makeup is oppressive...but also empowering? | philosophy of beauty & self-expression

my husband insists I wear full makeup whenever we're intimate and I'm not comfortable with it too scared for boyfriend to see me without makeup very embarrassing question am I the only one who's still terrified of my boyfriend seeing me without makeup I've been with my boyfriend for 7 years my beautiful sisters or my best friend or most women I know in general all look glowing without makeup I wouldn't think oh she looks so weird without makeup Etc ever about another person I just see beauty and loveliness but for me I believe I look so starkly different without that I look ugly naturally when I read these posts it's hard not to get sad women all over the world of all ages are routinely fed the message that they are less beautiful and therefore less valuable in a barefaced state for all my fem people out there have you ever gone out not wearing makeup feeling decent about yourself until people start to ask you things like are you okay you look tired are you feeling ill instant self-confidence killer and a 1979 magazine issue the media personality Dina Rose said one of the many things men don't understand about women is the extent to which our self-esteem depends on how we feel we look at any given moment and how much we yearn for a compliment at any age if I had just won the Nobel Peace Prize but felt my hair looked awful I would not be glowing with self- Assurance when I entered the room 40 years later not much has changed in the 2015 New York Times opinion piece titled the pressure to look good Jennifer Wier writes about the constant attention towards a woman's appearance especially in the digital age when Tina F shows off her Spanx on Lettermen how are you lady writer supposed to go on TV ungirdled when The Stylist who gave Kate Middleton those great post- delivery waves is praised in People magazine how are you brand new Mom supposed to leave the hospital with your own locks untended when there are conservatively speaking a 100,000 YouTube makeup tutorials how can you leave the house looking anything less than flawless think of that recent viral shot of the Macedonian protester using the Reflection from a police officer's riot shield to apply her lipstick yes it was funny yes she's a badass but she's also a woman of her time one who knows that being out in public means being looked at and possibly photographed assessed in a way that men still are not and maybe never will be when people tell us beauty is on the inside and then go get BOTOX it's hard not to experience some cognitive dissonance I have been repeatedly frustrated about the amount of times I've wasted trying to get my eyeliner to look even or to even have to spend time doing my makeup at all I could have slept in extra 40 minutes if I didn't feel the need to do makeup to go out and that time seriously matters as a university student working multiple jobs when I did my makeup routine in my Q&A video I can't lie I was nervous about putting my bare makeup face on the internet cuz when sneo watches your video in a live stream and says all women know how to do is look cute in front of a camera that sticks with you but at the same time many people online have a resistance towards labeling makeup as oppressive when we see a cool makeup look it truly is an art form and often it's a mix of artistic and scientific knowledge just as how a painter knows how to use shadows and highlights and colors to make something beautiful so does the makeup artist they also know which ingredients last longer together and which don't what the optimal order of product is to get an indestructible base makeup seems awesome here I remember a while ago now seeing this trending video of a woman on a podcast talking about how makeup is oppressive and she was flamed by comments and reactions calling her a pck me this is probably not going to be relatable at all but I am so immensely ferociously unexplainably anti- makeup and yes I'm wearing mascara I'm against makeup is capitalizing on women's insecurities when that's something that they can easily fix but I think it's also like a really good outlet for artistic people to like kind of showcase their art I agree but how many people are actually using makeup to Showcase their art rather than hide and insecurity that's also true the thought seems to be what's so wrong with makeup I enjoy makeup I do it for myself makeup is about self-expression it gives us confidence which if this is true for you amazing so happy for you but for others like myself the comments The Woman made in the video may not feel far off makeup may be something that feels most restricting rather than liberating after all if makeup was purely a tool of self-expression and identity formation why are people worried about 10-year-olds at Sephora buying tarte concealer and Fenty Contour sticks why care about the kids doing full-faced get ready for me to elementary school in this 1997 study which interviewed women as to why they wore makeup to work the respondents felt that women who do not wear makeup do not appear to be one healthy two heterosexual or three credible so what is the harm happening

