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A friend once sent me side-by-side pics of all the makeup brushes and tools laid out to be used for her face at her engagement party by her makeup artist, and the table full of surgeon's tools she used professionally (she was a surgeon and thought it was funny).

This was in 2015 and meant as a joke, but the resemblance was stronger than she'd initially thought. Glad to know we weren't alone being a pair of crazies about it, not so good to think about how compulsory and rigid that 'third shift' feels. It's still legitimately insane to me that we got to the point where women were told they needed a Brazilian wax to be 'clean', when something is part of a standard to that extent then how much of a 'choice' is it really? Juno is right when she says women can't win either way - see: Bella Hadid.

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Oh wow! Yes that’s such an interesting parallel! So many early beauty tools look like torture devices - it’s hard not to draw the parallels!

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The Beauty Myth is such a good book! I've written part of my aesthetic philosophy dissertation on it :) I loved the interview and the pics, thanks for sharing.

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Oh fascinating! What was your dissertation on? And yes it’s such a good book! X

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It was on personal beauty, I took a Hegelian approach and analysed beauty by nature standards, society, and ideal/ised beauty. I recently digged it out from my files to prepare for a book club, we have been reading Frankenstein and I know aesthetics isn't the main topic but that's the beauty of a book club, everyone brings something different to the table

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