Beauty regime burdens

Oh balls.

I love fashion, I always have. It makes my heart beat faster. I saw it as an art form really (I actually don't wear it currently, too fat - mostly fine with that)

But it's probably not ok, is it. It probably is a feminist issue. And I am a feminist, I care passionately about women being able to live their best life.

And yet I also want to be pretty ...

And I want to teach my son that women don't have to do any of this bullshit ..

And yet he's 2 and sees me put make up everyday and when he asks I can't give him a valid reason for why I do it and daddy doesn't

But I don't want to stop wearing make up....

Oh my head .. I can't make sense of who I am ..

That's lovely barelove.

ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving "...now we're sharing the same dream"

I practically never comment on peoples appearance and if I do it's to say something practical. I snuggle my niece and tell her I think her skin is beautiful for holding all her bones in so well. She thinks it's hilarious.

Small things that make me happier.

I didn't say anything about having a problem with long hair, in fact I said it was fine. I don't understand what your point is

Yes you did say long hair was ok sorry. It was someone else moaning about it as if long hair was a new phenomenon. Including the comment below.Although long straight hair is far easier to manage than the Princess Di styles.

So when did that become obligatory? What made it obligatory? Porn? As with everything else? The 60s and 70s clearly passed this poster by.

So if we are stuck with culture, and we are stuck with people wanting to look nice, even in an ideal world, how do we draw a line around that?

My ideal would be to see beauty linked only to health. Whenever I catch myself thinking "urgh, my stomach" I follow it up by thinking "...looks exactly normal for someone with 2 kids in her 30s". Or "urgh my legs... both work absolutely fine, which is what they're for". My old lecturer used to go on about the psychosexual function of hair and skin, but I would like to see these things admired (if we must) for being actual indicators of health rather than canvasses for simulating the appearance of health. So, skin that is actually healthy because it is well cared for through diet, hydration, cleansing etc, rather than just appearing healthy through the application of makeup. I'd like to see a world where women (and men) were admired for their beauty relative to their own age group as well. Where being an attractive woman in your 40s meant looking good for your 40s not attempting to look 10 years younger. I'd like to see an appreciation of natural body variation as well, where stretch marks and c section scars and body hair and freckles and wonky noses were all valued over homogeny of appearance.

I know, I know - "my utopian pipe dream is valid"

There's definitely a feminist issue in there but it's so difficult to talk about it as so many people take such offence at having what they are convinced as their uninfluenced personal preferences questioned.

This is true of so many issues - giving up work to be a SAHM/ "housewife", changing your name on marriage, giving the children their fathers surname etc. It's hard interrogating our choices, especially if they're choices that maybe we aren't actually 100% comfortable with. I gave up my degree when I had my son - I spent years pushing down the resentment and telling myself it was my own free choice to have done that. It was MN and FWR that made me finally face the fact that my "choice" had been made in the context of substantial pressure from my father, friends, lecturers, and just my own internalised misogyny about what a good mother "should" do. Once I started to analyse my life through that lens I was finally able to start hearing the difference between my own voice and thoughts, and those put there by patriarchy. The idea that we maybe aren't all quite as free as we think we are can be a hard one to stomach - hence the appeal of liberal feminism.

I guess the 60s and 70s passed you all by? Loads of young women had long straight, parted in the middle hair.

I didn't say anything about having a problem with long hair, in fact I said it was fine. I don't understand what your point is.

I was thinking about the poster earlier who argued that the magic marker eyebrows and tonnes of slap look was more democratic as it makes everyone look the same whether or not they are stunning to begin with.

Logically by this reasoning the best solution would be if everyone wore the niqab.

Remember when Princess Diana was a beauty icon - I had that haircut as a kid, it was very popular

I guess the 60s and 70s passed you all by? Loads of young women had long straight, parted in the middle hair.

The haircut you describe requires far more attention than my very long straight hair did. It needed a trim along the bottom with the kitchen shears every now and then.

I think part of it is difficult because we have preferences and such even outside of a problem. THat sounds confused!

What I mean is this. Imagine a scenario in which men and women were treated in the same way, or at least in an equal way. And then lets say we imagine it so that people are not being asked to do anything that is really problematic, like surgery, or hair dye, or whatever.

People would still, I think, have the desire to decorate, to do something to mark important occasions, they will still want to look attractive and nice.

