Link between lack of women's rights and feminine grooming?

But chairman, your anthropological arguments don't really work here because human females don't naturally have the equivalent of a peacock's tail do they? Clothes are a cultural construct not an evolutionary adaptation. If nature intended for women to evolve wearing high heels we would have little spikey bits on our heels no? It's entirely cultural because in their natural state women are not particularly flamboyantly equipped compared to the male.

Also, in the peacock world, it is the drab peahen that does the choosing so by your analogy the human male is the chooser, not the female. In one of his many books, can't remember which one, Richard Dawkins muses over what changed in human history to make women the so called peacocks when for most other species is the other way round. My guess is that money or realization of paternity or both had something to do with shifting that balance of power to males, but then of course that doesn't take into account that during the C18th men's costumes were far more elaborate (also pointing to culture being the culprit).

The idea that society has of women being the choosers is nonsense. This media exaggerated image of a beautiful woman strutting down the street whilst men fall on the pavement drooling after her and the idea that all a woman has to do to have sex is decide to have it, is BS. It applies to a small subset of goregous women, the subset that men no doubt spend a lot of time thinking about, and completely ignores the fact that the average woman doesn't have a queue of suitors and that, because of the constraints placed on her by the boy-chases-girl model, means that she can only chose between the men who have first chosen her.

There is another type of sexual selection that exists in the animal kingdom though - and that is that males compete among themselves for access to the female harem. The current winning alpha male gets access (not much choice for the females but then they tend to have a lot of "affairs" to maximize conception chances) and sometimes kill off the offspring of former alpha males. This model happens a lot during primates.

But anthropological arguing aside, I totally agree with you that no evolutionary reasoning justifies the kind of garbage thrown out by our media.

Sorry for the long post, but I do love a bit of anthropological chit chat!!

messy
i've been putting off trying to answer that because what i think will probobly be rather controversial for these feminist threads, and i have learned the hard way, this is a hostile enviroment for a man.

to SOME extent this isnt a feminist issue, and it it's core i belive it's more anthropological , to do with human beings as a species.
if a zoooligist came here from mars and studied the various species he/she would notice that in some species the males compete for the females. in some cases with bright coulors flash grooming and dazzeling displays. but when he looks at the humans he/she will conclude that allthough the males do compete for the females the way the females chose ( and it is the females that do the choseing) it isnt in there interest to groom that much, there are, of course other ways, being strong or having a healthy bank balance, being educated etc.
the females on the other hand do groom much more , to increase the scope of choice they might have.

if peacocks were the dominant species on our planet it would be the males who would be doing the grooming.

hope some of that made sense.

disclaimer.....none of the above means that it doesnt matter that the female image banged out by the media is acceptable, size zero models held up as feminine perfection is very damaging to teenage girls and i think most men would tell you they dont find those models very sexy anyway, major hulahan was my teenage crush not twiggy.

where we stand on this as a species and where the media took over turning real women into unreal airbrushed make-up pancaked aspirations i dont know.

I think the positive correlation is easier to see, because 'feminine grooming' is valorized by patriarchial society. If you recognize the patriarchy is a force at work, it's that much easier to recognize the issues to do with performing femininity.

But I wonder as well if there's a tipping point - if hyper-performance of gender creates conditions in which it's that much more obvious what is going on? Like with the Victorians, with tight-lacing and bustles and so on, and then the suffragettes emerging?

I'd say that East End (and Essex) women are as groomed (over-groomed) if not more as those in Harvey Nicks, just in a different way.

Having recently played a TOWIE type onstage I was astonished at how time consuming (and how tedious it was!) to get ready - fake tan, full deforestation of legs, 'tache and pits, full face of slap (following the TOWIE make up artist's vid on Youtube) including 2 kinds of lipstick, liner, lipgloss, 2 shades of blusher, matt foundation, powder, highlighter, concealer, bronzer, false eyelashes, eyelash curler, mascara, eyeliner, eyeshadow x 4, eyebrow pencil, THEN the hair extensions, straighteners, hair serum, curling wand, half a can of hairspray THEN the false nails, ridiculously high heels, short tight dress...

I felt like a drag queen. That was performing 'femininity' (or a version of it)!

And even though that was for the theatre, I live in Essex and see my teenage nieces and their friends all undergoing this utterly mental level of grooming on a daily basis. The grown women I know who have this look every day are all either childless or married to very wealthy men so they don't have to work. So what slug said, basically!

It is easier to get the time if you are not working. But I do know, an admittedly very few women, who appear to be constantly dolled up, in spite of working full time and having older children

All that grooming takes time. All that time is only really available to either those wealthy enough to employ others to care for children and houses, or those for whom full employment is denied. Once you are denied the right to function in society as a full human, you really are forced to perform femininity as that is really your only way to survive.

Comrade - While I think you are right, just wanted to say that there were women, including poor women, in the 50's and 60's who refused to perform femininity. Often at the cost of great derision and sometimes violence or the threat of it. I don't think we should forget these women who were brave enough to challenge things

I see 10cm Louboutins and Burkhas as flip sides of the same coin - they are both performing femininity. I think there's a link between a lack of women's rights and the pressure on women away from clothes that are practical and comfortable.

"women do tend to take more care over their appearence/wardrobe than men."

The question is why?

Compared to women's attire, men's attire stays relatively the same throughout most of the world. A man in t shirt and casual trousers is pretty universal and carries no particular message, whilst women's clothing varies more according to the local culture and is loaded with more meaning.

Why is that?

i would hazard a guess that dubai having relitively 'new money' it's all about showing off your wealth, being well groomed is part of that, shows you have the time for such things for a start.

women do tend to take more care over their appearence/wardrobe than men.

I don't know. Perhaps for wealthier countries, but surely wealth and the influence of materialism must have an impact? After all in places like Afghanistan I can't imagine the women are particularly well groomed?