Beauty regime burdens

[Sunkisses]

Given recent threads on make up and false nails that have produced much debate and defensiveness, I thought a thread highlighting all the ever more elaborate and costly things and products women are expected to do to their appearance now could be illuminating. Particularly new things, or things that have become a lot more mainstream. Men are not expected to 'groom' and spend so much time/money on their appearance, and many women think just because they 'choose' to, it's not a feminist issue. It is, particularly the messages we send our daughters that our purpose is to be decorative. Things like:
Push up bras
Leg hair removal
Pubic hair removal, especially waxing and Brazilians - ouch
Underarm hair removal
False eyelashes
Eyebrow threading
Hair that costs a fortune (highlights etc)
Body contouring underwear
Botox and fillers
Plastic surgery like breast implants
Hair extensions
Fake tan
False fingernails

@Loopytiles

I appreciate your point of view. And I agree, but my point. Was you can separate the pressure from the ability. The pressure women face regarding their looks I imagine is horrible, and no doubt is fueled by the makeup industry. My point was completly separate from the pressure, at least women have the ability to do more for their appearance. There are women and men who do and do not care about their appearance, my point was the men who do care (however small a group that may be, although I bet its bigger than you would think) would like to be able to wear makeup.

@SuperLoudPoppingAction

I watched the Mitchell and Webb one, didn't seem at all relevant to what I was saying. Brilliant debate tactic though, ad hominins and refusing to engage.

Capitalism has to put everybody under pressure in order to make more money, so it's not surprising that the cosmetic and beauty industry has tried to turn its attention to men. It's still not in the same league as what they do to women though and even men's makeup and cosmetics are far more simple and straightforward than what's marketed at to women.

I missed a few things of that list:

Waxing
Shaving
Depilation
Depilatory creams
Eyebrow plucking
Eyebrow waxing
Eyebrow threading
Eyebrow pencils
Eyebrow cream
Eyebrow pomade

Apart from cosmetic surgery I think hair removal is one of the worst. I've cut my legs shaving them, literally blood running down my legs, waxing hurts like hell and eyebrow plucking makes your eyes water. I'm so glad I don't do any of that anymore, but I still feel weird about having hairy legs on show. It's hard to resist some social pressures, even though I know intellectually that men can wear shorts with hairy legs and nobody bats an eyelid.

Sunkisses I couldn't agree more, I went shopping for a present for 2 year old niece un Smyths. Absolutely horrified to see the 'girls' aisle filled with make up sets, make up dolls, shopping carts and trolleys, kitchen, cashiers, hairdressing dolls. Sociap conditioning from a very very young age to engage with hair and make up and heels and jewels

It's weird to say that women are "privileged" because apparently we can "improve" our appearance, when the real issue working to dismantle the idea that anytbody's natural appearance needs improving.

@Erythonium

I agree, although I don't think that's going to happen any time soon.

I think there is a lot more pressure on young girls to "perform femininity" now then when I was young. Yes Jackie magazine was full of hair styling and make up tips but it was very light touch then. Also there was a feminist backlash against the beauty trade and it was debated more and androgyny more accepted without being a sign you had gender issues.. I agree with the person who said that young women are now trying to look like drag queen caricatures of femininity.
The teenage girls I know who wanted to identify as boys said they felt more comfortable and less judged as boys.
Yes males do beauty regimes too but not as much. I wonder if one of the reasons the New Romantic movement faded was that many men decided they couldn't be bothered with all that.
Why do so many women decide they can be bothered with all that?

The other thing is how subjective the idea of beauty is anyway.
There are notions of class bound up in it.
Sumptuary laws linked to that and linked to racism.
Eg requiring Black women in the USA to always cover their hair in public

www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/psychology-today-apologizes-black-women-less-attractive-article/351205/

This scandal shows how academics are still trying to measure attractiveness to 'prove' ideas around master race.

Women of colour are pressured to bleach their skin. They are pressured to relax their hair. They are often depicted in fashion magazines as animalistic.

I think it's far better to think of health as a goal than to conceptualize beauty as a linear scale whereby one must simply spend money and torture oneself to be 'more beautiful'.
Paris Hilton can spend money and appear to comply to a greater degree with patriarchal beauty standards.
Not everyone can.

I've got a few copies of Jackie and Mandy etc and a lot of the 'beauty' tips are either low cost or free.
I remember one being 'eat a cube of jelly for glowing skin' and another was 'use shampoo the size of a 10p piece'.
Not 'get this eyeshadow pallete from urban decay or you will never find love'.
And they had posters of sports stars like Martina Navratilova on them.

Yes beauty is regarded as whiteness. The beauty industry is incredibly racist as well as misogynistic.

