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Without paying attention to the three "R's" - region, race or religion - it is apparent that some enclaves in the world thinks little of the opportunities for its feminine constituents. The United States and most developed nations have enjoyed advances in the status of womanhood in these past 100 years, but some nations are lagging behind. Additionally, some are retreating back to the Dark Ages, with horrific consequences for women. In most of the world, improvements are continuing to be made.
Now we are in the midst of a Third Wave of feminine freedom wherein women - liberated from the constraints of feminine stereotype - can feel comfortable expressing themselves as beautiful persons freed from strictly masculine ideas of femininity. They take, for themselves, the right to be concerned with lipsticks and hair styles, handbags and sandals, Lady Gaga's costumes and Mila Kunis'choices of eye shadows. |
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Stand Up For the Right to Be Beautiful Much of the world clings to the notion that women must not be ladies: bejeweled in neither fashion nor show their lovely faces to the wind. In some parts of the world, they are killed for working in a beauty salon, scarred with acid for wearing makeup, stoned for passing a note on the street. In a month dedicated to women we must see this condition for what it is: an assault on the right to exist, to express themselves as not only capable people but as beautiful beings. Shakespeare's Shylock lamented in the Merchant of Venice: "If you cut us, do we not bleed? If you poison us, do we not die and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? "It is time for women to stand up and demand an end to the shameful treatments they endure in much of the world. The Outrage Against Women
When women have to fear violence in the midst of historical celebration, they have no freedom. The beauty industry is, in this sense, more than just Balayage, Smashbox lash mascara, and Kate Spade Adelle handbags. It is an industry that must be aware of the struggle for basic human rights for women around the world. It is an industry that must stand behind the struggle around the world for equal rights and equal opportunity. We see clearly how women are repressed in the world: the first thing intolerant societies strip from women is their lipstick: then they supervise their bodies and then they shutter their lives. Our Homework Assignment
Read this interview with Jon Clifford, English hairdresser who worked in Hong Kong and travels to Laos to support a Laotian beauty school's effort to train young women as hairdressers - girls, really, who come from very unfortunate backgrounds. Buy this book about a beauty school in Kabul, Afghanistan and the struggles to keep it open and to keep the students free from harassement and fates far worse. RaulŠ2011 |
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March 8 was first celebrated in 1911 as International Women's Day. Today around the globe, March is Women's Month, and it is the time to reflect on the advances in social conditions of women around the world.
The years from the 1970's to today have been called a "Second Wave" of rights for women where a generation expressed themselves as educators, business people, inventors, astronauts and scientists. Betty Frieden put it best when she said "The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own. There is no other way."
A short synopsis of the outrages: In China, each family is allowed one child and many first born girls are aborted or murdered to give families one more shot at having a boy. In Iran, women are given lashes for dressing "immodestly". In Afghanistan, women who own or visit beauty salons are subject to cruelties and death for the temerity to express their individuality. Political unrest in the Congo has left a legacy of sexual violence against women that is a decade old, and, upon the fall of the Mubarack regime in Egypt, a wave of sexual assault swept out from Tahrir Square as an element of the victory celebration.
Watch this YouTube