Yes, standing up for the rights of middle-aged women to have access to cosmetic enhancement is part of the work of contemporary feminism, [NOW president Terry] O’Neill told me this week. It’s the sorry consequence of a number of sorrier truths: The economy is terrible. Middle-aged women, many of whom reduced their working hours, limiting their earning power and ambition, when they had kids or, later, found themselves having to care for their parents, are in a particularly vulnerable spot these days, as they’re increasingly called upon to supplement or take over the lion’s share of family money-making. And any number of studies have shown that people with better (read: younger) looks have a better chance of getting a good job. Particularly women."Looks are the new feminism, an activism of aesthetics," Alex Kuczynski wrote in the introduction to her 2006 book on America’s obsession with cosmetic surgery, “Beauty Junkies.” At first glance, this seems ridiculous. And yet it says something true enough about the way many younger women understand feminism at a time when organized, real-world activism has hit wall after wall of political impossibility. Sneaker ads teach that feminism is all about taking control — of your figure. This is what happens when equal pay stalls, abortion rights wither, and attempts to improve child care and workplace flexibility die on the legislative vine year after year. Women’s empowerment becomes a matter of a tight face and a flat belly. You control what you can control. And so many middle-aged women feel particularly out of control now, as indeed they are, in these life plan-wrecking economic times.
(Judith Warner, "Bo-Tax Backlash", New York Times, December 3) (Hat tip to Wesley J. Smith at Secondhand Smoke)
