Vanity fair.

On feminism and gossip.

On the internet, you choose once, and you suddenly belong to one category of humanity and only one. The masses cannot possibly fathom that you can change your mind or, worse, entertain two ideas in your head at the same time.

Ana Bosch here perfectly encapsulates what we at the STSC are trying to fight against. We’re pushing against the idea that you have to define yourself as one thing, that liking Y automatically means you must be against Z and that you always have to stick to the same ideas, the same themes, the same identity.

Whatever happened to the idea that we all contain multitudes? Well hopefully ourselves and other fellow travellers can start to bring this idea back. Ana Bosch most certainly gets it, and a lot else besides, as this fun and covertly wise essay demonstrates.

Enjoy.

TJB.

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“We can be deep, smart AND vain, if this is what we want.”

CL, 43 years old, deep, smart AND beautiful.

I recently had a conversation with my friend CL who mentioned the very common and unhealthy need to link a choice to an identity. She pointed that many women have decided not to dye their hair, and when they do so, often judge the women who continue to dye branding them as “a slave to the system” as if truly liberated women had to stop colouring their hair. CL, a very smart and liberated woman who dyes her hair, has a disarming way of pointing out the shortcomings of humans and dissecting them on her way to work. I myself stopped dyeing my hair when I was 40, not because of some feminist identity, but because I just could not be bothered anymore. It was a beauty hack that just was not worth the time or the money for me. When CL told me this, I got the urge to buy some tint. I know these urges; they always come up whenever someone says, “If you are A, you should do B.” I had the urge to wear high heels even when sleeping after reading this post by the magnificent La mala de la película, and the desire to wear pearls with a t-shirt, jeans and my Converse when someone told me pearls were for snobs. Whether I did or not is beyond the scope of this post since what I came here to talk about is our apparent contradictions and feminism. Let it be known that I am shallow and deep every single day of my life, most of the time simultaneously.

The author upon hearing that women cannot be vain and profound.

It would seem that we struggle to define what feminism is, so let’s begin by defining what it is not. Feminism is not a political party, it is not a photo op, and it most certainly is not a fashion statement. Having made that clear, let me tell you a story.

There are two religions I follow¹, catholicism and crystal retinal², the first one faithfully, the second one devoutly. I will confess that, as much as I believe that Christ is God and that the Virgin Mary is a key figure in the history of our redemption, I don’t go much to church (or very little). Retinal, on the other hand, I don’t really believe works, but I apply it with the same constancy the sun shows rising in the east and setting in the west. I have had issues with my habits before, questioning their validity, but with this one, never. Call me a fool, but there is a thing about applying some expensive cream on my face that makes me feel pretty, even as I see wrinkles taking over and my face starting to show the signs of 45 years of gravity. I follow my routine that over the years has changed content but never format. Nowadays, in the mornings, it’s vitamin C and sunscreen; at night, it’s retinal and some form or other of hyaluronic acid. Twenty-five years ago, I slapped on my face the same Nivea lotion I used for my body because I am vain and I was poor.

As I watch menopause creep up on me and observe my freshness and shine and, let’s call it by its name, beauty fade, I have also noticed that other rituals have started almost unnoticed until they have become second nature. When did mascara become my shadow? Why am I applying eyeliner to sit at home and study? And I cannot help but wonder at the satisfaction I feel when washing my hands in the bathroom and observing in the mirror that I made the effort. The thrill when I catch a glimpse of myself in the security camera of the supermarket and find that “Yoncé filling out this skirt. I look damn good, I ain’t lost it”³

The author in December 2024 and the author in December 2055.

We have all heard these things: wise women don’t wear heels, women who do not dye their hair are more authentic, women wear makeup to cater to the male gaze, and a long list of et ceteras that say more about the longing of the people pronouncing the words than about the lack of insight of the women performing the deeds. I have noticed this phenomenon at play under the disguise of feminism and thus be transformed into an unquestionable truth. Some people have transformed a movement that was originally defined as the belief in social, economic, and political equality of the sexes⁴, nothing more, nothing less, into this virtue-signalling cult where you are supposed to tick certain boxes to fit in or be called out.

My dears, I want to earn as much as my male peers, have my vote count equally and be given credit where credit is due. However, I did not sign up for a sect, and I might or might not say smart things while wearing high heels, but most certainly the arguments I pose are not automatically more valid because I shout them while wearing flats, with a washed face and grey tresses, throwing the word patriarchy in the mix.

The many changes in dress style I have gone through have not been documented on Instagram so that I could shed apparent identities, and maybe only my mother and best friend would notice. But the stakes are much higher nowadays, and we still seem to hold women to different standards (no surprises there, I guess.) You see it with the scrutiny women face, even in how we dress and what they say it says about us. Apparently, all we say, do, wear, and eat is sending out some type of message to the masses. Everything is read as if it were some kind of life mission statement. All the time, no one has stopped to ponder why this obsession. Dude, it’s just hair, those are just shoes, and it’s Monday morning, so give me a break.

