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Appearance As a Feminist Issue SMU Law Review Volume 69 Issue 4 Article 2 2016 Appearance as a Feminist Issue Deborah L. Rhode Stanford Law School, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Deborah L. Rhode, Appearance as a Feminist Issue, 69 SMU L. REV. 697 (2016) https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr/vol69/iss4/2 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at SMU Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in SMU Law Review by an authorized administrator of SMU Scholar. For more information, please visit http://digitalrepository.smu.edu. APPEARANCE AS A FEMINIST ISSUE1 Deborah L. Rhode N 1929, in A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf maintained that every woman needed to consider “what is your relation to the ever- Ichanging and turning world of gloves and shoes . .”2 Since then, that world has grown ever more complicated. In today’s universe of esca- lating opportunities for cosmetic enhancement, the issues surrounding beauty have posed increasingly complex challenges. For some women, our cultural preoccupation with appearance is a source of wasted effort and expense, a threat to physical and psychological well-being, and a trig- ger for workplace discrimination. For other women, the pursuit of beauty is a source of pleasure and agency, and a showcase for cultural identity. The question for the women’s movement is whether it is possible to find some common ground, and to develop a concept of beauty that is a source of pleasure rather than shame, and that enhances, rather than dic- tates self-worth. I. NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY DEBATES Contemporary challenges to appearance-related practices have long- standing roots. During America’s first two centuries, “respectable” wo- men did not “rouge,” a practice associated with prostitutes.3 Women might ingest chalk, vinegar, or even arsenic to achieve a fair complexion, or kiss rosy crepe paper to redden their lips, but any detectable use of paints or powders put their reputations at risk.4 Beauty and virtue were intertwined, and reliance on cosmetics was thought corrosive to a “chaste soul” and a sign of moral depravity.5 Some black women’s leaders simi- larly condemned anyone who wanted to whiten her skin: “Why does she wish to improve her appearance? Why not improve her real self?”6 On hair, many leaders echoed the advice of Marcus Garvey: “Don’t remove 1. Original publication available at Deborah L. Rhode, Appearance as a Feminist Issue, in BODY AESTHETICS 81 (Sherri Irvin ed., Oxford Univ. Press, 2016). The editorial assistance of Eun Sze is gratefully acknowledged. 2. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas 117 (Oxford University Press 2015). 3. Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture 53 (1998). 4. Id. at 15, 17; Karen Kozlowski, Read My Lips: A Cultural History of Lipstick 18 (1998). 5. Peiss, supra note 3, at 57. 6. Id. at 207. 697 698 SMU LAW REVIEW [Vol. 69 the kinks from your hair! Remove them from your brain!”7 Market forces, however, kept putting temptation within ever-easier reach, and by the early twentieth century much of the stigma surrounding cosmetics had eroded.8 They became seen as a form of self-expression and an emblem of emancipation, as well as a means of moving up in the marriage market.9 According to Zelda Fitzgerald, “paint and powder” were a way for women to “choose their destinies—to be successful com- petitors in the great game of life.”10 By the early twentieth century, suf- fragists advocated lip rouge as a symbol of women’s rights and incorporated its use in public rallies.11 Although some activists in this “first wave” of feminism also attempted to link dress reform with other feminist causes, their initial campaigns had little success. In 1851, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Amelia Bloomer launched their crusade against corsets and crinolines by wearing short- ened skirts over Turkish-styled pantaloons, a style quickly labeled “bloo- mers.”12 A few other suffragists joined the effort, but soon dropped out after journalists viciously caricatured the costume and spectators jeered and stoned women who wore them.13 However, many doctors, educators, editors of women’s magazines, and authors of advice manuals supported at least some reform, and “sensible dress” apart from bloomers gradually emerged.14 The increasing popularity of the bicycle and other forms of physical exercise, as well as women’s entry into the paid labor market, ultimately reinforced the demand for functional fashions.15 In the 1960s, the emergence of a “second wave” of feminism brought a more fundamental and sustained challenge to the beauty industry. In 1968, protestors at the Miss America pageant announced a boycott of all products related to the competition, and unceremoniously deposited bras, girdles, curlers, false eyelashes, and women’s magazines into a “Freedom Trash Can.”16 Although no undergarments were burned, the label “bra burner” stuck as an all-purpose pejorative to characterize “radical” femi- nists.17 Among that group were authors of a statement accompanying the protest, which explained, “Women in our society are forced daily to com- pete for male approval, enslaved by ludicrous beauty standards that we 7. Ayana D. Byrd & Lori L. Tharps, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black hair in America 38 (2001). 