In 1963, Betty Friedan had argued women’s magazines were central to creating the feminine mystique, an infantalising image of womanhood built around a myth of beautiful women in beautiful homes tending to handsome husbands and beautiful children. Carol Hanisch, a member of the New York Radical Women group behind the 1968 protest, argued later that protesters should target not the women who enter beauty contests, but “the men and bosses who imposed false beauty standards on women”. Anne Summers, writing in the newsletter MeJane in 1973, said she was abused for wearing make-up at a Women’s Liberation conference. Women’s liberationists did have their disagreements about individual choices and tactics. It was inspired, in part, by a protest in the US against the 1968 Miss America pageant. As Susan Magarey writes, one of the Australian Women’s Liberation movement’s first actions was a 1970 protest against Adelaide University’s “Miss Fresher” beauty contest. Second-wave feminism, to a large extent, defined itself against the beauty industry. We also played AFL with the boys during sports period, but the news from women’s liberation about make-up and women’s oppression hadn’t yet arrived at my little school in the sleepy seaside town of Sorrento.
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Once a week, during electives at primary school in 1980, I walked with a group of girls to the local hairdressing salon where we were taught how to apply eyeshadow, lipstick and smooth foundation onto our perfect skins.