Tag: false empowerment

jayspeakswords:

ironfoxe:

stfumras:

spookymixedgirl:

stfumras:

spookymixedgirl:

stfumras:

stylemic:

Watch: Thousands of years of makeup in one video.

Ok I’m sorry but what?  We have the POWER to wear any makeup look we want?  What damn world do you live in lady  We don’t have the power to wear makeup, we are forced to and we are forced to do so in a way that conforms to traditional beauty standards or else we experience backlash.  I can’t stand this narrative, that makeup is somehow empowering.  I hate wearing it yet I have to in order to be taken serious in the business world.  Power my ass woman. 

OK but what’s empowering to some may just not be empowering to you. But y’know do you

There’s nothing empowering about being raised to think we must alter our faces in order to be found attractive. There’s nothing empowering about having to spend money on products to hide what I really look like so that I can be taken seriously. There’s nothing empowering about being scared to go out in public without makeup on just in case we run into someone, there’s nothing empowering about having a constant dialogue of what woman have to do to be acceptable constantly screamed at us from every media source.

Anyway like I was saying what’s empowering to some might just not being empowering to you. Like you literally don’t get to say make up doesn’t empower other women bye

I literally do get to say makeup isn’t empowering to women because makeup and the entire industry behind it is aimed at weakening a woman’s sense of self and self esteem and scaring/shaming them into buying a product to alter their appearance and the most glaring way you can see how this is not empowering is by the fact that they DO NOT DO THIS SHIT TO MEN 

AND why do you THINK women think it’s empowering to wear makeup hmmmm?  Could it be that we were raised in a society that values the beauty of a woman over all else?  Could it be that we as women were raised to believe that beauty=power?  Ya think maybe that could be it? 

another reason “empowerment” has become an empty buzzword with zero meaning

As someone who loves makeup even I can see the patriarchal structure behind it. There’s a reason why when I sit in my wheelchair I feel like I have to have a full face of makeup. It isn’t because makeup empowers me and gives me confidence in my chair. It’s because I’ve been programmed to believe I’m not beautiful without it and being disabled makes me even uglier.

Make up is pretty much obligatory not empowering.

Advertisers must convince young women that they are in need of constant improvement—largely to get and keep boys’ attention—without threatening young women’s views of themselves as intelligent, self-directed, and equal. Buzz words like “empowerment,” “self-determination,” and “independence” are sprinkled liberally across their pages. But this seemingly progressive rhetoric is used to sell products and ideas that keep girls doing gender in appropriately feminine ways, leading them to reproduce, rather than challenge, gender hierarchies. An ad for a depilatory cream, for instance, tells girls that they are “unique, determined, and unstoppable,” so they should not “settle… for sandpaper skin.” Feminist demands for political and economic equality—and the refusal to settle for low-wages, violence, and second-class citizenship—morph into a refusal to settle for less than silky skin. Pseudo-feminist language allows young women to believe that they can “empower” themselves at the checkout counter by buying the accoutrements of traditional femininity.

Amanda M. Gengler,

Selling Feminism, Consuming Femininity

. (via

sukoot

)

i know i reblogged this before, but i don’t care.

(via fourdroopydogs)

brutereason:

The idea that women have some sort of “power” over (straight/bi) men by virtue of their “sex appeal” is such a common idea that it shows up in my life almost daily, like when my mom suggests that I should use it to get men to help me with things or when a guy messes up what he’s doing because he’s looking at me or in films and music and whatever.

The thing is, when someone has *real* power over you, you don’t have control. I can’t force men to stop seeing me as a bitch if I speak up for my needs or as a pathetic damsel if I don’t. I can’t force them to give women equal representation in government and business and STEM. I certainly can’t force them to stop harassing and assaulting us. That’s because they have power over me and all other women, especially women of color.

Whatever power I have over white men is illusory. They *can* choose not to look at me. They can choose to focus on what they were doing and it’s a dangerous lie that they can’t. They can choose not to give me the larger drink for free. But they don’t choose that, because it’s fun to look at me and it’s fun to flirt a little and give me the thing for free “because your smile is so beautiful.”

Women get sold this idea that they have this “power,” this ability to “control” and “tempt” and “destroy” men, because it’s a distraction from noticing the actual power that we don’t have. Indeed, who needs equal wages for equal work or political representation or the freedom to live without fear of rape when we can make some dude crash his bike into a pole because he was staring at us?