the reason men want women to look so unnatural and bizzare, the reason they want them in layers and layers of makeup, insane amounts of surgery, completely covered and faceless and quiet, is that the less human you can make her, the more you can remove her from her natural state, the less guilt you feel for being a monster. If she is not human, what humanity do you need to treat her with?
i thought of this while watching the breadwinner, and watching the scene where Parvana’s mother is beaten in the street in her burqa— and even her eyes are covered by a mesh. and all i could think about was the experiments where people (largely men) would press a button to shock someone in a room over that they couldn’t see but they could hear. i know in that experiment part of it is that it was an authority telling them to do it, but i do have to think about how the scientists who conducted the experiments specifically made it so they couldn’t see the person they would believe they were harming. i really think that also plays a part in the dehumanization to a degree. when you remove the ability to see the pain you’re inflicting, or can obscure it, make it pretty or easy to cover it up, it becomes even easier for them (men) to inflict it. i think this can be as direct as these two examples or as subtle as the makeup or extreme as plastic surgery. anything to remove you from your basic state, to make you something separate from just how you would be. idk. maybe i’m overthinking it but it is something.
This is the complete process of othering.
When I was younger, I really thought other women enjoyed the things I found uncomfortable and painful. The makeup, the hairstyles, the clothes, the forced smiles and laughter, the heels, the domestic and emotional labor. I wonder how many men go through an unconscious thought process like this: women freely choose to put themselves through this and that and seem to enjoy it, so they must be built differently than us, they must be built for pain.Â
