True...WOMENS ONLY COMMUNITY

I worked in a gift shop, one thing we sold was lotions/creams and had testers on the counter. Then one day the boss brought in some magnifying mirrors, 3x on one side and 10x on the other. We set up one on the counter. Every woman looked into that 10x mirror and their face fell. Then they'd sigh and grab a tester and pat cream into their face. We sold a lot of cream and lotion, and all the mirrors! But I hated it. I was glad when they were gone, because I didn't like having a bunch of depressed customers. And I certainly didn't want to keep catching glimpses of my own face in there! Every tiny crevice looked enormous, like I was 100 years old.
- I spent so much time in front of mirrors like that as a teenager, obsessing about every black-head and pimple, etc.
- Oh lord that says it all!

- Thanks didn't realise it was on all, I've added to the post that it's a women only community
  
  (some dude comments:) I've seen your posts in my feed a couple of times already, and I'm positively surprised there're not many troublemakers who get stirred wrong by someone asking for a safe space. The big reminder that it's a comm for women is, sadly, a goog idea for now on. Lemmy doesn't yet have a functionality to flag it like this, only to make a privated space with user vetting, that won't fly as high as an open community with posts in lemmy's Hot. Anyway, cheers, and please go on.
- I want to add, there's no reason not to indulge in reasonable self-care, and everyone should be able to, within their means. No one should be unable. The skin is the largest body organ and our first barrier defense against illness and infection.
  That said, we also need to take responsibility for our own ability to love ourselves, even if that means saying we love us until we get it. Because this isn't new, and we do often do it to ourselves, probably because of no small degree of conditioning. I watched a short (~40 minutes?) doco on Elizabeth I, she had a sweet tooth, a fear of dentists (who wouldn't, in those days?), and so rotten teeth. Because of the (not altogether true) hype of poets and paramours (which is a whole other ball of wax), women with perfectly (?!) good teeth began to blacken their teeth, to imitate Elizabeth.
  TL;dr Our wounding isn't always our fault; our healing is our responsibility.
  
  Here's how my healing has gone down.
  I don't shave. Period. We have hair for a reason and cutting it off with blades that can (and do) nick the skin, or pulling it painfully out by its roots, or dissolving it away with hazardous chemicals is not good for us at any level.
  I don't use makeup. (Well, OK, not entirely true. For very special events I might hazard some lipstick.) Most makeup clogs pores and makes the skin actively unhealthy. In response to this we're meant to use a whole bunch of chemicals of dubious provenance to clean it off our skin?
  I clean with just soap (yes, even my hair). Unperfumed soup. In my case I use Aleppo soap or a goat milk soap from Xinjiang. There are no perfumes, no harsh chemicals (like the laurel sulfates at the core of most shampoos, body washes, hand cleaners, etc.).
  I don't use commercial deodorants. I have a spray bottle (like the kind for misting leaves in a garden) 500ml in size into which I drop 1-2 teaspoons of alum powder and fill the rest with water. It lasts all day, typically, though on a really rough day I might have to apply it a second time. (I have a small sprayer at work for those rare occurrences.) It is a bit pricey, though. The last batch I bought cost about twenty-five bucks. After two years I've used up 20% or so of it…
  I wash with the hottest water I can stand to clean out pores. (No need for harsh chemicals if you melt the sebum that traps dirt away.) Then I rinse with the coldest water I can stand. That cold water rinse takes getting used to, but it's enervating and it somehow aids (I've had it explained to me but couldn't follow along) in moisturizing.
  On a very dry day I may use a neutral moisturizer (no perfumes) with a hint of petroleum jelly to help seal it in.
  The result of all this is:
  I feel better and look better.
  I save a whole lot of money.
  I save a whole lot of time.
  I stop stressing about what I look like to other people; let them judge away. It's a case of mind over matter: I don't mind, they don't matter.
- Thank you for your insightful comment, but this community is for women only.
- Hey driving_crooner (love the name) just fyi we're a women's only group so please don't comment again 😊

The more "ugly" and "fat" they can make you feel, the more money they can snatch from you!
And they very quickly change the beauty standard goal posts.
It's a never-ending carousel of horror! 🎠🔥
- Thanks for your comment, but this is a women-only community.

