Friday 20 September 2013

Friday Feminism #selfie for #bareforbasics

I went "Bare for Basics" today - a campaign for raising awareness about the basic needs of women and children in Africa, needs like regular food and access to family planning resources.

Go to their website http://gobare.org.au for more information.

Going without makeup for a day and uploading a selfie is a sort of cool idea for a show of solidarity. It would be cool to think about taking this a step further, for myself anyway - I wonder, if we put all the money earned by the cosmetics industry into a third world country just how much change we could achieve.

I'd like to know a little more about the situation in Africa, as it is the country specifically nominated by this awareness campaign. I don't know anything, really. I'll make it one of my Friday posts, sometime soon.

For now I have a few thoughts on the makeup industry:

Funnily enough, I don't really wear makeup, besides the occasional mascara coat when I'm going out to flutter my eyelashes at people (to no avail). My mum never wore it as we were growing up, and honestly I am not quite sure what to do with it anyway. Having said this, I've never had much problem with my skin, so I don't know how it feels to have acne that you want to hide with foundation. It seems unfair to me that there's such a concept as 'bad skin' or 'good skin', and it also seems unfair that much more emphasis is put into a solution so skin doesn't look bad, rather than addressing the pain that can come with acne.

I consume other cosmetic products like shampoo, soap, toothpaste, moisturiser, deodorant, lip balm. These too are luxuries that much of the world doesn't have. The clean water required for western beauty practices alone is an unbelievable luxury.

I plan to look into this some more for future posts, but for now I do want to add a thought: there is a reason women wear makeup in the first place. There is a reason that this is a huge industry, and there is a reason that giving up makeup would be one of the last things to go if women had to sacrifice a luxury.

I will be writing more about beauty practices before long, as I'm writing an essay on the topic at the moment.

Stay tuned.

Bare for Basics, with trademark half-smile

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