Feminism

Take a look at this piece in the Times today. The comments turned into a general discussion on feminism, of the sort we see all the time. One thing I particularly noticed was this comment:

Most people my age know that feminism was never about equality – it was about ugly women wanting to be treated the same as attractive women.

I’m so confused by this. Does this person not realise that ugly people* are people too? What the hell is wrong with wanting all women to be treated the same, regardless of how attractive they are?

Oh, I guess it has something to do with the fact that this is how we treat people. Women are quite different.

I do despair.

*I hope it goes without saying that I really don’t like saying that at all. I discussed some of the problems with the whole thing about attractiveness here.

Attractiveness

This post at Shapely Prose got me thinking about stuff that I used to ponder a lot, but sort of gave up on, to be honest, for a little while (I think it gave me a headache – like free will, I can’t bear to think about that for too long).

Feminists often talk about how women are objectified as sex-objects, and how this is demeaning to women (which I totally agree with). I’ve mentioned before how I used to flirt back when men would approach me in the street – I was incredibly flattered by this. Now, if something like that happens (it tends to happen much less, I suspect because I am no longer a teenager) I get offended. It’ll be clear to most readers that this is because this man has reduced the person I am, to what I look like. Whether or not he thinks I am “pretty” or “beautiful”, the shape of my body. The thing is, I just didn’t get any alternative.

Before I go on I just want to clarify something. I understand that I look at people that I think are attractive. However I think there are more and less acceptable ways of doing this. I am particularly reminded of this one post on The F-Word. The post is quite long so a bit of it is below (although I recommend you read the whole thing):

He then turned to his friend and said in a loud, brass and self-assured manner, “so, fuck that or what?”

I don’t think there’s any need to convince anyone that this is totally unacceptable! It’s incredibly dehumanising, and the implication that the woman in question should almost be honoured by the privilege of being ‘fucked’ by one of these guys is awful. In addition, it is often very intimidating, as a woman, when a man speaks about you like that. Finally, personally I find it offensive when someone (always a man) stops me, in the middle of talking to someone/walking somewhere/whatever else I happen to be doing, and tries to talk to me. The assumption there, as I see it, is that what I am doing is less important than this particular man’s desire to talk to me (and whatever else he may be thinking).

Incidents like these are not what I am talking about! There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it is completely unacceptable for somebody to clearly objectify another person, in a situation like that. It’s not acceptable to basically dehumanise someone in the way that these men did in the example above.

But the thing is, what is an acceptable way to find someone attractive? I mean, as I’m writing this the obvious thing I’m thinking of is to *not* dehumanise them. And I guess that’s a big part of it.

One of the key problems is that what is attractive is pretty much always culturally-defined. In the west it is often said that men prefer women with blonde hair, but the fact is, men in Africa have been happily falling in love with women for centuries, and these women aren’t blonde. There’s often an element of racism in there – I remember watching a film about prostituted women, and one woman, who was from south-east Asia, said that her ‘clients’ would often expect her to exaggerate her accent. There seems to be a tendency to desire ‘exotic’ women. However in general (perhaps when looking for a long-term partner, rather than a prostitute?) it seems the more attractive faces in the UK are white, and have white features. Numerous studies have shown that what is the average is considered more attractive (for details look at Wikipedia). These studies (as far as I can gather) used entirely caucasian participants. So any features that aren’t average (ie, pretty much any features that aren’t caucasian) aren’t considered attractive. Obviously the post that got me thinking was about fat; again, it is generally culturally defined what weight is attractive: for example in cultures where food is more scarce, the slimness that is loved so much in the west isn’t as popular.

Another big problem I personally have with the whole concept of attractiveness, is that to me it seems we are basically saying that people who are deemed attractive, but whatever standards, are basically worth more than those who aren’t. Isn’t that how we see it? And it’s not only about forming relationships with people; beauty is frequently associated with ‘goodness’ so people considered ugly are more likely to be convicted of a crime, for example.

For me personally, as I understand more and more the cultural nature of attractiveness, and the ‘othering’ I guess, that is a big part of it, I find myself becoming attractive to a wider range of people. But this still leaves out a lot of people that I’m just not attracted to. And aside from the problem I mentioned, about basically deciding somewhere is worth more or less on the basis of what they look like, to me it’s just absurd to rule someone out as a partner on that basis – surely there’s so much other stuff that’s much more important?

It was mentioned in the discussion following the post that maybe it’d be a good idea to find one good feature about pretty much everyone you see. I’ve been confused about all these issues for years – I’m quietly optimistic that this may actually be a (partial) solution. Worth a try, anyway!