LOL, I remember the cubes of jelly advice for your nails too.

The women's lib movement was shit hot on all of this.
Girls work in particular explored these ideas with teenage girls. They were encouraged to go on residential trips without their make up etc.
They did physical activities. They were able to see their bodies as strong rather than decorative.

www.streetlevelphotoworks.org/event/maud_sulter_passion
Feminists of colour were also working on creating positive images of women of colour such as this photo series.

It's worth trying to get back to that way of being I think - producing our own definitions and representations.

Agree re whiteness. I have had a lot of Asian mothers (usually Pakistan origin) wanting bleaching creams for the skins of their beautiful daughters because some facial pigment unevenness made their daughters "less marriageable". Hair removal was important as well.
Perhaps my generation were atypical in rejecting beauty regimes and sexual stereotyping. My mother spent her life in high heels and had girdles and curlers in all night when she was young. She never did much make up though neither did her mother.

Yet young women do it. It isn't attractive to men, so what's at play here?

From what I can see, men and boys hate the thick eyebrow look and are pretty harsh about it online.
Yet, we're still saying women do it because of men's expectations?
I think the same goes for a lot of beauty habits - the approval of other women is at play maybe more so than the approval of men.

In addition to the debate about when choice isn't real choice, a lot of women are conned, in my view, in to buying extortionately priced make-up & beauty products.

There is a decent argument for the use of moisturiser, but no rational reason to spend £70 + on it.

This may sound a little harsh, but is it not a slightly hollow message to tell girls not to wear make up because thier natural appearence is beautiful, but then you go and dye your own hair because you don't like the natural grey hairs?

We all do it, I'm a big hypocrite. I really dislike it when girls add fillers to thier lips. I would never do this myself and I really wish girls didn't have the pressure to make thier lips look like 'ducks/fish'. But they would be within thier rights to tell me to get lost because I pluck my eyebrows so I don't have a monobrow.

I absolutley agree we should be urging girls and women to recognise thier own beauty and they don't have to do these grooming things to be beautiful. But if girls and women want to 'perform femininity' with grooming, then they can.

But why do they want to?

I don’t dye my hair, partly but not solely for that reason.

I don't think it's harsh.
I have a daughter and it was important to me that I modeled how I wanted her to be around this stuff - opt-in fun but not compulsory.

I stopped shaving my legs and armpits about 8 years ago. Loads of us on here did it after a thread not long after the topic started.
Dd doesn't shave either nor her arms.
I don't know how much of that is down to my influence but I would indeed have felt hypocritical saying she couldn't do it I I did it.

I don't dye my white hairs. I like them.

I do wonder if I would succeed in more interviews if I were more feminine.
But not to the extent I'm going to go into debt over it.

I have mixed feelings about this. I absolutely think though its not something where people are all making individual choices. The range of what is normal sets the stage so if it's making things very difficult, that impacts on what we do.

But at the same time, I think we likely won't ever have a scenario where people don't take any notice of how they look, not without significant effort like you see in some religious communities. And really, even those aren't totally successful. I also think you will be unlikely to see men and women taking on the exact same styles, so you won't get rid of gendered clothing or grooming practices. I don't think that's a problem though so long as neither men nor women have norms that are far out or unreasonable.

We do seem to be going through a period where girls are super conformist and made up. (Though I will say my dd doesn't really do many of the girly things - she has short hair in a boyish cut, no make-up usually, and so on, and no one has been rude about it.) I remember in the 80s there was a similar time too, big hair, heavier cosmetics. Then when I was in high school it was doc martins, no hairstyle, plaid shirts and jeans, not much make-up. Similarly the hippies then the 70s disco look. So perhaps it is just a sort of roller-coaster.
As far as current trends, I'd like to see the end of all the chemical peels, botox and the like. Contoured make up, hair and lash extensions etc. Shoes that are healthy for feet would be good. Simpler hairstyles not needing products and maybe simple make-up for events. I'd like women's shaving to end, but I'd accept just legs and armpits. I would like to see the end to more sexualised clothing

Kind of, can you get ready in 15 minutes, without spending a bundle?

Jackie magazine was full of hair styling and make up tips but it was very light touch then

Jackie magazine was utterly awful. It was steeped in narrow, judgemental 1950s attitudes towards women and girls. I ditched it in favour of Cosmopolitan, which at that time was an intelligent and inspiring read not the pitiful rag it is now.

There is a decent argument for the use of moisturiser, but no rational reason to spend £70 + on it.

I was given a pot of Creme de la Mer as a present. It is basically Nivea in a fancy pot.

I remember reading Mizz Magazine when I was about 11 and seeing advice on using Vaseline to highlight your cheek bones!

