From letter to Grace Carlson, quoted in Grace Carlson: Why Millions of Women Workers Don’t Have ‘That American Look’, The Militant, Vol. IX No. 23, 9 June 1945, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Your article on The Right to Be Beautiful, in which you discuss the use of cosmetics and beauty aids, awoke a few thoughts that I should like to share with your readers. I have lived for almost three-quarters of a century and in my youth we never used cosmetics. In fact, the use of them was considered indecent. And still we had beauty and romance. How do you explain the present situation? It seems to me that women’s entry into industry has a great deal to do with it.
While rich ladies use cosmetics to cover up their pale faces acquired during Society’s winter whirl of endless nights of drinking and dancing, women who work in factories and shops have pale and tired faces because of physical exhaustion due to overwork, bad air, hurried lunches and their whole life of rush and worry.
The working woman uses cosmetics, not only for her own satisfaction – to have a nice appearance or to attract possible romance – but she has to look well and attractive to keep her job. I think that if women would lead a healthy and normal life, their faces would look different. They would acquire the rosy cheeks that we had in our youth and the bright eyes and the red lips.
To me cosmetics are an expression of our unhealthy life under capitalism. It is not an important issue but it is just as well to understand that changes in women’s work affect even the most minute forms of their life. This doesn’t mean that I condemn cosmetics. I think that we shall have to use them for quite a while yet!
Last updated: 19 June 2021