"Ugly Beauty" Book Review and Reflection

First published Feb. 23, 2012 http://www.hercircleezine.com/2012/02/23/ugly-beauty-by-ruth-brandon-the-not-so-glamorous-history-of-cosmetics/

“HE HAD LOOKED WORSE. HE HAD LOOKED BETTER. IF HE HAD BEEN A WOMAN, HE AT LEAST COULD HAVE IMPROVED HIMSELF WITH MAKEUP.” thinks Vince Leone, a character in Tami Hoag’s DEEPER THAN THE DEAD, as he examines his face in the mirror one morning.

For several weeks now, I wondered how I’d cover the material in Ruth Brandon’s UGLY BEAUTY (HarperCollins 2011). Reading fiction for fun, I came across this line and it felt like an apt opener for this article.

As I read Vince’s thoughts, it occurred to me that women might see makeup as a boon. When we’re feeling poorly, we can spruce up with a little eyeliner or shadow to enhance or mask tired eyes. We can add color to our faces with blush or lipstick. If we have a cold and an important meeting, we can alter our appearance so we look what we’d refer to as “better.” Yet, cosmetics may also feel like a requirement for some women. We may stand before the mirror in the morning with a small fabric case on the vanity or sink and sigh at the thought of “painting” our face that morning. We might wonder as we lean forward to spread mascara along each lash what we’re doing and why.

When we look at the paint and pigments used by women and men historically, such as war paint or the cosmetics it appears were used in early Egypt, we see a long history of using color to change appearances. At the same time, we may lament the social pull we feel to use makeup or feel like we’re really bucking the system if we choose not to use it. Who and what do we support when we purchase a brand of makeup? There are so many “natural” and “cruelty-free” lines of makeup these days, that even those focused on environmental causes and animal rights can find a way to satisfy our penchant to avoid negative environmental and animal impact while still coloring our eyes and lips.

UGLY BEAUTY, Brandon’s book, explores the history of the cosmetics industry through the lives of Helena Rubinstein and Eugene Schueller, whose legacy is still a household name worldwide in the form of L’Oreal. L’Oreal bought Helena Rubinstein’s empire after her death, and thus her company continues under the umbrella of L’Oreal’s products. Brandon compares and contrasts Rubinstein and Schueller’s lives and motivations. Schueller was a chemist first, the son of poor parents, who made good on the educational opportunity he was lucky enough to have. Rubinstein was one of those women who were far ahead of her time, who sought a life in the world of business and industry. During her lifetime, most industries were closed to women. However, cosmetics was an industry where women could find work. Since women consume most of the lotions and makeup in the market, it made sense that a woman owned her own company in such an industry.

The ugly truth behind the makeup and cosmetics industry is that at some level it has always sought to exert social control over women, even while it purports to help women by providing working opportunities, self-care and self-confidence. For Rubinstein, she saw the world of cosmetics as an opportunity for women to work outside the home—for them to pursue careers. At the same time, the claims made on her product labels and in advertising were the same sorts of claims one might expect to find by anyone selling the proverbial “snake oil” from a roadside cart. Even the ingredients were not to be trusted, since labeling was not regulated as it is now. Schueller’s forays into cosmetics focused on safer hair dyes. While safety may be a noble pursuit, in a small way, it of course perpetuated a continuing pressure for women to color their hair. Politically, Schueller was aligned with the Nazi party at one point, and expressed his ideal society as one in which women were homemakers while men pursued the worlds of work and industry. He went so far as to write and publish these views, and enacted policies wherein an employee’s pay was based on whether he lived up to Schueller’s ideals within his personal life.

It is interesting to consider makeup as opportunity for women. It simultaneously creates social expectations even while it provides income. When I consider flexible jobs like Avon or Mary Kay sales, these jobs are key for a lot of women who would otherwise not be able to raise families as they desire while still providing needed family funds. Then again, the consumerism that this promotes and the pressure to have the latest wrinkle cream or shade of eye shadow is itself more pressure on women. Couple all of this with the philanthropic and public-service-type messages some of their products support, and we find ourselves unable to ignore the hype. Brandon notes that even today, Rubinstein’s legacy of cosmetics providing a working life for women has not been continued in management of makeup companies. Just ten percent of cosmetics companies, like all other companies, have female CEOs. The same holds true for cosmetic surgeons, who are also about ninety percent male. While women may sell cosmetics, not very many are in decision-making or policy positions at these companies.

The lives lead by Helena Rubinstein and Eugene Schueller are as fascinating as their biographies are told in UGLY BEAUTY. The fact that we also see the dawn of a new era in cosmetics in this book adds yet another dimension. There were plenty of controversies and the author also covers the new pharmacological cosmetics and plastic surgery industries. We’re left with a lot of questions to ask ourselves as readers and as women. While I’ve written in past articles about my refusal to use hair color, I don’t typically even go to the beach or hiking without applying eye liner, and I carry a certain shade of pink lip color in my purse at all times.

