The Illusion is that You Choose
on the impossible nature of choice feminism
Your choices do not, and will never exist within a vacuum. Every decision you make has been influenced in some way or another by external factors, and every decision you make will in some way have an effect on your environment. Accept this. Discourse around choice all too often involves some variant of “we shouldn’t be dragging other women down! Feminism is about supporting women!” which merely serves to obfuscate the true intention of choice feminism: to exonerate you from any blame.
Choice feminism avoids the work of eliminating hypocrisies, instead suggesting we should embrace them with open (and clean-shaven) arms. The allure is intensely seductive. It offers the ideology of feminism to use where personally beneficial, and simultaneously grants us the permission to ignore feminist actions where it is individually inconvenient. In this way, choice feminism and white feminism will always remain closely linked. Where white feminism has historically been used by white women to benefit themselves at the detriment of women of colour, choice feminism allows women to benefit themselves where personally practicable at the detriment of other women where inconvenient.
Reader Note: It is important to note that the issues with which this composition concerns itself are not necessarily of any great concern, however a movement can propound more than one issue.
Women do not Naturally Dream of Subservience
The push for SAHM (Stay-At-Home-Mother) lifestyles to be viewed as an ultimate achievement of happiness is single-handedly destroying decades of fighting oppression. The spectrum ranges from “traditionalist” often Christian-nationalist viewpoints which deem gender roles biblical, to supposed “anti-capitalists” who repeat “no one dreams of labour!” whilst dreaming about … going into labour for their 5th baby. Discussions about the exploitative nature of corporate conformity are important, but drawing the conclusion that “work = bad, therefore SAHM = good” is a redundant comparative fallacy.
The idealistic dream of second-wave Liberalist feminism, in which women could achieve everything they wanted in both home and the workplace, falls short of reality. Contemporary critique of the idea that “women can have it all” most notably includes Slaughter’s infamous 2012 article on the Atlantic1, however, even this take engages with the idealistic notion that choice really is the be-all or end-all of empowerment. Slaughter paraphrases a speech by Lisa Jackson2 to make the point that being a strong woman means, “respecting, enabling, and indeed celebrating the full range of women’s choices,” in regards to the relationship between motherhood and career aspirations. In any context however, this glorification of choice does not hold true. Choices which are detrimental to the continued empowerment of generations of women should be criticised, not celebrated.
The glorification of SAHM-lifestyles is inherently anti-feminist. “Traditional” values as defined by a patriarchal society are not in any way “natural” despite what the right will espouse. In any case, they are unnatural as proven by the continual progression of society which sees more and more women opting out of “traditional” lifestyles when empowered to aspire towards literally anything else. The so-called “modern woman” is denigrated for her decision to unsubscribe from motherhood and exercise her freedoms to their full extent, yet those who direct the vitriol come from the generation of women who warned us against subservience. If traditionalism was truly natural, it would not take harsh social conditioning, and the battering of women’s free will in order to achieve conformity. And the women who were victims to the social hierarchy which imposed this lifestyle on them, would not be so actively against their daughters following in their footsteps.
The SAHM lifestyle is also not anti-capitalist in any way at all. This argument is illogical and outright stupid. In fact, it serves the capitalist agenda more than an actual career ever could by being the unpaid labour which backs the workforce. The SAHM dedicates her life to cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing - tasks necessary to the continuation of capitalism, and further building of the workforce. And for it, she receives no financial compensation or recognition of her work. At the same time, by virtue of being financial dependent on the one person most likely to enact violence against her3, she is precariously trapped in her role. There is a reason why we have shifted away from glorifying being a SAHM, and the gall of women pretending that their choice to be a SAHM is a feminist choice because they are the one’s make it is ridiculous.
The SAHM’s children learn from her what it means to be a woman. Her sons are taught that a woman is good for child-rearing and household tasks, and should answer to the man of the house and depend upon him for financial support. Her daughters are taught that all they can aspire toward is their own eventual motherhood. This continued perpetuation of harmful gender roles and family dynamics is inherently regressive and anti-feminist. Regardless of the “choice” involved in becoming a SAHM, the outcomes are reductive.
