an FTM perspective, points out how the prospective trans man views his suffering as unique from and distinct from women's, even as the surgeries they seek are not especially different:

The stereotypical cosmetic surgery patient is seeking to become closer to being perfectly feminine - she wants to be beautiful. Transitional cosmetic surgery, on the other hand, is widely understood to mark the patient as ex-female and therefore unfemale; this is part of the meaning FTMs seek to create through surgery. FTM desire for cosmetic surgery is positioned as something totally different than the stereotype of a woman who 'merely' seeks beauty at her frivolous leisure. FTMs are deemed to have a rare affliction that needs urgent, life-saving treatment. Conversely, there is nothing more common than for a woman to become obsessed with her socially-deemed 'unsatisfactory' looks and desperately seek to change them, believing that such a change is the only thing that can restore her quality of life. This comparison will feel like an insult to the FTM. It will feel that way because we believe other women's suffering doesn't matter, and recognize how much ours does. Women's suffering is ordinary but ours is extraordinary. For us to matter, we must be differentiated from the silly little woman who wants to be pretty so badly she'll pay thousands of dollars (now billable to credit cards and loan programs designed to pay for elective surgeries!) to risk her life and health. These women don't need to be fixed; we do. FTMs know that we don't deserve a woman's fate but have not yet realized that no woman does.

I have more to write on the topic of the relationship between gender identity and beauty culture, but I'll end this one here. It makes sense that somebody who is identified with the opposite sex would also be affected by the standards of beauty expected of that sex. (Non-binary identification is more complicated and requires separate treatment.)

[fem-lit]

Rivalry, resentment, and hostility provoked by the beauty myth run deep. Sisters commonly remember the grief of one being designated “the pretty one.” Mothers often have difficulty with their daughters’ blooming. Jealousy among the best of friends is a cruel fact of female love. Even women who are lovers describe beauty competition. It is painful for women to talk about beauty because under the myth, one woman’s body is used to hurt another. Our faces and bodies become instruments for punishing other women, often used out of our control and against our will. At present, “beauty” is an economy in which women find the “value” of their faces and bodies impinging, in spite of themselves, on that of other women’s. This constant comparison, in which one woman’s worth fluctuates through the presence of another, divides and conquers.

To get past this divisiveness, women will have to break a lot of taboos against talking about it, including the one that prohibits women from narrating the dark side of being treated as a beautiful object. From the dozens of women to whom I have listened, it is clear that the amount of pain a given woman experiences through the beauty myth bears no relationship at all to what she looks like relative to a cultural ideal.

While the “beautiful” woman is briefly at the apex of the system, this is, of course, far from the divine state of grace that the myth propagates. The pleasure to be had from turning oneself into a living art object, the roaring in the ears and the fine jetspray of regard on the surface of the skin, is some kind of power, when power is in short supply. But it is not much compared to the pleasure of getting back forever inside the body; the pleasure of discovering sexual pride, a delight in a common female sexuality that overwhelms the divisions of “beauty”; the pleasure of shedding self-consciousness and narcissism and guilt like a chainmail gown; the pleasure of the freedom to forget all about it.

Only then will women be able to talk about what “beauty” really involves: the attention of people we do not know, rewards for things we did not earn, sex from men who reach for us as for a brass ring on a carousel, hostility and scepticism from other women, adolescence extended longer than it ought to be, cruel aging, and a long hard struggle for identity. And we will learn that what is good about “beauty”—the promise of confidence, sexuality, and the self-regard of a healthy individuality—are actually qualities that have nothing to do with “beauty” specifically, but are deserved by and, as the myth is dismantled, available to all women. The best that “beauty” offers belongs to us all by right of femaleness. When we separate “beauty” from sexuality, when we celebrate the individuality of our features and characteristics, women will have access to a pleasure in our bodies that unites us rather than divides us. The beauty myth will be history.

— Naomi Wolf (1990) The Beauty Myth