Pretty Privilege & Power: Facing harassment in a beauty-obsessed world

When you’re writing about sexism, the universe delivers in spades. Okay, it delivers many other times, too, but this thing I’m going to tell you about, is a little too on the nose. I was almost finished writing this post about pretty privilege when something completely unexpected happened: I was sexually harassed at my own book event — you know, for the book I wrote about sexism.

As I finished signing books, a man approached me, extended his hand, and purred, “Thanks for bringing the beauty.” Before realizing what was happening, I shook his hand, and he caressed my thumb. He asked me if I always looked like that (whatever the hell “that” is) and proceeded to ramble on about his “beloved ex-wife,” repeatedly making vomit sounds when mentioning her. Hmm, I wonder why she’s his ex? On and on he went, ignoring my nonverbal and verbal cues that I needed to go, friends were waiting, I was uncomfortable and basically trapped behind the high signing table. When I finally wriggled free past the table and his looming body, he asked for my email address. When I said I didn’t give out my email he said sarcastically, “Be careful of those dangerous emails!”

Everything about this interaction felt like an insult. He may as well have called me stupid or vapid given the talk I’d just given didn’t seem to register. My immediate thought after the beauty comment was, “Does that mean only my conversation partner brought the substance?” Also, he made the beauty comment in front her, so I guess she didn’t “bring the beauty?” It was all so icky.

Pretty privilege stems from conforming to conventional beauty standards, and I don’t exactly fit that mold as a woman of a certain age with gray streaks in my hair. (I mean, a six-year-old recently described my hair as “all gray” but screw her. Kidding! I love her—and my gray—but that joke also reveals my own internalized sexism). Still, I had dressed up, styled my long curls, and put on some makeup. Being seen as pretty in a man’s eyes has its downsides. I know, I know: #NotAllMen. But let’s be honest: #EnoughMen.

All women, whether conventionally attractive or not, experience harassment. But those deemed “pretty” are often seen as asking for it. Why else would they wear makeup, style their hair, go blonde, wear trendy clothes, look like that? Could it be that they’ve been told all their lives that their appearance is their most valuable asset? Or that society actually believes pretty people are intrinsically better and more deserving, making the pursuit of beauty feel like a necessity?

I remember the day friends and I toasted to being mostly invisible to men post 40 because the fear of harassment and rape had diminished.

The book event where this harassment occurred was sandwiched between two other events, both of which included a question that ties this post together. The first event was my book launch party which was a blast and more special than I ever imagined—packed with friends and strangers, the conversation was easy¹ and the Q & A was wonderful. Plus, there was cake! And swag!

But there was one thing that bothered me: The last audience question. Or rather, how I answered it.

A woman asked how to deal with a girl who knows she’s pretty, and walks around like she deserves more than others. This isn’t only unfair to others, she pointed out, but we all know being pretty by cultural standards is temporary. Such a good question! But since we had just been discussing how many girls feel undeserving—lacking a healthy sense of entitlement to respect, a voice, and money—I struggled to shift gears. I mean, as early as third grade, girls start asking for less than boys if they’re negotiating with a man which reflects the same gender gap we see in adult women. Argh! But I did answer.

I mentioned how decades of research show we assume attractive people are kinder, smarter, more trustworthy and generous. In court, they’re less likely to be found guilty and are given lighter sentences. So, I said, I could see why a conventionally pretty girl might develop that attitude. I mumbled something about the need to discuss with girls how “pretty” is a moving target and fades quickly, as youth is a requirement for conventional beauty. Then we moved on to the celebration. But I could feel my answer had fallen flat, or maybe it was just me who felt unsatisfied.

Later, my teenage son who attended the event, brought it up. He told me he’d often witnessed the entitlement of pretty girls. They expect boys to do favors for them — get my jacket, bring the car around, carry my bag—and boys do it for them, if they’re pretty, he told me. I agreed it wasn't fair to use privilege in that way but also reminded him that feeling empowered isn’t the same thing as actual power. So I want to really dig into it this phenomenon and what we can do about it.

It’s true, being pretty is currency for girls in a world where they hold so little. Pretty is welcomed in a culture where girls’ voices, ambition, and authority are not; where we teach girls it’s more important to be likable than to be respected. Despite outperforming boys in school, girls still believe they are less intelligent. Not surprisingly, as with any form of power, some girls will take advantage of pretty privilege because it offers certain social, professional, or personal benefits, including male attention. They may wield it against boys and, because society tells them their value lies in their appearance, they may believe they are superior to other girls.

