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On Beauty Work as Self-Care
Jan. 9th, 2016 11:12 amThere's an article on Slate about beauty work as "self-care" that's been making the rounds on Facebook and Twitter. Both the essay itself and people's responses to it have been making me extremely uncomfortable.
I should preface this by saying that I couldn't care less about the ways that people present their physical bodies. From makeup to tattoos to surgery, no one type of body presentation or modification is more or less feminist.
With that in mind, the one line that jumped out at me in the Slate article was this: "I started looking askance at friends who 'only' used a cleanser and moisturizer."
I understand that the point of the article is that female-gendered cultures should not be dismissed as frivolous, but associating feminism with the sort of capitalistic "self-care" that renders women more attractive within a heterosexual and male-dominated economy of desire is a slippery slope. More specifically, the essayist is tip-toeing around the major paradox that lies at the heart of feminism's relationship to beauty work.
On one hand, we have this: "She's engaged in a political act of self-care and/or unwinding from the day's 'bullshit.'"
On the other hand, we have this: "This particular form of self-care can be empowering for women (such as myself!) who are well outside of the age range considered sexually attractive."
In other words, making oneself look younger ("more elastic" and "dewy") is being positioned as "a political act." Combine this with "the ever-fraught job market, on which Koh […] quips that 'female candidates are often encouraged to look as asexual as possible,'" with "asexual" meaning "polished, but not too polished" – like a (very) young woman, then. This is of course far from "asexual;" it's exactly the type of unrealistic standard of beauty to which all women are held in the 2010s, in which "healthy" has become the new ideal masking all the old shit.
I certainly don’t want to deny people of all genders the comfort and solace of beauty rituals. Still, what I'd really like to see in conversations about professional women is an enthusiastic embrace of "ugliness."
I can appreciate that the writer is only saying this in jest, but this "I started looking askance at friends who 'only' used a cleanser and moisturizer" nonsense has got to go. How about the friend who uses neither cleanser nor moisturizer because she has other interests and other self-care rituals? How about the friend who has reptile skin and dark circles under her eyes because she stays up all night (drinking with friends, playing video games, working on a novel, plotting world domination, whatever) and then sleeps late and has to rush to work? Can we celebrate that type of self-presentation too?
When I read this article and people's responses to it on my social networks, I felt more than a little bit of judgment floating around, as if not engaging in beauty work were not only lazy but somehow not feminist. Finding peace with one's relationship to the beauty industry is all well and good, but I think it's also important to acknowledge that "negligence" when it comes to "self-care" is a major form of resistance against societal body policing.
I should preface this by saying that I couldn't care less about the ways that people present their physical bodies. From makeup to tattoos to surgery, no one type of body presentation or modification is more or less feminist.
With that in mind, the one line that jumped out at me in the Slate article was this: "I started looking askance at friends who 'only' used a cleanser and moisturizer."
I understand that the point of the article is that female-gendered cultures should not be dismissed as frivolous, but associating feminism with the sort of capitalistic "self-care" that renders women more attractive within a heterosexual and male-dominated economy of desire is a slippery slope. More specifically, the essayist is tip-toeing around the major paradox that lies at the heart of feminism's relationship to beauty work.
On one hand, we have this: "She's engaged in a political act of self-care and/or unwinding from the day's 'bullshit.'"
On the other hand, we have this: "This particular form of self-care can be empowering for women (such as myself!) who are well outside of the age range considered sexually attractive."
In other words, making oneself look younger ("more elastic" and "dewy") is being positioned as "a political act." Combine this with "the ever-fraught job market, on which Koh […] quips that 'female candidates are often encouraged to look as asexual as possible,'" with "asexual" meaning "polished, but not too polished" – like a (very) young woman, then. This is of course far from "asexual;" it's exactly the type of unrealistic standard of beauty to which all women are held in the 2010s, in which "healthy" has become the new ideal masking all the old shit.
I certainly don’t want to deny people of all genders the comfort and solace of beauty rituals. Still, what I'd really like to see in conversations about professional women is an enthusiastic embrace of "ugliness."
I can appreciate that the writer is only saying this in jest, but this "I started looking askance at friends who 'only' used a cleanser and moisturizer" nonsense has got to go. How about the friend who uses neither cleanser nor moisturizer because she has other interests and other self-care rituals? How about the friend who has reptile skin and dark circles under her eyes because she stays up all night (drinking with friends, playing video games, working on a novel, plotting world domination, whatever) and then sleeps late and has to rush to work? Can we celebrate that type of self-presentation too?
When I read this article and people's responses to it on my social networks, I felt more than a little bit of judgment floating around, as if not engaging in beauty work were not only lazy but somehow not feminist. Finding peace with one's relationship to the beauty industry is all well and good, but I think it's also important to acknowledge that "negligence" when it comes to "self-care" is a major form of resistance against societal body policing.
