The woman who checks her makeup half a dozen times a day to see if her foundation has caked or her mascara has run, who worries that the wind or the rain may spoil her hairdo, who looks frequently to see if her stockings have bagged at the ankle or who, feeling fat, monitors everything she eats, has become, just as surely as the inmate of the Panopticon, a self-policing subject, a self committed to a relentless self-surveillance. This self-surveillance is a form of obedience to patriarchy. It is also the reflection in woman’s consciousness of the fact that she is under surveillance in ways that he is not, that whatever else she may become, she is importantly a body designed to please or to excite.

Sandra Lee Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power.” (via 69188)

while i know i should let this little slice of radfem philosophy just pass me by without saying anything….

this article was written in the late 70s. the writer has spent her life critiquing ‘femininity’.

bah. this has zero room for women’s agency.

her argument, here, is literally that femininity exists only to serve men bc of patriarchy. *barfs*

(via hoodoodyke)