[miss_jane]

As I read through some of the threads about various aspects of beauty (cosmetic surgery, shaving, makeup etc) I noticed that the majority of them were distinctly not about the politics but about hints ands tips. I thought it would be useful and nice for busties to have a place to discuss the politics behind the "beauty myth" and hopefully clear some of our thoughts on it.

The type of topics that have been playing on my mind:

*Cosmetic Surgery
*The Removal of Body Hair
*Diets
*Makeup
*The Media's Attitude

Just to make everything clear I don't want this to become a place to attack busties who chose different ways of expressing their beauty.

So what are your thoughts? Can stereotypical beauty maintenance sit comfortably with feminist politics? Feminism is about a lot about choice for the individual, but is any choice (specifically about beauty) that a woman makes necessarily feminist? How difficult is it to stand up and fight the beauty myth?

As a side note : The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf is the book that stemmed these thoughts in me and a few years own I still haven't cleared in my mind the way I feel about things.

[octobersky]

Bump, bumping, bumped!

The other night I got sucked into watching some show on women who were addicted to plastic surgery - it was like watching a train wreck. This one woman had put her entire family so far into debt to finance her plastic surgery addiction. The family was having to sell their gorgeous house in order to finance her next $55, 000 surgery. What I couldn't believe was that her husband went along with her crap. Drive your family into debt because of some imagined beauty flaw? What kind of person does this?

To echo greenbean, there is a balance that you have to strike in life between spending every waking moment grooming yourself to taking care of basic hygiene. I have known women that wouldn't dare walk out of the house without full hair and makeup to run a 5 minute errand and I've known others that look like bagladies on a daily basis. I've tried to strike a healthy balance between the two, but I tend towards the more low maintenence end.

That said I like makeup, smelly good bath products, perfume (I'm a BPAL addict) and sparkly, shiny stuff. It's fun and makes me happy, I do it because I like it, not because I fear that society will perceive me as less than the feminine ideal. When I was younger I used to really care about not being taken seriously academically, romatically or at work if I didn't look a certain way, but then I realized that regardless of how I looked people would perceive me however they wanted. I don't like being pegged as well I'm a feminist so I must look like .... or well I'm an alt chick so I have to look like this...or I'm a hippie and... you get the idea.

Okay rambling here I'll stop.