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War Paint, makeup for men, uses toxic masculinity to sell foundation - Vox

The 13-second ad features a heavily tattooed white man using various War Paint products, flexing his pecs, and topping it all off by putting on a large skull ring. One thing it does not show very clearly is how the makeup looks on the guy’s face. But that is not the point of this ad. The point is to show you that this is a thing for men. Like, “real” men. Manly ones.

Free speech is often likened to a marketplace of ideas. … This “marketplace” metaphor was popularized in the United States in the early twentieth century by the Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who argued that truth could best be promoted by a “free trade in ideas.” … In fact, the “marketplace” metaphor perfectly describes the power dynamics of free speech in a capitalist society, though not in the way that its proponents intended. Multinational corporations aspiring toward monopolistic control of capital and information establish the general confines in which the vast majority of humanity sell their labor and articulate their speech. The market of commodities is inseparable from the market of ideas, since ideas are commodified along with everything else in capitalist society. All non-incarcerated citizens may have an equal right to literally speak, but the ability to make that speech heard and make it matter is highly stratified. Support for campaign finance reform and opposition to the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court show how many American liberals agree about the conflicts between free speech and big money.

(from “Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook” by Mark Bray)