Guest Contributor

The Second Skin: Lipstick, Lies and Lead part 2 by Sabahat Fida

part 1 appeared yesterday

It is mind-boggling to consider how standards for women’s bodies have been normalized over time. Centuries ago, practices like binding women’s feet in ancient China or forcing the use of corsets to narrow the waist which are now universally condemned as cruel and uncivilized. Throughout history, women have been subjected to extreme and often harmful beauty standards. Foot binding created tiny “lotus feet,” causing lifelong pain and disability, while in Europe, tightly laced corsets compressed ribs and displaced organs to produce an exaggerated hourglass figure. In parts of Southeast Asia, neck rings elongated the neck but weakened muscles over time, and in Africa, South America, and Asia, lip and ear stretching permanently altered tissue as a marker of beauty or status. Pale skin was prized in ancient Egypt, Asia, and Europe, often achieved through toxic powders containing lead or arsenic, while teeth were filed, blackened, or inlaid to meet local ideals. Women were also expected to meticulously shape or remove hair and conform to strict weight norms, whether forced thinness or fattening, depending on the era. Across centuries, these practices reveal a clear pattern: women’s bodies were controlled, altered, and harmed in the name of beauty , a coercion that, in many ways, continues today through cosmetic interventions and socially enforced aesthetic standards.

The Second Skin: Lipstick, Lies and Lead part 1 by Sabahat Fida

A woman’s body has become a site of commodification to such extreme that even her most basic necessities are not spared. Products meant for hygiene or comfort ; razors, deodorants, tampons, shampoos are packaged, scented, and coloured in ways that signal femininity, pushing them into a hyper-aesthetic zone of the departmental store. This creates a glaring economic contradiction: men’s products, often identical in function, are sold cheaper, while women pay a premium simply for their gender. But the exploitation is not merely financial. By demanding that her essentials adhere to socially approved standards of beauty, the market sends an unambiguous message: a woman’s needs, her very body, are only legitimate when they are commodified, beautified, and consumed in accordance with society’s expectations. The Pink Tax is thus not just a matter of inflated prices, it is a subtle enforcement of control, conditioning women to invest continuously in an ideal that is neither natural nor negotiable.

But this exploitation extends far beyond commercialized markets and seeps into the routines of everyday life. A tailor may charge different rates for the same shirt depending on the gender it is intended for, while a simple haircut at a salon can cost women far more than men, despite the identical service. Men’s consumption remains largely practical, functional, and unembellished, whereas women are expected to pay for aesthetic compliance at every turn. This raises the question: is the female market driven merely by trends or gullibility, or is it a reflection of deeper societal pressures — an unspoken demand that a woman’s body and appearance must conform to rigid standards of femininity in order to be socially acceptable? Is the answer in the very language and design of advertising Taglines like “You’re worth it” or “Strong is beautiful” which carry a psychological imperative, subtly instructing women to compare, conform, and continually invest in their appearance as a measure of worth ? These subliminal marketing strategies are deeply rooted in social comparison theory, objectification and fear appeal/protection motivation theories.

Keyvermestn by Janet Madden

in memory of Esther Shumiatcher-Hirschbein

1.
On a sunny Elul afternoon
I kneel at your grave
a sprig of rue in my pocket.
I recite a tkhine for visiting the graveyard
and imagine that you know this ritual–
stretching string to calculate
the space your body inhabits.
The unspooling wick rests gentle
on rough-cut grass, touching
the edges of mortality,
its twists separating and connecting worlds:
the dead and the living
the past and the now
mine and yours,
a woman I never met,
a writer dead these 40 years.

From the Archives: Censored Angel: Anthony Comstock’s Nemesis. A Novel by Joan Koster

This was originally posted on October 10, 2024.

Moderator’s Note: With the Trump administration getting closer and closer to re-establishing the Comstock Laws in their efforts to stop all abortions in the United States, we felt it important to repost this story. It is about Ida Craddock, her life and her efforts to stand against Anthony Comstock. Joan Koster wrote a powerful book about her. This post today is also a prelude to tomorrow’s post which will discuss a new movie Sex Radical that will be premiering this month about Ida Craddock’s life.

“I would lay down my life for the cause of sex reform, but I don’t want to be swept away. A useless sacrifice.” Ida C. Craddock, Letter to Edward Bond Foote, June 6, 1898

In 1882, Ida C. Craddock applied to the all-male undergraduate school of University of Pennsylvania. With the highest results on the entrance tests, the faculty voted to admit her. But her admission was rejected by the Board of Trustees, who said the university was not suitably prepared for a female. (U of P only became co-ed in 1974)

With her aspirations blocked, Ida left home determined to leave her mark on women’s lives by studying and writing about Female Sex Worship in early cultures. At the time, little information was available to women about sexual relations. To do her research, Ida resorted to having male friends take books forbidden to females, such as the Karma Sutra, out of the library for her.

An unmarried woman, she turned to spirituality and the practice of yoga, a newly introduced practice to the American public at the time, as a way to learn about sex. In her journals, she describes her interaction with angels from the borderlands, and in particular, her sexual experiences with Soph, her angel husband through what was likely tantric sex.