here this video is ultimately about navigating this Paradox of makeup how can something feel so essential to Identity formation and self-confidence yet also cause insecurity and oppression a few disclaimers before we move on when me and others ask the question is makeup oppressive the question is a bit misleading but it's catchier and easier to say but an inanimate object like my eyeliner or my eyes Shadow cannot actually do any oppressing rather it is about why and how people will use makeup and the Dynamics that mediate makeup usage in other words is makeup a tool of Oppression and if yes can makeup ever exist separately from oppression spoiler alert I'm going to be arguing yes to both questions makeup is a tool of Oppression but that doesn't mean people aren't using makeup in ways that combat its oppressive context this is an important clarification to make because to say it's the makeup itself that's oppressive like this thing right here seems to be a copout it lets people say oh just stop wearing makeup and you'll be free they can put the blame on the individual who buys this oppressive product it's your fault for being insecure and reliant on concealer by narrowly thinking of Oppression as existing between objects and individuals it misses all of the context Sur it because what's a girl going to do when she does ditch her eyeliner and concealer she goes oh natural only to hear comments from men like the ones mentioned in this Reddit post if you aren't pretty without makeup you aren't pretty and 90% of the time a comment on Reddit like this is not some super Progressive guy trying to say and if you aren't pretty who cares attractiveness should not define you most of the time the implied message is that you better have won the genetic white CIS able-bodied Lottery that aligns with societal beauty standards or else you are a less valuable woman as we'll see in the history of makeup this thought process comes from a long history of makeup being seen as deceptive and immoral second disclaimer this video is not going to be giving one universal answer to how oppressive makeup is everyone has a unique relationship with makeup dependent on their social identity and their personal history I spoke with Dr Kate main a philosophy professor at Cornell University for this video who you'll hear from in other parts and she's here to Echo this sentiment we need to be careful about universalizing here so it's a really common impulse that philosophers have to try to universalize from our own experience or from the experience of people who have similar kinds of relationships to Technologies and tools that we're talking about here I think there are people for whom makeup really is self-expression and I think people have very different relationships with it I mean someone who really enjoys playing with color palettes or who wants to do something that like feels to them dramatic or unexpected or artistic like that's obviously a very different thing than this example I'm using of wanting your eye brows to look like a little bit more just neat and tidy and professional though I try to be inclusive I will miss some perspectives because I only have my lived experience for instance I am aware of the shortage of queer disabled and non-american perspectives in this video I tried to reach out to a bunch of interviewees but my inbox came back pretty empty so please feel free to educate me and others in the comments below lastly this video is a philosophical and historical analysis not a moral Superior priority thing I'm wearing makeup so clearly I'm not going to say anyone is a failing feminist for also using makeup I myself struggle with feelings of being a hypocrite I know makeup's role in a racist patriarchal fat phobic industry but I still feel compelled to wear it I have gotten a lot more comfortable with my bare face in the past years but it's still something that I'm working on Lucky news for me though and anyone else feels like a hypocrite that is just how oppression works the defining feature of Oppression is that no matter what you do you will face some negative effect when you're a member of an oppressed group and you're in an oppressive double bind no matter what you do in the choice situation you're going to end up to some degree reinforcing your own oppression this is Dr Suk hiri who wrote this paper called oppressive double binds when I read her paper I found it to be an important expansion on Marilyn Fry's famous definition of Oppression from 1983 if we're going to explore whether makeup is a tool of Oppression or not we better get clear on what oppression is free our sister free ourselves fre ours free ourselves we want there are many things in life that causes hardship and suffering but Marilyn fry recognizes that hardship and suffering are not synonymous with oppression I can suffer a really bad injury but that's not a sign of being oppressed I can also take pleasure in things that oppress me and in fact that seems to be when oppression is most pernicious when we don't even realize it why don't you like it I'd rather be the way I am I like to be husband's thumb

while bad feelings tend to accompany many experiences of Oppression is defined by how our autonomy is limited by structurally related barriers that benefit some at the expense of others oppression creates a distinct kind of dilemma part of how oppression works I think is to kind of co-opt our agency in the service of Oppression if you're a member of an oppressed group your own sort of like credential Goods so your ability to kind of like succeed or survive or flourish in the system is kind of bound up with your resistance to oppression so there's no sort of easy way to separate your resisting oppression from your ability to kind of survive or succeed or have access to certain kinds of credential Goods in order to get access to those goods you have to kind of cooperate within the oppressive system but by doing that you're kind of reinforcing the system that's controlling your access to these Goods but then on the flip side if you try to resist the system chances are you're going to face some kind of penalty or punishment and that's going to be kind of setback to your ability to survive succeed in the system and I think that in itself is a kind of set back to the goal of resisting oppression so even in a circumstance where you're doing you know you're acting with the goal of resisting your own oppression I think there's also to some degree a way in which the kinds of costs or penalties that you're paying are kind of a way for the oppressive system to win to some degree so oppression puts people in a double bind there is something necessarily self-undermining about the character of the choice available to an agent whatever they do they are forced to act against themselves becoming a mechanism in their own oppression due to oppression systematic nature it can only be observed if we zoom