“You’re so pretty, you’re going to have such an easy life.”
That is a real sentence that was really spoken to me by a real person. By multiple people, in fact, over the course of my 20 years of life. Society has always placed a significant amount of value on physical appearance, and beautiful women are highly treasured and even sometimes idolized by the rest of the world. While beauty is a wonderful thing, I don’t quite understand why it is often treated as the most important quality used to define what a woman is worth. According to statistics from the Women’s Bureau, female workers accounted for 51.5% of high-paying management, professional, and related occupations in 2010. That’s over half, and that number is probably even higher now. So why aren’t we getting an equal amount of credit for being smart? Hard-working? Independent? Bottom line: physical attractiveness is not, nor will it ever be, the most important part of being a woman. Now let me make it clear that I am not writing this article to brag about my appearance, or make people feel bad for me, or anything along those lines. I simply want to bring up a few other things that have really been said to me about my physical appearance to try and help us all understand that being “pretty” does not automatically equate to an easy or satisfying life. Quite the opposite sometimes, if I’m going to be honest with you.
“But you’re so pretty, I bet everyone is so jealous of you.”
This might be true, but it’s really not all that great of a compliment. What starts out as a little bit of envy can quickly turn into a vicious competition for attention. Women always have and always will wish that they could change something about their physical appearance, and when faced with a woman that they perceive to be prettier than they are, it’s very easy to feel threatened by her. What starts out as jealousy almost instantly becomes hostility, and this can make it very difficult for beautiful women to maintain friendships with other women. In an attempt to relieve feelings of self-consciousness, women often resort to tearing other women down, sometimes even their own friends. “She’s so pretty” can quickly turn into things like “She’s such a whore” and “She’s slept with every guy she knows”, and “People only like her because she’s pretty”. People can be so quick to make sweeping assumptions about beautiful women that are usually negative; there are these ideas that pretty girls are promiscuous or unintelligent or stuck-up, and while that’s definitely true for some girls, it upsets me that lots of beautiful women don’t get enough credit where it is due for all of their redeeming qualities that don’t involve physical appearance.
“But you’re so gorgeous, you don’t even have to try to get attention from guys like a lot of girls do.”
Again, this might be true, but what we need to understand here is that for every decently attractive, polite guy that approaches you, there are ten other stupid, annoying, rude, or overly intoxicated assholes that are also trying desperately to get a moment of your time (or maybe just cop a feel, depending on how many tequila shots they’ve had at the bar that night). There are a LOT of negatives to being an attractive woman, so much so that they can sometimes outweigh the positives. Don’t get me wrong; it can be great having a really hot guy strike up a conversation with you, or getting lots of comments on your latest Instagram picture, or having random people stop you on the street and tell you that you should be a model. What’s not so great is having men honk their horns, yell degrading things, or whistle out of their car windows at you as they’re driving by (super uncomfortable). Also not too fun is fending off persistent advances from male coworkers or even supervisors (something that has happened to me personally multiple times in the past week alone). Even more fun: minding your own business walking down the street in the city and being groped by creepy old men right in front of your mom (also something that happened recently). And I don’t even want to go into all the horribly sad stories of sexual assault that I’ve been hearing about lately. We all think that none of this is ever going to happen to us, but truth be told, all of these things are happening to lots of women every single day, and it’s frighteningly easy to feel uncomfortable and unsafe in situations where we really shouldn’t be feeling that way at all. The concept of being pretty sounds like it’s all fun and games, but truth be told, all the attention that comes with it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows like people make it out to be.
“But you’re beautiful, you can just marry rich and be a trophy wife and never have to lift a finger again.”
I really don’t know where to start with this one. While this is a perfectly legitimate choice that some women do make in their lives, assuming that it is a goal that all attractive women have is just totally wrong, and there’s no other way to explain it. I hate this concept of trophy wives because while it may be a suitable lifestyle for some women, it completely belittles and devalues every other woman in the world with the goal of getting an education and becoming a professional. I think that people sometimes tend to have this idea in their heads that a girl can’t be both pretty and smart, and that’s such a disappointing generalization to be making, especially in this century. Pretty girls everywhere are going to college and becoming lawyers and doctors and entrepreneurs and politicians, but regardless of that, people often acknowledge a woman’s physical attractiveness far before her intelligence as well as place more value on it. And that makes me sad, because it means we are getting far less recognition for our mental aesthetic, and far more for our physical aesthetic, which is something that we really don’t have much control over. I have nothing against women who want to marry rich, but I do think that the concept of trophy wives in general is extremely demeaning, especially to those women working tirelessly every day to get where they want to be in life, instead of just having it handed to them.
Being beautiful is a lot like having a spotlight shining down on you every single moment of every single day. You can quite literally feel people’s eyes on you no matter where you are or what you’re doing, and it can feel like there’s constant pressure put on you to look good all the time. It can be so degrading and frustrating feeling like your looks are the only thing other people see and value, even when you know how much more you have to offer. By no means am I complaining about my physical appearance; I appreciate what I was given and over the years I’ve learned how to use what I have to my advantage and be comfortable and confident with myself. But beauty isn’t the most important part of who I am, nor does it mean that I have a perfect life. I don’t want my looks to define who I am as a person. I don’t want to be remembered for being pretty; I want people to remember that I was smart and independent and that I worked my ass off to get where I wanted to be in life; that I didn’t take the easy way out even though I probably could have. Beauty is transient, but I don’t want to be. I am more than a nice body and a pretty face, and I will be appreciated for more than my physical appearance, because I know that’s what I deserve. It’s what we all deserve.
