TwissB left the following over at IBTP, and I immediately thought of you as the cartoonist.

“I apologize for breaking into this amazing discussion with an urgent off-topic appeal for a basic feminist cause: the “No On K” campaign opposing a San Francisco ballot measure (see http://www.noonk.net) to decriminalize prostitution in that city. Activist Melissa Farley is looking for a strong feminist cartoonist to draw an editorial cartoon illustrating a particular idea about the predictable effects of hanging a neon Welcome sign for pimps and traffickers on the Golden Gate bridge. If you are a cartoonist or know one who might want to contribute her talents, please contact Melissa at mfarley@prostitutionresearch.com.
Background info: Melissa, a research psychologist, is author of the recently published study “Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections” As an oganizer, she, along with Annie Fukushima and others, were successful in defeating a similar decriminalization proposal in Berkeley, and have just scored a court victory in SF against the pro-K side who sued to – listen up anti-censorship people – remove the “con” language from the city’s legally required “pro-con” ballot statement. Like her friends Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, and Dorchen Leidholdt, she is the target of vicious attacks by misogynists like Ronald Weitzer.
I hope that we’ll have an opportunity some day to discuss on this genuine forum the decriminalization/legalization and Swedish model responses to prostitution and trafficking.”

It’s funny isn’t how being “masculine” doesn’t entail spending thousands of pounds, spending your entire time starving and performining beauty routines and wearing shoes you can’t walk in. Also lipstick is a stupid cosmetic because it requires constant reapplication and contains many harmful chemicals, most of which the wearer will swallow. There’s some statistic that the average woman will swallow six POUNDS of lipstick in her lifetime. Well I’ll stick to my (paraben free) organic Chapstick I think.

Ok I’ll shup up now.

You are right that no one’s said that women who wear lipstick are not feminists. But it’s been suggested that somehow I implied it (in other posts), so I wanted to set the record straight.

What I meant was that the market has co-opted political change, as if the world could be changed by personal, consumerist choices. This is a far wider phenomena than just beauty practices. We can see it very clearly on environmental issues. “Use less water”, “Buy organic food”. It’s ridiculous! The very suggestion that climate change can be stopped just through “consumerist choices” is a blatant acceptance that the market rulez work.
Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t care what we buy. So long as we keep in mind that we will never bring about political change just by choosing “better”.

And it’s funny you mentioned that post. See, I read it and it was a huge revelation to me, so I blogged about it.

That said, the decision to wear lipstick is thought of by the majority of people on the planet and nearly all the people in power as “the right view.” Those who make this “choice” are rewarded in a million little ways all day long while those who do not are constantly bombarded with subtle-to-not-so-subtle reminders that they are despicable, rendering it more of a pragmatic survival tactic to wear makeup and less of a choice.

Reliably, every time I have pointed this out, some woman has acted as if I am attacking her, telling her she is not a feminist, telling her that women who wear makeup are not feminists, etc. This is not the case. She is simply furious because she does not want to believe that she is reaping rewards from patriarchy, nor does she want to give them up. And she’s chosen to handle this by taking out her rage on me. She hates me for pointing out her complicity, so she tries to justify it by saying that I hated her first.

For a more-detailed explanation, see this post about “pretty privilege.”

http://littoralmermaid.wordpress.com/2007/06/11/pretty-privilege/

In addition, while my own personal decisions don’t do much, the personal decisions of large groups of women do. While my own personal decisions are just drops in the ocean, the personal decisions of large groups of women are thunderstorms. When someone wears makeup, they’re just a person making a private decision. When someone publicly advocates for the beauty industry, they’re enforcing patriarchy. When somebody tries to paint all critiques of the beauty industry as the rabid delusions of the mean old bigoted radfems, they are disabling the opposition which would help free women from patriarchy. This is my problem with women who make up stories about radical feminists being “anti-feminine.”

Finally, I’d like to point out that the decision not to engage in the market by not buying given products at all is exactly that. I’m not sure how you are trying to cast it as a capitalist decision for which the market has a place, as if I was choosing between a plethora of products and personalities offered by the market. It is explicitly anti-market. The market may try to parody it and make room for it by, say, co-opting punk culture and even attempting to use anti-consumerist imagery in its advertising, but if I’m not fooled by that shtick, then I get to keep my anti-capitalist cred, thankyouverymuch.

Basically, “The Personal is Political” was born from the discovery made by women that what they thought were personal problems were, in fact, a direct consequence of the system in place.
However, it seems it has somehow mutated into “The Political is Personal”, which means that you can only change the system through your personal choices. And of course this in turn means that if you “choose wrongly” it must mean your politics are wrong. ie: if a woman wears lipstick, she’s not a feminist.

This is totally wacko. The system cannot be changed through personal choices. And in my opinion, this focus on the personal stems from brainwashing on the “wonders of a market driven worldz”. Everything you are and everything you do (or everything worth doing) has a place in the market. And the market will solve all our problems, if we choose wisely enough. Bollocks!