Women's Work

[China Cat Sunflower]

Chris pretty and beautiful, do you see them as the same value?

Yes, no...yes and no. It depends on the definition. What is beauty? Is it a more superlative state of prettiness? Is pretty an ability? It could be a job prerequisite. Human bodies are beautiful as objects, but what about the creation of a free floating value called "beauty" as a social control mechanism? What about the whole spackle and goo women's cosmetics industry? How do the politics of advertising abet coercion mechanisms supporting patriarchal power structures?

I like crows feet on women my age. I like those pleasant lines and crinkles that show personality. That's beautiful to me. It's not pretty. It's desirable I suppose, but it's not sexually stimulating in the way that one might describe as "attractiveness." It's more an idolatry of the body sense of object art. There's a whole massive cosmetics industry dedicated to, among other things, ease the wrinkles that I like. That's Beauty Incorporated, which is an entirely different, institutional thing.

Chris

 

[17th Angel]

I get ya!

Thanks for the reply brah.

 

[path_of_one]

I think it comes down to, as y'all have pointed out, what we think of as beauty.

One of the reasons I love my husband so deeply is that I know, without a doubt, that when we are 70 he will find me beautiful.

That is not to say that I will be attractive in the same way that I was when we met and I was 17. But rather, that he finds *me*- the me inside the body I currently possess, as a beautiful creature. And so he feels that this beauty shines through my body at any age.

I don't know if that makes sense.

In terms of cosmetics and fashion and all that, there are different ways to look at it. I can think "I am trying to make myself something I am not" or I can see it all as paint and my body as a canvas. I choose the latter. Make-up, fashion, hair, whatever... I see it as the same kind of thing as tattooing and piercing. My shot at making my body say something about me, putting some of the inside on the outside. There are different ways to fight against the US tendency to market to women by making us feel bad about ourselves. We can avoid or we can redefine. I like art, I like my body, and I like seeing what I can do with it, so I choose to redefine what all these objects mean to me and how I use them. The most permanent concepts I have about myself and my life go on my body in ink (tattoos), the more fleeting things like mood are put into makeup and fashion. I get to be a new person every day!

What makes me feel beautiful is that my husband knows everything inside that is and is not on the outside, and it is *that* which he finds beautiful. The good, the bad, the crazy- I can see that he is sincerely in love with it all and finds it all beautiful. Even things that aren't pretty now, he finds beautiful. And so I know I am safe to grow older and less outwardly attractive with him, and in that safety comes a deep-seated love that transcends attraction.

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

Hi Kim!

I've spent some time wondering why it's so hard to have an unemotional conversation about sex roles. Why are we so easily diverted into the men versus women trap? What is the unspoken taboo against admitting how each of us use the game to ostensibly game the game? Why do we defend social mores that don't actually benefit us?

Chris

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

How can self-decoration function in a way so that it is purely about self expression and not about signifying status? Even the size of the bone in one's nose signifies some achieved strata of tribally recognized status.

Chris

 

[path_of_one]

Hi Kim!

I've spent some time wondering why it's so hard to have an unemotional conversation about sex roles. Why are we so easily diverted into the men versus women trap? What is the unspoken taboo against admitting how each of us use the game to ostensibly game the game? Why do we defend social mores that don't actually benefit us?

Chris

Hi, Chris!

LOL If I could answer those questions intelligbly, I'd have a best-seller on my hands. LOL Retirement-ho.

I don't really get it, to be honest. I never got very emotional about sex roles. Maybe it's because I was raised quite androgynously. I generally feel just as comfortable with men as women, and I understand men about as well as I understand women. Which is to say, not much. LOL Just kidding. Sort of.

But honestly, I don't think "men vs. women"- I just think we're all stuck in a lousy system that limits us all. I don't really understand how people can be us vs. them and yet married to "them." Seems odd to me. I can't really figure out why and how other people get there. Perhaps it's our relatively long history of marriage as a social institution rather than the recognition of an existing partnership? And it is only recently in our culture that men and women interacted as intimately as they do. Go back one hundred or two hundred years, and you called your fiance "Mr. So and So"- things were so formal between the sexes that it seems you'd hardly know your own spouse, so perhaps women felt more affinity for women and men for men, but in the interest of procreation...

And I don't get it about using the game to ensure its continuity, either. I do know that a lot of women don't like me, to be honest, because I just won't do that. I call it as I see it. And I see a lot of both sides whining about this or that social norm but playing it for all its worth. Maybe it's just whatever advances one's own self-interest at the moment. Humans seem remarkably good at holding disagreeing viewpoints simultaneously and switching back and forth to get what they want. So it's reasonable that they do this with gender roles too.

You know...
I'm equal to men and just as capable of anything!!! I am woman, hear me roar!

Um... honey could you bring in those bags of groceries? They are really heavy.

LOL Men do it too. It's illogical but it gets us what we want at the moment.

Now the question of defending social mores that don't benefit us... oh, that is a very, very good question.

In this case, some people would say the roles *do* benefit us and those of us breaking out of the molds are ruining it for society.

But in general, it seems that most people do not enjoy change. They cling to what is familiar, even if it is detrimental. People cling to their spouses even when they are abused. People cling to their ideas even when they are betrayed by them into unwise decisions. The unknown is scarier than the pain we already know, so we trudge on in our ruts.

That's my two cents, anyway. There are whole books on the topic, I'm sure. That's just my observation and experience. Usually, when I've held on to something that doesn't work, it's because I'm scared of the unknown alternative.

 

[path_of_one]

How can self-decoration function in a way so that it is purely about self expression and not about signifying status? Even the size of the bone in one's nose signifies some achieved strata of tribally recognized status.

Chris

Status is defined by those around us. I can't climb in their heads and think for them (and if I could, it probably wouldn't be nice LOL). However, I can define my own choices by art and not by status.

For me, this means choosing things that I love and reflect my mood, philosophies, and so forth rather than choosing things because of what I think they will mean to others. I avoid name brands and I shop at thrift stores, street markets, and so forth because that is the cheapest and most sustainable way to get clothes without contributing to the humand and environmental rights issues of the garment industry and because the only purpose of name branding is to show status.

In terms of showing what others perceive to be identity- categorizing me- I can't help that. If others want to make assumptions, that is not my responsibility. I can only be responsible for my own choices, which is to it all as art. I have found that one way to defy classification, at least among those who see me on a semi-regular basis, is to honor my mood for the day, which changes a lot. So just when they think I might be X, they see me as Y. Eventually, a lot of people ask me about my appearance choices and I explain... I'm not just one thing. Don't pigeonhole me by my appearance. Clothes, makeup, hair, jewelry, whatever- it is just the window-dressing. So is my body.