Feminism has never looked better – literally.
Whether it’s gangs of female friends, full-faces on, donning pink body con and posing for group selfies before watching the Barbie movie, or TikTok videos where pretty young influencers explain concepts like internalised misogyny while applying lip-gloss, the notion that feminists are haggard, hairy, bra-burning and…well…ugly, is surely a thing of the past.
Fourth-wave feminism is mainstream, magenta pink, and all about choice. Of course, you can be a feminist and still get Botox, as well as a breast lift, your eyebrows micro-bladed, and your bikini line waxed, create heatless curls each night, and follow a seven-step skin routine, and wear red lipstick and heels, and…hang on…this all sounds quite tiring. Is that the point?
While researching my latest novel about beauty standards, I re-read The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, who wrote, “The more rights women achieve, the stricter the rules of beauty get.”
She argued that increased beauty standards are used as a political solution against female advancement. Beauty ideology exists to make us feel ‘worth less’ to counterbalance feminist advances telling us we’re worth more. As we inevitably succumb to the pressure to look a certain way, women in their ‘raw’ or ‘natural’ state shift from the category ‘woman’ to the category ‘ugly’. The pressure is so intense that adhering to these standards becomes almost obligatory. Wolf wrote, “Choice means nothing if the choice is to survive or to perish.”
Of course, the book wasn’t received without criticism. For one, it largely ignored the issue of race, whiteness, and other intersectionality in our beauty ideals. Also, Wolf has become a controversial figure of late and was banned from Twitter in 2021. But, despite the book being published in 1990, does this core message stand? If she was right, then this latest wave of feminism will raise the bar of how women are supposed to look.
The most important relationship is the one we have with ourselves.
I came of age in the feminist wastelands of the early noughties, and it wasn’t exactly easy to keep up with beauty standards back then. Circles of shame hovered around a celebrity's cellulite, Bridget Jones was considered ‘fat’, and every girl in college was on the Special K diet as we chased lollypop heads and Size Zero. However, beauty did seem simpler back then. You cleansed, toned, and moisturised. Done. For a night out, you shoved on jeans and a nice top and dabbed on some eyeliner. Done. And, for a really special event, like a Leaver’s Ball, you’d curl your hair.
Now, it’s almost impossible to keep up – both financially and logistically – with the long list of products, procedures, and technology marketed to us as normal grooming requirements.
Social media has put us under a 24-hour gaze, where we’re expected to look as good in a selfie taken during a hungover Gilmore Girls marathon as we are out having cocktails. And while, of course, there have been major steps forward, like the body positivity movement and increased racial visibility in fashion spreads, the overwhelming default is still thin, young, white, and an increasingly impossible idea of perfect – leaving us feeling drained and demoralised.
In her memoir, What Happened, Hilary Clinton admitted she’d spent six hundred hours getting her hair and make-up done while on the presidential campaign trail. “The few times I’ve gone out without makeup, it’s made the news,” she wrote. She spent the equivalent of twenty-five days ensuring her face conformed to what a powerful woman is ‘supposed’ to look like, and even then, she never won that power. Seems extreme? One 2014 survey shows most women spend 55 minutes a day on their appearance, the equivalent of two weeks a year. British women spend an average of £95 a year on makeup and a further £162 on hair products.
We spoke to Olivia DeRamus, founder and CEO of Communia, to learn more.
It’s not just the time and expense we’re willing to lose on beauty either, but the normalisation of pain. Whether it’s the gasp and wince of a wax strip being ripped or the codeine haze and infection risk following plastic surgery, pain is a totally acceptable byproduct of our grooming regimes.
The Intentional Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery shows a 33.3% increase in aesthetic surgery over the last four years, with women making up over 90% of patients. “A healthy body reflex leads it to avoid pain,” Wolf wrote. “But beauty thinking is an anaesthetic.” And, if we’re not upcycling our real faces, we’re also altering them digitally using increasingly sophisticated filters that blur our wrinkles and blemishes, whiten our teeth and eyes, slim our faces and bodies…further removing the sight of a ‘raw’ woman from anywhere but our own private mirrors.
It’s hard not to criticise beauty standards without seemingly criticising the women who adhere to them. It’s even harder to disentangle whether we’re using make-up for creativity, self-care and self-expression or because we’re subconsciously still slaves to the beauty myth.
I'm definitely confused at best and a hypocrite at worst. I’ve written feminist literature for over a decade, and yet still self-objectify. I travel the country, educating young girls about equality and empowerment, and then come home and forensically scan my reflection in the mirror for imperfections. I can never be sure if I’m choosing to rose-quartz my jawline, apply a sheet mask, and attempt a few squats each morning because it’s a genuine choice or for the dopamine hit I get from my reflection suiting a specified criterion.
It feels less like a choice when I examine the consequences of failing to comply. For example, The Economist found in June that there’s an economic incentive for women to be thin. A woman losing 65 pounds could have the same impact on her salary as having a Master's degree. I may claim that exercising and strength are for my mental and physical health, but how deep does that go beyond the endorphins released? Am I truly choosing to exercise when I know my material wealth depends on it? The same goes for anti-ageing. When I apply a pricey retinol cream, is it an act of empowerment, or a desperate grasp at staying visible in a society that seems to retire women from the public eye after the age of forty?
A lot can be learned by the beauty standards even the most determined feminists don’t seem able to reject. What are the realities of a woman’s body that are still real taboos? I notice that edgy online activists or feminist pop stars may sport the occasional hairy armpit, but their legs are still galaxy smooth, their bikini lines plucked to perfection in their leotards as they sing about sexism. Body hair might be the ultimate feminist litmus test. Is a bush full of societally repulsive pubes the real badge of honour?
But along comes another no-win situation for women. We criticise a feminist if they’re too pretty – their arguments weaken with every Botox injection or Hollywood wax. But we’re also less likely to listen to a feminist if they stray too far into that old bra-burning, hairy, ugly, trope.
Would the Barbie movie be a feminist billion-dollar blockbuster if the aesthetically perfect Margot Robbie didn’t front it? Is the feminist consciousness-raising of TikTok a net positive even if the algorithm favours white, thin creators, and the videos are sandwiched between tutorials for nailing the perfect curtain bang? Does it matter if a spoonful of rosemary hair oil helps the medicine go down? The list of questions reads as long as my BeautyPie shopping list – leaving me feeling confused and exhausted. Is that the point? I hope not.
Holly Bourne is the author of You Could Be So Pretty, published by Usborne, out now.
In rushing to defend women from the misogyny of being called a ‘homewrecker’, we often forget the pain of the woman whose home has been wrecked – regardless of which party inflicted the damage.
-Zak-Walton-(2)_L.jpg)
