If you want to discuss this like mature people then you have to stop insulting people you disagree with, to quote you âpull your head out of your ass and quit being a sexist twatâ. She certainly isnât the sexist one here. So letâs go then : OP wrote a feminist post, itâs encouraging women to stop viewing us from the perspective of men and how we have been brainwashed by their sexist gaze. The key word here is âbrainwashâ. If you pay attention to the advertising of make-up, shaving legs, genitalia and armpits itâs always targeted at women. You talk about men âwearing it sometimes tooâ as if they were in any way socialised by advertisers in âfeminineâ magazines, tv, their whole family and the culture around them to wear make-up, shave everywhere and starve themselves. For women we have injonctions to be feminine, for men wearing make-up is generally rare, some of them do it as a hobby but itâs not forced on them at all. Actually when they wear make-up or are feminine it makes them gender non conforming, therefore they will be seen by bigots as âless thanâ, ânot real menâ and all the plethoras off homophobic slurs you can find, even if theyâre not gay. So their experience has nothing to do with what women go through.
The second important point is that OP wrote with a class-based perspective, your personal experience with make-up and shaving isnât important here, given the fact that under patriarchy women as a class are socialised into conforming into a standard of what a women must look like : if you donât shave your armpits most likely than not your mother (first but others will do the same) will mock you and shame you into doing it. Yes women can and do perpetuate gendered/sexist views on their daughters and all women, thatâs how female and male socialisation work, weâre told since day one that we must do these set of specific things to be a âreal womanâ or âreal menâ and growing up we perpetuate these things into our daughters and sons, socialising them into femininity (for girls) and masculinity (for boys) just like we were. It all benefits men of course, not women, thatâs how patriarchy works, men though they also are subjected to certain strict standards (of masculinity) certainly arenât the ones who have to watch out every little detail of their body and existence so that they are liked by the outside world, their standards put them on a greater light (strong, courageous etc) while for women femininity implies shrinking ourselves, laughing and agreeing at the jokes of men instead of speaking our minds, being docile etc. You are not âa lazy bitchâ for not wearing make-up, you are not a âbitchâ at all. Not wearing make-up is perfectly normal and this statement reveals some self hatred, youâre regurgitating the things youâve been hearing all your life (consciously or not, itâs everywhere) concerning what women must do. Make-up is not an art form when all girls and women wear the same mask of make-up everyday, making them look exactly the same, since a few years now this being the Kardashian âcontouringâ face. Not only is this is a new form of blackface (this make-up make crackers like me look like their skin is darker than what it really is) but it really change the faces of these girls/women, they are disappearing under their make-up (note the word âmaskâ I used previously), itâs as if we were all interchangeable, like the same dolls over and over on an industrial fabrication line. Easier to consume for men, our personalities do not matter, our flaws, the specificities of each bodies disappear, weâre all variations of the current most popular rich Beverly Hill woman.
And finally, your armpits get scratchy and pokey precisely because you shave and the hair grows back. I know because this is exactly what happens to me everytime I donât shave after I shaved for many months. And you know what ? I wrote all this answer and I still shave my armpits occasionally (Iâd say once every two months maybe), the difference is that I know that I do it because Iâve been socialised to. Men arenât being told to do it, they can be free while we still cannot have this, not with the images of women circulating around. Look at tv shows where itâs the apocalypse, a war battlefield, the world after a giant nuclear attack, letâs take the example of The Walking Dead (one of my favourite shows), are the women unshaved ? No. You see Michonne for the first time, supposedly alone for months and months, killing zombies and having to worry for her life every second of each day, without food or anything yet her armpits are completely shaved. Just a detail ? No, itâs one more âdetailâ, one that doesnât even have logic in such a setting/scenario and one that is part of a large imagery of what women must look like and itâs absolutely never beneficial to us. Itâs normalised and rarely talked about (outside of feminist discussions) for a reason, it benefits men, theyâre the ones who control our bodies to their liking, making profits over us hating our bodies (talk to most women who wear make-up and theyâll you at one point or another how terrorised they are of going outside without make-up, they fell ânakedâ and âuglyâ, none of this is normal), shaping us as dolls they can control as they wish. The problem isnât women criticising the tools of our oppression (the tools of patriarchy here), the problem is this sexist system existing in the first place.
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