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Why women are faking it

Strimpel, Zoe
http://unherd.com/2021/07/why-are-women-faking-it/

Publisher:  Unherd
Date Written:  27/07/2021
Year Published:  2021  
Resource Type:  Article

Female Love Islanders justify Botox with the language of victimhood.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

the manipulation of our bodies has never been as explosive a political issue as in this era of trans rights and body positivity. In some circles, "natural" -- one of the buzzwords of the body positivity movement -- has become as political as "fake". Right-on beauty observers like Sesali Bowen see the celebration of the "natural" as a judgement of those who manipulate their bodies because they are "marginalised": trans people getting surgery to suit their true gender identities, say, or those hoping to escape pressures intensified by racism, ableism and lookism. Bowen also argues that plastic surgery is a democratising force that wrests "pretty privilege" from the hands of the few.

Perhaps she’s right. But the downsides of excessive bodily manipulation are painfully obvious. As well as signalling a moveable feast of insecurity and the tyranny of constant self-monitoring, fake-gate has highlighted how easily women can plunge from the envied and powerful into the pitied and reviled.

...

forcing this unfortunate chain of events into a vocabulary of politicised victimhood conceals the seriousness of the motive, which is an obsessive focus on the body as the font of all worth. Recognising this helps us to see Botox, fillers, butt-lifts and boob jobs for what they really are -- extreme, often counterproductive measures to fight time and nature -- rather than acts of female bravura. They are short-term solutions, not only for individual women, but for women generally -- who'd be much better off if the whole sexist system were dismantled, rather than propped up "fake" feminism.

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