Attributing value to your own beauty based on your personal value system is what we typically call vanity (though the concept is itself intended to gatekeep the assignment of value); understanding that men assign value to women based on beauty is just being a woman in patriarchy.
https://twitter.com/DarkStormX2/status/1397051560010600452
...and before anyone accurately points out that women often assign value and police one another based on patriarchal standards of beauty, note that, as I have said before, reading the meter is not the same as controlling the measurement.
Living in accordance with standards you do not control is part of existing in society writ large. Every person has the obligation to work toward changing unfair standards but not every person has the same opportunity to do so. When it comes to internalized misogyny and...
patriarchal norms, pointing out that those standards benefit men is important, but not because it absolves women from participation; rather, because the options that exist for women are (1) willingly participate in their own oppression and do better than those women who do not...
(2) participate as a means of survival; or (3) refuse to participate but be denied value within society. As to gendered norms, men are also subject to similar limitations, but critically:
Men are granted value until they do not conform, not UNLESS they conform. That matters.
Men are granted value until they do not conform, not UNLESS they conform. That matters.
Because, as to gendered norms, it means men control who is granted value and who is not.
In general, people tend to get hung up on women's participation in patriarchy as somehow antithetical to arguments against it. Following the rules is not the same as making the rules. The point is that no one should be making rules for value based on gender or gendered norms.
What is particularly bad about patriarchy is that not only does one gender make the rules, they also, predictably, make them in accordance with what benefits them (men) most. Beauty standards based on the Male Gaze are one of thousands of examples.
So, to bring us full circle, when you claim that women "obsess" over beauty in ways that harm them, you're only halfway through the analysis. Why beauty, and what standard of beauty, is worth self harm, is the relevant question if you're looking for a resolution.
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