out to a big picture Marilyn fry compares the double bind of Oppression to being stuck in a bird cage from a microscopic Viewpoint it appears the bird can easily fly around each individual bar but only a macroscopic Viewpoint reveals how the interrelatedness of the bars leave no means to escape no matter what the bird does it's trapped in its cage like there's some individual like forcing you to do a particular thing or manipulating you or threatening you into doing it often like the stuff is happening at the level of structures nobody actually needs to be telling us what to do or not to do but there's a way in which even though we're free to kind of make any of the choices that are available to us the ways in which those choices are structured is kind of systematically limiting actually it's a mistake to think that we should be so hard on ourselves or other people making these kinds of choices when the choices I think are really fraught and difficult and instead I think what we need to be doing is thinking about kind of building solidarity and sort of engaging in Collective action so does makeup put people in this double bind let's dive into a history of makeup to find out her eyes are beautiful she uses Maybelline and your eyes too can be beautiful when you use Maybelline in this section I'm going to refer a lot to Hope in a jar written by Kathy pice a historian which is an American history of makeup so just keep that in mind I highly recommend reading this book yourself if you're interested because there is a lot of detail I won't cover in this video Let's Place ourselves in the shoes of society centuries ago POV it's the 1600s and there is no such thing as makeup instead it's called paint because people who paint their faces are deceitful sexually corrupt [ __ ] be damned forever you wrench how dare you disobey God and change the face he created and try to lure innocent men into your sexiness when darwinian evolutionary theory was popping off darwinian argued that makeup AKA paint hindered evolutionary progress since men choose mates based on visual attraction wearing makeup would mess up natural selection of course if this is how it was for white women it was even worse for black women in America white women wearing paint was sinful but they had the choice still of whether to wear it or not and paint was made with white Beauty in mind meaning don't expect too much from the foundation range back then people also used the fear and hatred of Blackness to try to stop white women from using paint an old etiquette book for example warned that the use of tinted lip Sal gave the mouth a quote shriveled purplish look of a sick derogatory term Beauty was and definitely continues to be used as a symbol of social status and the white women wanted to keep that hierarchy in place black slaves who would try to use beauty products would be severely punished deia garlic an enslaved woman recalled being beat unconscious by her mistress for wearing some eyes Shadow quote for this Southern mistress fashionability including the use of beauty preparations underscored the class and racial hierarchy of the plantation already we can see makeup playing a paradoxical role for black women and racial minorities in general using makeup challenged white supremacy's dehumanization of them since they recognize the political significance of their appearance beautifying themselves was a claim towards being recognized as a human being and if relevant a woman however

Harriet Jacobs who was herself enslaved and sexually abused shared that physical Beauty contained a cruel irony for it inflamed white men's sexual abuse of black women today makeup sales are driven primarily by advertising but the beginnings of makeup business were a lot different when women who wanted to work were not allowed into almost every field of employment some of them turned to selling beauty products a good chunk of these women were racialized immigrant women but since racialized immigrant women were not allowed to produce ads in the newspaper they relied on local marketing strategies such as Word of Mouth visiting people door too giving their customers advice in their salons business women used popular narratives of womenhood female bonding and called their customers friends and sisters quote reversing the Victorian logic that made appearance a function of character they claimed that beautifying was a moral necessity that honored God's handiwork and nature's laws Susanna cocroft who wrote that beauty was a duty eared urged don't be ashamed of your desire for Beauty at the end of the 19th century the term paint was replaced by makeup this shift in language indicated that drawing and coloring our faces was not a costume like cover up it's just a Finishing Touch to a woman's daily Beauty routine this leads to a beauty culture that still Rings true today there are NeverEnding improvements one can make to their appearance for white wealthy women to expand their Market they focused on erasing social differences even though they were obviously prominent black people were literally being lynched in public Madame Yale being one of those white businesswomen once said women may be divided into two classes those who have a good complexion and those who do not quote in the female democracy of manufactured Beauty all could improve their looks and those who did not only had themselves to blame we love an apolitical queen as makeup became more commercial and tried to be apolitical unlike the white business women black business women paid extra attention to the politics of makeup and appearance Madame CJ Walker and Annie turbo Malone two black female entrepreneurs refused to sell skin bleaches and never spoke of hair straightening as an aspect of their beauty systems for marginalized communities Beauty culture was a chance to Achieve Personal dignity and Collective advancement they put the money earned from sales back into black churches black schools and communities and neighborhoods salons became a special place for black women to bond and learn and