live through this
Mar. 11th, 2010 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanI have never been one of the Pretty girls.
Before anybody starts thinking this is a sudden onset of self-esteem issues, let me be perfectly clear that this statement has absolutely nothing to do with my appearance. The face in the mirror has it's good days and it's bad days, but mostly I'm pretty cool with it in a "It-may-not-be-perfect-but-it's-mine" kind of way. It appears that some pretty hot people also seem like my face just fine and I'm certainly not about to argue with that.
This statement is about identity.
When you're growing up people give you labels. Adults do it. Other kids certainly do it. And when I was growing up the label I got from everybody around me was The Smart One. The bookworm. The one who was destined to go to University.
My younger sister - now she was The Pretty One[1]. And man, was I envious. But the older I get, the more I think I really dodged a bullet by not getting that label slapped on me when I was young and likely to really internalize the things that other people thought of me. And let me be perfectly clear about this, I strongly internalized the way I was perceived. I don't know if it would be possible not to internalize the terms that people use to describe you, the qualities they praise you for, the thing that dictates the very way they relate to you.
The reason that I've learned to count myself lucky is quite simply because as I get older the things that people use to define me as "smart" don't really change all that much. I had to gave up precocious in return for a little wisdom-from-experience, but that's about it. Assuming I escape dementia or a debilitating head injury, I will probably get to continue thinking of myself as smart right until the end of my life. If my designated label was "creative" or "funny" or "green" I could probably say much the same thing.
But "pretty" is one of those labels that means some very specific things in our culture. And one of those very specific things is being young. And for the lucky ones, being young is something you eventually stop being.
That's the nasty fucking trick that gets played on the Pretty girls. It gets planted into their psyches that they are The Pretty One before they are even old enough to know what that means. It gets reinforced by the way they are treated by others the first 30-odd years of their lives - and people do treat others differently based on their perceived attractiveness judging them as more competent, more intelligent, nicer. It's held up in magazines and movies as both the ultimate goal and the natural state of all women. People treat them better or worse based on their appearance.
And then our culture starts to slowly peel away the very identity that's been pushed onto these women for the majority of their lives. No matter how accomplished intelligent, or surrounded by love a person is, no matter how many additional layers of "self" she has built for herself over the years - losing that first one? That's going to sting.
And I was lucky enough to escape all that.
I don't have to lie about my age. I can watch the gradual flowering of laugh lines across my face with fascination (and admittedly little trepidation). I can eschew expensive spas, painful injections, dubious skin treatments and creams that come in teeny tiny little bottles. I can eat what makes me happy and move my body solely to make myself feel good. I don't wax anything.
But man, suggest that you think I'm dumb? I'll probably eat your face.
[1]Years ago my sister said to me, "You know, when we were kids we were The Smart One, The Pretty One and The Nice One. Now we're The Weird One, The Fat One and The Bitch." I howled.
Before anybody starts thinking this is a sudden onset of self-esteem issues, let me be perfectly clear that this statement has absolutely nothing to do with my appearance. The face in the mirror has it's good days and it's bad days, but mostly I'm pretty cool with it in a "It-may-not-be-perfect-but-it's-mine" kind of way. It appears that some pretty hot people also seem like my face just fine and I'm certainly not about to argue with that.
This statement is about identity.
When you're growing up people give you labels. Adults do it. Other kids certainly do it. And when I was growing up the label I got from everybody around me was The Smart One. The bookworm. The one who was destined to go to University.
My younger sister - now she was The Pretty One[1]. And man, was I envious. But the older I get, the more I think I really dodged a bullet by not getting that label slapped on me when I was young and likely to really internalize the things that other people thought of me. And let me be perfectly clear about this, I strongly internalized the way I was perceived. I don't know if it would be possible not to internalize the terms that people use to describe you, the qualities they praise you for, the thing that dictates the very way they relate to you.
The reason that I've learned to count myself lucky is quite simply because as I get older the things that people use to define me as "smart" don't really change all that much. I had to gave up precocious in return for a little wisdom-from-experience, but that's about it. Assuming I escape dementia or a debilitating head injury, I will probably get to continue thinking of myself as smart right until the end of my life. If my designated label was "creative" or "funny" or "green" I could probably say much the same thing.
But "pretty" is one of those labels that means some very specific things in our culture. And one of those very specific things is being young. And for the lucky ones, being young is something you eventually stop being.
That's the nasty fucking trick that gets played on the Pretty girls. It gets planted into their psyches that they are The Pretty One before they are even old enough to know what that means. It gets reinforced by the way they are treated by others the first 30-odd years of their lives - and people do treat others differently based on their perceived attractiveness judging them as more competent, more intelligent, nicer. It's held up in magazines and movies as both the ultimate goal and the natural state of all women. People treat them better or worse based on their appearance.
And then our culture starts to slowly peel away the very identity that's been pushed onto these women for the majority of their lives. No matter how accomplished intelligent, or surrounded by love a person is, no matter how many additional layers of "self" she has built for herself over the years - losing that first one? That's going to sting.
And I was lucky enough to escape all that.
I don't have to lie about my age. I can watch the gradual flowering of laugh lines across my face with fascination (and admittedly little trepidation). I can eschew expensive spas, painful injections, dubious skin treatments and creams that come in teeny tiny little bottles. I can eat what makes me happy and move my body solely to make myself feel good. I don't wax anything.
But man, suggest that you think I'm dumb? I'll probably eat your face.
[1]Years ago my sister said to me, "You know, when we were kids we were The Smart One, The Pretty One and The Nice One. Now we're The Weird One, The Fat One and The Bitch." I howled.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-12 07:43 am (UTC)I have gone through bouts of lack of self-esteem due to never being called attractive/pretty/sexy/beautiful, but I have a loving husband, good friends and (mostly) supportive family, so I think I win.