Moya welcomed the book as a contribution to the fight for women’s emancipation, not only in capitalist countries but “in our own context” in Cuba. González Pagés called Cosmetics, Fashions, and the Exploitation of Women “a Marxist classic on women’s liberation.” He noted that “there are few Spanish translations of books about fashions and the cosmetics industry,” and, in particular, “very little literature on this subject from a Marxist standpoint.” It will be a valuable addition to textbooks used at the University of Havana, he said.

Waters said that Joseph Hansen’s article “The Fetish of Cosmetics” is in fact “a popular introduction to Marx’s Capital,” which she called “the best book ever written to help us understand women’s oppression and the struggle to end it.” At the heart of this book “is the class question,” she said. The fight for women’s emancipation is not a battle of women against men—it is “a battle between those who own no property and those who own and control the land, the mines, and factories, and expropriate for themselves the product of our social labor.”

The overflow audience included students from the University of Havana, who had advertised the meeting by circulating posters of the book’s cover and other illustrations. Also present were José Ramón Fernández, vice president of Cuba’s Council of Ministers, and Víctor Dreke, president of the Cuba-Africa Friendship Association, both legendary fighters of the generation that overthrew the Batista dictatorship in the 1950s and opened the socialist revolution in the Americas. Luis Morlote and Lázaro Castillo, president and vice president of the Saíz Brothers Association, an organization of young Cuban artists and writers attended as well.

Return to "Pathfinder Around the World"