Everyone who has ever been into makeup or other beauty practices traditionally associated with ‘womanhood’ knows: it’s a huge amount of work to look your best every day. Not to mention the amount of money it costs to actually pay for that flawless exterior. Being pretty is expensive, especially since the requirements for ‘pretty’ keep shifting constantly: the products you used a few months ago are already being replaced by better ones. Products that will either point out more of a person’s flaws that they then promise to fix, or even through products that are “healthier” or “greener” than the ones that you purchased before. 

Women and ‘femme’-presenting people are a lucrative business and capitalism is always looking for ways to join forces with the patriarchy and secure more profits by exploiting the leftover pieces of women’s barely existing self-esteem. And if there’s anything that a lot of women learn to work for, it’s the approval of men. The ‘male gaze’ isn’t just a buzzword used to talk about the centering of men in our everyday lives, it’s in every woman’s upbringing from the moment we’re born. In the movies we watch, the books we read, the stores we shop at – the way men see us is almost more important than the way women see themselves. Being attractive is all about being attractive for others and never about whether or not we like the person looking back at us in the mirror of yet another changing room in a store that promises us beauty…