Originally published at: 以“美”之名——论“服美役”的本质及资产阶级对女性的压迫 – 曙光
In the Name of “Beauty” — On the Nature of “Serving Beauty” and the Bourgeoisie’s Oppression of Women
Editorial Board of the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Proletariat
October 24th, Yu Han, 22, was rushed to the hospital after experiencing cardiac arrest, with her blood oxygen saturation dropping to 68%—a severe hypoxia state, accompanied by acidosis and severe hypokalemia. The cause of her life-threatening condition was the weight-loss pills she took. Four and a half years ago, Yu Han weighed 170 jin. After years of using emetics, laxatives, and diuretics simultaneously, her current weight is only 80 jin, and her bodily functions have been severely damaged.
Once the incident was exposed, many bourgeois doctors and media donned masks of “consideration” and “care” for women, shamelessly “science popularizing” the various dangers of weight-loss drugs, as if Yu Han’s tragedy was merely caused by her ignorance. However, in Chinese society, many women, like Yu Han, pursue “beauty” with fanatic zeal, spending vast amounts of time, money, and even risking their health to “become beautiful.” They are not entirely unaware of the potential harm caused by various weight-loss methods, but still “resolutely” choose this path, as reflected in a popular saying among them—“Either be thin or die.” Among less affluent petite bourgeois women, there are those who use vomiting to lose weight, called the “rabbit group.” They insert a 50-centimeter plastic tube into their esophagus to induce vomiting. The cycle of binge eating and vomiting leads to various illnesses such as abdominal pain, esophageal rupture, gastroesophageal reflux disease, and anorexia nervosa. The widespread use of vomiting for weight loss has even led to the emergence of vendors selling plastic tubes for this purpose. They package ordinary plastic tubes costing less than a few yuan as “tasteless” and “painless” “food-grade” “fairy tubes,” sold at high prices of dozens of yuan. As for the wealthier petty bourgeois and bourgeois women, they often pursue so-called “beauty” through cosmetic surgery—to keep their skin “smooth” by injecting hyaluronic acid into the face, to make their noses “high and straight” through rhinoplasty, or to “modify” their facial contours by shaving the jawbone… China’s developed and expanding medical beauty industry is built on this foundation. From 2018 to 2022, the Chinese heavy medical beauty industry market size expanded from 71.7 billion yuan to 106.1 billion yuan, nearly 50% growth in just four years.
This pathological pursuit of “beauty” among bourgeois women is shocking enough to provoke opposition from some bourgeois and petty bourgeois “feminists.” They realize that in today’s society, makeup and dressing up have become almost “mandatory” for women: in society, women who do not wear makeup are considered “disrespectful” and “lazy”; in workplaces, many companies require women to wear makeup to “observe workplace etiquette” and “maintain a professional image,” especially in service industries like flight attendants, who are required to wear “tight skirts” and high heels; in artistic works, bourgeois female stars are often dressed up to look glamorous and alluring… Regarding this phenomenon, bourgeois and petty bourgeois “feminists” have coined the term “serving beauty.” They say that the appearance of “serving beauty” is because the vast majority of women in society obey the so-called “male gaze” and “mainstream aesthetic.” However, they neither explain why women must obey the “male gaze,” nor where this pathological “mainstream aesthetic” of women comes from.