I imagine this is going to be difficult for you to run. The website is heavily weighted towards men and a very particular kind of man at that. I congratulate you on your endeavour and optimism and that is not sarcasm. A lot of women's sites are slowly eroded away until they disappear. Here's hoping we last out
- Thanks mate. We've been blessed with some amazing women posters and some lovely men have commented to show support. It can be difficult but so far we're coping

I'm pretty sure if everyone stopped buying purses, women would finally get pockets in their clothes.
- Hi mate, thanks for stopping by! This is a woman's only community so please don't post again 😊
- I’m just a weird, furry, pan guy (cis he/him).
  Hey appreciate the commentary but you aren't a woman and this is a women's space.
- well at least they get fake pockets
- I boycott clothes without pockets. It's improved my life 1000%
- It's the dream!
- The story behind pockets and women's clothing is actually kind of funny. (Not "pockets" in the old sense either, of a belted pouch.)
  Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back when, only the noble women could have dresses. Now at that time, nobility weren't the spoiled pampered things we have as a picture of them nowadays. Most had only very recently become nobles, and usually by force and violence. They were barely this side of pirates and brigands really. And they were super-practical.
  So even the gowns and dresses of what amounts to medieval new landers had pockets. They were just concealed for the looks, so a casual observer didn't see them.
  As the merchant class rose and started wanting to be treated like nobles, they started to "ape their betters" in dress and language and such. But, here's the thing, the clothing? That was copied from observation. And the noblewomens gowns didn't have visible pockets so the new mercantile class assumed they didn't have pockets at all and started making all women's clothing without pockets.
  And thus we have today's ludicrous world: a bunch of nouveau riche aping the look of the class they so wanted to become part of have given us a world where women don't have pockets.

Off of the top of my head:
Makeup,
(Some types of ) clothing,
the diet industry - not saying hating your body is the only reason for a diet, but I suspect it’s 50-80% of the industry anyway
some parts of workout industry
some types of self-help books
cosmetic surgery
- The diet industry is definitely invested in having women hate our bodies. An actual lifelong healthy diet does not require their products

I can believe this. Once I started appreciating myself, I didn’t need to buy so many potions, makeup, or any other weird thing that men think we need.

Insecurity is the driving force behind all lifestyle marketing, especially clothing and cosmetics.

I'd say it's equally true of most industries.

- thank you for your comment, but this is a community for women only
- thank you for your comment, but this community is for women only 😊

I'm worried your post body could make trans men (ftm) feel unwelcome here. Rule 1 is that anyone under the trans umbrella is welcome, so you should probably be careful about language that either excludes trans men, or implies they're not real men.
- Rule 1 says "any woman-identified person" is welcome here -- can you explain how this includes trans men? But I could see bigender people feeling unwelcome from "men ... please do not comment" and that'd be bad.
  Edit: nvm, just realized that rule 1 was changed.
  
  I know it can be hard to understand, but trans men sometimes remain members of lesbian and women communities even after transition and may even struggle with their identity this way. Reading Stone Butch Blues might provide some insight, as Leslie Feinberg was precisely one of those trans men who struggled with giving up their identity as a lesbian, and detransitioned and remained on that fuzzy line between man and lesbian.
  This space isn't here to exclude women like that, even if they are men. They have lived experience as women, they live as women, they might identify as women, and so on.
  Binary trans men who don't feel the need to continue identifying as women and who no longer have lived experience as women may see themselves as men and not participate based on that rule, but it's not because they are trans but because they are men who do not feel a need to identify and remain in a community of women.
  Bigender people and nonbinary people who identify as women are likewise free to post and comment here. The rule is meant to create a safe space for women, and we believe people who identify and live as women do not contradict this.
- Thanks I thought it was clear from the fact that we're women only. I've edited it now
  
  Ah. Well, I'm no longer welcome according to the rules as I'm agender, but before I go I should warn you that you could also make bigender people feel unwelcome. I have a friend who's a man and a woman at the same time.

Isn't this true of all insecurities?
- ~~Thank you for your comment, but this is a women-only community.~~
  
  So why are kicking me out? Do mean "women you like"?

- hey, I appreciate your comment, but this community is for women only

- Things toxic masculinity says.
  
  Did I miss an incel? I missed an incel, didn't I?
  
  A million percent