Fucked up how women are expected to preform femininity to such an unreasonable, expensive and time consuming degree right now. Obviously that’s been an aspect of patriarchy forever but theres a late capitalist spin on it in our current period that’s just so extreme and unrealistic.. I feel like this is something people don’t see as getting worse but in, say, the 70s it was totally normal for women to go outside without foundation on. The degree to which women are expected to compete with other women in the amount of money and unpaid time they spend on their appearance every day has accelerated along with the acceleration and of global capitalism in general
There’s a massive feminist movement erupting in South Korea right now where women are posting pictures of their destroyed makeup collections in protest of the massive amounts of sacrifice they’re expected to make towards conventional beauty just to be employed or viewed as normal. I know liberals like to talk about this stuff being a choice but when thousands of people are saying that it ISN’T a choice for them, and is in fact something they feel cornered into that’s actively harming them, that’s something worth listening to
An increasing number of South Korean women are choosing not to marry, not to have children, and not even to have relationships with men. With the lowest fertility rate in the world, the country’s population will start shrinking unless something changes.
“I have no plans to have children, ever,” says 24-year-old Jang Yun-hwa, as we chat in a hipsterish cafe in the middle of Seoul.
“I don’t want the physical pain of childbirth. And it would be detrimental to my career.”
Like many young adults in South Korea’s hyper-competitive job market, Yun-hwa, a web comic artist, has worked hard to get where she is and isn’t ready to let all that hard graft go to waste.
“Rather than be part of a family, I’d like to be independent and live alone and achieve my dreams,” she says.
…
When I put it to her that if she and her contemporaries don’t have children her country’s culture will die, she tells me that it’s time for the male-dominated culture to go.
“Must die,” she says, breaking into English. “Must die!”
Pass Through Fire 