Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West

216 Pages·2005·1.15 MB·english

by  Sheila Jeffreys

BEAUTY AND MISOGYNY
Should western beauty practices, ranging from lipstick to labiaplasty, be
included within the United Nations’ understanding of harmful traditional/
cultural practices? By examining the role of common beauty practices in
damaging the health of women, creating sexual difference, and enforcing
female deference, this book argues that they should.
In the 1970s feminists criticized pervasive beauty regimes such as dieting
and depilation, but in the last two decades the brutality of western beauty
practices has become much more severe. Today’s practices can require the
breaking of skin, spilling of blood and rearrangement or amputation of
body parts. Some ‘‘new’’ feminists argue that beauty practices are no
longeroppressivenowthatwomencan‘‘choose’’them.Thisbookseeksto
make sense ofwhybeautypracticesarenot only justas persistent30 years
after the feminist critique developed, but in many ways more extreme. By
examiningthepervasiveuseofmakeup,themisogynyoffashionandhigh-
heeled shoes, and by looking at the role of pornography in the creation of
increasingly popular beauty practices such as breast implants, genital
waxing and surgical alteration of the labia, Beauty and Misogyny seeks to
explain why harmful beauty practices persist in the west and have become
so extreme. It looks at the cosmetic surgery and body piercing/cutting
industriesasbeingformsofself-mutilationbyproxy,inwhichthesurgeons
and piercers serve as proxies to harm women’s bodies. It concludes by
considering how a culture of resistance to these practices can be created.
This essential work will appeal to students and teachers of feminist psy-
chology, gender studies, cultural studies, and feminist sociology at both
undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and to anyone with an interest in
feminism, women and beauty, and women’s health.
Sheila Jeffreys isAssociate Professor inthe Department ofPolitical Science
at the University of Melbourne where she teaches sexual politics, inter-
national feminist politics and lesbian and gay politics. She is the author of
five books on the history and politics of sexuality, and has been active in
feminist and lesbian feminist politics since 1973.
WOMEN AND PSYCHOLOGY
Series Editor: Jane Ussher
School of Psychology
University of Western Sydney
Thisseriesbringstogethercurrenttheoryandresearchonwomenandpsychology.
Drawingonscholarshipfromanumberofdifferentareasofpsychology,itbridges
the gap between abstract research and the reality of women’s lives by integrating
theory and practice, research and policy.
Each book addresses a ‘‘cutting edge’’ issue of research, covering such topics as
post-natal depression, eating disorders, theories and methodologies.
Theseries provides accessible and concise accounts of key issues in the study of
women and psychology, and clearly demonstrates the centrality of psychology to
debates within women’s studies or feminism.
The Series Editor would be pleased to discuss proposals for new books in the
series.
Other titles in this series:
THIN WOMEN
Helen Malson
THE MENSTRUAL CYCLE
Anne E. Walker
POST-NATAL DEPRESSION
Paula Nicolson
RE-THINKING ABORTION
Mary Boyle
WOMEN AND AGING
Linda R. Gannon
BEING MARRIED DOING GENDER
Caroline Dryden
UNDERSTANDING DEPRESSION
Janet M. Stoppard
FEMININITY AND THE PHYSICALLY ACTIVE WOMAN
Precilla Y. L. Choi
GENDER, LANGUAGE AND DISCOURSE
Ann Weatherall
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF GIRLS AND WOMEN
Sheila Greene
THE SCIENCE/FICTION OF SEX
Annie Potts
JUST SEX?
Nicola Gavey
WOMAN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH HERSELF
Helen O’Grady
BODY WORK
Sylvia K. Blood
BEAUTY AND
MISOGYNY
Harmful cultural practices in the west
Sheila Jeffreys
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Beauty and Misogyny is dedicated to my partner, Ann
Rowett, with my love, and with respect for her lifelong,
determined resistance to beauty practices.

CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 The ‘‘grip of culture on the body’’: beauty practices as
women’s agency or women’s subordination 5
2 Harmful cultural practices and western culture 28
3 Transfemininity: ‘‘dressed’’ men reveal the naked reality of
male power 46
4 Pornochic: prostitution constructs beauty 67
5 Fashion and misogyny 87
6 Making up is hard to do 107
7 Men’s foot and shoe fetishism and the disabling of women 128
8 Cutting up women: beauty practices as self-mutilation
by proxy 149
Conclusion: a culture of resistance 171
References 180
Index 195
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to the Australian Research Council for the large grant that
enabled me to do the research for this book. I was able to employ two
wonderful research assistants, Carole Moschetti and Jennifer Oriel, who
notonlycollectedandannotatedmaterialsbutdiscussedthemwithmeand
made suggestions. I appreciated their enthusiasm for this project and their
support in looking at the sometimes difficult materials that had to be
analysed.
I would like to thank those friends who read and commented helpfully
on the manuscript, Ann Rowett, Heather Benbow, Iva Deutchman. My
students in Sexual Politics over the last few years have contributed very
useful insights about the impact of beauty practices such as high-heeled
shoes on their lives and I have enjoyed my discussions with them very
much.
I would like to acknowledge my debt for the ideas in this book to the
work of the radicalfeminist theorist Andrea Dworkin. Her untimely death
inApril 2005 was a terrible loss to feminist activismandscholarship. Iam
very sad that she will not be able to read this book and know how her
ideas on beauty practices continue to inspire those who survive her.
viii
INTRODUCTION
In the 1970s a feminist critique of makeup and other beauty practices
emerged from consciousness-raising groups. The American radical femin-
ist theorist Catharine A. MacKinnon called consciousness-raising the
‘‘methodology’’ of feminism (MacKinnon, 1989). In these groups women
discussed how they felt about themselves and their bodies. They identified
the pressures within male dominance that caused them to feel they should
diet, depilate and makeup. Feminist writers rejected a masculine aesthetics
that caused women to feel their bodies were inadequate and to engage in
expensive, time-consuming practices that left them feeling that they were
inauthentic and unacceptable when barefaced (Dworkin, 1974). ‘‘Beauty’’
was identified as oppressive to women.
In the last two decades the brutality of the beauty practices that women
carry out on their bodies has become much more severe. Today’s practices
require the breaking of skin, spilling of blood and rearrangement or
amputation of body parts. Foreign bodies, in the form of breast implants,
are placed under the flesh and next to the heart, women’s labia are cut to
shape, fat is liposuctioned out of the thighs and buttocks and sometimes
injected into other sites such as cheeks and chins. The new cutting and
piercingindustrywillnowsplitwomen’stonguesintwoaswellascreating
holes in nipples, clitoris hood or bellybuttons, for the placement of ‘‘body
art’’ jewellery (Jeffreys, 2000). These developments are much more dan-
gerous prescriptions for women’s health than the practices common in the
1960s and 1970s when the feminist critique was formed. It might be
expected,then,thattherewouldhavebeenasharpeningofthiscritiqueand
a renewed awareness of its relevance in response to this more concerted
attack on the integrity of women’s bodies. But this is not what happened.
Instead, the feminist perspective, which caused many thousands of women
to eschew beauty culture and products, came under challenge in the 1980s
and 1990s.
The challenge came from two directions. Liberal feminists, such as
Natasha Walter (UK) and Karen Lehrman (USA), argued that there was
nothingwrong withlipstick orwomenmakingthemselveslookgood,with
1