Oppressed by Lipstick

The Apostate:

lipstick makes a huge difference to a monochromatic color scheme like mine - I'm brown (skin) and black (hair and eyes), pretty much. No blues and pinks and yellows, as in white women's faces and hair. A bit of lipstick and good hair goes a long way for me.

So, choice = be ignored and undervalued or be admired and adored? Some choice.

Of course. Every person gets judged on their attire and makeup.

The Apostate has a simple choice: use makeup or not. She has to weigh the consequences: save time and money by not applying makeup but get less attention from the public. She, being weak, likes the approval, so she chooses the makeup.

From this simple situation, she gets a penetrating insight:

I'm not chastising myself for the fun of it, but because it occurred to me - quite recently, as I have begun to notice more and more my transformation from a serious nerdy person to a "girly girl" - that essentially, there really isn't a difference between what the Muslim chicks do to fit in and what I do to fit in. This is an important insight. To get approval, Muslim women are asked to be submissive and show it in symbols, such as the headscarf. Western women are asked to be decorative. Or risk being made irrelevant.

If a woman doesn't wear an abaya in the Magic Kingdom, then she is harassed, beaten and likely arrested by the Religious Policemen and later released to her disgraced master guardian.

In America, when a woman doesn't wear makeup, people ignore her.

The similarity between Saudi Arabia and the US is stunning.

Every society has a code of conduct, parameters and restrictions that apply to both sexes. Take two men: one wears casual clothes, the other a suit. Who will get more attention, approval or respect?

And it isn't because The Matriarchy is keeping the casual guy down.

Comments

[Francis W. Porretto]

It sounds to this Curmudgeon as if "the Apostate" is feeling "the need -- the need for a creed." Having left the smothering embrace of Islam, she feels much like a woman who's just removed her corset for the first time in twenty years -- about to fall apart without the missing restrictions -- and has started groping about for some other ideological cincher to "keep herself together." Gender-war feminism appears to be her confinement of choice.

Poor kid. I hope she'll grow out of it, but it could take awhile.

[Isaac Schrödinger]

Need for a creed!

Ain't that the truth.

[MikeT]

There is no ideology more tied to the neuroses of the believer than feminism. One feminist's means of empowerment is another feminist's means of oppression; some find sexy lingerie empowering, others you'd think it was like being chained up as a sex slave in a dungeon.

Goes back to the old theory that most feminists are just ugly women who cannot stand the fact that they have to put effort into their personalities and appearances in order to get a man.