share in this woman dominated culture a lot of women started to use makeup because it was fun to experiment on themselves they would buy makeup products based off of socializing with friends there were sensory Delight in different colors and smells and doing makeup was also a private ritual just for themselves entering the 20th century Mass marketing comes along rip to all the business women and their local marketing strategies they were cooked the moment men were like wow this makeup stuff is getting popular all right ladies we can take it from here let's do mass production m Mass distribution market and advertise everywhere and all these women who are historically excluded from advertising and business ownership especially racialized immigrant women were kicked out from the sector by the 1920s cosmetic firms were LED primarily by white men women lost ownership of the beauty industry now of course the 19th century business women cared about profit but the new Mass Market made profit more important than ever the problem though most of the cosmetic companies sold the exact same product same for formulas and everything so what did they do to stand out they invented better products I'm kidding they just packaged them differently marketing was crucial by 1930 women could choose from a bewildering array of 3,000 face powders and several hundred rouges another way to maximize profit and get women to buy more was to create false needs in the 1920s and 1930s manufacturers and consumers increasingly understood the face as a fashion piece and fashion is constantly changing so now that your face is a style that changes based on fashion trends manufacturers had a convincing reason to introduce new products every season forget your old lipstick that still functions perfectly and is only half used you need this new lipstick shade because your face will be outdated if you don't yay to feeling insecure every few months these advertisers are smart as hell they always seem to be one step ahead of us sheep consumers see they knew Americans loved their land of free individuals so advertisers tied makeup to free individual self-expression which is still a common way of thinking about makeup there was the Armand find yourself campaign in 1929 which listed different aesthetic categories or as kids today like to say different cores we have bloke core ballet core and cottage core they had Cleopatra core Sher core Mona Lisa core actually those are more fashion related so maybe the more accurate pair pars are clean girl

makeup siren eyes girl next door I can't think of anything else but there's tons aesthetic categories became more and more prominent in the 50s and 60s when the market was booming for the Baby Boomers Brands started to associate themselves with certain types of women Revlon was known as the brand of the sensual women who only went out at night Covergirl deliberately marketed itself in opposition to Revlon as the daytime wholesome makeup so that teenagers could also use it because of America's diverse population they also released face types which turned ethnicities into Aesthetics today we've got the same thing just repackaged with different words or we got people saying I love Latina makeup I love this style I'm going to wear it without knowing how it came from workingclass Latino women advice writer Helen mcfaden once wrote it is quite possible here in the United States to join a Nordic skin to Italian hair and eyes to color an English skin with a warmth of Spanish Jewish or Russian blood modern-day translation of this would be like it is quite possible here in the United States to look like the Kardashians who have just mixed a bunch of ethnicities together so that you can't really tell where they come from even the names of theatrical music used ethnic signifiers such as Stein's mexicola Rouge I don't think I have to explain much as to why reducing ethnicities to Aesthetics that anyone can replicate through consumerism is problematic advertisers also Drew upon another beloved American value self-improvement to achieve the American dream they started using psychology and therapy language to claim that a woman's external appearance is a direct reflection of their inner state if a woman stopped trying new makeup she was said to be destroying her inner potential to be different selves quote those who are conscious of their poor appearance suffered from an inferiority complex one psychiatrist judged but help was literally at hand industry spokesman Everett McDonald promised for many a neurotic case has been cured with the deaf application of a lipstick in little more than a decade an aesthetic of women's freedom and modernity had narrowed and turned in upon itself Vogue could claim without irony that bright fingernails offered a minor adventure and a facial doesn't stop at giving you a new face it gives you a whole new point of view on life what had once been seen as women's vices vanity deceit desire were now signs of a nor normal Mind Beauty manuals and women's magazines urged women to encourage narcissism in their daughters to make them care about their looks the Paradox of makeup is becoming more and more clear makeup began as a place of economic livelihood individuality and Community for women it gave women control over their identity and especially for black women it let them feel dignified in a world that denied them Humanity but over time makeup ended in binding feminine identity to Manufactured Beauty self-portrayal to acts of consumption you could not be perceived as properly feminine without buying makeup and adhering to racist patriarchal beauty standards the spread of film and photography also made women more self-aware they could spectate others most intimate moments and then would begin to spectate themselves closeup photography gave the ability to expose new flaws men who once deemed makeup a horrible sin were now looking at women differently they began to decide what was attractive based on film and media they would pick Partners based on their resembl to a famous actress