https://fortune.com/2023/10/27/unilever-deodorant-personal-care-hygiene-wfh-return-to-work/

Among those changes was the lesser time spent showering, wearing fresh clothes, and in some cases, even brushing teeth,

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Beauty standards in class society are dictated by the ruling class, and because the ruling class is racist it sets anti-Black standards.

    I don't think the concept of standards, themselves, are exclusive to class society. In primitive communism the beauty standards were set by nature, so sea shells would be fashionable by the sea shore while wooden beads would be fashionable by the forest.

    Would someone who moved from the sea to the forest keep their shells, or cast them off for beads? Or wear both? Dunno.

    This is all to say that, under communism, people will probably still work to maintain an aesthetic for people around them. It'll just be set to a very broad communal standard rather than set by the narrow opinions of the ruling class.

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            That means there has to be active effort to override it.

            That, too, would be creating and enforcing a standard. Haha culture wins! culture always winnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnns!

                  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    I'm reminded of the fact there was a period in Western history where they believed bathing was unhealthy and would let "bad airs" into your skin because you washed off all of the filth that protects you from miasma. Humans are sometimes really gross.

                    • Magician [he/him, they/them]
                      ·
                      1 year ago

                      I was more talking about how racism and reactionary politics in general can be couched in conversations about hygiene and aesthetics.

                      Showering and bathing are perfectly fine. It's just a lot of people consider dread locks as dirty and use that as an excuse to treat Black workers differently and/or pay them less.

                    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
                      ·
                      1 year ago

                      That's mostly an ahistorical meme. afaik the only historical basis is a brief period where public bath houses were shut down in parts of europe because there was plague going around. They shut the bath houses down because it was somewhere people congregated in large numbers, not because they thought bathing was bad for you. There may have been some quack doctors here and there, but for the most part Europeans have thought bathing was the coolest thing since the Romans turned up and introduced the idea of municipal bath houses. As far as I know folks mostly tried to get a real bath at least once a week when they could, and have always washed at least their hands, mouths, and faces if they couldn't manage more than that.,