In fact, over a hundred years ago, the pioneer of the Chinese women’s liberation movement, Xiang Jingyu, already explained the reason why women in a society based on private ownership pursue “beauty” at all costs: “Since the pastoral era, after women’s economic productive factors were seized by men during the agricultural era, women’s economic and social status was completely exploited and confined to the domestic division of labor. Marriage and prostitution became the only means of women’s survival, and appearance often determined a woman’s fate for her entire life. Even poor rural old women fear their daughters becoming unwanted and cheap, so they spend some money to decorate their daughters. Long-term life lessons have gradually made women’s desire for decoration a common psychological trait.” Here, Xiang Jingyu pointed out that the “love of decoration” among women only appeared after human history entered a patriarchal society. In primitive matriarchal communal societies, because women undertook primitive agriculture that could provide stable food and domestic labor serving the entire clan, they enjoyed high social status and did not need to marry or prostitute to survive, nor did they need decoration or dressing up. However, with the development of productive forces and the increasing complexity of production activities, men who originally engaged in hunting gradually participated in agriculture and became the dominant force in this field. Meanwhile, based on the development of productive forces, surplus products and private ownership of surplus products appeared—production activities that once required the entire clan’s labor could now be performed by individuals, and men, as the main labor force in agriculture, naturally became owners of food and tools (later also slave owners). With collective labor replaced by individual household labor, the basic economic unit shifted from clan communes to families. As a result, women’s domestic labor lost its social nature, and they could no longer earn wages through this work. To survive, they could only rely on marriage and prostitution, dependent on the main owners of wealth—men. Oppression, enslavement, and the phenomenon of women “loving decoration” thus emerged. Today in Chinese capitalist society, women’s situation is no different—they are often unable to maintain continuous labor due to physiological activities like menstruation and childbirth. They face discrimination and exclusion in the labor market, deprived of independent means of livelihood and economic status, mostly surviving as household slaves and reproductive tools for men. Besides economic hardship, women are also subjected to various bourgeois reactionary ideological indoctrination. To enslave women, the bourgeois propagates through all channels the idea that women must depend on men—Confucian “Three Obediences and Four Virtues” are the core of family ethics dramas, confining women within narrow family boundaries, with daily activities limited to domestic affairs and interactions only within the husband’s and parents’ families. Obedience to husband, filial piety to elders, and patience in adversity are their survival principles; in love idol dramas, women are often portrayed as fair-skinned, beautiful, “little birds dependent on people,” and “love above all,” as if women’s appearance and thoughts are solely for being “flower vases” and men’s sexual tools… Under this barrage of slave mentality, some women who have become or are becoming family slaves even accept their slave status and become defenders of the existing oppressive system; some women who have not yet become family slaves increasingly hope to rely on men for a “stable” future, becoming more eager to enhance their “value” as family slaves and reproductive tools, in order to find a suitable buyer or master. Thus, the phenomenon of contemporary women “serving beauty,” catering to the “male gaze,” and resorting to various extreme methods to pursue the “mainstream aesthetic” of “white, juvenile, slim” has emerged.
Similarly, regarding the source and class essence of the “mainstream aesthetic” that these bourgeois and petty bourgeois “feminists” talk about, Marxism has long provided a scientific explanation. “In class society, everyone lives within a certain class position, and all ideas bear the mark of class.” Moreover, “the ruling class’s ideology is dominant in every era”. Since human society entered a class society, the mainstream aesthetic standards for women have been the aesthetic standards of the exploiting class. All exploiting classes share common traits—pleasure in ease and idleness, detachment from labor, oppressing and exploiting workers’ lives, and deriving pleasure from enjoying others’ suffering and destroying others’ dignity. These traits are reflected in their aesthetic standards, especially in their aesthetic standards for women: European medieval noblewomen applied glaring white lead powder on their faces; since the Song Dynasty, Chinese feudal landlords forced women to bind their feet; during the Republic of China, landlords and comprador bourgeoisie painstakingly “improved” increasingly tight and erotic cheongsams; contemporary Western bourgeoisie pursue so-called “healthy,” but actually only suitable for sunbathing or “tanning booths,” “wheat-colored” or “copper-colored” skin… These complex aesthetic standards dazzle the eyes, but their core is to separate “beauty” from “the laboring woman with fragrant mud and proud calluses,” and instead associate it with features detached from labor and easy to control—delicate figures that cannot bear heavy loads, tender skin that has not been tempered by labor or exposure to the elements, exaggerated features that defy normal human proportions… This is the essence of the so-called “universal” and “transcendental” “beauty” that the contemporary Chinese bourgeoisie vigorously promotes and decorates.