And it is really difficult to think that looking nice is some terrible problem. In fact I would say there is some sense where people who really don't care about it at all usually have some deeper problems like depression.

It's also impossible to imagine a society without social norms. So if one thing is seen as usual, something else is going to seem weird and maybe unattractive. You can't have a society without any expectations about clothing/grooming, unless you have one without culture, and that is impossible.

So if we are stuck with culture, and we are stuck with people wanting to look nice, even in an ideal world, how do we draw a line around that?

Yep, nothing wrong with long hair.

There's something wrong if you want to be found attractive but are led to think, by our media etc that no one will find you attractive if you cut it so you don't, even though you would actually much rather have short hair. Or, you cut it to self harm and deny yourself that perceived attractiveness. That's a mess.

If you've read any of the 'nail' thread you'll see it's incredibly problematic to pass any kind of comment on how women choose to express themselves and to the discuss the possible reasons why.

There's definitely a feminist issue in there but it's so difficult to talk about it as so many people take such offence at having what they are convinced as their uninfluenced personal preferences questioned.

There is noting wrong with long hair. IN a lot of ways it can be easier than short, which needs to be cut more often. I think people find it notable that there is so little variation in hairstyles when it used to be common. Remember when Princess Diana was a beauty icon - I had that haircut as a kid, it was very popular. And no one thought it was masculine.

I am somewhat wondering though if it isn't equally as problematic to be telling people that they should be able to express themselves through what they wear, as if otherwise they are inauthentic. I wonder if it hasn't created a sense that your sense of style or what you like to wear is more important than it really is, leading to some of this "internal essence" stuff.

I keep reading posts (on this thread and the school playground version of it on the false nails thread) mentioning long hair on women. I'm going to presume that the intentions behind linking it to porn and the patriarchy come from a none judgemental place. That women don't want to see other women feel limited by the hair style that they choose. But to offer another explanations of why some of us like to wear our hair long, here's some of my reasons:

I'm skint and hairdressers cost money I haven't got.
I wash my hair (no shampoo) once a week, brush it and stick it up in a bun that gets messier as the week progresses. I leave my hair tied up in the same bun all week which is super time saving.
I love the feel of it down my naked back and brushing it out is calming and meditative.
On a windy day, I love to go out on a walk with my hair flying around like a crazy medusa! (I let it down specially).
My son loved to play with my long hair in the baths we shared. He used to tangle his toys up in it so that they could rescue each other.
It's taken a long time coming but I now love my body. In my youth I would shave my hair off as a self loathing gesture (it was always short :(). My long hair now is a sign of my self care, acceptance and love. It's part of me and I would no more cut it off than any other part of my body.

(Except I shave my legs and pluck my chin because I do live in a patriarchy and I've lost the guts not to do this for the time being.)

The amount of choice these days is ridiculous. Unless our faces have grown to size of a satellite dish, where does it all go?

Yes, the amount of the weird stuff available is crazy.

The only thing I wear regularly is a tinted moisturiser with sunscreen. I like the moisturiser and suncreen for practical reasons, and the tinted bit I guess because I am a bit vain, but also lazy and it adds no extra work when they are all combined.
Last time I went to buy some I had a really difficult time finding anything, there were so many base layers and colour correctors and pore fillers.

Interesting thread.

I went to super drug at the weekend to pick up a bottle of nail varnish and a brown mascara, and I was dazed by the sheer amount of powders and creams for sale these days. I could not work out what most of it was for.

There seemed to be a huge section for eyebrows: pencils, powders, liners, setting stuff... all for two strips of hair above your eyes.

But here's the thing. I couldn't find a brown mascara at all. And there was only one bottle across all the ranges of a pearl nude varnish.

It was as though makeup is now about Instagram or nothing. There's no longer anything in-between makeup-free and "theatrical".

Grab your “friend” sounds utter shite .. go to the wedding, wear what you like,enjoy your beautiful baby...then slowly ditch her.

I think on a personal and family-based level it is good to try to destroy the beauty myth, but we should be really careful about judging others on appearance alone.

Some really interesting women come plastered in makeup and dressed up to the nines. My daughter, for example. She doesn't take after me at all, except that she is a deep thinker. Unfortunately she gets written off by so many of her peers because she doesn't fit easily into any of the boxes based on outward appearance that everyone creates.

