why do women collude in their own oppression?

ISNT you see I think it varies for different jobs; I started out as a receptionist nd tbh when I did wear shoes with silly heels and tiny mini skirts I was extremely popular with the male management and absolutely they much preferred that look; the woman at my last recptionist post who ahd the job before me used to wearr tight lycra.

But it was a male dominated field, and indeed one that is s eriously behind the times generally- pirelli calendars and the like.

IME you dress in the costume for the job. And yes men do also of course. But for a receptionist in a bakckwaters haulage company you might (might have, over ten years ago since I last did that role) dress in a very different way to my later roles for homestart etc.

I alsom think styles are regional; I am far from the city or oxford street and the uniform fgor women here seems to be either huge statement heels, spray tan and big blonde hair or cheap juicy couture rip off trackies. As an outsider I notice that perhaps more than usual as it was agin different back home- jeans and t shirt for everything.

The shame- I now feel like the drunk trying to fight his own shadow!

As you were everyone. Just ignore me!

No I know I just have seen it happen a couple of times that we have somehow all ended up arguing aganst sometihng that no-one has actually said - and I'm not sure how it happens!

FWIW I agree with sakura that really beautiful females can have a really terrible time.

Arse- cant find it either. I think I might have cross-threaded with another thread along a similar vein (mea culpa). Promise I didnt make it up just to derail the thread.

Can someone point me in the direction of where someone said that women have to be beautiful to succeed though, as i can't find it. And I think it'd be silly of us all to start arguing against something that no-one has actually said IYSWIM.

I don't think women have to be beautiful to succeed. Beauty can often work against women: beautiful women are often presumed to be thick.

I had a quick scan, can you point me in the direction of the "women have to be beautiful to succeed" post/s?

Oh I must have missed that argument. It's not true in my experience.

ISNT- but on the same basis, men in the city also conform to a style - let's face it, you dont get many imaginiative dressers in the square mile. It's blue shirts, short hair and double cuffs all the way. I think "general good grooming and smartness" is different to dressing in a way intended to be sexually appealing.

The argument made seems to be "women have to be beautiful to succeed whereas men dont" which I dont think is true outside very few, especially image conscious industries.

Yes there are heels on a boot or shoe eg, solid and more comfortable then the shoes one can't walk in... I don't totter around in the latter at work. Like gender, femininity - a spectrum.

I feel guilty for engaging with SR now. I mised the part on the other thread where he said he was a prostitute user.
Actually for some reason, God knows why, I thought slightreturn was a woman A woman rock musician . I think my brain has been warped by YDWTK because Slightreturn does seem rather normal by comparison.

Professional women working in the City adhere to a different beauty standard though.

That's the problem. I can be terribly chuffed with myself for not having a spray tan and wearing 6 inch heels, (ie snobby), but I am adhering to a beauty standard which is just as strong, it's just not one that's as obvious IYSWIM.

Most women do adhere. So while in my work the women wear flats and don't iron their hair, they do a different style of female attractiveness which is subtler but just as present.

Not many women do wear heels much IMO- many fewer than is implied. Following a thread on MN on this subject, I looked at all the women I passed on Oxford St over a week in June.

There were hardly any wearing high heels (

It's not even beauty though is it, the extreme things, they're fashion. They're not worn to enhance a womans natural form, they are worn because it is the fashion and then the eye becomes accustomed to the look and accepts it as a norm and as desirable.

When we had a thread about clothes/makeup before I was very much of the view that the media & fashion houses & pop stars etc are to blame for all of this. So a small cohort of v powerful (mainly) men are dictating what western women wear. And that look is spreading around the world by the power of the media. Most normal blokes on the street think eg really high shoes look stupid and uncomfortable. i mean, we're clearly not wearing them for them, we're wearing them becauuse we have been brainwashed by the media into thinking that they are desirable and covetable items.

Notice when women in uncomfortable shoes compiment each other, they always say "nice shoes", not "they really suit you" or something like that. The shoes are a covetable item to be displayed to other women - it's nothing to do with looking nice. Or something like that I think.

But I think wearing painful shoes that make you unable to move becuase of some notion of beauty is very much in that line tbh.

There's grades of everything I think.

Plus if you do choose to reject the standards you will suffer; at job interviews, for example.

I do think that appearance is one area where absolutely women collude with oppression more than any other - it's terribly insidious. I mean, I do it, without even thinking twice. Commenting on the appearance of other women who do not meet my beuaty standard, which is set by my background. Forming an alleigance with women who share the same idea of what constitutes the "correct" form of female beauty and talking about the ones who don't. (False eyelashes in teh office). Of course the whole DMs and casual clothes and no makeup thing is also a different beauty standard - because the women who do that and look great really are beautiful. And of course I notice whether people look great or not....

Maybe this is why people get so upset about the makeup for kids etc - traditionally you could forget about all of that stuff, and people didn't expect you to do anything, when you were a child or after menopause. Just women in their reproductive years had to look luscious. Now it seems to be all females, all of the time, for their whole lives...

Do they beer? Yeuch!

Yes makeup etc does definitely absolutely bear discussion as a feminist issue.

However I personally think that you can be a part of that discussion while still adhering to societal norms as to what women "ought" to look like, to a greater or lesser extent. And I know that no-one on here disagrees with that - it's people with stereotypical ideas of what being a feminist means, that think it means stopping shaving your legs etc. No-one would say that an individual woman wearing some makeup negates her views on issues that affect women - I mean we are all a part of this society, and the pressure to conform is very strong and very ingrained, to completely turn your back on the whole lot is a very difficult thing to do.

You know what, i bloody wish I had done that now!

Although i'd have wrecked it by the time of the wedding; people coming to help me seemed to think they were my guests and I was up at 6am cleaning floors and getting thier brekkie whilst they ahd a lie in - and it was my first night without a baby to care for in 3 months as well, after a birth that'd almost killed us both.

TBH I think finding a dress at all was something of a miracle!