when World War II rolled around makeup consumption became even more crucial to preserving a feminine identity as more women took on traditionally masculine jobs they faced greater societal pressure to maintain traditional femininity through makeup powder and lipstick or enough follow the natural shape of your lips for example Tangi which appeared in major women's magazines in 1943 in 1944 claimed that lipstick was essential during wartime to wear lipstick stick was to successfully keep your femininity even though you are doing man's work the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during the war ordered the female athletes to take makeup lessons and to appear ladylike on the field psychiatrists expressed the importance of Cosmetics encountering fatigue improving morale and increasing productivity I can't find the exact quote in my notes now but the Cosmetics entrepreneur Helena Rubenstein said that there are no ugly women only those who are lazy and those who put in effort well i' put in the effort I guess but I sure am not buying your products selling creams for $700 or $800 I'd rather be considered lazy one of the respondents from this 1997 study I mentioned earlier named Magda said her husband interacts better with women whose appearance is pleasing to look at she tells the story of them going out for dinner with a young woman that her husband had just hired for his company quote I told him she was fabulous I said she's witty she's intelligent and she could do those things you don't want to

do he goes yeah but she doesn't try to maintain herself and I said what do you mean does she fight is she aggressive he said her appearance didn't you see how she was just so simple then when Magda asks him do you think women have to be pretty to be competent employees he says Magda it has nothing to do with beauty it has to do with just the effort they make to look good it's the effort yeah I know she puts in tons of effort into the actual job tasks I give her and she's highly intelligent and organized and all that but uh come on a little color on her cheeks wouldn't hurt anyone does this line of reasoning sound familiar to anyone just me okay the Cosmetics industry did try to sell to men as well but makeup was so tied up with Notions of femininity that the stry men refused query men were obviously a different story but they had to engage with make up discreetly and they were not the target audience for these advertisers eventually in the postor War II era advertising companies worked hard to create Cosmetics that would reinforce masculine stereotypes so that men would buy them and still feel like real men a big Focus was convincing men that Cosmetics actually enhanced their heterosex appeal which unfortunately came with harmful messages of domination quote in much of this marketing to men the need to counter effeminacy turned romance into sexual aggression and violence in television commercials using clips from the James Bond movie Thunderball an announcer intoned when you use7 be kind careful it's loaded and Licensed to Kill women the makeup industry and its marketing campaigns left a damaging impact on fem people's self-esteem and they were sending contradictory messages using makeup was necessary to become feminine but also we demand you use makeup to preserve the femininity that is already naturally there this allowed makeup to become naturalized advertising was training the eye to perceive makeup as a natural feature of women's faces like it will never not be funny when straight dudes say they prefer women who don't cake their faces with makeup and they like their women natural only to pull up a picture of a woman with a full face of makeup on by the mid-60s teenage girls who comprised 11% of the population bought nearly one quar of all cosmetics and Beauty preparation makeup became an integral part of Womanhood now if you're wondering where the hell the critics of all this were they were there but they were mostly black women so naturally the criticism didn't make it mainstream it was only until the end of the 1960s that the counterculture movement against makeup really took off quote the counterculture promoted an ideal of the Natural Body evident in men growing long hair and beards and women rejecting makeup the natural body was considered authentic real erotic and beautiful a challenge to the artifice and repression of post-war Society who taught you to hate the texture of your hair color of your skin to such extent that you bleach to get like the white man who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and lips animated by the counterculture and the example of black women activists young white feminists mounted an attack on beauty ideals in the beauty industry tellingly the first public action of the women's Liberation movement was a demonstration in 1968 against the Miss America beauty pageant protesting women's enslavement to commercial beauty standards 100 feminists filled a trash can with makeup curlers hairspray bras and other Beauty AIDS and crowned aive sheep America's beauty queen second W feminism heavily criticized makeup as a representation of harmful consumer culture and patriarchy bear with me because I'm about to read a long time passage but I'm a sucker for well-written Pros Dana denmore who was a math professor and an activist wrote in her chapter on the temptation to be a beautiful object many of us are scarred by attempts as teenagers to win the promised glamour from Cosmetics how often the date sat below while the girl in anguish and despair tinged with self-loathing applies and wipes away the magical products that despite their magic are helpless against her horrifying plainness then as We Grew Older and better looking our faces more mature and our handling of Cosmetics more mature there are times when Nature and artifice combine to make us unquestionably beautiful for a moment the incredible Elation of looking in a mirror the lighting just right and seeing not the familiar plain Troublesome self but a beautiful object worthy of worship then the lighting changes or the evening wears on and the face slips imperceptibly back into plainness harshness we must laugh louder because we must make up for the ugliness we suddenly found or we crawl back into ourselves in an Agony of humiliated

