"A Woman's Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source?"

When I was a freshman in college, my writing teacher required each student to pick a topic that they wanted to present about and to find an essay that related. I chose the different beauty standards between women and men. There are two components of my presentation that I will post about. The first is the essay I chose was by Susan Sontag entitled “A Woman’s Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source?”, (The second is a video which will be a separate post). This essay is a very powerful work and Sontag touches on many major points of the differences of beauty standards throughout her work.

Many of Sontag’s points revolve around the notion that beauty has become a top priority to women, their character, and their concerns while men are preoccupied with being strong, effective, or competent. Society has set forth these standards that women must always be more interested in how they look rather than anything else. Sontag talk about women who have reached high levels in their careers such as: doctors, lawyers, and business women, and many of them confessed that they still worry and focus much on their physical appearance regardless of their amazing accomplishments. On the other hand, society also set the standards that men are more focused on what a man does or is and maybe his looks.

My favorite part of Sontag’s essay is when she explains that women are taught to see their body in parts. In society and the media today, bigger lips, bigger breasts, smaller waist, bigger eyes, thin, slender nose and many more features are glorified for women. From personal experience, I have been compared to these standards from society many times. There is nothing more devaluing than being told you do not fit the mold you are “supposed to” regardless of your acceptance of your own self. On the other hand, men are never told to dissect their body and to be certain measurements for acceptance, beauty, attractiveness, or worth. In fact, Sontag makes the argument that small imperfections on a man can make him appear more attractive. A small imperfection on a woman would never get a positive response in the same way. Sontag attributes this to a massive devaluation of women and I could not agree more.

Beauty is power. What is unfair and unacceptable is that this is the only power that women are encouraged to seek. Women are also expected to solely be beautiful objects that are good for nothing more than getting married and having and raising children. Many people find it outrageous and unbelievable when they meet a woman who is beautiful but also intelligent.

Many people believe that a successful woman is only successful because of her beauty. No one ever sees a successful woman as a hard-working, motivated, talented, ambitious woman. On the other hand, a man who is successful is always seen as respectable and inspiring. Nobody expects a man to use his physical appearance to upgrade in either society or the workforce, however, it is almost an immediate reaction for people to believe that a woman uses her beauty to her advantage, to manipulate people with her beauty, and to use that beauty to seek further power. 

Women are constantly being put up against other women. Women are taught to bring other women down to rise themselves up. Additionally, Adiche says that women are taught to see other women as competitors but only for the attention of men. Women are not taught to be competitive with other women for jobs or accomplishments (We Should All Be Feminists). On the other hand, men are not raised to be competitive with other men. This creates an unequal standard for women. Women should be empowering each other, lifting each other up, and on the side of their fellow women, not going against them to get short lived physical attention from a man. 

Society has caused women's beauty to be used in a malicious way. Women are expected to have their beauty at the fore front of their life and actions rather than being used in addition to the beauty of character and the nice, accepting, intelligent, giving, and thoughtful person that a woman should be. 

Link to PDF of Susan Sontag’s Essay, “Woman’s Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source?”:

https://mrglennjchs.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/sontag-and-stanton.pdf

2 Dope Queens

Today, I listened to a podcast by “2 Dope Queens” entitled “Dude for a Day”. I found this podcast very funny and I believe that Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson try to appeal their audience on common issues in a very comical way.

While they were talking about Tinder, I thought it was relatable for a lot of people. A lot of people have tried Tinder and a lot of people have tried to see what the hype is about. I believed the story that was being told was very funny and I believe it appeals to young audiences. One point she brought up is that a lot of people ask about race. She was clearly upset that a man asked her if she was Caribbean or American black. I felt bad for her that she immediately had to be labeled and put into a category for her race. I was surprised that this situation kept occurring in her experience with Tinder. Unfortunately, I have seen this a lot in my own life as many people think I am Hispanic, however, I am not. People like to know people’s race or nationality before they know them. It seems to me that people are uncomfortable when they cannot put someone into a category. We talked about this in class recently and we talked about people needing to categorize someone as either: a man or a woman. If they are unable to do that, they believe that something is wrong with you since there is no clear difference.

