[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.

[venetia]

Boil the question down to its essential : would you rather be thought of well by society, or by yourself and of course they do. And if you're thinking about looks, well Julius Caesar was routinely teased for male pattern baldness by the Senators. Men have not historcally been immune to this stuff, even though women in our culture bear the brunt of it. And if things have changed so much why is my inbox full of penis enlargement and hair loss spam?

You might be right. But then I could say the same thing for eyeglasses - short sightedness is not being selected against. But... who does this matter to? I think human culture goes way beyond biology in so many ways.

p.s I think it's based on pheromones and ecrine sweat. I guess we could argue that sex before marriage works in favour of people getting the "right" mate because sooner or later you will smell the real person.