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

I think we should differentiate between things that are basically harmless (I'd say push-up bras and leg shaving, basic makeup) and things that are either very time consuming (nails done in a nail bar rather than at home) or painful (Brazilian wax, high heels).

High heels are the worst of all imo, not only are they painful, but they also curb women's freedom as a woman can't walk far in them and cost money (bus, taxis rather than walking).
Similarly, surgery is completely different to wearing control top tights or something.

And I don't quite agree that men aren't expected to groom these days. You only need to visit a gym to see the amount of effort some men put into their appearance.

@Erythronium I take it you have not seen anal/vaginal bleaching then?

On another thread there was a post about something you ingest to make your nether regions taste better for partner during oral sex. Another level of making ourselves "better". Sometimes I am glad I am middle aged. Being a young female these days must be shit.

I haven't seen vaginal bleaching. Really? WTF?

I've cut myself shaving quite a few times. Put it in the harmful pile.

I run a young adults womens group (18-24 year olds) and supported with a into womanhood late teens group, it came up as a topic, www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/vagina-bleaching-lightening

Heels - yes - long term use can have catastrophic impact on posture. Katy Bowman has written buckets on it. Several books on feet, walking and alignment.

That's appalling 64632K. Glamour seem to be tying themselves up in knots objecting to this. Your body your choice, but don't do this. They can categorically condemn the racism in the practice but don't seem to notice the misogyny.

"I've got a wedding coming up and I feel hugely resentful that I "have" to buy a new dress (no I don't have to, but I know the bride well enough that she'll be pissed if I don't)"

How would she know? She can't be familiar with every dress you own surely?
I don't know anyone in real life like this.

It was actually an article in The Sun that one of the women mentioned how a women did it for her boyfriend and it led to the besr sex they ever had, but being MN and The Sun, I thought better find a more credible link

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say vaginal bleaching isn't very common. I know that's not the point, but if we're going for niche procedures, some men get muscle implants.

I didn't mean for this post to be 'what about the men' but I think hours and money spent is a better comparison than listing things only porn stars in LA bother doing.

I would say women have men beat in that regard obviously, but with the hours that some men and women put into the gym, you can see why sex is in some respects less relevant than values, class, laziness etc.

Dd told me that her friends told her that anal bleaching was to make sure it was nice and clean

Sorry...nothing to do with the thread

I'm very aware of this as a feminist issue and I'm doing less and less as I get older, partly because I give less of a shit what people, especially men, think of my appearance and partly to feel like a good feminist, reading here has really made me question some of the choices I was making.
I'm early 30s, been going grey since my teens and I've stopped dying it.
Hated the messy, time consuming, smelly job of doing it so I just don't anymore and my hair is grey enough that it actually looks OK if not quite striking.
I take perverse pleasure in watching people try to work out how old I am, baby face, tiny, still occasionally get asked for id buying wine.
I do shave my armpits legs and tidy the relevant bits but I've never been waxed.
Get my eyebrows threaded and bleach my mustache otherwise I'm a little Freida looking. Will be drawing them all back on and wearing a flower crown at a festival I'm. Going to.
I do wear make up but toned it down recently and resent the time it takes and have a customer facing job, people think I'm sick if I don't bother.
Heels, hardly ever and even then two inch max or wedges.
Keep my hair in a Bob as its quicker, easier, needs less product.
My nails get cut and that's it unless a very special occasion I will paint them a neutral colour myself, not allowed polish at work even if I wanted to.
I definitely notice younger girls wearing more make up than people my age did.
My youngest sister has a massive makeup collection, false lashes, fake nails,very long hair.
She's beautiful without it all but to be fair she sees it as a hobby, will often give me and other sisters makeovers to practice, try out new products and looks.
Part of the difference there is she has more money than we did growing up, partly because parents are better off with only one at home. I didnt get much pocket money so couldn't buy loads of make up even if Id wanted to.
maybe all kids just have more allowance now.
Expectations are definitely higher at a younger age and that does make me sad.

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.

But it has produced an antisocial effect, surely. We live in a world that is so rigid around gendered clothing and interests that it's more acceptable to say you've changed sex than to say you're a man who likes dresses. There's a poster up-thread saying he'd love to wear makeup but that he doesn't think he realistically can. How many men would have been happy to just identify as men if that wasn't the case? Why is it easier for Alex Drummond to "widen the bandwidth of being a woman" than for him to widen the bandwidth of being a man?

We spend all our time asking "why can't you just be a man who likes dresses?" If the answer is "because for most men the desire to present in a way that accentuates the fact they belong to the male sex class is too deeply innate for my desire to ever be seen as normal" then perhaps men who want to present as women actual are better off pretending they literally are women.

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?

I resent every one of the tedious beauty regimes I do. If I listed them here I swear it would run to more than twenty. I often think back to being a kid and just leaping out of bed, throwing on some clothes, cleaning my teeth and being done.

The older I get the longer it takes for me to get ready. I hate it.

Now I've thought about it, I can definitely notice a pattern amongst my friends and women I know quite well, the more time and money they spend on appearance, the lower the confidence and self esteem underneath.
The ones who bother less are happier and more carefree
One of my best friends is beautiful and puts a lot of effort in to her appearance, on the surface she seems confident but there is always some crisis bubbling up and she's never secure in relationships even though she's usually way too good for the men she chooses. It's like she uses cosmetic enhancements a mask and as a way of getting validation.
A lot of people also place high value on beauty, otherwise none of us would bother with any of it.

Gwenhwyfar

She would know because it was the dress I wore last year to our mutual friends wedding that we attended together. I basically only have this one dress that I wear to weddings and usually that's fine because most of my friends don't know each other. This is the first "overlap" wedding I've been to and believe me my friend will be pissed if the pics from her wedding and the pics from mutual friends wedding feature repeated outfits.

I would never be friends with people that shallow. Sorry.
Part of the reason I've decided to stop dying my hair, cut my hair short, wear less make up, is so that if I ever do attract a man it won't be a shallow, image obsessed, bore.
Or rather I see that as a positive side effect.

She would know because it was the dress I wore last year to our mutual friends wedding that we attended together. I basically only have this one dress that I wear to weddings and usually that's fine because most of my friends don't know each other. This is the first "overlap" wedding I've been to and believe me my friend will be pissed if the pics from her wedding and the pics from mutual friends wedding feature repeated outfits

Obviously you know your friend better than anyone on here but I find it very hard to believe that any bride would even notice, far less be annoyed, that the dress one of her guests was wearing had appeared in some other bride's wedding photos.

Does anyone subject other people's wedding photos to that level of scrutiny? I can't imagine any bride caring as long as guests weren't wildly inappropriately dressed or deliberately trying to upstage the bride.

I care about clothes, really, really care. I notice what people are wearing and compliment them , but whether a friend or colleague has worn something before at a formal event would not enter my head

As for wearing the same dress twice, I have dozens of dresses. For a special occasion I might buy a new one but at the moment I have 3 dresses which I love but which really can't be worn anywhere except somewhere special. They have and will be making plenty of appearances.

It gets trotted out a lot but I'm really not convinced the claim that women can't wear the same dress twice has much legs to it.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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?

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?