self-consciousness how can anyone take a mannequin seriously I chose this passage because it highlights some of the common themes in second W feminism's critique of the makeup industry first there's the use of Concepts like object versus subject which may be borrowing language from a post hegelian existentialism popping World Simone bvar a feminist existentialist wrote about how women have been socialized to view their body not as an instrument of their radical freedom but as an object destined for another knowing we are judged as objects we view ourselves as objects we become narcissistic we now want to escape our radical freedom and freeze oursel as a finished art project for instance the wrinkle creams Botox and powders are to stop the aging process are ways for us to escape the scary fact that we are free and changing subjects but that is inauthentic to boir and to many of those feminists secondly there's a way in which the second W feminist criticism sounds similar to Plato's criticism of art yeah Plato that ancient Greek guy Plato thought that artists could only ever imitate an imitation of reality for example in the platonic worldview there is the abstract form of beauty then there is a physical flower which is an imitation of that abstract form of beauty and then there's the drawing of that flower which is imitating in imitation similarly with makeup some women activists have argued that to put makeup on trying to replicate an image of some ideal beautiful woman is to remove ourselves from reality that picture of the Flawless woman we see is already an imitation of real life and now we are trying to copy that imitation with makeup feminist branches of philosophy also developed and criticized the makeup industry Sandra bkey put a feminist lens on Marxism and psychoanalysis to argue that sexual objectification was a form of gendered self-estrangement just as how capitalist production produced self- estranged workers on the one hand the fem person is defined by her body or her mere body parts as the corn industry teaches us to do on the other hand she must always be removed from her body thinking about how it is flawed how it can be better she must identify solely as her body or her body parts and she must identify solely with her ideal potential body this leads Fen people to become infatuated with their physical flaws to the point where we enjoy discussing our insecurities how to improve them spending tons of money and effort on fixing them and if you don't admit your flaws you might be shamed for it I hate my thighs I'll take your thighs and raise you a chin I'll take your chin and raise you what oh come on I happen to love the way I look you should you paid enough for it as such the counterculture movement emphasized that Aesthetics are political people advocated for little to no makeup usage as a black person straightening your hair or dying it blonde it was not just a personal style Choice anymore it was a political iCal message Malcolm X gave a speech about how straightening black hair was an alienation from one's Blackness but as usual the advertisers were smart they saw this no makeup counterculture and responded accordingly several Brands changed their packaging to be plain and naturall looking and hygienic they focused their advertising on the scientific benefits of Cosmetics this is organic science shows that using this twice a day improves collagen production so now when critics said the makeup industry objectifies us and exploits our insecurities the industry could respond with no sweetie we're just doing objective science we just want what's best for you today I feel like similar themes of advertising persist except now we have influencers to tell us the same things too makeup consumption has really skyrocketed in the 21st century as someone who definitely does not have the highest self-confidence criticizing the makeup industry comes naturally to me wearing no makeup until I was 16 and then still wearing very little until I was 18 gave me experiences that made me feel like I had to wear makeup to be valuable it really hurt my self-esteem now unfortunately hurt self-esteem is not something I could get legal compensation for but even if I could traditional personal injury law firms have tons of paperwork are timec consuming and are really expensive that's why the sponsor of today's video is Morgan and Morgan America's largest injury law firm with over 1,000 attorneys operating in all 50 states that means they have the resources to fight to get you the best results cuz look when you're seriously hurt the way my self-esteem was your injury could be worth millions unlike most insurance companies Morgan and Morgan don't settle for lowball offers they achieved significant verdicts in the past couple of months for victims involved in life-altering car accidents $12 million in Florida 34 times the highest insurance offer $26 million in Philadelphia 40 there are no upfront costs no 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recap on oppression if you're a member of an oppressed group your own sort of like credential Goods so your ability to kind of like succeed or survive or flourish in the system is kind of bound up with your resistance to oppression so there's no sort of easy way to separate your resisting oppression from your ability to kind of survive or succeed or have access to certain kinds of credential Goods the oppressive system is kind of controlling your access to certain sorts of goods like success or survival or ask of your well-being in order to get access to those goods you have to kind of cooperate within the oppressive system but by doing that you're kind of reinforcing the system that's controlling your access to these Goods I think makeup definitely seems to put a lot of people in a double