A reader at What Privilege emailed, suggesting we dismantle the notion that conventionally beautiful women are privileged over other women. I’m all for this, but I was never considered conventionally beautiful (henceforth shortened to merely “beautiful”), so I could use some input from those who are, or who have talked at length to beautiful women.
I’ll start with this. I do agree with the poster that being “beautiful” isn’t really a privilege. Whatever perks there may be to being a beautiful woman, they are all to do with using her as a sex object. I.E., perhaps no one but a beautiful woman has a chance of marrying a superficial rich guy, but that’s hardly my idea of a privilege. There have been dubious studies indicating the conventionally attractive people get more promotions and raises at work, but if that’s true, it’s somehow failed to shatter the glass ceiling.
The reader also talked about how men avoid asking out beautiful women, on the assumption that they already have dates. I can confirm this. L.A. is flooded with conventionally beautiful struggling actresses, and I’ve been friends with them and witnessed this for myself. It may also be that guys lack the self-confidence to ask out beautiful women.
And then people treat beautiful women with incredible resentment. Not just those envious women who have bought into the idea that if only they were beautiful all would be well, but also those men who can’t attract beautiful women but have been taught by their culture that they deserve one (as a trophy, of course – these guys never seem to have noticed anything beyond the packaging of these mean women who won’t date them).
Obviously, women who aren’t conventionally beautiful get locked out of certain arenas: acting opportunities are severely limited, modeling isn’t even a possibility, etc. There’s definitely a prejudice against women who don’t conform to beauty standards. But I don’t think that translates to “privilege” for the ones who do. Just a few perks.
What do you think about the idea of beauty privilege?
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Maria,
Those are great links, and I definitely agree about the race/ethnicity issue. Ethnic women are “exotic”, which makes them even more “fascinating” and “distracting” to little boy-men who have never been confronted with the suggestion that panting after attractive women all day at work is far more unprofessional than anyone’s appearance could ever be.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Zweisatz,
I brought that up to a therapist once — that the several of the same types of grooming and dress that make a women more conventionally physically attractive and gender-norm conformative also serve to make her more vulnerable to physical attack (high heels, narrow skirts, apparent physical weakness). She nodded and said that was an importnat insight at the same time she looked helpless / frustrated she couldn’t figure out a way to refute the point right away.
littlem(Quote) (Reply)
Suicidewinder,
There is also this.
littlem(Quote) (Reply)
I tend to agree that people often equate beauty with goodness. To quote Ani Di Franco ‘I am not a pretty girl; that is not what I do’, and… I’ve lost track of how many times over the course of my life that I’ve been told by others ‘I’m afraid of you’, ‘you might hurt me’, and ‘you might kill me’. On the rare occasion I am complimented, the word most often chosen is ‘striking’ – again with the assumption of violence on my part. I’ve never killed, maimed, tortured, or poisoned anybody – and yet, ‘cos I’m weird looking people want to believe that I could do it without a second thought.
Sabrina,
Leah(Quote) (Reply)
Doesn’t Ani also sing that everyone hates the prettiest girl in the room? That doesn’t necessarily sound like beauty=goodness to me.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
I’ve always heard that people equate beauty with goodness, but I’ve never been given good evidence of that. What comes to mind when I try to think about it is:
–Eve
–Femme fatales
–”Nice Guys(tm)” whining about those horrid women who won’t blow them, and you know those are all beautiful women, because women in the more ordinary looks range are invisible to these guys
–Mermaids and sirens as the explanation for boating misadventure (and male sailing incompetence?)
Which would make me think female beauty is equated with narcissism, treacherousness and death.
I mean, hell: Yahoo answers the question of why beautiful women are evil and only one person complains that that’s a “generalization”
I would also consider this: a LOT of female villains in real life get framed by the media as gorgeous, particularly if their crimes involve sex (“hot teacher” molesting little boys, Long Island Lolita, etc.). People have NO trouble believing such a beautiful girl/women could do that horrible thing. But when a good-looking man is accused of crime, people are “stunned”, particularly if it’s a sex crime. It comes down to the absolutely unfounded belief that the only reason men turn to horrid crimes is because they’re lonely, because they’re ugly, and beautiful women are so mean to them.
Maybe the best way to sum up why I don’t find this credible: we’re invited to pity the Phantom of the Opera and view the engaged girl who won’t dump her fiance and go live in a sewer with him as a selfish bitch. This story repeats, like, everywhere. Remember the comedian who suggested the VA Tech massacre wouldn’t have happened if only some cute girls would get off their high horse and service guys like that sexually?
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
What I find interesting is how much of that is fan reaction rather than the actual story in the novel or most adaptations. The Phantom is a figure of pity, to be sure, but he’s also a murderer, a kidnapper, and threatens to rape Christine in nearly every version. But the fan romanticization (is that even a word?) of the Phantom is extreme, along with a lot of hatred of Christine. And most of it is from female fans, which is the really worrying part for me about the messages our culture is sending.