Are cosmetics a boost or bane, in your opinion? Do you use makeup? If so, why? And, if not, why not? Share your thoughts and comments with inContext readers so that we may continue this discussion.

"On Moving" Book Review and Reflection

First published February 16, 2012 http://www.hercircleezine.com/2012/02/16/16140/

Since we married, my husband and I have contemplated moving away from New England. With family in the area, however, and children who arrived within our first three years of marriage, we decided to stay in place. We planned on moving once our children were grown. Our children are now in high school, and so we look at our options for moving within the next five years.

So, when I heard about Louise DeSalvo’s book, ON MOVING, I hoped it would give me some insight into moving, and help me look deeper at reasons and expectations. The book definitely provided personal insight, and I recommend it to anyone contemplating a move for whatever reason. In addition to discovering more about myself as I read, the book provides thought-provoking information with anecdotes about moves made by famous writers, including those that were for better or worse.

DeSalvo wrote about Henry Miller and his move to Paris. Many, including Miller himself, believe this move helped him develop into the author he became. Miller credits the French with honoring and respecting him as a writer, whether he was published or not, and their attitude that “didn’t regard poverty as a sign of moral failing.” DeSalvo says that while Miller “was often lonely in Paris, he never felt alienated.” When I think of the situation women face in the United States, we are often alienated, regardless of our decisions. These can sometimes be related to pursuing art, but are also just as likely to be decisions like having a family or not and working or not working once we decide to have children. It is the isolation that drives women mad, as so many tales, both fictional and nonfictional confirm.

When women choose to work and not have families, they often find old friendships lost when friends take a different path. Then, if they choose to have families and work or not work, again, they lose friends and thus support. Working mothers, especially, have combined pressures of living up to expectations at work and then their own (and possibly also others’) expectations at home and with their children. Who has time for friends? And, when they talk with bosses or colleagues, they’re pressured to put work first, while when they talk with friends or family, they feel pressure to put family first.

Our culture demands that women have “lives of their own” and yet are available as mothers to their children. Additionally, rather than food stamps, fuel assistance or other public programs, if their husband’s salary doesn’t support their home and family, a woman is expected to work to contribute. There is that “moral failing” as a clear message in our social fabric.

The book also made me think about and want to know more about how many moves are either undertaken or not to accommodate the work or other needs of women in households versus those for husbands’ jobs. Studying military social work last fall, I read about how the non-military spouses, mostly women, have to move so often due to their husbands’ jobs. For those called to active duty, that sometimes necessitates a move because housing and childcare are inadequate when the father/husband leaves the current living environment. DeSalvo wrote about how she and her mother moved while DeSalvo’s father was away serving in the military in World War II, so that until they moved again upon his return, her father never felt like the space was “his.” Other than in situations like that, I wonder whether moves are ever as demanding of men as they are of women.

Have you had a move that you desired that proved to be different than you expected, for better or worse? Let us know in the comments section below.

Part I and II of Reflections on "This Land Is Their Land"

“Owning Up to Abortion” from Barbara Ehrenreich’s THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND

This section first published February 2, 2012 http://www.hercircleezine.com/2012/02/02/owning-up-to-abortion-from-barbara-ehrenreichs-this-land-is-their-land/

THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND: REPORTS FROM A DIVIDED NATION by Barbara Ehrenreich (Holt, 2009).

Ehrenreich is well known for her writing and reporting on issues related to social justice. THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND is a series of satirical essays about issues related to the economic melt-down that began in 2008, and the divide between religious and secular America. Two essays stood out as especially pertinent to inContext readers. The first is entitled, “Owning Up to Abortion,” and the second, “A Uterus is Not a Substitute for a Conscience.” I’ll look at each essay individually, and address the first this week and the second next week.

“Owning Up to Abortion” is Ehrenreich’s call to women to acknowledge their own abortions and the need for access to abortion care. She points out that with all of the genetic testing available prenatally, there are increased reasons why a woman may choose to terminate her pregnancy. However, many women who abort for reasons related to the results of prenatal testing refuse to call these abortions just what they are. Ehrenreich reports that many women invent some kind of differentiation in their own minds between their “need” for an abortion and the women who might be sitting next to them at a clinic who merely do not want to be pregnant at that time.

I worked with a social researcher over ten years ago who was gathering data for a book about childbirth practices. Her demographic questions included asking whether the interviewee was pro-choice. One interviewee claimed she was against choice, yet went on to describe her support for her sister-in-law who “had to” terminate her pregnancy due to severe fetal abnormalities. The researcher and I were incredulous. If you are against allowing women control of their own bodies, then how could you think it acceptable for one woman to decide to undergo a second trimester abortion rather than continue her pregnancy through its natural outcome whereupon the baby would die either at some later date in the pregnancy or certainly at or just after birth? As Ehrenreich found, the difference to these women is that they claim they “wanted” their babies. Ehrenreich wryly points out that these women did not “want” the PARTICULARbaby, however. This “prejudice,” as the author calls it, was confirmed in a survey she found wherein 82% of survey participants supported abortion due to fetal abnormalities and only 40% supported a woman’s right to choose for another reason, such as an inability to financially support another child.

