Can we talk about this lip filler fashion

[squirreltrap]

I'm just wondering if there is some feminist analysis for the current fashion for lip fillers. I don't want to slate the women who are doing it, just understand what the hell its all about!

My thoughts on it are:

• it must be porn related?
• are they designed to look like labia on your face?
• it seems to be some obvious expression of sexual availability?
• I've never spoken to a man who finds it attractive so that's confusing
• it seems to make women look 'vulnerable' and low in self-esteem somehow, is that what is attractive? (Reminds me of the old feminist arguement about high heels being attractive because they render women unable to defend themselves I.e. Run away)

What's everyone else's view on this?

(And it is a feminist issue because it's women doing it to themselves)

The roots of this is making money! And we are the consumers who (not me particularly) want a particular thing to make us look good which in turn makes us feel better!

Does it really require an in depth analysis? Or if it does just because this is a forum and you can analyse everything and anything then at least be fair when stating your argument and not litter it with outrageous assumptions

Now I'm definition out

• definitely should say

Does it really require an in depth analysis

Feminism does. With no analysis, you have no statistics. With no stats, you have no conclusion. With no conclusion you can't take any action.

So do you want action against fillers and other cosmetic enhancements?

Discussing patterns and trends and their relationship with/to feminism?
Yawn - I'm out

And on the feminism board no less - what will these nutters think of next?

Won't somebody please think of the people who aren't interested in feminism and can't be bothered to check what board they're posting on before they start a feminist analysis on FWR? The Humanity!

I'd say ^as with my blow up dolls on my pp that while men may or may not be specifically thinking 'engorged labia' they're definitely thinking 'place I can put my penis'

"Dsl" or dick sucking lips was a common term when I was in school

Scarlett Johansson? I think she was the prime example back in my school days.

*Yes, larger lips are supposed to represent engorged labia, hence wearing lip colours that make your lips appear larger

This gets said often. It sounds complete tosh.Lips with lipstick look nothing like labia.*

I have noticed recently though, that the filled lips + duck face selfie = something looking very much like an anus.

I dunno. My dd's aren't teens and for all the reasons why people do this given here, it breaks my heart that they might grow up to think their beautiful, natural bodies aren't good enough and they need to modify themselves, be it waxing, fillers, surgery, fake tan, hair extensions, whatever.

Today 14:41 Dippingmytoesin

So do you want action against fillers and other cosmetic enhancements?

I'd absolutely agree with action over the objectification of women and girls by the media. The 'is your body bikini ready?' type adverts. The relentless pressure girls and young women are under to achieve an impossible standard of beauty.

The huge upsurge in young women having their labia changed by a plastic surgeon to be more uniform/appealing/acceptable.

Does it really require an in depth analysis?

You'll be telling us we're 'over thinking' it next!

If you (generic) prefer to under think things, that's fine. Just leave everyone else to it, surely.

I didn't ask about the media I asked about cosmetic surgery and enhancements..

Dippingmytoesin

You don't see a correlation between the media lead objectification of women and girls, and breast enhancement and lip fillers?

The one is a direct result of the other.

The media has some blame, but I don't think it's 100% to blame either.

Dippingmytoesin

Where do you see the blame? I'm not disagreeing, just interested in your answer.

@Datun look at the picture below of viola Davis wearing red lipstick. The comments she got was horrendous.

The misogynior towards black women's body is astounding. But also, the linking of red lip stick with the "black face". Apart from that, it's not seen as good colour for dark skin women and it's one of those where you have to be light to wear one and brown paper bag would have to be brought in as test.

Interesting link about a British woman who grew up knowing that as black woman she could not wear red lipstick.
"It was only 2 years ago that I started giving myself permission to wear bold lipsticks. To have the audacity to stand out, to be seen and to actually love myself exactly the way I am. I did that in spite of what I and so many POC have been taught is beautiful. I do it to affirm to myself that I am a sovereign queen, and that nobody can make me feel ugly or unworthy without my consent."
www.wildmysticwoman.com/poetry-prose/red-lipstick

And the debacle with asap rocky on his comment about dark women who shouldn't wear red lip stick.

www.teenvogue.com/story/mac-black-model-lips-instagram-racist-comments

Lots of pictures of blacked people with red lips used in America (warning for the wiki page)
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface

www.lipstickalley.com/threads/why-are-black-women-makeup-shamed-so-heavily.992197/

In France they call it "une bouche à pipe" which is the equivalent of "blow job mouth".

I highly recommend Sheila Jeffries' brilliant book "Beauty and Misogyny" for anyone who is interested in why what women do to their bodies in the name of fashion or choicey choices is a feminist subject.

The book has a brilliant analysis of gender and how beauty practices are part of women being identified and clearly marked out as subjugated and of the sex class.

None of us make choices in a sociocultural vacuum. Unfortunately.

