The limitations of being called beautiful
Being beautiful is pretty great. Feeling admired, desired, envied even I think we can all agree is a great ego boost. People being nicer and more open to you, being more willing to trust you, help you or do you favours. Studies (and people) diverge on how pronounced this effect is, but being more attractive undoubtably gives you some advantages in life.
But there is a not so great side to beauty that often goes unacknowledged.
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For starters, lets unpack what ‘being beautiful’ in a society-moulds-itself-to-your-every-whim-and-fancy kind of way means. Anyone can feel beautiful. Anyone can be beautiful even. And yet for there to be advantages to beauty, there have to be those disadvantaged (ie the beauty in context of this article can’t apply to everyone).
Hers the thing. The phrasing is a trick. ‘Being beautiful’ implies the action of the beautiful person that makes them beautiful, yet beauty as a social advantage can only exist as a majority perception. One isn’t ‘being beautiful’ any given moment so much as ‘being perceived as beautiful and treated as such’. The beautiful person is passive here. Maybe they are trying to maintain and improve on their beauty, but its still truly outside of their control.
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Here the problems begin.
Beauty is passive, treating those who possess it as objects of others’ attention . For historical reasons, the importance of beauty is more emphasised in women (though this issue is not at all exclusive to women). A situation where passivity and the opinion of others are most important forms. Its uhh not the best.
Essentially, the way we treat beauty in people inherently ties it to objectification. While there are many benefits to being beautiful, the trade of is some part of your perceived humanity, and the condition that you are to be watched, and then be, in that order.
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Look at any famously beautiful woman, and we see this effect glaring back at us. Meghan Fox has spoken a lot about how she was treated at the start of her career, particularly her objectification in the Transformers movie. The initial backlash to these comments were great, with many saying she should be grateful as the movie was a great catalyst for her career. Heartbreakingly, even during the rise of the Me Too movement in 2020, she felt she couldn’t be a part of it as she ‘wasn’t a sympathetic victim’ because she was still profiting off of her beauty and felt that her making the choice to do so came with the diminished autonomy that caused her so much pain.
“How limited any woman’s power is when she survives and even succeeds in this world as a thing to be looked at”
More recently, Emily Ratajkowski’s book, ‘My Body’ covers in depth the exploitation of the beauty industry, as well as the pain of beauty. In this book, Emily grapples with her intense feelings of victimisation and being reduced to just her appearance. It is maybe a little bit ironic that most criticisms attack not the book itself but Emily’s decision to continue modelling, albeit on her own terms, as if engaging with the benefits and professional success her beauty has enabled her, the exploitation she experienced is justified. Can’t have one without the other.
There are many other issues with societal perception of beauty, from limitations of age to the inherent classism tied to many cultural signifiers of beauty, to some extra bonus classism tied to attitudes towards those that commodify their beauty, but these are big topics to cover in just one post.
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Beauty in a cultural sense is inherently tied to objectification, and the pressure to feel beautiful and the effort put into beauty every day is terrifying. The alternative - focus on self expression and personal ‘inner’ beauty is a tough thing to reach as it requires ignoring the opinions of all the people who’s validation would feel so great. But it’s worth it, I promise.
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