To wonder why women do this to themselves?

[YourAmplePlumPoster]

https://images.app.goo.gl/qjKyBnm1bkpCKefWA
Lauren Sanchez before and after. What is it with inflatable lips and sculpted cheeks and the inflated breasts? She looked like a nice, attractive woman before.

Drag Queens are men. A woman cannot turn herself into a drag queen any more than a drag queen can turn himself into a woman. There is no irony whatsoever that I can see in the fact that some women find the trans movement regressive, while meanwhile, completely different women are having cosmetic procedures. Can you explain?

She’s in late middle age, so the before images are not what she’d look like without plastic surgery.

I know some guys who like this look!!

I think it’s the environment and circles that she is in. I think it’s become very normalised to get these procedures done. And ageing comes with many negative connotations. Ironically though, I think some of these procedures actually age her and others further. I would like this big lip trend to end because on the majority of people who get it done, it just looks absolutely ridiculous and doesn’t make them look any more attractive. I feel everyone looks like a Bratz doll.

So in summary, I feel she is a bit of a product of her environment. Being in the public eye will also bring a lot of pressure.

I don’t know her personally, so I wouldn’t be able to call her a “bimbo” especially as she has achieved certain things e.g. becoming a pilot. However - I do wish women in the public eye such as her would go against such procedures because they’re kind of normalising it for every other woman and girl out there unfortunately. There are very few female celebrities that are growing old gracefully so to speak. There’s so much pressure on women, and it’s all to do with the systems and societal pressure we live under.

I find it highly ironic that people complain about drag queens and trans women performing regressive stereotypes of women, and yet have no problem with women performing the same stereotypes. The drag queens are merely mirroring people like the Kardashians and Lauren Sanchez. People say that trans women are 'reducing women to a set of stereotypes' but ignoring the fact that actual women are doing the very same thing. The call is coming from inside the house and I find it telling that we defend women mutilating themselves in the name of feminism.
Also, in the case of the Kardashians, there is a strong argument that they took features that are often associated with Black women (bottoms and full lips) and repackaged them to be mainstream to a white audience. They have been criticised for appropriating certain aspects of Black culture, which I'm not sure that people on here have taken on board. It is to me ironic to complain about drag, which came from the Ballroom culture of the 80s, and allowed young Black men (who were often very poor and marginalised in mainstream society) to express themselves in a safe environment, and yet give the Kardashians etc a pass. This to me is a complete failure of intersectional thinking.

I find it highly ironic that people complain about drag queens and trans women performing regressive stereotypes of women, and yet have no problem with women performing the same stereotypes.

The whole thread is an attack on a woman doing something stereotypically feminine, in response to a certain kind of pressure that disproportionately affects women, since everyone knows who the women are when it suits them. By distinguishing women from transwomen and drag queens here, you're demonstrating that you know the difference too.

However, the point is that doing stereotypical woman things isn't what makes Lauren a woman. If she'd never had any work done, if she weren't beautiful, if she had one leg, if she were black, white, gay, straight, fat, thin, a SAHM, a world leader, stupid, a genius, whatever, she'd be a woman. It is not something you perform, it is something you are. Similarly, a drag queen ir transwomen could act out every single female stereotype that there is and he'd still be a man. You have to be a man to be a drag queen or transwoman. It's literally the only requirement for eligibility.

It is far more regressive to say that he becomes a woman by acting out these stereotypes because then you are asserting that performing these stereotypes are what make him a woman. Actual womanhood is not a collection of stereotypes and Lauren would be a woman if she'd never had anything done.

Actually, now that you mention her… She is an example of having work done in a way that doesn’t make her look like an implausible human being. It is theoretically possible to look the way Meghan Markle now looks, naturally. You’d have to be extraordinarily lucky with the teeth, but I have a now-elderly aunt who did actually have teeth and a wide smile exactly like MM’s implants/veneers/whatever they are. Perfectly even, perfectly white - crazy. The nose job has left her with a nose that many women are born with; the skin treatments are subtle. The worst-impact intervention she’s had, imo, is the weight loss jabs. But generally speaking she looks way, way more “real” and natural-looking than Lauren Sanchez/Bezos. I think it’s a choice a woman makes, to look a certain way. We do it with our clothes and make-up too: goth, trad, punk, nondescript, glamour, etc. They’re all costumes, really. The surgery/injections/whatever are just a more extreme version of the same.

Ironically she looks 10-15 years older in the second photo.

Yep, exactly.

Actually there are female drag queens. They are known as diva queens, hyper queens, or bio queens.

I really like your thinking and you were able to articulate my thoughts in a much better way than I could.

There is a big difference between a woman carrying out these “stereotypical” behaviours than a transwoman or a drag queen. It’s best we don’t conflate the two. In my humble opinion, I feel that drag and trans is 100% appropriation. It is performative, and I feel that is what tends to really wind up biological women.

Something that comes up for me — if we were to talk intersectionality — is the economical inequality of looking this way and these procedures. Many women from poorer economic backgrounds cannot look the way that Meghan & Lauren do. I feel that’s reinforcing the very social conditioning that they’re both products of…and thus the cycle continues.

