AS women and girls, we have been told we can be anything we want to be, and it shows. We are seizing opportunities closed to previous generations — in science, technology, sports and even leadership. But then, we’re also getting another message: what we look like matters more than any of the above. In fact, when it comes to not winning the genes lottery game, life really sucks for any woman considered by the society as unattractive given the inclination to almost always put emphasis on women’s looks and bodies instead of their character traits or abilities even in situations where looks should not matter and the widespread nature of the inclination. And in today’s media-saturated world where we are bombarded by images of what we should look like and what we fail to look like, this trend is quite disturbing than ever. In this wise, I’ve met women who are routinely judged and even humiliated for things that have nothing to do with their work or qualification. In fact, a friend recently mentioned that she was urged by a mentor to paint her nails for job interviews presumably to present herself as pretty. The truth is that there are many of these striking and disturbing examples to show that people find it difficult to judge the performances of women, without being distracted by their appearance; from personal secretary to back office manager, from reporter to anchor and on to friendship level, we all seem to want to determine the worth of women and girls around us solely on appearance and our sense of how pretty they are even as this is not the societal operating code for judging men and boys.
The society seems to have a simple judging reality for the female folk: as far as the worth of women and girls is concerned, skills come second to appearance. To buttress this position, a recent survey examining the attitudes of 500 hiring professionals reported that the female job seeker most likely to be selected for hire based on photos only were those that subscribe to the beauty standards set by the society. Only 15.6 percent of hiring professionals surveyed would consider hiring the heaviest job seeker, about the same number who would consider hiring a frowning woman. Additionally for women, the interview etiquette seems to be: always smile, be perpetually youthful, diet, and make sure your interviewer gets the message that you are the prettiest thing available and around. Along this line, not only does the society judge beauty based on how much makeup a woman is wearing, it also means that for the society, make-up adorned women must rank higher in competence and trustworthiness, according to a study funded by Procter & Gamble, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston University, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. A study in the American Economic Review further said women who wear make-up can earn higher than 30 percent more in pay than non- makeup wearing workers. But the society does not just canvass the prettiest culture for the female at the formal level. Even at the informal level, mothers, aunts and grandmothers shower their little girls with compliments on their physical beauty as they grow up, which isn’t entirely a bad thing. The issue, however, comes when little girls who are now all grown up are forced to face the reality that their appearance is the first thing that others notice and that people will treat them in either a positive or negative way based on that assessment of appearance. We teach females that they should be pretty first and smart, second. As a consequence, this imposed pretty calculation forces young women to worry about how they look from a young age. Instead of just getting along in life at young ages and focusing on how to acquire necessary skills and excel in them, they’re worrying about getting fat, dieting, wearing makeup and even worrying how their boobs look in a dress.
The unfortunate reality is that judging by the extremes to which we have taken the idea of beauty, and the exclusivity of the features which we deem beautiful today especially for women and the current context of judging women solely on the basis of prettiness, we are invariably breeding a society that equates external appearance with intrinsic value for women, which is a dangerous assumption indeed. For how then do we hope to have females in the society who would set great store by such important values as intelligence, strength, courage, dignity, kindness, and such ones if all we encourage in them is external appearance? The implication is that we must be ready to thoroughly examine the present messages and assumptions and values of the society with respect to women and radically and positively overhaul them. And this is a task that we must take very seriously as the society is already bearing the negative effect of the present prettiest culture. Imagine, for instance, the revelation in Lisa Bloom’s book, Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, that “15 to 18 percent of girls under 12 now wear mascara, eyeliner and lipstick regularly; (and that) eating disorders are up and self-esteem is down; and 25 percent of young women would rather win their state’s Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize.”
It is the same sense in which even bright, successful female undergraduates say they’d rather be hot than smart, and on the international scene, a Miami mom would end her life through complications from cosmetic surgery while leaving behind two teenagers. And we are forced to ask: how does a child even grapple with the savage hierarchy of this ‘lookism’ that usually starts from the playground when the adults themselves are so gauche about it? The bottom line really is that it’s about time we avoided starting conversation with a little girl by stating how pretty she is, and instead, ask her what she likes to do, what are her likes/dislikes, or even what she’s reading.Instead of little girls learning that pretty comes first, they must be taught and encouraged to instead start to think that their words, opinions, thoughts and intelligence matter more. Sure, being pretty is good; it’s great even if left to the desires of each individual. Which is why it must be stated that being pretty isn’t the problem.
The problem lies in the absurdity that comes with the imposed societal idea and inclination that being attractive and pretty is the sole platform and way to get ahead in life for women, thus causing girls and women to want to invest themselves solely in cultivating good and pretty looks rather than working hard to acquire real skills. Of course, we know that ultimately looks would not get the job done especially at the very highest level and women would be left stranded when it comes to the key structures of the society. We therefore have a duty going forward to raise our children, particularly the girls, with the knowledge that being smart and having excellent skills is indeed the superpower and the most important yardstick for relevance in the society. We, in raising the generation of the future, must teach our own children that being pretty is not what they should aspire to, but rather teach them that the power of the mind is the only sustainable marketable trait.
- Yakubu is of the Department of Mass Communication, Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria.