Content Warning: body image, beauty standards, white supremacy, male gaze, misogyny, sexualisation, desirability.
The other day I saw a post online which articulated something to me that I have never properly addressed. It wasn’t complex, it was very
They were just white.
Somehow this articulation of such a simple truth gave me a dizzying feeling of realisation and a new lens to review my entire life through. Of course, the equation of whiteness with beauty is not a surprise, it is an ongoing conversation and one I engage in frequently; but this particular post went beyond the abstract and the theoretical, hitting me right where it hurts: in the memories of myself. In memories of growing up, of trying to understand where I fit in, of expectations and of desirability.
Talking about beauty and desirability is always problematic. What is beauty and why do we equate it with ‘womanhood’? The stereotypical images of beauty we see are white, cis, thin, able-bodied, young women presenting in a very specific way that we equate with ‘femininity’. These images hurt all of us on multiple axes, they present painful standard-bearers to all children who are told they will be women or must be attracted to women. And crucially, the pain occurs not only because the sought after standard is unattainable, but because it is deemed desirable.
Desirability is something difficult to talk about. It’s difficult to talk about, I think, because it is uncomfortable to confront how important it is. It’s difficult, even when you try to reject any notion of ‘being desirable’ to truly and fully not harbour those long engrained ideas. If we consider even the recent visibility and vocalisation of women ‘reclaiming’ body hair – there is still a level of acceptability to it, a boundary within which it is maintained so it is not fully undesirable. For instance it is mainly white
Growing up in a world where every image, every film, every song, story, magazine and shop portray to you that being desired by men is essential to your existence, even when you choose to reject the sentiment it still haunts you. It haunts you in explicit ways, but more often it haunts you in the form of your own insecurities born of a lifetime of the imposition of warped values.
I was talking to a friend recently about the subtle ways in which we are consistently told to change ourselves so that we can be desirable. From feeling too loud ‘for a girl’, to the bizarre considerations that go into choosing an outfit, or the anxious feeling that follows ‘talking too much about feminism’; it was clear that the need to be ‘desirable’ had venomously infiltrated our everyday. Whilst we were both in agreement, of course, that we must never change for anyone – we also felt the overwhelming struggle that even with that confidence there was the knowledge that to reject desirability was to reject being desired.
To reject being desired is to reject the very foundations upon which we are taught to base our lives. Whilst I fully support and attempt to reject notions of desirability and beauty therefore, it still hurts. Whilst I accept that in being brown – and more visually, in wearing a hijab – I fall out of all images of mainstream ‘beauty’, it affects me in contradictory ways. On the one hand it is freeing, I sometimes feel that having fallen off the radar of ‘desirability’ I am more able to dodge the toxic societal connections between ‘beauty’ and ‘sexualisation’, or ‘femininity’ and ‘object’ – I am able to become almost invisible in some ways, unaccounted for on some measures. But on the other hand it is painful. It is painful even whilst it is ironic. Painful to know that what society deems as beautiful is not what I see in the mirror. Uncomfortable to watch the way interactions unfold with other women – who look more like the archetypical woman – and the way they unfold with me. It’s petty and it’s problematic for sure, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t felt.
And that’s why then, when I saw this post reminding me that other people ‘weren’t actually prettier than me they were just white’, I was hit hard. It was a reminder that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, it is constructed, it is warped. ‘Classically beautiful’ is just a synonym for thin and white, it’s not meant to be attainable, it’s meant to sell products. In recalling the pain that haunted me as a teenage girl who could never suitably fit what the internalised male-gaze asked of me, I realised that the pain was not just in the past. It remained.
It’s a pain that no one talks about because it is uncomfortable to admit that despite your feminism, despite your radicalism and anti-capitalism, societal expectations and pressures remain. Despite rejecting and condemning the male gaze, it manages to infiltrate the rejection itself, it manages to persuade you that even in falling off the radar you should want to be noted by it. As Margaret Atwood well encapsulated it, ‘You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.’ And when you live with that contradiction – that you have created your existence through the lens of a heterosexual white man but are in fact a brown Muslim woman, it feels enormously difficult to ever escape. When on your own in your own head it is sometimes possible to see things for what they are; but the moment you exist in a social space the expectation of desirability descends and imposes itself despite your best wishes. It asks of you to seek for it, it whispers to you that with a few more spends, a bit more time, a lot more make-up, a different dress, a change of diet – you too could be desired.
But it lies. It is in its nature to be simultaneously all-pervasive and unattainable. It is in its nature to be white but impose itself on the entire world. We must go beyond rejecting desirability, we must derail it and dismantle the imperialist white supremacist, heterosexual, capitalist patriarchal values that sustain it. I’m not asking to be able to ‘feel pretty’, I’m not asking be told I’m pretty; I don’t need validation, I need freedom.
you got one thing wrong white is only more beautiful according to the mass media. in real life its different. for one 9 out of 10 white women on TV are pretty but in real life the numbers are reversed.
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Reblogged this on msamba.
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A related observation:
In movies, when we are given a non-white character that we are supposed to like / sympathize with, they almost always seem to make that character mixed race with “white” features, to better enable us white people to identify with these characters.
For example: the main character in Home had vanilla-caramel skin, wide doe eyes and perfect ringlets in her hair.
Another example: in the first Hunger Games movie, the girl from the all-black District 11 had vanilla-caramel skin, wide doe eyes and perfect ringlets in her hair. Now, my oldest daughter happens to have vanilla-caramel skin, wide doe eyes and perfect ringlets in her hair, so I had the highly enjoyable experience (ha!) of feeling like I was watching my daughter get some arrows planted in her torso while I watched that movie. So that’s ~2 hours of my life I’ll never get back.
Anyway, I wonder what would happen if we got to see many more characters outside that narrow mold of “beautiful” and it was made clear that we should perceive them as “beautiful” too. Won’t ever happen, but it’s a nice thought.
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First, why are you bothered? Second, every one of your posts appears to be the proposition of why can’t I have my cake and eat it too? You can’t, welcome to reality.
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and on the contrary, i, a white woman, always thought the colored girls were prettier. i think we admire people who don’t look like us because we are so critical of ourselves.
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I used to be suggested this blog by means of my cousin. I’m now not sure whether or not this publish is written by means of him as no one
else realize such unique approximately my trouble.
You are incredible! Thank you!
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