‘Attractiveness’ – all it’s cracked up to be?

So, hurr durr, appearance is a big deal for women. It’s constantly shoved into your face, everywhere you look, wherever you turn, you’re being judged based on what you look like. Of course, this isn’t entirely unique to women but it is certainly felt far more acutely by us than our male counter-parts. Women are objectified, judged and experience tremendous pressure to pay constant attention to their appearances. Magazines devoted entirely to ridicule, slut-shaming, fat-shaming, existence-shaming…oh yeah, and BUY THINGS THEY WILL MAKE YOU PRETTY.

Because it’s not just appearance, it’s being considered attractive according to certain society-specific standards of beauty that are suffocating, narrow and unrealistic. The same unobtainable ideas, the same indignant chunks of disbelief I’ve already vomited out, but keep being forced to eat up all over again. Be thin, but don’t be too thin, please, because you will be force-fed and accused of having an eating disorder, which is unthinkable! But that’s got to be better than having any fat on my body whatsoever, that automatically means I’m unhealthy and lazy and think the gym is out of some horrible, school-days nightmare.

Okay, so I can rant all I want and it’s probably just because I’m totally jealous of other women and wish I was as attractive as them.

But is being considered ‘attractive’ actually an advantage?

Far as I can tell there are three key advantages to perceived attractiveness:

1)      People do shit for you because they’re patronising ‘gentlemen’ types. Oh well, at least I get my shopping carried, I guess.

2)      You get away with shit because men forget their names in front of you so can’t be expected to deal with say, fining you for not buying a train ticket. SCORE.

3)      You get laid. But not really, this is a complete fallacy and ‘unattractive’ people get laid all the time.

Okay, so what’s so shit about being perceived as ‘attractive’?

Allow me to list, in-exhaustively, the many disadvantages:

1)      You can’t be intelligent. It’s just, like, not possible.

2)      Your opinions are invalid, silly!

3)      You must accept all sexual advances towards you, because THEY ARE COMPLIMENTING YOU, OBVS.

4)      If you wear anything other than a nun’s habit you are totally ‘asking for it’.

5)      Ditto for drinking alcohol. This blatantly means you want sex.

6)      Expect random (presumably male) drivers to beep you as they drive past, shout lewd comments and then drive on in a smug fashion, their quota of pointless, questionable womanising fulfilled for the day.

7)      You’re a slut, by the way. Just so you know. Or a cock-tease, if you’re a virgin.

8)      By the way, ARE you a virgin? Because that’s totally everyone’s business and not just yours.

If I’m being honest, (some) men are pigs and probably just do this to any woman who isn’t exceedingly far from their gender expectations.  But still, I think I’d rather be ‘unattractive’ and ignored by gawping, misogynistic men, on balance. So, women’s magazine’s sweeping assumption that we all live to be viewed as attractive by men is kind of…wrong? Oh shit. I think I just blew some minds there.

Unfortunately, I can’t control my objectified status as a woman. I have my own identity, my own aesthetic pleasures; pride in my appearance for the sake of what I want to look like. Sorry, but I’m not willing to sacrifice that to be taken seriously in this ridiculous patriarchal society. But I think I covered this in my previous article: Reclaiming Femininity.