The bourgeois and petty bourgeois “feminists” are not only theoretically incompetent but also reactionary in practice. They tend to confine their activities to cultural fields, circling around issues like makeup and dressing, occasionally mentioning economic issues like gender discrimination in employment, but especially avoiding political discussions. Their excessive concern about whether women should wear makeup and dress up is precisely because they are the bourgeoisie with the financial means and leisure to do so. Most working women, who are deeply exploited and oppressed and have developed a frugal worldview through labor practice, generally do not care too much about this issue. Moreover, in terms of makeup and dressing, the worldview and methodology of bourgeois and petty bourgeois “feminists” are also idealist: they believe that “serving beauty” results from most women’s ignorance and blind obedience to the “mainstream aesthetic.” To eliminate “serving beauty,” they think women must be “awakened” through their “feminist” theories, and then each “break free” from “beauty service,” “male gaze,” and “appearance discipline.” Through Marxist and historical materialist analysis, we know that this “idea-to-idea” theory—believing that social consciousness determines social existence and that the way to change a social phenomenon is through “propaganda” and “education” to change people’s ideas—cannot eliminate the phenomenon of “serving beauty” nor achieve the liberation of the vast majority of women. Even the bourgeois and petty bourgeois “feminists” themselves realize that makeup and dressing are almost social coercion on women and compare this phenomenon to the forced service of serfs in feudal society. Let us also use their analogy—can we simply eliminate labor service by propaganda telling farmers “don’t serve the landlords”? In other words, in a situation where the landlord class monopolizes land and means of production and enforces extralegal coercion on farmers, can farmers refuse to serve the landlords? Thousands of years of history have proven that only through social revolution against feudal production relations can farmers be liberated from feudal shackles and truly realize the social ideal of “no more corvée, no more grain tax.”
The same logic can be used to respond to our “naive” “feminists”—that is: without abolishing the production relations and social system that force women to sell themselves to men for survival, can women avoid makeup and dressing up? Can women escape the fate of becoming household slaves and tools for sex and reproduction? The answer is obviously negative. Conversely, revolutionary mentor Engels, over a hundred years ago, in his book “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,” explained the truth that only by abolishing private ownership can women achieve complete liberation, and only a vigorous socialist revolution can accomplish this. In socialist society, women will no longer be confined within narrow families but will participate broadly in all social labor, becoming a powerful revolutionary force in various production fields; at the same time, even domestic labor itself will gradually become socialized—large numbers of nurseries, kindergartens, and cafeterias will emerge. As a result, women will no longer depend economically on their husbands, and men’s dominance will naturally lose its basis. Moreover, socialist society implements the principle “those who do not work shall not eat,” opposing parasitism, exploitation, and oppression, and naturally rejecting the old pathological aesthetic standards, instead promoting health, labor, confidence, and self-strengthening as beauty. The history of socialist Soviet Union and socialist China has produced numerous female labor models and female combat heroes, all evidence that social revolution has transformed women from family slaves into the “half of the sky.” Only socialist revolution can thoroughly sweep away the decayed and reactionary bourgeois aesthetic and patriarchal ideas, and eradicate the phenomenon of “serving beauty” entirely. The French utopian socialist Fourier once said in the 19th century, “In any society, the degree of women’s liberation is the natural measure of universal liberation.” Today, we revolutionary Marxists also say—only social liberation can realize women’s liberation!
“Heavy medical beauty” refers to cosmetic surgery that changes the shape of any part of the body through surgical procedures. ↑
“Male gaze” is a bourgeois “feminist” theory that emerged in the 1970s, based on the notorious Freud’s “psychoanalysis.” The so-called “male gaze” is an idealist explanation of the dependent and oppressed status of women in private ownership and patriarchal society, and their reflection in people’s consciousness. The specific content of this theory is not elaborated here. ↑
Xiang Jingyu: “Why Women Love Decoration,” Women’s Weekly No. 10, October 24, 1923. ↑
Mao Zedong: “On Practice,” Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Volume 1, People’s Publishing House, 1967. ↑
Marx and Engels: “The German Ideology,” Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Volume 1, People’s Publishing House, 1972. ↑