[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.

[gluelita]

i don't have anything to add except that more than a few times lately i have found myself in a room where i was the only one who had not had plastic surgery. or the only one in a room who had not had it and did not want it. wtf! that's creepy.

what interests me also is the economic implications. beauty maintenance is not free and these surgeries, diets, etc can be very expensive. even women who make less money are supposed to maintain a high-class (high-cost) regimine. for working class women, think of the percentage of disposable income expected to go to this upkeep just for the purpose of having or finding a job. that, to me, is really troublesome. when you consider that we only have so much income and that, in a very real sense, we are asked to choose between our looks and our retirements, downpayments, oppressive debt, children's education, it seems very WRONG to me to expect so much of our limited resources to go to these ends. the cycle of insecurity-consumption-profit for the beautyand diet industry-investment in creating more insecurity pisses me off.

not that i'm not stuck in it too. i try to limit it, but like the rest of you, at the end of the day i need a job.