via: baroquedown

sludged:

Elle (US),  April 1998 / ‘Simply Irresistible’,ph. Gilles Bensimon

via: whirrrring
source: interstellardiamond

"It’s the disconnect of being trained since birth to look a certain way, only to have dudes turn around and go, “Don’t you know we hate all that stuff on your face?” Like it was our idea! Like women collectively woke up one day and thought, “Wouldn’t it be awesome to slap a bunch of chemicals and dyes on our faces every morning from now on?”
We’ve got a multi-billion dollar industry doing their best to remind us daily that we need what they’re selling, so don’t act all befuddled about where we got the idea that we looked better this way. Plus, it’s not like men don’t still expect us to look beautiful. They just don’t want us cheating with cosmetics. Hope your face is naturally flawless!
And while we’re talking, don’t you ladies know how annoying it is that you’re all hung up on your weight? Sure, we expect you to have a great body. But don’t be one of those lame girls who orders salads on a date. We like to see you eat!
Most of the time, when men say they prefer “natural beauty,” they don’t mean that they’re ready for us to start leaving the house the way we roll out of bed in the morning. They mean that they want us to look perfect without appearing to try.
Basically, it’s a trap."  -

Emily McCombs (via interstellardiamond)

the “natural beauty” garbage is so fucking galling

• it’s bullshit disingenuous rejection of responsibility for patriarchal beauty standards
• it hides yet another performance standard: never let us SEE what we are doing to you
• it shows contempt for effort. people are not supposed to try at anything, you’re supposed to be a gifted special snowflake
• and admitting that femininity is effort means fundamentally undercutting the idea that women are flighty and trivial and weak
• and it makes - OF COURSE - the whole thing about dude’s boners, and not the way there are social and financial consequences for not being a little made-up
• and it is so hostile to the idea of self-expression? someone who wears bright red lipstick does not think that people will actually assume their lips REALLY ARE bright red, any more than we assume a dude who shaves his face is naturally hairless, or think that a person wearing a blue shirt actually has blue arms. sometimes we make aesthetic choices to communicate with the world.
• which in and of itself depends on women as fundamentally underhanded. of course even the way we present ourselves is a bald-faced lie

basically it is a Gross Things About The Patriarchy 101 midterm all rolled up into one passive-aggressive bid for a pat on the back over some Nice Guy’s “enlightenment”

(via pocochina)