From: le01167@portal.lasc.lockheed.com (Ron Nadel (x2025))
Newsgroups: soc.women,alt.feminism
Subject: Re: Feminists ignore Cosmetics?
Date: 26 Aug 92 22:14:58 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. - Rye Canyon
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <7353@skye.ed.ac.uk>, jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes...

>>>| In this regard, American women  |
>>>| are just as oppressed as their eastern sisters while having to pay far |
>>>| more for the priviledge.
> 
>"Just as oppressed"?  Really?  Is colouring one's face "just as
>oppressive" as covering it?  Is there no difference in the two cases
>if a woman fails to follow the "required" practice?
> 
>>Read some Naomi Wolf sometime.
> 
>Does Naomi Wolfe use cosmetics?  She doesn't seem to avoid jewelry...

Good point.  When Wolfe's book first came out, I recall several women 
reviewers who felt that she had chosen a small point (the pressure to 
be beautiful and the role played in this by cosmetics) to harp on for a 
couple hundred pages compared to some of the larger issues and _oppressions_ 
women have had to deal with.  Although I have not read her book, I have 
heard and read interviews with her, and seen her on talk-shows so I believe 
I understand her thesis.  She clearly, and in a somewhat reductionist 
fashion, finds the motivation for women's preoccupations with beauty, and 
in some cases the unhappiness that results, is subtley brought about by a 
society that overly values certain looks and expects its women to achieve 
those looks - at practically any cost.

In fact, if you shift the focus from internal motivations to external 
pressures you can find oppression in almost every aspect of our behaviours:
athletes (of any sex) whose bodily obsession is a result of societal value 
on power, muscle, success, competition, looks, etc., women who want 
children because of societal pressure to be mommies, women who do not want 
children because of societal career pressure to succeed in a man's world, etc.

If you shift to internal motivations instead of external pressures:  
athletes whose bodily obsession is a result of a powerful self-love (or 
even insecurity) driving them toward perfection and preservation of 
of said body (or defense against their insecurity), women who want children 
in response to a need for love, in response to some personally satisfying 
reward of childbaring that I take it cannot be gotten in any other way, 
women who do not want children because of the personal satisfaction of a 
career that has its own immediate rewards for its own sake, etc.

The difficult question becomes not one of the affect of people's choices on 
themselves (to wear makeup or not, bodily obsessions or not) - we can easily
agree or disagree which ones are ok and which ones harmful - so much as 
the ultimate cause for the _choices_ they make (can I really call them 
choices if there are some hidden determinants?).

If we start by saying that a particular woman wears makeup in an 
uncomfortable response to some pressure, it becomes important to determine 
just where the pressure comes from - inside or outside.

It's quite often *too* easy to point a finger at the vague, formless, 
undefinable _thing_ called society, because none of us (men or women) like 
to find the role our own weaknesses play in our difficulties.  That's not 
to say that suppression and oppression do not exist.  But to really get at 
the root of something, I think we need to point the finger in the right 
direction.

Even if Wolfe is wrong (which I clearly think she is), that does not change 
the fact that some or many women are still suppressed/oppressed by the men 
(and women) in their lives; and if she is correct then an investigation has 
to be made into the differences between (a) those women whose makeup use is 
subtly forced on them by others' sense of beauty, and (b) those women who are not 
preternaturally concerned or unhappy with their looks (regardless of their 
makeup use) living in the same society.  I believe it is some difference 
between (a) and (b) that will explain what is going on.

Ron Nadel