rationalisms:

empowerment is such a useless concept tbh.

your personal feelings on make-up really don’t matter when you’re talking about structural oppression. feminism doesn’t give a shit whether you are ~empowered~ from wearing eyeliner or not.

what feminism cares about is the fact that girls are pressured and groomed to wear make-up from their childhood on, that employers are less likely to hire you or pay you well if you don’t wear make-up, that the beauty industry is largely controlled by men and focused on making women feel insecure about their natural body so they can advance capitalism, that the beauty industry spends billions of dollars each year to contribute to the idea all girls are raised into that it’s only their looks that matter and give them worth.

i don’t think that wearing make-up or lingerie invalidates someone’s feminism, no. i do think that, regardless of your personal feelings on the matter, you have to be able to criticize make-up and femininity in general on a structural level though. you have to recognize that femininity is compulsory and imposed on women from the patriarchy. you have to recognize that women who don’t or can’t perform femininity the way it is dictated, especially disabled, lbpq+ and trans women and women of colour, are punished for it. and if you can’t do that because you’d rather cling to useless liberal concepts like empowerment then yes, that does invalidate your feminism.