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Comment by user_0001 | Hacker News Reader

Equally as important, perhaps they do not have it drilled into them that beauty is all they should aim for. Everything they see is that women should be (model level) beautiful. Should flaunt their women-ness.

Advertising, makeup, dolls, television, films play a bigger part than the so called sexism that exists in engineering cultures

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Even in male dominated fields this applies.

There are pink hammers, pink calculators, and plenty of other pink tools that would otherwise not be gendered. A black handled hammer isn't masculine, it's gender neutral, it's functional.

You can't simply be a woman, who is in the tech industry, you have to be a "woman in tech"

The fact that makeup exists speaks a lot about our culture and how it views women.

Are you saying makeup doesn't exist in Eastern Europe?

Well, it exists everywhere, but so does sexism.

So... it doesn't have anything to do with our culture at all, then?

Human culture, I guess if you step back far enough. I say culture because I don't think makeup is tied to genetics.

What evidence do you have that makeup is actually linked to sexism at all?

That women wear it daily while it doesn't even cross most guy's minds. Also that women wear it, and are expected to wear it, to look better while, again, the concept rarely crosses most men's minds.

If it doesn't cross guys' minds but it does cross their minds, isn't it a reasonable explanation that they personally notice the effects and like how it looks on them?

Culture does not have a view, as abstract concepts cannot themselves conceptualize

Since it exists in every culture that has ever been known to man, it's not actually possible to draw conclusions in the normal way, by comparing a culture with makeup to one without. You can make claims about what it would mean for a culture not to use makeup, but if you do you should realize that those claims are, in their entirety, just some random junk you made up.

I was inferring global human culture, we didn't really develop in vacuums. And pardon my wording, I meant species, but I felt that'd imply that women were biologically disposed to wear makeup, which obviously I don't believe is true(maybe social factors caused by biology, but none still relevant in the 21st century).

More importantly, you're right though, I have zero evidence backing this up, or going against it. I just don't feel like it's very right.

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