Given that our wardrobe, makeup, shoes, and lifestyle choices will likely define who we are to the world, I wonder if this is not the true plight of the modern woman— what should my choices be to have people make the least assumptions about me? She looks so motherly with those highrise jeans and the white trainers; she is probably a stay-at-home mum, so unintellectual, but also so kind. That miniskirt is quite the statement, at her age? What a cougar. She looks so ambitious in that black suit— surely there is not one ounce of tenderness in her body, she must also be so intelligent. I own (and wear) highrise jeans, short skirts and black suit pants… should I be having a schizophrenia checkup? For the record, one can be a stay-at-home mum and a feminist, a cougar and a feminist, ambitious and feminist, and, shockingly enough, one can be an asshole and a feminist. Luck would have it that women are complex and multifaceted beings. Also, let it be known that all of these assumptions about who we are given our particular choices are just one thing, and one thing only: gossip.

I fear for my daughter, whose future is in a society intrinsically tied to the internet and social media. On the internet, you choose once, and you suddenly belong to one category of humanity and only one. The masses cannot possibly fathom that you can change your mind or, worse, entertain two ideas in your head at the same time. The collective mind would implode were you to say you are a poet and a mathematician, or even worse, a feminist who wears pumps and likes men to open the door for her.

I guess this is human nature; it has nothing to do with patriarchy; it has to do with our inherent urge to communicate and the tragedy that most of us do not have really much to say, so we talk about what others said or did or did not say or did not do, and we fit it all neatly in boxes trying to make sense of the world. An example we can all relate to: Eve does this thing, and Mary just has to tell Jane what Eve did because “what a hypocrite!” Now amplify it through your social media of choice. This could be a drama for Eve unless Eve is a true master of her fate and does not give a fuck. Misfortune also comes for Mary, who now has to keep up appearances to be forever perceived as the beacon of righteousness, a role she chained herself to. I read in a paper for an assignment in my Public Health course that the perpetrators of online bullying present just as many symptoms of depression and life dissatisfaction as the victims⁵, maybe this is why. But what about Jane? How is the consumption of all this gossip and framing of people’s characters from trivial deeds shaping her brain? How is all this affecting us, the consumers?⁶

“Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people” someone said. I would not put it past great and average minds also discussing people; there is, after all, something delicious about gossip, but I would say it is more about balance, proportion and place (or company). If you only talk about people, great minds will find you extremely dull. If you are only criticising people, you are now boring and caustic, and if you get upset because a woman uses nail lacquer, you might want to seek professional help. I guess what I am saying is that we could keep gossip to the intimate sphere of our loved ones, take it lightly, laugh, and forget.

Here is a thought I am floating out there: Since talking about women’s appearance seems inevitable, it could be catalogued as one would catalogue a man’s fashion choices— with adjectives such as elegant, pretty, comfortable, sporty, unfortunate or ugly— and not with the little film we've made up in our heads about who we think that woman is. Wild, huh? So much so that I just know it will never catch on.

“People can’t let one another alone, as I believe Johnny. If they did, the world would be pleasanter to live in.”

From The Mystery at Number Seven by Mrs Henry Woods

Not so long ago, I wrote a post on the pursuit of beauty and when to stop, my main argument being that we had been sold that plastic surgery is a choice and a form of self-care while, in reality, it is just clever marketing to make us want to fit in a beauty canon that is unattainable. And yet, and yet here I am, finding clothes that best fit my changing figure and applying eyeliner like it is a religion. Human nature is like this: a struggle for balance that each of us finds in our own time, at our own pace and is never as boring as black or white, more like different shades of grey. Call it hypocrisy or call it cognitive dissonance, but I will stand by what I wrote last year and keep on applying mascara without skipping a heartbeat. I will read Tolstoy and Hello! I will be intelligent and do stupidities. I will be deep and vain, because I am nuanced, interesting, and also a feminist.

Seeking beauty is deeply ingrained in our nature. You see it in flowers making themselves attractive with colours and scents, in a lion’s mane and in the peacock’s plumage. Darn, you see it in men from the XVII century!⁷ So let us agree that it’s natural to pursue beauty, human to let two opposing thoughts inhabit our head with no apparent friction, liberating to do the fuck we want, and feminist to let us just be.

Yours in profound understanding,

Dr. Ana

Expert in unsolicited advice

Ooh! Your wig looks way more fetching than mine!

And now a song by Beyoncé, one she got a lot of heat from “feminists” when all they needed to do was listen and enjoy.

The pursuit of youth and beauty, and when to stop.

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1. This is not entirely accurate since I am a firm believer in universal health care coverage and public education. Education of women is among the most powerful contributors to overall development (scientifically proven), and at this point in time, affirmative action is the only way to ensure representativity that allows for policy development that positively impacts everyone, not just men, so yes, all of that is my religion. Oh! And I pay my taxes religiously because I also believe in social security, but these aspects of my faith did not quite fit with the poetry of the paragraph.

2. “Crystal Retinal contains retinAL, a next-generation vitamin A which acts 11x faster than standard retinOL.” I copied this information from the webpage of the brand I use. I have no clue if it is true, but hey, I buy it.

3. Lyrics from Jealous, by Beyoncé.

4. Definition from Britannica.

5. Kelly Y, et al. Social Media Use and Adolescent Mental Health: Findings From the UK Millenium Cohort Study. eClinicalMedicine 2018.

6. I do not have an answer for this, but I am willing to bet the consequences are the same as living surrounded by gossip with amplified effects. The pervasiveness of certain thoughts about people who have nothing to do with you and the idea that someone is always watching and judging. Uff!

7. Although their definition of personal beauty is admittedly questionable.