This subterfuge is exactly the same as when reporters give airtime to Republican voters who in the same breath tout their disdain for “big government” and yet want to vote for candidates who would outlaw abortion and birth control. I used to be unable to comprehend how small government equated with a government that meddled in my most private business. However, I now understand that when a Republican advocates for small government and the criminalization of abortion and birth control, what he or she really wants is government small enough that it can set up camp in my uterus.

At the end of the essay, Ehrenreich calls for honesty among women who seek abortion services for any reason, at any point in their lives. She also warns “the freedoms that we exercise but do not defend, or even acknowledge, are easily taken away.” Acknowledgement must come first. Women need to acknowledge the necessity of legal, quality medical care and access to abortion services. Rather than determine for individuals when abortion is acceptable, we must keep it legal and accessible to all women who may then individually decide when it is acceptable for them personally. In an election year here in the United States, it is even more crucial that women recognize pregnancy termination for any reason as abortion, and to protect access to legal abortion for all women.

THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND Part 2: “A Uterus is Not a Substitute for a Conscience”

This section first published February 9, 2012  Robinsonhttp://www.hercircleezine.com/2012/02/09/this-land-is-their-land-part-2-a-uterus-is-not-a-substitute-for-a-conscience/

A common platitude among feminists (myself included) is that if women ruled the world, there would be no war or violence. Ehrenreich debunks the myth of the benevolent female in her essay, “A Uterus is Not a Substitute for a Conscience.” inContext examines this particular essay to continue the discussion from last week about Ehrenreich’s book THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND (Holt, 2009).

Ms. Ehrenreich admits her own surprise at viewing photographs from Abu Ghraib prison that depict female soldiers committing abuse of male prisoners. She, and many other feminists, were disturbed not only at the images in the photographs, but also their evidence that women could be trained in a way that undermined what is assumed to be the very essence of womanhood: a commitment to non-violence. As women’s roles in our military have increased, feminists hoped our armed services would be changed by the presence of females. A lot of feminist scholarship claims our culture of war creates our rape culture. Researchers believe that because war requires hyper-masculinity, which of necessity and by definition is the opposite of and denies validity to anything feminine, that this view pits women as less than men and thus “other.” Because war requires soldiers to see the enemy as “other,” this allows male soldiers to kill, maim and yes, rape.

The pictorial evidence from Abu Ghraib shows that women have assimilated to the U.S. military rather than bringing their own, assumed innate, feminine, anti-violent, pro-human rights agenda. I believe the women soldiers in the Abu Ghraib photographs are less a testament to the nature of women and more a testament to the effectiveness of our modern military training. Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman wrote ON KILLING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL COST OF LEARNING TO KILL IN WAR AND SOCIETY (Back Bay, 2009), which examines the ways in which we train our soldiers to fight and how this has an impact on them as individuals and on our society as a whole. His insider view as a former service member confirms scholarship about war by non-military researchers who posit this view of the enemy as “other” as the most effective way to train soldiers to kill. This same training is provided to female soldiers, and thus brings them into the mind-set of viewing fellow humans as something “other” and something “less” so that they might be prone to the same dehumanizing and abusive behaviors long-thought to be the purview of men alone, based, ironically enough, on their anatomy.

With the rise of military sexual trauma, which is committed upon both men and women in the military, there is a rising focus on training that counteracts the training strictly to increase a soldier’s willingness to kill. Scholars from both inside and outside the military ask that principles of duty, honor and respect that are part of military recruiting be integrated into training that would simultaneously allow for the ability to kill. (How this might be accomplished is too big a discussion to begin herein.) Ehrenreich and other feminists would agree.

As a society, we need to stop vilifying men as perpetrators or potential perpetrators of violence and realize that women are not necessarily the only peacemakers and peacekeepers. Grossman’s research points to men being just as opposed to violence as women, unless they are trained otherwise, of course. He posits that humans are against violence by their nature, in fact. Just as women do not want biology to be their destiny, we must recognize the same for men. We need to erase our own blind spots in feminist thought and scholarship and believe a higher moral ground is something to achieve—not a thing synonymous with our anatomy.

(THIS ARTICLE PURPOSEFULLY LACKS AN IMAGE OUT OF RESPECT FOR THE PRIVACY OF THOSE HOODED PRISONERS DEPICTED IN PHOTOGRAPHS THAT ARE THE IMAGES OF ABU GHRAIB.)