Patrick McGraw(Quote) (Reply)
I don’t think especially beautiful women or men are privileged, however, I find it possible that people who are (in lack of better words) not especially ugly are privileged. Those that make sense to anyone?
Alice(Quote) (Reply)
Patrick McGraw,
That I did not know! It’s interesting because critics often misunderstand the hell out of Wuthering Heights – Bronte was so clearly pitying Heathcliff as a child while condemning his behavior as an adult, and framing the whole thing in generational cycles of abuse years before such concepts began to be studied. But critics to this day think it’s valid to consider Heathcliff a romantic lead rather than a study in abuse.
Just speaking for myself, the message people keep trying to send me is that I’m being horribly mean to men if I choose not to date every single one that asks. Apparently, I have to have a socially accepted “excuse” to avoid dating someone, and “I’d rather stay home and read than date that particular person” is not acceptable. And I get this from other women. It’s almost as if they’re worried that if *I* won’t date them, THEY might have to, because if NOBODY will have sex with them, then they’ll turn into serial killers and we will all be raped and killed! Or something. I really can’t figure out the little twists in their minds when they do that.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
@Alice
Maybe, lol.
Check out this headline:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00C10F63B5D11738DDDA90B94D9405B8885F0D3
WOMAN’S RIGHT TO BE UGLY; An Indisputable Privilege That Is Hers by Right of Time and Custom. SOME FAMED HOMELY WOMEN Beauty of Face and Form Not Always the Prerequisites to Feminine Success in Life — Intellectual Ability and Capacity to Love Come to Beauty and Ugly Alike.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
Maria,
Wow, that’s from 1898~? I’m kinda confused…
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
Maria,
I don’t think that holds true anymore. In 1898, if you weren’t beautiful, there was little to be done about it (and most of what could be done wasn’t socially accepted for most classes, such as makeup). Now there’s surgery, makeup, all sorts of commercially available stuff, and it’s bred the idea that people are entitled to only be confronted with women who are pretty, or who at least hide their ugly under a veneer of carefully applied makeup and the most expensive hairdo they can get.
Ugly men get elected to public office. Ugly women are supposed to wear paper bags when they leave their homes.
In a lot of ways, people who are average in some way are treated better in this culture. People hate on the beautiful and the ugly, the smart and the mentally challenged, the really virtuous and the really villainous, with equal venom… but as long as you’re somewhere in the middle, you may not get much positive attention, but nor do you get people ganging up to bully you.
And speaking as someone who’s gotten a lot of positive and negative attention for being smart, and not much attention to my looks either way, I prefer the sometimes depressing lack of attention to the anxiety I have about how some people will react if I let on that I’m smart.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Jennifer Kesler,
I literally just thought it was a funny headline.
I tihnk your point about being average is a really good way.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
Gah. dang keyboard.
I meant:
I think your point about being average is a really good way of thinking about it.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
There’s also the believe that a woman’s beauty can make other do horrible things.
Like:
1. A beautiful woman will make other women jealous who will then turn into evil bitches.
2. A beautiful woman will tempt Nice Guys into raping her.
I also think this is rather strange, since the original novel is told mostly from Raoul’s POV, who’s portrayed as being the perfect man: he’s kind, generous, handsome, risks his own life for Christine’s and doesn’t expect anything in return – when he offers her money to leave the opera and live on her own he doesn’t even ask her to be his wife or misstress, he just wants her to be save from her creepy stalker. And it’s solely up to Christine to decide that she’s fallen in love with Raoul and wants to marry him. He’s the complete opposite of the manipulative, threatening Phantom.
M.C.(Quote) (Reply)
Oh, btw: Does anybody else think it’s curious that right now there are 3 different Hollywood projects (one tv show, 2 films) about the Snow White story, which is essentially about a beautiful woman trying to murder another because she feels threatened by her looks?
M.C.(Quote) (Reply)
M.C.,
That’s another story that’s gone through some really interesting iterations over the years. I read a fascinating snip of an essay by Gilbert and Gubar which I can’t find now, but the big takeaway from it was very relevant to this thread: SW isn’t about female narcissism. It’s about how male narcissism reduces women to objects that fight over scraps. The voice in the mirror is actually the absent husband-father who wields so much power over the women in the story, he doesn’t even need to put in an appearance. The queen lives by his approval, and when she loses it to Snow White, Snow White is in turn doomed to live by her prince’s approval, which she will someday lose to a fairer woman. There really isn’t a happy ending, and the whole story is a chilling portrayal of what the luckiest of women are doomed to.
