ERBIL, Kurdistan Region, Iraq — “Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women helps us understand how the capitalist system that dominates the world today turns not only cosmetics but all economic and social relations into commodities,” said Catharina Tirsén in a presentation at the Erbil International Book Fair April 15. She was speaking on behalf of Pathfinder Books of London, which was featuring the book at its booth.
“The authors explain that the road to ending the oppression and exploitation of women is inseparable from the revolutionary struggles by the working class and our exploited allies the world over, to take state power out of the hands of the capitalist rulers.”
Tirsén related the impact an earlier edition of the book had on her early in her political life. “It was published when many young women were getting industrial jobs where women had not traditionally worked,” she said. “I worked in a shipyard and later as an electrician in one of the iron ore mines in the north of Sweden about the same time as the first edition was published. We learnt that women could do these jobs, and we won the solidarity and comradeship of our male workmates.”
Forty people attended the presentation of the new edition in English, along with a first-ever Kurdish edition published by Sulaymaniyah-based Idea Foundation.
Shallaw Yassin Latif, the book’s Kurdish translator, said that under capitalism, companies selling cosmetics work hard to convince women to buy their products, and “medicine” promotes the idea that women are imperfect and need surgery to improve.
“But the book is not just a critique of capitalism. It discusses the way forward in fighting for women’s liberation,” Latif said.
Among those attending were people who knew Pathfinder from previous years at the book fair. Several others came after having visited the Pathfinder stand earlier in the fair, including a young woman who had bought a stack of books and took time from her job as a receptionist to come.
Another was medical student Azeez Osman, who had already started reading the book. “I’ve been questioning why women think they need to change themselves, even with surgery,” she told the Militant. “I knew there was something wrong, but the book and the presentation help me understand how capitalism is the root of women’s oppression today.” Osman decided to also buy the Kurdish translation, five copies of which were sold at the event.
Several people stayed around for more discussion. Salman Saber Hussein, a student, said he loved the presentation. “Imagine how free you would feel if you didn’t need to prove anything to anybody with your appearance,” he said. “Your body is yours and not a product to be marketed.” He added Cosmetics to two books he had bought previously, Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power and Malcolm X Talks to Young People.