pink collar

I started reading The Beauty Myth last night after the experiencing grave disappointment brought on by the discontinuation of my favorite Lush "temple balm" aromatherapeutic fragrance. As a magazine worker and as a woman, I should have read this book a long time ago. I feel pretty lazy that I never got around to it before.

I was pretty excited that Wolf started out the book by discussing the "Professional Beauty Qualification" — this has plagued me for years — in which " 'beauty' had to be defined as a legitimate and necessary qualification for a woman's rise in power... The working woman was told she had to think about 'beauty' in a way that undermined, step for step, the way she had begun to think as a result of the successes of the women's movement... The closer women come to power, the more physical self-consciousness and sacrifice are asked of them."

While reading this book, I definitely have been thinking about how I got into all this media stuff with the intention of bringing fresh ideas, intelligence, other general goodness, and was stuck just working towards the lowest common denominator as well as buying into the harmful ideas more than I ever have before. I wrote and then deleted a post in Jan in which I detailed the trauma inflicted on my psyche during a week that I tried (and failed) to ban all makeup. I am very much feeling the aspects of this book where she talks about women's magazines as disseminaters of feminist ideas throughout middle and lower classes, and doesn't dismiss them as entirely negative agents. I have really learned to hate all magazines, but there are some things about women's magazine in terms of providing a place — albeit a highly fucked-up one — for female culture to actually exist.

More important, though, it reminds me of the old life I had as a girl before I moved to New York, the epicenter of this crazy beauty shit. In working-class America, beauty is something very different than it is here. My mom and grandmother and great-grandmother didn't wear makeup. People weren't as pretty but they weren't as neurotic about their appearances. There wasn't crazy plastic surgery and trainers and the constant barrage of mani-pedi-wax-threading-locarb-mastercleansefasting. There is no substantial beauty industry in rural pennsylvania.

As I spring cleaned for hours on end today, I thought about how as a teenager I actually cleaned buildings for money. All the women I knew growing up did jobs like this: they sold Avon or Mary Kay; they cleaned houses; they cut hair; they were teachers, day-care workers, school-bus drivers; they worked at restaurants; they worked at banks; they worked at stores. They all worked in highly gendered "pink-collar" jobs, and none of them made very much money. I have done so many jobs that I decided maybe I should try to make a list.

I’ve been a babysitter.
I worked at a gift shop at an amusement park (specifically, in Berenstein Bear Country).
I’ve cleaned banks.
I’ve worked as a dishwasher, line cook, and hostess at Pizza Hut (my first unpleasant experience with sexual harrassment).
I’ve made sandwiches at Subway.
I’ve stuffed envelopes.
I worked at a greenhouse propagating plants.
I convinced people to switch long distance carriers at a Nascar race (my second unpleasant experience with sexual harrassment).
I worked as a waitress and barrista at a deli-style restaurant (my third unpleasant experience with sexual harassment).
I worked at the coffee bar at Borders.
I worked as a waitress at Cracker Barrel (dress code: country fresh).
I mounted slides at a slide library.
I solicited alumni donations.
I dispatched temps and reviewed resumes at a temp agency (my fourth unpleasant experience with sexual harassment).
I interned for a famous designer.
I designed publications for my college.
I interned for a famous artist (where the only women who set foot in the studio were the interns).
I babysat a boy in Tribecca.
I designed various materials for a travel store.
I worked as an administrative assistant at a PR firm.
I designed ads for a record label.
I sold lingerie at Victoria’s Secret.
I made photocopies for a designer.
I art directed a strange video-game oriented magazine.
I interned for a street style magazine.
I worked at a design firm.
I designed stuff for a performing arts center.
I worked at a pastry shop.
I designed a pitch for an amusement park.
I worked at an architecture firm.
I handled the bookkeeping for an art collective.
I worked at another design firm.
I worked at a graphic design magazine.
I’ve worked as an artist.
I’ve worked at a women’s magazine.
I’ve worked at a national newspaper.
I worked at a music magazine.
I’ve worked as an independent graphic designer.

I am happy that I moved out of PA and the pink-collar and joined the "creative class" but I still am always afraid to ask for more money and often fear that I am somehow less competent than my male peers. Additionally, I have to worry about things like how I'm so sad that Lush has discontinued one of the one thousand products I buy, and how I will be potentially less attractive without that product, and that perhaps I should really revisit my whole routine because I haven't been feeling very attractive lately anyway and I AM getting older...