Of course, hierarchy and dominance are patriarchal concepts that needs dismantling and wreak havoc on equality. But if a girl genuinely likes how she looks, it’s a revolutionary act, and not something I want to take away from her. Yet even girls who meet conventional standards of beauty, often still nitpick their appearances. It’s hard to be satisfied when you’re inundated with messages to scrutinize every part of your body for flaws so you can buy what’s “needed” to fix said flaws. And even pretty girls intuit sex appeal is about the only power they’re granted. It’s difficult to fault them for wanting to use it.

Pretty power, though, is mostly an illusion. True power resides with those who decide what’s beautiful or normal, and who reaps the rewards. Girls and women have been playing by men’s rules for centuries. As I wrote in Why Your Daughter’s Version of Body Autonomy Might Look Different Than Yours, “Succeeding at beauty and sexiness, especially one that adheres to the straight male fantasy, may feel good, but as the feminist critic Jill Filipovic writes in Cosmopolitan, it’s a cultural “head-­pat to keep us satisfied with subservience.” Real power is about the fair distribution of resources, political influence, and personal agency.”

Moreover, relying on pretty privilege comes with its own set of challenges. It often means feeling like a target or facing assumptions that you lack intelligence or skill, or that you're seeking attention, when you're not. This is why I desperately want girls and women, conventionally pretty or not, to recognize they (we!) are all in the same boat—a boat that's designed to sink because of the inherent cracks in it’s structure, and because women inside the boat are pushed to fight with each other for the rare top spot—for scraps—until it capsizes.

At the final event, a woman asked what my hopes were for girls as we move forward. My answer, of course, was that they see a female president take office in January. But then I thought of the two prior events and the coinciding power and disempowerment that come with attention to one’s appearance. I added that I hoped we keep our eye on the prize of self-­esteem and inner beauty and teach our kids to do the same. We need to decouple a girl’s appreciation of her body from society’s validation of it. There’s perhaps nothing more radical in the fight against sexism than to teach our girls not only to love their expanding hips and developing curves but to view themselves as embodied and whole, rather than as a collection of parts deemed pretty or not pretty.

Ultimately, we want girls to understand that pretty privilege is fleeting. Real power comes from within, and from knowing what we deserve, not from how others perceive us. We want those who experience the entitlement of pretty girls to know it’s not fair, but also, they, like the rest of us, must stop worshipping superficial beauty. We all age, we all become infirm, and we need to be left with a self we’re proud of—regardless of how our bodies look. Of course, in a world that constantly reinforces the value of beauty, detaching from the reliance on it for validation or acceptance is difficult. When girls understand that, they’ll understand why they can feel simultaneously powerful and disempowered by something as seemingly innocuous as a selfie.

I, then, told the bookstore audience about my fleeting wish to be rescued while being ambushed by the man at the prior event. I had imagined being dragged away by the group of people talking just inches away, or their forming a protective line between him and me. Thankfully, I’m a grown woman who writes on this topic a lot and could quickly assess the situation, recognize it was fucked up, and “impolitely” walk away in the middle of his monologue. But a teenage girl would likely have heard him saying: “you have nothing important to say. I am entitled to your body and your time. I decide when this interaction is over.” She would perform femininity with a smile and head nodding (as I initially did), trying to assess whether or not this verbal harassment could turn physical if she disappointed him, all while telling herself she was making a big deal of nothing.

When I think about all of the mental labor that goes into interacting with some men, I get tired. So I finished off my response about my hopes for girls by saying I would like them to be free of energy-sapping male entitlement. But since that isn’t going away any time soon, I want them to trust their gut and feel confident making their getaway when they need to, and to know when they need help doing so. I want girls to make eye contact with their friend if they suspect she’s being pestered and to elegantly or brazenly pull their friend away.

Untangling female worth from beauty and sexual desirability is a lifelong process. As adults, we can make it easier by defining it differently for our daughters (and our sons), helping them unlearn deep social conditioning by talking directly about sexism and encouraging them to use privilege, when they have it, responsibly.

1. Thanks in large part to my friend and conversation partner Debi Lewis, author of the beautifully written, heart-wrenching yet uplifting medical memoir Kitchen Medicine: How I Fed My Daughter out of Failure to Thrive.