The curse of being attractive

Saturday 28 March 2009 - Filed under Journal

This has come up before. Some bloggers are beautiful women. Some dudes comment that the woman is beautiful. All hell breaks loose in a flurry of accusations of sexism and misogyny.

I see both sides of this. There are huge double-standards when it comes to how men and women are treated. Women are objectified and marginalized again and again by men (and, to be fair, by women, too). There is no question in my mind that women are treated unfairly and are demeaned and discriminated against, much moreso than men.

But the other side is this — beautiful women are universally adored. This is a fact. People of every gender, race, color and creed, on average, see being beautiful as a good, desirable and noticeable thing. Women are also objectified by and for other women all the time. The entire beauty and fashion industries cater to this.

So if you are a woman who is a scientist, singer, painter, business executive, doctor, lawyer, acrobat or plumber, if you are beautiful, people will notice. Men will notice, of course, but women will notice, too. It is very common, in fact, for women to point out how beautiful other women are.

So if you are a very smart scientist-blogger who happens to be beautiful, it will be noticed. This should be taken as obvious.

Unfortunately, it also is a fact that people, almost exclusively men, will be lame about it to some degree. Often they are not trying to be lame, but sometime they are. There are people who honestly look at beautiful women as pieces of meat. This is appalling and these people are idiots. But many men who are lame about it are actually trying to be nice. They don’t feel they are demeaning someone by calling out the fact that they are beautiful.

So to say “I’ll be the first to say that Sheril is quite fetching” is a far cry, IMHO, from demeaning someone as a piece of meat. Sheril is, in fact, attractive! The young man who made this statement was saying what many people were thinking. Should this statement have not been uttered? Was it off base for someone to comment on the physical appearance of this women?

It’s hard for me to reach that conclusion. The blogger in question is blogging for Discover Magazine, a big, popular public magazine. Welcome to public life. Your physical appearance is fair game, just like it is for your male co-blogger, who is kind of hot himself.

I recognize that I could be wrong about this. I am genetically disposed to appreciating beautiful women. It is never, ever my intent to pre-judge, demean or disrespect anyone, beautiful women included. But it is hard to apologize for noticing them.

2009-03-28  »  lolife