Thanks for that quencher. I hadn't realised it was an issue (I know, I know).

I shall read more about it, to get a proper handle on it.

I blame Kylie Jenner partly for popularizing it here. the lips look like a bloated asshole to me and they're aging (I'm charming, I know). I think it's part of the pushback from the super skinny waiflike white girl ideal in the 90s/early 2000s. That and the big exaggerated curves and the huge thick eyebrows seem to be distancing themselves from the Paris hiltons and Kate mosses w their stick thin brows/asses/lips/etc.
is it just styles cycling ? Idk. Is there a bit of cultural appropriation mixed in there? I think so too
It's interesting.

I think it can be people's feeling In genera not just media.

From my own experience which I'm in no way saying others feel the same. I was diagnosed with anorexia aged 8 after suffering with eating for 2 years, i wasn't a little girl who liked pop stars/films etc I was quite happy to sit in my room and do maths or read or draw. I've hated my nose since I can remember. I've never compared myself to those in the media just a constant feeling of being uncomfortable In the way I am.
I'll admit I'm still what medical professionals will say 'anorexic'. (Now 26)

Through my years of therapy I've been in groups of others with eating disorders a few women had had extensive plastic surgery, there's always a few men and women who have said it's not media that has triggered their disorders and wanting to change their looks it's how they feel about themselves.

I know your argument is about fillers and the media, but it can be the same as EDs etc where it's not liking yourself and not always due to the media.

I've not articulated myself well here I apologise I'm just exhausted and In pain!

Datun but nothing said about women by Desmond Morris (Mr 'breasts are a bottom on your chest') is to be taken at face value (npi). He's like one of those mouthy blokes down the pub in that he talks a lot but I don't think he knows much. All his 'social theory' or whatever he calls it seems to be based on what he has 'observed' (selectively) in animals and then applies (dodgily) to humans: www.theguardian.com/books/2007/dec/18/scienceandnature.science

I think we arrived at the current lip zeitgeist via a melange of influences (Kardashians + porn + desire to look young/horror of aging) which are not unrelated. Throw in a good measure of fear of 'resting bitch face' too. That thing that happens to you when you age and your face falls and crinkles around your mouth and maybe you look 'angry' because you're not smiling at fellas all blinking day is apparently not considered all that fuckable.

I suspect most women in middle age who get lip filler just want to look 'fresh' and less gnarled around the mouth, but the reason this is a thing is because looking a bit gnarled clearly indicates that being 'fresh' is not a priority for you and we have a horror of women who 'let themselves go'. I say this as someone who is struggling with the concept of looking like I have let myself go unless I spend a lot of time doing my hair and choosing a 'put together look' because my default look (which in youth looked a bit interesting and artsy) now looks unkempt and self-neglecting. So what i mean is that I understand the interest in looking 'fresh' I just resent being charged with this responsibility.

I wonder if this is also a thing in France, where all that smoking and lip-pursing often show shamelessly on an older lady. They never seem to mind.

Ah, thanks for that Beachcomber. (I posted before I read your comment.)

Dippingmytoesin

Sorry for your experience. It can't be easy.

I'm not sure I would disagree with someone having a nose job if they are truly distressed about the size of their nose. If we, as a society weren't so looks orientated, it wouldn't matter. As we are, it does. It's just a question of degree.

In terms of anorexia, I confess I do not know enough about it. Apart from it being a mechanism of control for the person suffering.

I don't know whether the desire to look/be thin has got anything to do with our obsession for slenderness though?

Perhaps someone else can enlighten me on that.

DIpping- i was the same as you.

However even though i didn't follow media or fashion, i was quite aware that the thin girls with boobs at school were the admired ones, and the fat kids were picked up on and ridiculed. I saw clearly which girls the boys flocked too. It's subliminal. I became anorexic at 17- social pressure was a factor.

It's like gender stereotyping. Doesn't matter if the parents insist boys wear pink, if the child has any contact with the outside world they will pick up that pink is "gay" or "girly"

And yet the fashionable body shape keeps changing. So the heroin chic of 10-15 years ago. Now the curvy bum look.

The 1960s was all about no boobs and being stick thin. Whereas the 50s had pointy boobs and an hourglass figure.

All buying into women's insecurities about their looks. Because they are judged on their fuckablity.

Capitalism changing the rules every decade so we can buy more stuff.

Not read the whole thread but I have some experience with this because I naturally have very full and pouty lips.
When I was a teen I used to follow the fashion and have the dark lip line with lighter lipstick and gloss inside the line (wft was I thinking?!) anyway, I had numerous men comment that 'blowjob lips' looked like pillows that were perfect for penetrating in between. A group of girls at school nicknamed me Lips and I got a completely unfounded and undeserved rep for being a 'blowjob queen'

I now hate my mouth and try and not draw attention to it at all.