Their first guest appealed a lot to the audience. She tells a story about her boyfriend wanting her to wear ‘traditionally sexy female clothing and stilettos’. I think there is a lot of issues with a man trying to control what women wear so that they can get pleased from their ‘sexy clothing’. I believe that a woman should be able to decide what she wants to wear and should not need to wear sexy clothing to be loved by her man. What was even more horrible about the story is that the boyfriend found someone else who would wear what he wanted and cheated on her throughout the whole relationship. Although she laughed about it and was talking about her situation in a comedic way, I still believe that situations like this are unfortunate and unnecessary as it is ultimately her decision what she wears.

One thing that Ashley mentioned is that a man told her that ‘if she did not smoke she would be prettier’. I believe that people are free to make their own decisions and that they should not have to follow other people’s ‘rules’ to be attractive. A lot of women believe that their physical appearance is not enough and to be told that something that they are doing is making them less attractive is not fair to them. I believe that if a man was smoking a woman would not say that ‘a man would be more attractive if he did not smoke.’ In my opinion, if a woman were to say that she would be put down for that due to the fact that they are ‘tearing down’ a man and his appearance.

Overall, I truly enjoyed listening to this podcast from 2 Dope Queens. I love that these two women were able to empower and lift people by using relatable life situations and making a comedy about it.

Women’s fight for equality is long from over and, in many ways, has taken another step in the right direction after the success of the Women’s March a couple weeks ago. The need for feminism has greatly increased as the rights of women have continued to be lower than the rights of men.

Women are constantly facing sexism and disrespect on a regular basis. Women are still cat-called on the streets and are expected to reach one particular type of beauty standard in order to obtain society's view of 'beautiful'. Women who do not reach this ideal body type are often judged, shamed and are conditioned to believe that something is wrong with them. In addition, women are often ridiculed and even denied the rights to make decisions for their own body and have many politicians, such as President Donald Trump, who believe that women do not have the right to make the decision to have an abortion by themselves and that the government must make the decision for them.

A feminist is "a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes", said Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - a world famous Nigerian-feminist writer. Adichie states that women in Nigeria need the assistance of a man to do many simple things. For example, she states that women need the help of a man to enter a hotel because if they are alone they are automatically labeled a sex worker and denied access. Although I do not know much about Nigeria in general, I do not understand why someone would think that a woman would never be getting a hotel room by herself and why she is automatically labeled in such a negative way as a sex worker. This story by Adichie came as a great shock to me and although women in America do not face a problem as severe as this, we still face many challenges of our own. We live in a world where rape is still seen as the victim's fault rather than the fault of a man that forces a woman into doing a sexual activity she does not want to do. A woman does not deserve to have her body violated so that someone else can feel pleasure. No woman is simply an object. On top of that, women are often degraded while being slut shamed or cat-called. A couple weeks ago, while walking to my internship in New York City, a car pulled up next to me with three men yelling inappropriate sexual remarks. My first reaction was freight and decided to ignore them and keep walking. After I paid no mind to their outrageous comments, their sexual comments and verbally stating their desires of me turned into unpleasant and critical comments because I was not reacting the way they had hoped. After this unfortunate situation, I began to think of the mindset that someone must have to verbally harass someone innocently walking on the street. I have heard in the past that men only cat-call women in revealing clothing, however, I have seen this to be untrue as I was wearing dress pants, ballet flats, and a long pea coat; I have come to the conclusion that some men who cat-call do not see my value as a person and are just not thinking. In the end, I believe it is common occurrences such as this that increases the need for feminism and the continuation of the fight for women’s rights.

In fact, Kristen Anderson wrote in Modern Misogyny that the benefits revolving around considering one’s self a feminist are immense. Although often getting a bad reputation, feminists often have much better psychological health than women who hold more traditional values. Additionally, feminist women are less preoccupied with thinness of their body, are less likely to suffer from eating disorders, and experience better sexual intercourse. Moreover, they reject mass media’s idea of praising a thin, “perfect” body type.

Reasons like this are just a few motives for why I promote feminism. I believe feminist women are the women that will make a difference in the world and fight for what all women deserve including equal pay, more women CEOs, more representation in government, rights to their own body, less sexism, less emphasis on gender roles, and no more unnecessary degrading of women everywhere.