Three Poems by Harriet Ann Ellenberger

I Resolve To Speak

There’s a fascist in the White House —
a malevolent clown and front man
for a cabal of the hard right.
Their takeover of the US government
proceeds rapidly, a stunning succession
of defeats for democracy.

The nightmares of fascism
are taking shape in waking reality.
Now is the time, I tell myself,
to speak up, speak out,
name the perpetrators,
name their games.

The bully in the White House
has been called a rapist,
and fascism is patriarchy on steroids,
waging unremitting war on nature,
people of color, and women.

A Cave Story by Arianne MacBean

A few years ago, I took a pilgrimage to Crete with the hope of meeting the Great Goddess. I was yearning from something undeniable, proof that would allow me to be a card-carrying believer. Although our group was led to powerful ancient sites where we enacted sincere rituals and dances, each time I failed to feel greeted by Her universal power.

Except once. And I almost missed it.

The great cavern, Skotino (Photo by Helen Marie Traglia)

One day, a small but determined group of women took it upon us to co-lead a ritual at Skotino cave, an ancient site used for sacred purposes from the Bronze Age through the Roman era. The collaborative approach to facilitating a ritual was new to us, so we all felt especially ignited and giddy. Before we descended into the depths of the cave, I sang, (something I NEVER do). I had been provided lyrics, but I made up my own melody, which my fellow initiates sang back to me, as a call and response.

Sea Glass by Elanur Williams

Image Credit: Seascape, 1879, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (available on public domain).

I am drawn to the sea not for its grandeur, but for what it returns: small, broken things that once had sharpness. As a child, I remember walking along the shore searching for glimmers, glass fragments dulled into misty greens, smoky ambers, pale blues. I wanted to gather the pieces of what had once been whole and what had once been contained. I collected the way a child collects secrets, each piece a contradiction. Maybe I thought I could make something from these fragments; after all, I was the kind of child who looked for meanings and signs in everything. It is in part what drew me to literature and writing.

There is a piece of sea glass I remember more than the others: an opalescent shard, a piece of moon. That piece became a metaphor for the self I hadn’t yet become. Like those fragments, I too had sharp edges once. Pain teaches that: the need to defend, to protect oneself from further breakage, carves us into angular shapes. I learned early how to brace for fracture, and there was a comfort I found in control, a fierce desire for wholeness that was often mistaken for strength. But there is a brittleness to that kind of armor, and eventually, it begins to break. It took years of undoing for my edges to soften.

If I am The Mother* by Rebecca Rogerson

If I am The Mother

then I am holy. Made of moonbeams and shadows, darkness and light, questioned and answered, lost and retrieved;

discovered remains

If I am The Mother

then I am a reflection, a depiction, an inflexion of a cosmos in bliss and chaos, birth and destitution; a primordial sound unleashed to form planet, life, and

you and me

If I am The Mother

then I am fermented in humanity, and sour the illusions of precipices we’re told that

we cannot cross

Cross the trinity of three’s and return to

the magic of all

The Beat of Your Own Drum by Sophie Messager – Book Review by Judith Maeryam Wouk

Pick up a drum and start your unique journey with this sacred tool; there is no one right path. The drum can help women hear their inner voice, access their own wisdom, reclaim their power, and heal. The drum in its simplicity offers a direct link to our deepest selves.

That is the message of this profoundly personal saga, told through the stories of Sophie Messager and others. She recounts her own transition from scientist to birth doula to journey guide for women in life transition, through reiki and a diagnosis of ADHD, growing into her identity shift from outer- to inner-centered wisdom. Her personal practice now includes weekly drumming at dawn in a woodland with two friends and monthly drum circles.

Offerings to the Labyrinth on Papoura Hill, excerpt from the novel by Sylvia V. Linsteadt

Sylvia’s discussion of Papoura Hill was posted yesterday; read it here.

I have so many words I want to pour out of my vessel of milk and honey upon Papoura Hill, on the big scar in Crete’s earth where the airport is being carved, on all the places slated for the construction of electricity pylons, and into so many other scars left by millennia of conquest and occupation, but for today what follows is just one song to her. These words are not full of fighting rage or defiance, but of praise, and softness, and memory. Of motherlines that cannot die, and fatherlines almost lost, but not quite. These words come from the beginning of a novel that I began writing during my first season living in Crete almost seven years ago now, a novel that has metamorphosed with me across these many years, shedding skins and growing new ones— both me, and the novel. The book is still in process, close to being born, but here is one of her many skins, laid at the center of the labyrinth on Papoura Hill with my love.

Moonrise Over Old Crete
an excerpt

The earth tilted toward dusk.
Along the shores of Crete, the Aegean turned for a moment to gold.

Women flocked down to the sea like dark birds to pour jugs of oil and wine into the water. Amphitrite of the cockle crown, they murmured, Aphrodite mother of vessels, mother of the foam and deep, bring our men home safe. The sun lowered under the edge of the world, leaving the last light along the coast. Threads of it pooled in sea-caves and in the inlets where fishermen kept their summer boats. The old storytellers said that in lost times, when the queen was called the Ariadne and her king the Bull, the women of Crete could gather up the last light from the sea onto their distaffs and take it home to spin golden thread for their skirt hems and finest vests.