This page: http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/professional-development/childlit/swcriticism.html has a terrific quote: “”Let’s start with the mirror, mirror on the wall, because that shows at every point that this is a story about the desire to be the fairest of them all. The term “narcissism” seems altogether too slippery to be the only one we want here. There is, for instance, no suggestion that the queen’s absorption in her beauty ever gives her pleasure, or that the desire for power through sexual attractiveness is itself a sexual feeling. What is stressed is the anger and fear that attend the queen’s realization that as she and Snow White both get older, she must lose. This is why the major feeling involved is not jealousy but envy: to make beauty that important is to reduce the world to one in which only two people count.”
Again, that’s relevant to this thread: even if beauty privileges women, it’s a temporary privilege. Even able bodied privilege has a shot at lasting your whole life – beauty for women has always had a guaranteed expiration date. Then the beauty goes, and so do any benefits it once conferred.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Jennifer Kesler,
Thanks for the link. One of my professors once gave me a book about the psychology behind fairytales, but the author only wrote about the roots and not the modern development of the fairytales.
M.C.(Quote) (Reply)
> What do you think about the idea of beauty privilege? Female privilege, if it exists, is a ragtag combination of consolation prizes to keep the women quiet and content in a system which subordinates them. Real power remains in the patriarchal power structure. The existence of possible female privilege in areas like the draft doesn’t disprove this; the pitifulness of female privilege simply reinforces the original point.
Meanwhile, female “privilege” is employed as a tool to keep women from challenging their own subordination.
And it’s frighteningly effective. <
from here : http://www.feministlawprofessors.com/2011/11/female-privilege/
also, imo, if *we e.g. link "beauty" to "age" it becomes clear to me that there is a terrible/counter-… soc. stereotype-threat still active *again/ad nauseam i.e. perpetuating a soc. kyriarchy (or pls. feel free to add/put your own words for "its the system".
(plus racism-, sexism-, anti-LGBTQIA-threat etc.)
socimages and other resources on the webz have repeatedly published studies and reports how also this soc. beauty-privilege is hurting *everybody, esp. *women. the beauty-privilege-status-quo imo is a good example how "women are/kept in this system" – another soc. catch22-example : "damned if they do/are, damned if they don't/aren't"
(btw imo a good loop with your *empowering vs. empowered post)
A. L.(Quote) (Reply)
Before I gained a ridiculous amount of weight I was considered extremely beautiful. It was obviously awesome in some ways, but no one took me seriously in anything aside from modeling or the performing arts (in which, admittedly, it was helpful). It was next to impossible to get professors or academic peers to hear me out… I had a few professors who, thankfully, were willing to be advocates for me to those (in my department) who sneered at me or outright hated me (mostly women but not entirely). And whenever I walked into a job interview I could tell when I wasn’t going to get hired just based on the look in the interviewer’s eyes. It’s hard enough breaking into a typically male-dominated profession (law) as a young woman without having the men assume I was just some jumped-up bimbo secretary and having the women assume I was just some jumped-up bimbo sexretary.
It’s even harder now, in some aspects — apparently the general disgust with fat people that most people have makes it okay to not hire people based on the fact that they don’t want to have to look at you every day, regardless of whether you’re some slovenly fool who doesn’t bathe enough and wears disgustingly tight clothes and too-short skirts or whether you’re tasteful and respectful and cover yourself up and bathe regularly — but at least academically I’m taken more seriously than I was. I think being ten years older is a big help in that regard, though.
So I’m not sure whether it’s worse to be a young, beautiful woman or a fat woman, in that regard. I know it’s okay to be an attractive man and it’s okay to be a fat man, so either way it’s pretty much crap.
Unemployed fat ex-beauty queen(Quote) (Reply)
As a rather goodlooking woman I think “beauty privilege” is a strange construct. When I did my apprenticeship as a craftsperson (I’m a scenic paintress) in a maledominated team, I wore ugly clothes, no makeup at all and my hair in ponytails, to be taken seriously. It was important not to be seen as a woman. Especially not a beautiful woman. So everybody could concentrate on my work, and my work alone.
I think it’s not really about beeing beautiful or not, but about making men forget that you’re actually a woman. So where’s the privilege.
Eva(Quote) (Reply)
Patrick McGraw,
Okay, that makes more sense. I’ve seen several versions of Opera and while they are sympathetic to Erik I’ve never seen them as condemning Christine for not wanting to be his woman.
Fraser(Quote) (Reply)
Two years ago, I worked at a Macy’s. A few months after I started, I found out the manager of my department was known for almost exclusively hiring young, good-looking females, and he often asked them out. I was never asked out (I’d have refused if he had tried that crap), so I don’t know if he hired me for my looks or not, but that there’s even the possibility made me feel cheap.
Cheryl(Quote) (Reply)
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