Make-up is for ME, Beauty Standards are for YOU
The argument that make-up is a form of self expression, and therefore is an excusable action is ridiculous and ill-thought at best. With a few exceptions (extreme alternative makeup styles), the purpose of makeup is to enhance physical beauty and to conform to expectations of appearance which exist uniquely for women. Doing your make-up “for yourself” is never as simple as it seems when we take into account the multitude of external factors which actuate this decision.
A society which values women for their “beauty” and rewards them for their conformity is more than likely responsible for the “choice” to wear make-up. One might argue that women deserve the choice to value their own beauty, however the beauty standards achieved by makeup do not exist to appease women, rather we are conditioned to find them beautiful based off of men’s preferences. We have observed a correlation between men’s attraction to women and their youthfulness, specifically the immaturity of their features4 and it is clear that makeup serves to enhance these features to a great extent.5 Even more recent trends such as white eyeliner and inner eye highlight serve to widen the innocent, childlike eyes - a feature found attractive by men. Foundation and concealer create smooth and texture-less skin, mascara draws attention to the eyes, blush adds rosy youth, lip products add pigment, and thus conformity is achieved.
Aside from the inability to decentre men whilst conforming to the beauty standards which exist to appease them, wearing makeup is an action which insists upon itself. The perpetuation of beauty standards is communicated through all of us, and through our conformity, at every level. Young girls are feeling a pressure to look a certain way now more than ever before, due to the coupling of social media with unrealistic expectations of beauty standards. There is a direct correlation between low self-esteem and the desire to wear makeup.6 The more we wear makeup, and the more young girls and other women see us doing so, the larger the pressure to conform becomes.
In fact this culture of conformity has made it so that non-conformity is viewed as “attention-seeking behaviour” in a phenomenon known as “girls girl policing”. Now, the neutral act of leaving one’s appearance unaltered holds it’s own inherent crime: being a “pick me”.
Pamela Anderson and Calynn Chapman come to mind as recent examples of the vilification of women who do not wear makeup. The harmless video sharing her decision not to don makeup for her own wedding was met with the kind of vitriol reserved only for women who refuse to conform. How dare a woman be confident in her own skin, or even worse, refuse to conform to societal expectations of beauty.
So whilst it is unreasonable to suggest that every woman who wears makeup is a self-hating misogynist, it is also true that the act of wearing makeup in a conforming manner is inherently anti-feminist. Your conformity comes at a cost, and to the detriment of all other women.
Condemn the Choice Feminist
The term “intergenerational equity” often falls into an environmentalist context, however I believe it very aptly fits into critique of choice feminism. Women today in positions of privilege being able to make decisions and choices which regress our freedoms from patriarchal oppression should not be celebrated. They should be condemned. Having the freedom of choice which feminism has fought for you to have, and using it to make regressive choices is selfish and reprehensible. Your choices do not exist within a vacuum. Actively making choices to the detriment of future generations of women is not feminist purely by virtue of a woman being the one to make those decisions, and I’m sick of people pretending it is.
Critique of conforming women isn’t “nasty women looking down on you for being too girly!” It is subjugated people observing the privilege you have to willingly execute your own oppression, and saying “you take more from this system than you give.”
Slaughter, A.M, (2012) ‘Why Women Still Can’t Have It All’, The Atlantic
Jackson, L.P (2009) ‘Remarks at the 2009 Toxics Release Inventory Training Conference, As Prepared For Delivery’, United States Environmental Protection Agency
World Health Organization & Pan American Health Organization (2012), ‘Understanding and addressing violence against women: Intimate partner violence’, Geneva: World Health Organization
M.R. Cunningham, (1986) Measuring the physical in physical attractiveness: Quasi-experiments on the sociobiology of female facial beauty J. Person. Soc. Psychol., 50, 925-935
Korichi, R. et al. (2009) ‘J. Cosmet. sci., 59, 127–137 (March/April 2008) Why women use makeup: Implication of psychological traits in makeup functions’, International Journal of Cosmetic Science, 31(2), pp. 156–157.
Lee, H., & Oh, H. (2018). The Effects of Self-Esteem on Makeup Involvement and Makeup Satisfaction among Elementary Students. Archives of Design Research, 31(2), 87-95.