We need more “real” women role models, those that are ageing naturally.

I don't think you understood my point. I wasn't saying that Lauren's surgery is what made her a woman. I'm saying that the same people who criticise drag queens and trans women for mocking women and for performing so called 'womanface' seem to ignore the fact that said drag queens are merely mirroring a certain type of biological woman who also performs a stereotype of femininity and has the cosmetic surgery to match. Also that the people who complain about drag queens appropriating femininity seemingly have no issue with the Kardashians appropriating Blackness.

Those are different terms. It's not drag because they are in fact women.

I've been to shows where women performed as men, acting out hypermasculine stereotypes. They're called drag kings.

I have an issue with the Kardashian’s appropriating blackness as well to be honest. I don’t much like the Kardashian’s and I feel that they lack substance and real talent.

Well surely that applies equally in reverse? You write respectfully about men 'expressing themselves' an expression that for some men leads them to undergo far more extreme bodily modification, surgery and medical interventions than any actual woman will ever undergo. Yet describe women with filler as 'grotesque' and 'sex clowns'. If we were refer to men who 'express themselves' via stereotypically feminine forms of dress and presentation as grotesque, which is the honest opinion of many people, there is typically a great deal of upset. So are you not as guilty as those you accuse?

As for how can women complain about men presenting as regressive stereotypes of womanhood while defending women doing the same, I guess the obvious difference is that womanhood belongs to women, and women have the right to express it in any way they choose, while men are appropriating it.

You write respectfully about men 'expressing themselves' an expression that for some men leads them to undergo far more extreme bodily modification, surgery and medical interventions than any actual woman will ever undergo. Yet describe women with filler as 'grotesque' and 'sex clowns'.

Thus again proving that they know who's a man and who's a woman!

I wouldn't choose body/face reconfiguration for myself. Mostly I don't care about it in principle for others ... although one of my cousin's kids had large fake boobs inserted when she was around 17-18 (boobs she had before were present and in proportion)... I'm more alarmed by cousin's Instagram pics showing off the too-big cleavage with a minimal g-string bottom than the fact she has the implants. Daddy paid for it... I wonder how he feels about the near-soft-porn pics. Anyway...

If I may be allowed to have an opinion, the face of LS looks awful in her wedding pics. Plasticy, rigid, distorted. Not lovely. I presume lots of Celebs have had face & body reconfiguration work that is super hard to see (for ppl like me to see, anyway). I'm not an attention seeker is maybe why I don't 'get it'. Maybe the plastic doll look goes with wanting lots of attention so all makes sense to LS.

Bezos looks fine to me in the wedding pics, fwiw.

You can’t turn yourself into a clown either but you can style yourself as one.

The irony is that some women are modifying their appearance in a way that makes them resemble a man creating an exaggerated stereotypical portrait & gender performance of femininity that is regressive and mocks women.

Lauren has created a caricature of sexualised femininity, when she was already a very attractive woman.

The men in the ballroom culture did not make themselves grotesque with cosmetic surgery, though. They expressed themselves through dress and movement, and to an extent makeup. I think that there are definitely conversations to be had about appropriation and who was influencing whom, but as a half black woman, I can't accept the failure of intersectionality that says that 'womanhood belongs to women' and doesn't acknowledge who is rewarded for expressing femininity and who is punished (someone like Sanchez is rewarded: a few critical comments on Mumsnet aren't going to make any difference to her!) I have often felt marginalised as a woman and have found watching drag to be liberating, not offensive at all.

Thank you, you've expressed yourself better than I could.

well i think she looks fake and plastic -but that is up to her.

I am far far far more scathing about her conspicuous consumption. But i grudgingly admire that she doesn't give a flying fuck what anyone thinks of her.

The irony is that some women are modifying their appearance in a way that makes them resemble a man creating an exaggerated stereotypical portrait & gender performance of femininity

Sorry, but this is arse about face, so to speak. A woman might spoil her looks with too many procedures but she's still a woman and not defined by men who mock or badly emulate her. She doesn't look like a man exaggerating femininity, she looks like a woman exaggerating femininity. Or just youth, to the best of her practitioners' ability. The man who tries to get that look is imitating her; she's not imitating him.

Ru Paul famously said that he did not dress like a woman, he dressed like a drag queen.

I agree that that's the worst thing about all of that set of people. To be fair, though, I have less beef with her about that than I do with the likes of that disgusting hypocrite DiCaprio.

there are rumours that DiCaprio is gay and the women he dates in public are beards though. It appears to be mutually beneficial so, meh. (i also don't care if he is gay or straight. He's an actor, it really shouldn't matter)

What the Bezos wedding showed me, though, is that a lot of people with far far too much money can't buy class. They can buy conspicuous consumption, but they all look awful. The only one who i saw in any of the photos (which i admittedly didn't search for, they just come across my SM) who looked at all good was Usher.

Oh and sadly Orlando Bloom no longer looks like an elf.

I don't care about who DiCaprio dates. My problem with him is how he preaches about the environment while taking private jets and super yachts. His private life is his own business, but his hypocrisy over the environment is absurd.