Louise Mensch’s fashion blog is geared towards pleasing your man: A backwards step for feminism or just frivolous garbage?
What does Louise Mensch know about fashion? Or more to the point, does she know we’re no longer living in 1956?
After her failed attempt at launching her career stateside as a social networking entrepreneur, Mensch has decided to establish herself as the blogger du jour unfashionista – ‘a lazy girl’s guide to gloss’, where she preaches the Mensch commandments ranging from lazy hair styling tips to ‘what men want’ in a woman’s face and body.
This would be all very well and good, yet as a blogger Mensch is sporadic, teetering on the verge of insincere because what she publishes and what she set out to do are pole opposites. Her ethos is style made easy, for the average woman tired of unattainable perfection and searching for a simple and practical solution to looking good.
Bearing this in mind, her first blog post aims to encourage women to don the high heels because, and I quote “your man wants to see you swing it.”
This is not a lone incidence, however. Her posts continue to cite male approval as a legitimate reason for beauty and style choices. Because men hate a woman in too much make-up the ‘unfashionista’ way is to wear as much as you can without looking “done”, clear lip-gloss is recommended because ‘men love it’ and there is a lengthy post dedicated to advising women the best way to achieve male approval through the way you dress yourself.
As well as hugely contradicting her philosophy of lazy girl style through encouraging women to prime and groom themselves incoherence with male preferences, isn’t Mensch kicking feminism in the teeth in the process? She propagates her feminist stance, but as a supposedly strong, independent modern day business woman her feminist back bone is somewhat crippled when it comes to her work in the blogosphere.
Not all of her content is reminiscent of a 1950’s housewife’s philosophy. Still, this doesn’t mean that it carries any weight. The majority of her posts are so frivoulous that it’s painful, dedicated to helping women of a certain age improve their style with half-hearted tips that already exist in multitude all over the web. When you pair this with her posts about heart-shaped burgers for your husband, her blog looks drugged up on diazepam with no real direction or purpose.
The positives? The design of the site is great, but Louise, I don’t think you’ve quite found your niche just yet.