bind the problems with makeup happen at the structural level look you're entitled to do what you want with your body it's yours but I really worry that we're going to effectively feel obligated to do these things which we shouldn't because of big Beauty because of oppressive St standards and because of the sheer white supremacy and misogyny and ableism transphobia classism Etc of it all for those who feel obligated to use makeup whether that be to look like a certain Beauty ideal or to avoid social judgment or to be seen as lovable the desire to wear makeup is manufactured by oppressive structures and fulfilling that desire is controlled by those same oppressive structures so no matter what choice a fem person makes about makeup any choice will undermine their flourish ing in some way whether big or small every time we buy a product especially the more expensive it is and the more often it needs replenishing we are benefiting these incredibly lucrative corporations that are profiting off our Collective insecurities is this particular idea that I have of myself for example as someone who always wears like a bold red lip is that something that is really me or is it something that I have been reward Ed for makeup is so tied up with patriarchy capitalism colorism ableism classism so forth that even those who genuinely choose to use makeup for self-expression or art May face negative consequences if a woman or fem person decides to wear makeup in a way that aligns with standards of beauty she does get the Practical good of being recognized as properly feminine or a real woman she will probably be seen as desirable and a competent employee however she gives up the moral good of resisting those exclusionary beauty standards if she does not wear makeup or wears makeup in ways that are unconventional she may be insulted or called an improper woman she is treated as the exception that proves the rule about what women should look like Kathy a black woman explains how she has to choose between excusing racism or sexism in the workplace quote I have always experiened racism in my life and I'm more attuned to identify when someone is being racist and I let the sexism pass it's more offensive to me for you to be racist than to be sexist so I do find that because I'm an African-American there are certain things that I need to do because I'm African-American and one of those things is to look professional and all the other good things she feels she needs to use makeup to follow white standards of femininity to gain some racial Justice she's giving up one cause being gender justice for another whether a woman or fem person wears makeup or not it seems to be self-undermining moreover because of the societal context makeup exists in it's very difficult if not impossible to separate the personal from the political can an Asian person with monoliths like me use double eyelid tape without it signifying the European Standard of having double eyelids can someone Contour their nose to make it look smaller and pointier without it carrying some anti-semitic baggage surrounding Jewish noses probably not but at the same time it also sucks not to be able to conform to these standards we lose out on practical benefits and also chances at self-expression remember

there is no Perfect Choice in oppressive situations just because there is a negative political message that can be read from someone's makeup Choice does not make them blameworthy they are still entitled to make the style choices they want self-presentation and what we're told we should look like are not always neatly separable I mean is the fact that someone wants to appear a certain way completely separable from what they've been told they should look like no but does that mean it's not an authentic expression of self not necessarily to say something is oppressive or that someone is aligning with oppressive standards is not to automatically shame the individual for the choice they made because the core of Oppression is not having a fully great choice available I think with so many oppressive structures around us we can all be more empathetic towards each other's choices however it's not all doomed we can TR try to make better or worse choices all choices under oppression undermine our resistance against oppression in some way but the degree of the undermining can differ when systems work against your flourishing your very survival and success can be a net positive Act of resistance take for example a trans woman who is faced with the choice of whether to use makeup or not if she uses makeup to try to look feminine but doesn't pass as Cy she'll be seen as inauthentic or delusional if she uses makeup to look feminine and does pass aist she gains practical Goods such as avoiding a lot of social punishment getting jobs without worrying about transphobic employers she can gain Fame as conservative media's Trophy Wife but she might also alienate herself from her own trans Community or legitimize the connection between traditional feminine appearance and Womanhood and if the transwoman doesn't care about using makeup to look feminine she will be seen as her real gender quote because there are multiple intersecting oppressive norms in operation she does not have a simple choice between cooperation and resistance there is a sense in which anything she does is a kind of resistance in so far as simply being a transwoman is a form of resistance in a community that denies Womanhood to transwomen likewise there is a sense in which anything she does to some degree amounts to a kind of cooperation with an oppressive Norm for me in making the kind of choice between how much do I want to sort of take certain kinds of penalties or costs if there's some meaningful resistance possible I think actually I have a responsibility to kind of like lean more towards the resistance side so I think about like you know the decision of a trans woman in a very transphobic Society whether she should try and pass as CIS and that's the kind of situation where if you know your life is at