Feminists Can Multitask!

Shaker Tereska13 sent along this article by Alexandra Suich objecting to NOW's stance against the proposed "Bo-Tax," which would add an excise tax to plastic surgeries. Suich's position is that NOW shouldn't be arguing on the side of plastic surgery, because it undermines the fundamental feminist idea that women shouldn't be compelled to conform to an unrealistic beauty standard.

Tereska13 quite rightly points out, however, that if "reconstructive surgery, breast reduction or other health related 'cosmetic' surgeries would be taxed," there's a good reason for NOW to take the position it does.

I was also interested in Suich's contention that "NOW's president is not decrying the 'beauty myth' but is accepting a 'beauty reality'," because:

These harsh economic times, however, call for a different ideology. Or so says Terry O'Neill, NOW's new president. Middle-aged women are struggling to compete in the job market, and cosmetic surgery can help them appeal to employers. "They have to find work," she told the New York Times. "And they are going for Botox or going for eye work, because the fact is we live in a society that punishes women for getting older."

I'm not sure I agree that acknowledging this reality is the same thing as accepting it. NOW, it seems to me, is taking the quite reasonable position that as long as unrealistic expectations of women exist, we shouldn't be punishing the women who try to meet them.

That doesn't preclude simultaneously working to revolutionize cultural expectations of women.