Ocasio-Cortez says ‘glam’ can improve your politics
https://themilitant.com/2020/09/19/ocasio-cortez-says-glam-can-improve-your-politics/
BY JANET POST
Vol. 84/No. 38
September 28, 2020
Women coal miners from U.S. visit British coalfields in 1987, to learn
about miners’ resistance. As millions of jobs are erased today and wages
and working conditions come under attack, the bosses of the cosmetics
industry come in to try and boost profits off women’s insecurities.
MILITANT/NORTON SANDLER
Women coal miners from U.S. visit British coalfields in 1987, to learn
about miners’ resistance. As millions of jobs are erased today and wages
and working conditions come under attack, the bosses of the cosmetics
industry come in to try and boost profits off women’s insecurities.
“If I’m going to spend an hour in the morning doing my glam … it’s
because I feel like it. … My body, my choice!” U.S. Congresswoman
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says, describing her daily beauty regimen in a
recent film made by Vogue magazine and shown on YouTube. Some 2 million
people have watched.
“There’s this really false idea that if you care about makeup or if your
interests are in beauty and fashion, that that’s somehow frivolous,” she
says. “But I actually think these are some of the most substantive
decisions that we make — and we make them every morning.”
Ocasio-Cortez is a member of Democratic Socialists of America and a
Democratic Party politician elected largely by middle-class
professionals in New York in 2018. She promotes anti-working-class
big-government “socialist” reforms that would maintain the capitalist
system. Here she is promoting the profit-driven “beauty” industry —
cosmetic companies, magazines like Vogue and other operations that rake
in billions of dollars. Like Ocasio-Cortez, they present their products
as the answer to women’s insecurities.
The congresswoman has been promoting her “glam” cosmetics routine in a
step-by-step “Beauty Secrets” online tutorial — applying layers of
makeup while discussing her reformist politics. Ocasio-Cortez ends the
session saying, “Let’s go seize the day and fight the power!”
Some 6.9 million women have been tossed out of the workforce since
February, as workers have borne the brunt of the government shutdowns of
production and trade imposed after the onset of the coronavirus
outbreak. Women make up a large majority of workers in child care,
clothing stores, hotels and restaurants that have been shuttered.
Cosmetics industry bosses are looking for ways to rebuild sales that
have shrunk during the crisis. Estee Lauder reported sales fell by 32%
from April to June and said they will cut between 1,500 and 2,000 jobs.
Cosmetics and exploitation of women
The fetishism of cosmetics under capitalism is nothing new. In the
1950s, a debate on the question of the use of cosmetics and its
connection to class relations, women’s oppression and the struggles of
working people unfolded in the pages of the Militant. In 1954, editor
Joe Hansen published an expose of the cosmetics industry and how it
profits off undermining women’s self-confidence. One reader wrote to
complain that his article was an affront to the right of working-class
women to strive for “some loveliness and beauty in their lives.”
This discussion is just as relevant — and fascinating — today. It is
reprinted in Cosmetics, Fashions, and the Exploitation of Women by
Hansen, Evelyn Reed, and Mary-Alice Waters, leaders past and present of
the Socialist Workers Party. “Concealed behind the debate,” Reed
explained in the book, is “a question of class struggle and class ideology.”
“What we have in cosmetics is a fetish, a particular fetish in the
general fetishism that exists in the world of commodities,” wrote
Hansen. “The special power that cosmetics have derives from the fact
that in addition to economic relations, sexual relations attach to them.
That is the real source of the ‘beauty’ both men and women see in
cosmetics.”
Working people are inundated by constant advertising, pressuring them to
buy these and other commodities. “Our task, therefore, is to expose both
the capitalist system as the source of these evils and its massive
propaganda machine which tells women that the road to a successful life
and love is through the purchase of things,” Reed says. “To condone or
accept capitalist standards in any field — from politics to cosmetics —
is to prop up and perpetuate this ruthless profit system and its
continued victimization of women.”
When we defend the right of women to use cosmetics “without clearly
distinguishing between such a right and the capitalist social compulsion
to use them,” Reed says, we fall into the trap of ruling-class propaganda.
In the 2010 preface to the Spanish-language edition of the book, Waters
writes that Reed “explained how and why ever-changing standards of
‘beauty’ and ‘fashion’ imposed on women — and men — are integral to the
perpetuation of women’s oppression. How millennia ago, as private
property and class society emerged through bloody struggle, women were
reduced to a form of property. They became ‘the second sex.’”
Waters says that since the 1954 debate, “the pressure to be
‘fashionable’ — that is to be ‘employable’ and attractive to a potential
spouse has penetrated even more deeply into the working class.” But, as
Reed points out, that “does not mean that we must accept these edicts
and compulsions complacently or without protest.”
Reed says that the fight for women’s emancipation is critical,
explaining, “The class struggle is a movement of opposition, not
adaptation, and this holds true not only of the workers in the plants,
but of the women as well, both workers and housewives.”
This is the exact opposite of what Ocasio-Cortez with her “glam” is
doing today.
Front Page Articles
Solidarity with Dominion grocery workers in Canada!
Workers need a union in every workplace!
SWP: Join the fight to defend jobs, wages, safety
Mass protests, labor actions say down with Belarus gov’t
Dominion workers strike for pay, full-time jobs bosses took away
Join the fight to overturn Florida’s ban on the ‘Militant’ in state prisons
Feature Articles
Bahrain joins UAE in signing recognition pact with Israel
Letters protest Florida’s ban on the ‘Militant’ in state prisons
Also In This Issue
Protest hits campus worker layoffs at San Francisco State
End US gov’t crippling sanctions against NKorea!
Univ. of Illinois workers strike over staffing, safety, higher pay
Ocasio-Cortez says ‘glam’ can improve your politics
Ukraine miners sit in, strike in fight for pay, conditions
Charges filed against cop who killed Steven Taylor
Manchester drivers hit new fees on cabs
Books of the Month
Che: ‘Youth must be the motor force of our revolution’
25, 50 and 75 years ago
Letters
© Copyright 2020 The Militant - 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor - New
York, NY 10018 - themilitant@xxxxxxx
Cookies
This site uses cookies to improve your experience. Learn more.
Okay, thanks
--
___
Robert G. Ingersoll
“Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never
inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the
Church does neither.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll,
