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iirc the whole phenomenon around women being expected to shave was created by gillette marketing in the early 1900s simply bc they wanted to sell razors to women.

the ads essentially created the expectation by making it seem embarrassing for women to NOT shave - and boom the womenโ€™s shaving industry was created.

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Damn, I hate that the need to sell productsโ€”more and more of them, now different ones, now pricier ones, ad nauseumโ€”has created these "have to's to be a woman" that are totally false! It actually pisses me off. Because it's this industry based on making women feel ugly and terrible about themselves.

I guess all marketing is like that, pointing out what you must be lacking in order to sell a product or service.

But it feels especially insidious and evil to make women feel insecure for profit, when we already have puh-lenty of reasons to feel "less than" in a man-centered world. With thousands of years of patriarchal history behind us.

Grrrr...

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I think I still haven't gotten over this. The whole hair removal thing is so absurd. Women's hair was ok for thousands of years until suddenly it wasn't because of a marketing scheme and now everyone acts at though it's abnormal. And no one can explain convincingly why women's hair is so hideous/unclean it needs to be removed in a way that men's isn't (though I've heard a couple of people try to weakly argue that "well some men shave too" (lol)).

This is a great example of "bad" marketing

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Yeah, that's because there IS no reason women's body hair should be seen as gross. Just look at customs in other countries. I don't know what it's like now, but when I was in my 20s in the (ancient) 1990s, European women didn't shave their legs and often didn't wear bras either. It's just marketing and cultural customs that make us feel like body hair is gross. Unless we say FU to those false expectations and then support each other in doing so. ๐Ÿ˜‰๐Ÿ”ฅโค๏ธ

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Great to hear this, no matter how many times it's been said. I think there's also an anti-capitalist/anti-consumerist angle there that maybe the zoomers would resonate with.

I often think about this subject in the context of transition, where it can feel like there's a similar daunting list of things you NEED to do, up to and including surgeries, just to be like, OK. But ime, this list slowly goes from "things that you need to do to 'become' a woman" to "things you need to do to be pretty" in I think a rather insidious way. Not for everyone, I do think a lot of people approach things from an inherently GNC position and are a bit insulated by those values, but for a lot of girls there's a tipping point where you're passing, you should be happy, but now you find actually I want to be really hot too.

One can go from having no real belief in one's value, to grasping, touching, grazing the idea of beauty as value, and so seeing a way to feeling ok about oneself. Like a light at the end of the tunnel. "willing to swap out everything about yourself to become acceptable to other people" indeed!

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yeah it feels like for everyone who identifies as female thereโ€™s always โ€œmoreโ€ you can be doing

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This is gonna be one of the all time greats

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๐Ÿ’—๐Ÿฅน๐Ÿ’–

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This sentence delights me: "It was annoying to be a girlโ€”it seemed so unfair that periods and pregnancy were in my futureโ€”but it was also incredibly pleasurable and interesting. I couldnโ€™t wait to grow up and do all the mysterious, glamorous things that other women did."

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Thereโ€™s a very interesting analysis done by Emily Sundberg of Feed Me where she compiles all of the procedures and products performed by her readers that they justify as an expense. Part 1 is titled โ€œBoob jobs in Korea are half the price of LAโ€ (I had no idea my answer of a friendโ€™s experience would end up as the title).

Aside from the captivating figures and expense justifications, she highlights Jessica DeFinoโ€™s Substack The Review of Beauty as a medium pushing back against the expectations of beauty and viral products/procedures. Definitely recommend checking out for a refreshing POV to help deinfluence and sift out the noise.

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i stopped caring about losing weight when i got a chronic illness that made me involuntarily lose weight. when you're not losing weight on purpose it's so depressing and worrying. now i know that this statement is absolutely false - "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" - this is not true, i was skinny and unable to eat food i loved because of my illness and i'd never been so depressed in my life

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This is so right on. Thank you for sharing your experience and wisdom! I would love for my 11-year-old niece (nearly 12yo) to read this piece, because it's sadly relevant to girls her age. And then I want to talk to her about it along with her mom, my sister. My sis does a good job with her, but I think you just can't have too much quality mentoring at that age.

If you have any book recommendations for adolescent girls dealing with all these thoughts, I'd sure appreciate it. Thank you! โ€“ Karen

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