For many ladies, experimenting with make-up is a lifelong pastime. After all, who doesn’t love a brand new lip colour?
In 2019, New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made headlines for rocking pink lipstick to the State of the Union deal with. Last yr, Vogue shared a “Beauty Secrets” video enjoying off this red-lip consideration: “Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Guide to Her Signature Red Lip.” I watched. Finding that excellent pink lipstick takes some trial and error, and there are all the time new shades to discover.
But Ocasio-Cortez’s video contains extra than make-up recommendation. She’s a shrewd politician, and she is aware of how you can use supposedly nonpolitical platforms to succeed in younger folks. Along with make-up ideas, the extra than 3 million individuals who considered the video received a style of her politics.
Ten minutes into the video, Ocasio-Cortez opined about the so-called pink tax:
“One of the issues that’s fairly wild to me is that, to begin with, in case you are an individual that wants a tampon or in case you are an individual that wants a pad or a menstruation product of any sort, you’re typically topic to what’s often called the pink tax. And it’s not simply menstruation merchandise. It’s virtually any services or products that differentiates by gender.”
She’s resurrecting an argument that ladies unfairly pay extra for merchandise marketed to ladies than comparable merchandise meant for males or each sexes.
A research performed by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs discovered that ladies’s merchandise price a mean of seven% extra, together with an 11% distinction in the value of razors. But the report additionally famous, “Men’s and ladies’s merchandise are hardly ever similar, making precise comparisons tough.”
No one needs to pay extra for the similar product. But the merchandise marketed to males and ladies typically are packaged and operate in a different way — variations which will seem small or irrelevant to some however that different shoppers are prepared to pay for. Schick’s web site, for instance, features a description of the distinction in razors for males and ladies: “Generally talking, males’s razors are designed to shave areas round a face, and ladies’s razors are designed to shave physique areas, similar to underarms and legs. Men and ladies have completely different shaving wants so some razors are created with their major shaving utilization in thoughts.”
Of course, persons are free to disregard the pink packaging and choose whichever razor appeals to them most. It is sexist, in spite of everything, to imagine that ladies aren’t clever sufficient to check costs and merely purchase the cheaper one.
Even if merchandise operate the similar, many ladies are prepared to pay extra for one thing in a sure colour — dare I say pink. I do know I’m. (I used to be thrilled not too long ago to obtain a pink Hot Wheels automotive for taking part in with my son and would have paid extra for the colour.) There is nothing flawed or sexist about giving folks choices and permitting them to make buying selections that mirror their style. That’s the great thing about capitalism.
Ocasio-Cortez goes on to argue that the pink tax is about extra than the price of merchandise. It’s additionally about the strain to look a sure method:
“In my opinion, a pink tax is not nearly cash. It’s additionally about time. … There are research that present that ladies who put on make-up or usually put on like a good quantity of make-up, form of present as much as the workplace in glam, additionally make more cash. And so at that time, it stops being these calculations and selections cease being about selection and they begin being about patriarchy, the place if we glance engaging to males, then we might be compensated extra.”
To her credit score, research have discovered a magnificence bias in the office, and books have even been written about it. But ladies aren’t the solely people who find themselves affected by societal perceptions.
There are additionally research discovering that taller folks make more cash than shorter folks. This contains comparisons amongst males. Height doesn’t simply have an effect on earnings. It’s additionally a sizzling subject for presidential candidates. Take the “presidential peak index,” which says that “earlier observations have proven that taller candidates have gained 58 p.c of U.S. presidential elections and the fashionable vote in 67 p.c of the elections between 1789 and 2008.”
Yet as a society, we aren’t preventing the “peak tax.”
Of course, Ocasio-Cortez is stuffed with contradictions, uncertain whether or not to see magnificence merchandise as a instrument of the patriarchy or a path to self-actualization, saying that carrying make-up “is virtually like a mini-protest to like your self.”
For Ocasio-Cortez, all the things is political. One cause she reaches so many younger folks is that she doesn’t restrict herself to conventional political media. She pulls viewers in with a lip tutorial however then sells socialism. Women could be smart to reject what she’s promoting, however conservatives ought to study from Ocasio-Cortez’s advertising and marketing smarts.
Karin A. Lips (@klips) is the president of the Network of enlightened Women, a senior fellow with the Independent Women’s Forum, and the editor of She’s Conservative: Stories of Trials and Triumphs on America’s College Campuses.
