By: Jenna Gadd
When a woman is given pretty privilege, emphasis on given not asked for, and when a woman is successful and intelligent, she is deemed as close to a perfect woman, but nobody sees or questions the dark side of pretty privilege and success.
If a woman is pretty, her intelligence is undermined. Many assume that your entire personality must stem from being pretty, that you lack substance and value, that you don’t know understand how the world works, that your opinions aren’t valuable, and that you simply exist as an object of beauty, and there is nothing more you can offer than a face card. Others limit your ability of job performance. You can’t work in law. You can’t make a business deal. If you do make a business deal, you used your body and your face to get it. You buy your way in with looks if you’re a sports analyst. When you speak up, people MUST fact check you, because you can’t possibly know what you’re talking about, and when your fact check comes back clean, there are shocking looks from everyone in the room, because how could you ever know so much if you’re ONLY beautiful. Please, you are more than just a pretty face.
We can never tell if a guy likes us for who we are, or if he is just objectifying us. We can’t tell if he’s going to leave. We can’t tell if he truly listens and validates our feelings. We don’t know if he talks nasty about us to his guy friends behind our backs. We don’t even know if we can get a guy, because half of the male population doesn’t even want to approach us, because we’re “unapproachable”, and we only “look for looks”, because WE’RE pretty. And you can’t make girlfriends, because other women are intimidated. They view you as a threat to their friends, family, partners, potential partners, basically every aspect of their life. We don’t fit in anywhere. Yes, we get placed on a pedestal, but that pedestal isolates us. We are put outside a box of normalcy, because of society’s standards they put on us. By no fault of our own, we want to be confident, bold women, but if we are, we are “cocky.” If we don’t own our beauty, then we’re attention seekers. There is no waving the white flag. We lose either way, so you might as well just own it.
Because people have told us our whole lives that we can get whatever we want or be whoever we want simply because of our good looks, or that we can have any friend we want, as we grow and change, we dissociate slowly but surely from our inner beauty and place our identity in our outer beauty instead. Then, if the slightest person tells us we’re not pretty, we self-sabotage, and we put way too much worth into their words and take it to the core, or we do the opposite and claim they’re a jealous, rude, liar.
This is just being a supermodel of a woman. Success? That’s another story. If you’re successful people will tear you down. You will be told your success is only temporary, that you will fade out like the rest, you’re just a phase, or you can’t do it. I like this one even better. You’ll be deemed a “try hard”. Maybe we don’t have to try hard, maybe we just are capable, or maybe we do try hard and that makes us determined, committed women, and there is no fault in that. An egotistical man who lacks confidence will undermine your success and never want to celebrate you in all your glory. Megan Moroney even said on the Call Her Daddy Podcast that she dated a man who never let her sing or play her guitar for him. So, own your success. The people that are secure in themselves will cherish your success AND your beauty as much as their own.
Being pretty and smart is a pool of great loneliness. A woman would rather die alone, bury herself in her success with the most perfect skin to match, than settle for someone who is incapable of reaching her level of emotional intelligence and security within her identity. She would rather be objectified. She would rather be torn down, sacrifice it all for herself, because that is self-love, and that is beauty. That is inner peace, and THAT is what pretty privilege made her, and I think that’s pretty spectacular. I think of it as a lone wolf, a beautiful creature that can stand alone in their own shadow.