Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women

By: Mary-Alice Waters and Joseph Hansen and Evelyn Reed

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Synopsis: In the whole history of capitalism, have the owners ever cultivated the fetish of commodities more cold-bloodedly than American big business?—Joseph Hansen. • How do capitalism’s cosmetics and fashion “industries” play on the emotional, sexual, and economic insecurities of women and adolescents to generate profits? • Why are the ever-changing dominant standards of “beauty” always those of the ruling class? • How did women become “the second sex,” and how can this product of class-divided society be ended? • How has the entire structure of oppression been weakened by the accelerated integration of women into the workforce worldwide? In the early 1950s, a lively debate on these issues was sparked by an article in the US socialist newsweekly the Militant exposing the ruthless profit drive of the giant cosmetics monopolies. Today this exchange, Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women, is recognized as a classic of Marxism, providing an introduction to the origins of the oppression of women—and the road toward our emancipation.