Oh, and the long flowy hair. I hadn't even noticed it taking over young womanhood. (I live under a rock.) But it hit me between the eyes one day like a wet fish when I saw a photo shoot of Trumpy women. I could barely tell them apart through the identical ethnicity, identical makeup, and identical long blonde hair. (Yes, Melania's is light brown. She's the only one I can pick out of a line-up of these people.)

So when did that become obligatory? What made it obligatory? Porn? As with everything else?

The women I boggle at are the ones who can walk effortlessly (well, it looks effortless) and gracefully in those ridiculous lethal-weapon-heels.

You know, models and the like.

How do they do it? How many years does it take to learn? Do they have foot surgery to fit into those absurd shoes?

What I'm trying, clumsily, to ask is, do you think the desire to present and be read socially as belonging to your sex class, and distinct from the opposite sex class, through the use of whatever cultural gender markers exist at the time, is what TRAs mean when they talk about "gender identity"? And if so, do you think that maybe it actually is innate?

Speaking largely about my intuitions and personal thoughts, I do think there is such a thing as gender or sexual identity. There are all kinds of identities, we seem to be made in such a way that we build them up from our experiences and cultural environment. From what I understand there is a lot of psychological study related to how we build and interact with identity, that has nothing to do with our sexed bodies, how you conceptualise yourself as a person, as a member of a family or race, and so on. So I would say our identification with our sex is one facet of that, probably a pretty basic one since sex, unlike race or favourite band, is ubiquitous and important for species survival.

I don't think this is something we can avoid, it seems to be integral in some way to our consciousness and I would say also having regulated personalities, and on a larger scale to social stability. I think its a big part in creating societies that function, and maybe the more complex the society is, the more it has to build up complex identities. (And maybe more can go wrong?)

It does seem to me that at least some of the classic gender dysphoria descriptions could be about some kind of fault in the way the individual forms their identity.

In the older cases it was associated by the doctors with homosexuality, and maybe that played a part in some way - perhaps it is even significant that we recognise among homosexual persons definite types (not sure what other word to use there, but like butch lesbians or effeminate gay men) that seem to take on some characteristics of the opposite sex. Those people seem to have a stable identity as male or female though, though many do have a period where they really struggle even more than heterosexual peers. And it also makes sense to me that the ones who can't make a stable sense of identity might have other related issues.

So my thought is that its a disorder liked to particular ways identity forms. I don't think all TRA are thinking about that though, the queer ideology has changed things a lot.

I will, baring testosterone treatment and surgery, always be read as female. There is no hairstyle or clothing choice I could adopt that would make me be read as male. I wear clothes from the women's section because they are the ones in my size. If menswear came in a size 8, I'd probably buy that instead. I don't go out of my way to highlight the fact that I'm female, but I don't try to hide it, or present as male. I just am female, it's obvious no matter what I wear.

What gender does that mean I identify with? Is that what cis gendered means - just no strong desire to be read as the opposite sex? How does that work with the gender identity =/= gender expression thing then? How can the Muscatos of the world argue that they want to be read as female whilst highlighting the fact they are male through gender markers like suits and beards? I seriously wish The Monitors would quit monitoring and just explain this shit if they understand it. "Gender identity = a desire to emphasise (or pretend) that you belong to one sex or the other through the use of gendered language" is coherent to me. That makes sense. "Gender identity = inner sense of woman-ness/ male-ness but it has nothing to do with your sex class or your gendered appearance choices" is incoherent to me.

I promise you Lass my friend would notice and care. Most of my friends wouldn't, hence why I've been happily recycling the same dress for a few years now, but this friend would. I'm already the only person bringing a baby, against her original wishes, so I don't want to risk pissing her off further!

What I'm trying, clumsily, to ask is, do you think the desire to present and be read socially as belonging to your sex class, and distinct from the opposite sex class, through the use of whatever cultural gender markers exist at the time, is what TRAs mean when they talk about "gender identity"? And if so, do you think that maybe it actuallyisinnate?

I think it is. I assume that many posters on here think it isn't / want it not to be the case but I think it is.

Wearing pink dresses might not be innate but I do think that whatever cultural gender markers exist at the time is.

Hmm, it is how you would feel if you didn't do your routine.

Does that come from social pressure to conform, those hidden messages everywhere about what is acceptable? Difficult to pick it apart. There is certainly pressure to look good from society, how much that effects each individual is hard to tell.

There are some things I will not go out without doing. There used to be more.