The hijab is a personal religious choice made by the woman. The idea of the hijab was not to make a women worry about what she wears and how other men view her, it’s actually the oposite, so she wouldn’t be objectified. That revelation was made over 1,000 years ago and still to this day shows insight into women’s experience. (Though many second-wave feminists read it the wrong way).

As far as beauty is concerned, I’m well aware that even shortly after birth, humans prefer an “attractive” face. However, the concept of beauty I’m refering to is one of sexual beauty bleeding into the concept of beauty. I’m not saying that women should go out of their way to be as ugly as possible, so that men don’t objectify them. But, I will say that the concept of beauty has been vastly abused.

While the attraction of beauty was not created by males, the concept of feminine beauty -standards- was. I believe in the enlightenment period of France it was not uncommon for a young, attractive female to be married off to a rich (old) man. (I’ll have to look that up… but later.) This says much. Age disparity indicates the patriarchal value system.

Note how the man only had to be rich (not hard, considering you’re usually born into material and class wealth). But the women had to subject herself to makeup and corsets. In Imperial China, women had to bind their feet. Why? Because it was the masculine standard of beauty.

Essentially, what I’m getting at is that appearance standards are in vast disparity as far as gender is concerned. (That’s why beer commercials have to have scantily-clad women to sell their product.) It’s not the attraction to beauty or the concept of beauty in itself. Its the value we place on “beauty” and the standards we impose upon women to uphold this ideal.

That is one reason I absolutely -abhor- the idea of the “melting pot.” I’m not saying races should go out of their way to avoid marrying. What I am saying is that it creates this ideology that diversity is bad.

My case is simple: values aren’t always empowering. Many times, they are abused and cause oppression. If we can free ourselves from imposing standards in improper contexts, we can be liberated. Women aren’t the only ones who suffer under patriarchal rule. Everybody suffers.

While women have to worry about being stick-thin, men have to worry about getting bigger, more muscular, more powerful. Common sense tells us that if we are unhappy with the status-quo of our lives—I mean specifically, things that are natural to ourselves (athleticism, appearance, sex, income, sexual orientation, weight)—change it.

Common sense needs to be challenged some time, to say the least. We will never be happy with ourselves until we accept and appreciate who we are first. The consumerism aesthetic that capitalism brings is one of the worst by-products. Buy this to be happy. And the sad thing is… we actually go and buy it believing it will make us happy.

I’ve said before, though I can’t remember where, companies make money from “quick fixes” (dieting pills, exercise gadgets, makeup, hair products, etc.) because it’s an easy way to make money. People feel they need to fix themselves to fix how they feel about themselves. That’s where the logic fails. If you want to fix how you feel, you have to fix how you feel. The reason they don’t is because the previous way seems easier. One problem: it doesn’t work.

As Koster points out in “A Theory of Fun,” the brain works by chunking — that is, our brains are hard wired to find categories and to place objects in those categories. It takes conscious effort to recognize when we are doing harm to individuals by placing them in categories. As always, Evan, I enjoy your eagerness to draw connections and carefully lead your reader through the steps you want them to take, in order to prepare for your main point.

“women will not truly be free until they don’t have to worry about appearance.”

What would you say about the Islamic veil? Of course, women in certain Islamic cultures don’t have the choice of wearing a veil, but it certainly frees them from the pressures of keeping up with fashion.

I’m being a little flippant here, but only a little. The concept “beauty” is not something that a bunch of moustache-twirling men came up with in order to oppress women. If you take a biological approach, you recognize that youth and health are attractive qualities in a potential mate, and people are naturally repelled by people who smell bad (because they don’t take care of their bodies, which could lead to poor health), and drawn to the serenity of nature (because nobody survives for long in charred wastelands or places full of oozing sewage).

Not too long ago in Western societies, fair skin was considered a sign of beauty, because it indicated that you were a person of leisure who didn’t have to work outdoors. Now, tanned skin is a sign of leisure, because it means you don’t have to spend all your time working in an office.

(I remember as an undergrad being shocked to learn that a friend took a particular summer job because it was mostly night shifts, which meant that she could lie out in the sun all day.)