I remember the backlash against photoshopped models on magazines, and being told by my mum not to feel insecure because nobody really looked like that. For a while lots of celebs and models seemed to be rejecting makeup and refusing to be photoshopped to send a healthier message. Companies like Dove started running campaigns promoting natural bodies in different shapes and sizes, and shows like "10 years younger" started promoting natural beauty options over surgery.

It seems like it all changed quite rapidly. I think "filters" have a lot to answer for. So many of the women I have on fb look nothing like their pictures in real life. For some of them the difference is so profound that it's actually jarring, I don't always recognise that it's them in pictures until I see the name. I imagine people feel a lot of pressure to try and look IRL like they do post-filter. Hence the whole "baking"/ "insta-face" make up trend which did quite literally come from drag queens.

Mind you, even 10 years ago I had friends who would check every photo of themselves before allowing it to be posted online, or insist group photos be retaken a dozen times until they were happy with the way they looked. I have never seen a man do that.

I also think you will be unlikely to see men and women taking on the exact same styles, so you won't get rid of gendered clothing or grooming practices.

I don't think you'll see the exact same styles, but I don't see why there should be such a gulf between us. Once upon a time it was unheard of for women to wear trousers, now trousers are not a gendered item of clothing. Maybe the style is to a degree but not much - plenty of women in cargo shorts, plenty of men in skinny jeans. Most of the style differences just reflect our different body shapes. If it can become commonplace for women to take on male clothing norms, why can't it become commonplace for men to take on female clothing norms? Why is there no demand for dresses among men? Well, simply, there is a demand for dresses with men but - we see that with the flood of men taking part in drag, cross dressing, or identifying as "femme". But, unlike women wearing trousers (which was "punching up" in social terms) - men cannot admit to wanting to wear dresses (which is still seen as debasing themselves to the level of women). That's true for lots of things - girls can have "boy" names, but boys rarely have "girls" names.If the fashion industry put it's weight behind normalising dresses for men though, I think they'd wear them. You probably wouldn't see many men out in bodycon dresses or others dresses designed to highlight the female body shape, but loose tunic type dresses would probably catch on. Just like long hair used to just be a girl thing, but now it's pretty fashionable among men. The styling isn't identical - less layering, fewer fringes etc - but long hair is no longer a strong "gender signifyer". If it can happen for those things I don't see why it can't happen for everything.

Funnily, I read a reddit rant the other day by a transgender person, who was complaining about James Charles normalising makeup for men, because makeup should just be for women otherwise how would anyone know that they were a "woman" when they wore it. Shockingly enough the comments were not positive and they flounced pretty quickly.

I was given a pot of Creme de la Mer as a present. It is basically Nivea in a fancy pot.

They have tested the two and Nivea did do better in terms of mild wrinkle smoothing.

It's difficult for me as I now know in hindsight that I had dysmorphia about my face and skin from a young age.

At its worst I couldn't walk down a high st without pretending to try on clothes so I could privately check my face in the mirror.

Now I'm much better/ under control, it rose it's head recently again with a bad skin flare but settled. I find putting on makeup / camouflage make up therapeutic and calming.

I very much wish I didn't feel the need to. At the same time it's my guilty pleasure.

Legs are hairy at the mo and I went swimming like that. Sometimes shave my arms. Only moisturise as my skin is v dry.

Cut my own hair and stopped dying it. So it's definitely something to do with my perception and confidence around my face. And it's definitely blown out of proportion by my mind.

ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving

I don't really see it as being about any type of clothing in itself, or even being more or less decorative. I think - barring certain circumstances which I'll mention below - we'd be unlikely to see clothing become very neutral because overall I think men and women like being different. I don't think that is just learned, I think it has something to do with how we relate to each other as sexed beings. I don't think clothing has to be extremely different to fulfil that function, it could be slight differences, colours, that kind of thing.

Now, there are places and times where clothing is very similar for both sexes, often where the wealth or technology or environment means everyone is going to wear the same type of thing. So I think those conditions can trump the desire to accentuate sex differences. But often in those societies gender roles, I'd even say sex roles, have been much more separate, again often for environmental reasons related to women being tied down with babies. So maybe that has the same effect.

While I think culture can sometimes be shaped, I think its usually not worthwhile to try and extinguish deep behaviours totally, it takes too much effort to keep people from acting in that way. It's better to reserve that for more anti-social behaviours. Something like gendered clothing styles, if its kept within bounds that don't restrict people in significant ways, is not worth the effort of trying to rub it out entirely.

Another one to add to the list:

Underarm whitening

New to me.

beautyshortcutips.com/best-underarms-whitening-creams/