stake or your bodily security is at stake I just think there very strong reasons for you to opt for the prudentially most safe or secure option and I think it's actually a mistake to think in that situation that what the person should do is kind of choose the resistance option because again part of what I want to argue in the paper is that division between resistance and what's prudentially best is not as neat or tidy as some philosophers have made it out I hope we're digesting the Nuance here so we can understand that for example when Dylan mulany makes a song about girlhood involving traditionally feminine activities doing her hair wearing makeup shopping and retail therapy there is no situation in which she could have pleased everyone women just don't want to get out of bed but fortunately they're able to pick up their meds to make them happy I don't know what kind of meds we're picking up but it's cool cuz by Wednesday we go shopping and we're back and yay we're very excited the internet gets mad at her for reducing Womanhood in this song to superficial stereotypes but what about Girls Just Want to Have Fun Last Friday Night seven rings when a trans woman tried to be hyper feminine to meet your ideal of CIS Womanhood she is shamed for never being able to truly know Womanhood she's just CA playing but when she was still learning about the Norms of femininity and didn't pass as Cy she looked too masculine to be a woman she was delusional at this point there shouldn't be a burden on trans women to ditch makeup and feminine Norms the way CIS feminists called for because their existence itself is resistance it may come down in the end to questions about is this really helping me flourish as the kind of social being I am in the world or is this something that's ultimately costing me more both in terms of time and Beauty labor and in terms of sheer expense than I'm willing to pay in Gerald ear's paper titled life with daughters watching the Miss America Pageant he writes about how his family bonds over watching the Miss America Pageant every year even though he knows the pageant is a patriarchal wet dream in many ways yet when Miss Debbie Turner becomes the third black woman to win

Miss America him and his wife knew it was important for the black community quote it is impossible for blacks not to want to see their black daughters elevated to the platforms where white women are they understood that because appearance is political succeeding even within a problematic beauty contest like this was positive he puts it really well when he says that resisting oppression teaches us about transcending your degradation while learning to live in it and with it so while resistance should absolutely focus on the oppressive structures themselves and not tear individuals apart there are also ways that in the meantime individuals can make strides towards dignity within those structures while important decolonial work is being done on a structural level many trans Latina activists are also paying attention to smaller acts such as hosting transgender Le beauty pageant and practicing makeup Artistry as Brenda Del Rio gonzolas a transac activist and makeup artist shares when we apply makeup we are healing our shredded Souls they have been shred to Pieces by life circumstances we have lived a path of roses and thorns and during that path there are many roadblocks HIV substance abuse immigration inequality discrimination all of those things destroy our integrity and our spirits but like the clowns that are sad and they paint their faces the same way we paint ourselves to cover our sadness and then we begin to feel beautiful and many more doors open up around us we are now accepted back into society traditional feminine makeup has been reappropriated by queer folk in many ways to challenge that very same traditional femininity rather than reinforce it I would make a Judith Butler reference here but I got too lazy to write it was like 3:00 a. m. so makeup has taken on such significant cultural meaning that it can become crucial to Identity expression and Community preservation for many people Latina makeup Chinese makeup drag makeup passing down these Styles and learning the reasons behind why we wear bold lips or gradient lips is a preservation of culture it is a sign of our right to flourish Katie pice writes about how despite the racist origins of black women straightening their hair many black women still look back on those times with fondness quote the smells of hair pressing the movement of hands expertly applying oils and combs the talk and laughter of black women in the kitchen or the beauty parlor no matter how nasty the makeup industry is history has happened and it has happened in a way in which representation now matters for beauty is political and Beauty has been a special space of community and teaching for many fem persons makeup is a tool of Oppression yes but so are many other things and it doesn't always have to be one I want to reiterate Dr Kate M's comment that everyone is entitled to their own stylistic choices and it is wonderful for makeup to be a tool of self-expression what's important is to oppose a world in which people feel obligated to wear makeup to follow oppressive gender rules I'll end the video off with this quote from Naomi wolf from 1991 it is often said that we must make fashion and advertising images include us but this is a dangerously optimistic misunderstanding of how the market Works advertising aimed at women works by lowering our self-esteem if it flatters our self-esteem it is not effective let's abandon this hope of looking to the index to fully include us it won't because if it does it has lost its function after this video what do you think about this quote now how do you agree or disagree with it I'd love to hear your thoughts down below this was a complicated messy video because the topic itself is full of paradox but that's why it's important to have discussion about it thank you so much for watching let's keep talking and I hope to hear from you soon bye