We have to stop buying stuff: 1 - feminsim
and just to let you all know, this has little if anything to do with our current "downturn" (ha!) in the United Kingdom but rather to do with a slow accretion of differing sensibilities that I have become aware of over time.
My previous posts will show you that in the last few years I've started to form the opinion that we should stop buying things. Having this sensibility is useful as a student after all. At first it was to do with feminism.
The other day my significant other wanted to buy a pack of mints. Being near a certain large pharmaceutical/beauty/appliances/photo/food establishment, we popped in to get our mints. As we crossed the threshold I suddenly realised why I had some weird niggling aversion to even setting foot in this particular shop. Arrayed in an irregular pattern so as to obscure any clear route through them were the cosmetics counters. 10, 20, maybe a hundred different counters offering hundreds of different products with backlit brand logos and very shiny packages complete with very stylishly dressed, primped, straightened, bleached, coiffeured, whitened, ironed and be-masked assistants staring hungrily in my direction for the next poor sap who might succumb to being cooed over and sprayed so that they might part with three figure amounts of cash to boost via commision the miserable minimum wages these assistants earn.
Luckily their gaze slides over me and Nelson to more likely customers behind or to the side of us, streaming in to define their lifestyle by their purchases, because we look like what we are - people who dont give a shit about how we look. Or not. We look, well, just different. There are no hair straighteners in our house and you can see it on our faces (though not by our hair because we both have dead straight hair already - a boon apparently).
But here's the niggle. Navigating through those counters (that support up to four staff each) I feel the same dread as when I'm snaking through slow pedestrians on the high street trying to avoid the gaze of charity canvassers. And yet the pressure of ignoring a make-up message is a huge one. Don't you want to smell nicer? have straighter hair? Cover those spots? Define those eyelashes? Highlight those eyes? Colour those cheeks? Whiten those teeth? The underlying message: don't you know that you are positively ugly?
I have never worn make-up, even now I don't know how to apply it. And I am confident in my opinion that I never want to and never will, but still I felt a pressure in my chest rather like bathing in the mineral-rich water of the new baths - crushing.
Women constantly yet halfheartedly call for sanitary towels to be tax-free. This thinking is wrong headed in the first place. Like the make-up, perfume, magic ointment etc. they are a luxury commercial item subject to taxes just like everything else. The only answer is to stop buying it all. Stop buying make-up. (yes, and sanitary towels - don't look at me like that!) Its sole purpose is to make you buy shit you don't need. It doesn't make you feel better - it stops you from feeling worse. If no-one in the west, or even your workplace, or town, wore make-up and instead pale untanned skin was valorised, wrinkles were a mark of the older woman and therefore something which gained one respect and deferance, if spots were a sign of youth and signified extra care and support from elders plus as marks of beauty due to only being present on the young - who would wear make-up then? Who would use anti-wrinkle cream? Who would spend hours on a sunbed?
Incidentally, if wrinkles are undesirable in beauty terms, why are tans so fashionable? Not only does UV damage cause cancer but it directly causes wrinkles. (Not only that but studies suggest that pale skin is more attractive to men because it indicates youth and therefore fertility). Why tans then? Because if we didn't have wrinkles they would lose money on anti-wrinkle cream. And tans make more money than being pale - sunbeds, spray-on tan, tinted moisturiser, anti-wrinkle cream.... what could they sell us to look pale? Parasols?
Your self esteem, how beautiful you are, how fashionable you look is all, ALL about the money.
And it's not just the money, it's the control. Your life is being controlled from the outside by make-up. It sounds funny. But lets substitute make-up, for anything else, I dunno, cucumber.
Little Jessica is obsessed with cucumber. She spends around 20-30 hours per month studying different brands and types of cucumber in the shops. She smells, tastes, and applies different types of cucumber for hours on end in order to get the right one for her. Even though she has no direct need for cucumber to maintain her health or wellbeing, she spends between £50- £300 on cucumber per month. She applies cucumber every day and spends a further £30 per month on products to remove the cucumber at the end of the day. She can't leave the house without cucumber on her face. She certainly can't attend her workplace without quite a lot of cucumber adhering to her. Does Jessica have an anxiety disorder over cucumber? It seems that way to me.
