
Don't you know we run the world? It's why we're so tired. |
I do hope we get some common sense soon but the problem with allowing a swinging pendulum to rule pur society is that it never pauses on common sense. Common sense would be the middle and it would have to stop swinging to hold there. |
My favorite thing about it is how white men will jump ALL over the conversation because they are thrilled at the opportunity to talk about how terrible white women are and how we're just manipulative and cruel and how ACTUALLY white supremacy is mostly our fault. They love it!. No one has ever enjoyed calling a middle aged, middle class white mother a "Karen" more than a white guy. He gets to act out all his misogynist thoughts and mommy issues under the guise of being an ally to black people. It's perfect. |
I’m a white woman and I’m not upset about the article at all. I’m not sure I buy it completely but I think there are some valid kernels in there. I certainly don’t feel attacked. |
Congrats. What are the valid kernels? My problem with it is that everything valid in the piece is undermined by the stuff that is hyperbole or just blatantly false. Like, yes, there is a history of white women appropriating black culture and aesthetics for their personal gain (i.e. the Kardashians, Miley Cyrus twerking to shake her Disney image, etc.). And there is a vile history of white women using performative victimhood to provoke violence against black people (Emmett Till and all the awful stories like his, but also more recent examples like the woman in Central Park calling the cops on a black man for looking at birds). Those are valid and valuable criticisms and as a white woman, I think we need to talk about it and be accountable. But to take those valid criticisms and apply them to young white women posting on social media about the "no make-up makeup" look or how much they enjoy wearing outfits composed of tone on tone beige items? It undermines the whole thing. Because those are not the same. And also, white women are not the only women posting on social media about natural beauty or neutral aesthetics. At all. Plus there's a huge difference between someone like Kim Kardashian or Miley Cyrus or even Amy Cooper (the Central Park lady, who worked in finance and was quite privileged) and just random young white women on social media. Those are women with real power, because they are wealthy and have access to powerful people and opportunities. That's not true of the vast majority of white women. So it just doesn't track to lump all white women in together and argue that a white woman talking about neutral lip gloss on TikTok is trying to enact "violence" on people of color. And it's such a leap that it starts to embrace a lot of misogynist tropes about white women -- that they are manipulative and power hungry, that they are shallow and selfish. Tropes that are often used to justify violence against women, actually. The article might start out making some fair points, but when it ultimately lands on talking points that would not be out of place in a 4chan article written by incels, or an explanation by Harvey Weinstein as to why his behavior was actually justified, then maybe it's time to take a step back and ask yourself what your are doing and why. |
Yes, it is exhausting to have a nation be built partly on the notion that you are clean and pure—and universally appreciated, almost like actual vanilla. But it’s not only you and centering it on you when other people are so much more injured (often killed) by products of that ideology is cringey. Those ideas have always been the obverse of the demonization, oppression and exploitation of Black women and men in this country, among others There’s nothing neutral about a #vanillagirl. |
Not true. Elizabeth Arden and Helen Rubinstein worked with chemists to develop the first sunscreen in the 1920s. Madame CJ Walker was known for face creams and powder in the 1920s. Maybelline New York was born with a spark in 1917 when Mabel Williams singed her lashes in a cooking fire— and turned disaster into opportunity by mixing the ashes with Vaseline to create a mascara product for all. This is such a clear example of how modern narratives end up distorting history. Ironically, the pp is actually serving the patriarchy herself by erasing the true history of women entrepreneurs. So misguided. |
Yeah... no. Sorry, my grandparents were literally enslaved and this country was definitely not built for me. In fact women like me are the butt of maybe 40% of our country's jokes. Go find someone else to demonize because somehow you believe it helps you cause to do so. I'm busy. |
Inventing and owning are two different things. Men have made more money off of the beauty industry than any of these women. And CJ Walker was black! Of course there have been women entrepreneurs, just as there have also been black entrepreneurs. That is different than arguing the beauty industry has largely been owned, run by and for the profit of women over the years. Not true. Like all industries, it was mostly men who made and kept the money. These women were entrepreneurs at a time in history (not very long ago) when women were often not allowed to own bank accounts, take out loans, or own property. When women were legally the property of their husbands. It's not taking anything away from these women individually to note that they certainly did not run the industry and that it was men who largely profited from their work and ideas. It's facts. |
Is the no-makeup look killing people??? |
I think you’re missing PP’s point. Despite these examples of these few women starting businesses, those at the top of the industry are predominantly men. |
It's like looking at the music industry in the 60s and concluding that black people ran the industry because there were a lot of individual black artists making music and money. But the music industry has always been run by men. |
Thank you. |
^ Meant to say white men. Clive Davis and the like. Beauty industry is the same. Most industries are the same! The rules were designed so that it was hard to impossible for women OR people of color (and definitely not women of color) to make and keep money. Even when entrepreneurial individuals broke through with a business or idea, they were held back by laws and cultural norms that prevented them from truly capitalizing on those ideas or hard work the way white men could. More often, white men who did nothing and had no ideas capitalized on the ideas and hard work of women and people of color.
There should be so much solidarity here and instead we bicker amongst ourselves. It is so counterproductive. |
This. All of it. The beauty industry exists to make money by making women feel badly about themselves. |