8. Peiss, supra note 3, at 54. 9. Id. at 59. 10. Zelda Fitzgerald, The Collected Writings of Zelda Fitzgerald 416 (Matthew J. Bruc- coli ed., 1997). 11. Sarah E. Schaffer, Reading Our Lips: The History of Lipstick Regulation in West- ern Seats of Power, 62 FOOD & DRUG L.J. 165, 176 (2007). 12. Susan Brownmiller, FEMININITY 88-89 (1984). 13. Id. at 89. 14. Lois Banner, American Beauty 98-99, 147-50 (1983). 15. Id. at 150. 16. People & Events: The 1968 Protest, PBS.org: Miss America, http://www.pbs.org/ wgbh/amex/missamerica/peopleevents/e_feminists.html [https://perma.cc/8HHC-5BP4]. 17. Id. 2016] Appearance as a Feminist Issue 699 ourselves are conditioned to take seriously.”18 Building on the premise that the “personal is political,” activists shed a range of conventions along with their undergarments. Unshaved legs and unadorned faces became a symbol of “liberation.”19 The public reception was not unlike the response to early dress reform- ers. Feminists were seen as “dowdy,” “frumpy” “moralizers,” who hated men because they could not attract them.20 Because radicals gained dis- proportionate media attention, the early feminist movement, in general, and its critique of beauty in particular, was often dismissed even by those who accepted most of its other egalitarian principles.21 In The Sceptical Feminist, Janet Radcliffe Richards voiced a common concern: “The image of the movement comes from the individuals in it; if large numbers of them are unattractive the movement as a whole is bound to be so too.”22 Over the last quarter century, as the feminist movement has grown in- creasingly fragmented, different subcultures have differed sharply on matters of appearance. Since the late 1960s, fat activists have sought to challenge discrimination on the basis of weight and to make tolerance for all body sizes a social priority.23 Beginning in the 1990s, a group of young activists, self-labeled as “third-wave feminists,” focused on interlocking categories of oppression and ways of encouraging sexual agency.24 For some of these women, that has involved reclaiming conventional em- blems of femininity—sexualized clothing and stiletto heels. For others, such as those in punk rock subcultures, it has meant rejecting traditional images of femininity and asserting deviant styles—green hair or shaved heads.25 And for aging second-wave feminists, the challenge has been finding ways to reconcile their personal attachment to femininity with their political commitments. II. CRITIQUES OF PREVAILING BEAUTY PRACTICES Despite their other differences, many contemporary feminists have raised shared concerns about current norms of appearance. The most ob- vious is cost. In her widely publicized account, The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf noted that women’s absorption with appearance “leeches money 18. Brownmiller, supra note 12, at 24-25. 19. Betty Luther Hillman, “The Clothes I Wear Help Me to Know My Own Power”: The Politics of Gender Presentation in the Era of Women’s Liberation, 34 FRONTIERS: J. WOMEN STUD. 155, 158 (2013). 20. Id. at 160-62. 21. Janet Radcliffe Richards, The Sceptical Feminist: A Philosophical Enquiry 282 (1994). 22. Id. at 283. 23. Dan Fletcher, The Fat-Acceptance Movement, TIME (July 31, 2009), http://con- tent.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1913858,00.html [https://perma.cc/TPA6-4B76]. 24. Leslie Heywood & Jennifer Drake, Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism (1997); see also Jennifer Baumgardner & Amy Richards, Manifesta: Young Wo- men, Feminism, and the Future (2000). 25. Lauraine Leblanc, Pretty in Punk: Girls’ Gender Resistance in a Boys’ Subculture 13, 219 (1999). 700 SMU LAW REVIEW [Vol. 69 and leisure and confidence.”26 Because women are held to unattainable ideals, their task is boundless. Almost all areas of the female body are in need of something. The result is to focus women’s attention on self-im- provement rather than social action. The costs of our cultural preoccupation with appearance are considera- ble. The global investment in grooming totals over US $100 billion, and Americans alone spend over US $40 billion a year on diets.27 Much of that investment falls short of its intended effects or is induced by mislead- ing claims. The weight loss industry is a case in point. Ninety-five percent of dieters regain their majority of their weight within one to five years.28 Yet in the fact-free fantasy land of diet marketers, miracle products abound.
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