We have to stop buying, and stop buying into, this bizarre and powerful form of mass societal control.
My previous posts will show you that in the last few years I've started to form the opinion that we should stop buying things. Having this sensibility is useful as a student after all. At first it was to do with feminism.
The other day my significant other wanted to buy a pack of mints. Being near a certain large pharmaceutical/beauty/appliances/photo/food establishment, we popped in to get our mints. As we crossed the threshold I suddenly realised why I had some weird niggling aversion to even setting foot in this particular shop. Arrayed in an irregular pattern so as to obscure any clear route through them were the cosmetics counters. 10, 20, maybe a hundred different counters offering hundreds of different products with backlit brand logos and very shiny packages complete with very stylishly dressed, primped, straightened, bleached, coiffeured, whitened, ironed and be-masked assistants staring hungrily in my direction for the next poor sap who might succumb to being cooed over and sprayed so that they might part with three figure amounts of cash to boost via commision the miserable minimum wages these assistants earn.
Luckily their gaze slides over me and Nelson to more likely customers behind or to the side of us, streaming in to define their lifestyle by their purchases, because we look like what we are - people who dont give a shit about how we look. Or not. We look, well, just different. There are no hair straighteners in our house and you can see it on our faces (though not by our hair because we both have dead straight hair already - a boon apparently).
But here's the niggle. Navigating through those counters (that support up to four staff each) I feel the same dread as when I'm snaking through slow pedestrians on the high street trying to avoid the gaze of charity canvassers. And yet the pressure of ignoring a make-up message is a huge one. Don't you want to smell nicer? have straighter hair? Cover those spots? Define those eyelashes? Highlight those eyes? Colour those cheeks? Whiten those teeth? The underlying message: don't you know that you are positively ugly?
I have never worn make-up, even now I don't know how to apply it. And I am confident in my opinion that I never want to and never will, but still I felt a pressure in my chest rather like bathing in the mineral-rich water of the new baths - crushing.
Women constantly yet halfheartedly call for sanitary towels to be tax-free. This thinking is wrong headed in the first place. Like the make-up, perfume, magic ointment etc. they are a luxury commercial item subject to taxes just like everything else. The only answer is to stop buying it all. Stop buying make-up. (yes, and sanitary towels - don't look at me like that!) Its sole purpose is to make you buy shit you don't need. It doesn't make you feel better - it stops you from feeling worse. If no-one in the west, or even your workplace, or town, wore make-up and instead pale untanned skin was valorised, wrinkles were a mark of the older woman and therefore something which gained one respect and deferance, if spots were a sign of youth and signified extra care and support from elders plus as marks of beauty due to only being present on the young - who would wear make-up then? Who would use anti-wrinkle cream? Who would spend hours on a sunbed?
Incidentally, if wrinkles are undesirable in beauty terms, why are tans so fashionable? Not only does UV damage cause cancer but it directly causes wrinkles. (Not only that but studies suggest that pale skin is more attractive to men because it indicates youth and therefore fertility). Why tans then? Because if we didn't have wrinkles they would lose money on anti-wrinkle cream. And tans make more money than being pale - sunbeds, spray-on tan, tinted moisturiser, anti-wrinkle cream.... what could they sell us to look pale? Parasols?
Your self esteem, how beautiful you are, how fashionable you look is all, ALL about the money.
And it's not just the money, it's the control. Your life is being controlled from the outside by make-up. It sounds funny. But lets substitute make-up, for anything else, I dunno, cucumber.
Little Jessica is obsessed with cucumber. She spends around 20-30 hours per month studying different brands and types of cucumber in the shops. She smells, tastes, and applies different types of cucumber for hours on end in order to get the right one for her. Even though she has no direct need for cucumber to maintain her health or wellbeing, she spends between £50- £300 on cucumber per month. She applies cucumber every day and spends a further £30 per month on products to remove the cucumber at the end of the day. She can't leave the house without cucumber on her face. She certainly can't attend her workplace without quite a lot of cucumber adhering to her. Does Jessica have an anxiety disorder over cucumber? It seems that way to me.
We have to stop buying, and stop buying into, this bizarre and powerful form of mass societal control.