1) sometimes when people don't get one, they're both women. 2) if you've been told all your life that you have to conform to certain rules, and you see someone you think is breaking them, you lash out at that person. 3) As far as I know, men aren't sat down at a young age* and told "this is how to keep women in their place" - the patriarchy is a self perpuating sustem ingrained into our society. Everyone is exposed to that society, men and women alike. (Everyone is told how to play the ugly card, everyone gets to play it.) 4) Crab buckets.
And stuff. My brain isn't here.
*though maybe they are! I've always wondered what the boys were told when the girls were told about tampons
> if you've been told all your life that you have to conform to certain rules, and you see someone you think is breaking them, you lash out at that person
That's just our hardwiring as social animals -- behaviour is to be conformed to. Triumph and tragedy all in one.
> I've always wondered what the boys were told when the girls were told about tampons
Ha! I can't remember, but whatever we were given to do we were mostly speculating on what on earth the girls would be told. I really think it might be better to tell everybody at once: this happens to girls, deal with it. I'm sure the thinking is that the girls would be embarrassed, but then taking them to one side to do it is surely only demonstrating that there's something to be embarrassed about in the first place.
And I'm sure it's already long grained in by then.
That's just our hardwiring as social animals I don't understand the word 'just' in this statement. Of course it's part of our existence as a social animal.
Well I guess when I read a statement like yours I automatically (and incorrectly it seems) assume that the behaviour is being ascribed to jealousy, envy, anger, etc: that it's on a personal level and there's a larger degree of volition than I suspect there really is.
"...the patriarchy is a self perpuating system ingrained into our society. Everyone is exposed to that society, men and women alike."
I think that's one of the reasons I find the word 'patriarchy' distracting and unhelpful. Similar structures tell guys they can't cry or can't be nurses. But 'patriarchy' implies someone's in charge, and it's probably the men.
I work in an all-female charity and we had a staff night out. My colleagues opened the conversation with a discussion of women's roles and stereotyping from men and how awful that was. Maybe 30 minutes later, they were bitching - in a very personal way - about some other colleagues. I brought that up and obviously got a lot of surprised looks.
Oh, I remember. I'd mentioned a friend who does glamour modelling, and my colleagues assumed she must be under some guy's thumb.
In this case I like the idea of something I can use for internet surfing and the like, that will have massive battery life. Running a very lightweight system like Android on it sounds perfect to me.
You know, now I've mulled on it, I'm thinking that ugly card blog post is not part of the solution. It's part of the problem.
It's the 'you are beautiful, all of you' thing.
No, you're not. This is the same mentality that powers the 'anyone can make it' American Dream, and it fucks up US society top to bottom because not everyone can. Not everyone is academically gifted enough to go to university, not everyone can earn above average wage, not everyone can play the guitar like Eric Clapton or football like Beckham.
Some people are plug ugly, and I don't mean only those with facial deformities. Some are just kinda not that good looking. As a friend of mine remarked after he put his picture on Am I hot or not, he's accepted he's a 7.5. There is an aesthetic ideal, like it or not, and that it is heavily warped by society and the media is a bad thing, but no, we're far from all being beautiful. Saying we are is just a plain lie.
Defining beauty as an objective set of physical features is limiting and harmful. Are you saying you wouldn't think Ursula was beautiful if she grew up with gap teeth and spots?
Well then you're redefining the meaning of the word. Is someone with gap teeth and spots entitled to and worthy of respect as a person? Yes, absolutely. Should that play any part in how we react to them in life, whether at a job interview or when making friends? Absolutely not. Are they going to get their sheet ticked at speed dating? Probably not.
I think doing that kind of shifting goalposts is the wrong way to go about it. Far better to accept that beauty is something that not everyone has, *but* that it's not that big a deal.
Compare: if you're short, you're always going to be short. Saying 'Oh, you're ALL of great stature' is just ludicrous. And you won't get ticked as much at speed dating. Similarly if you're disabled: if you can't walk, you can't walk, and no amount of mealy-mouthed rephrasing is going to make a jot of difference. If you're in a wheelchair, you're not going to be climbing up Arthur's Seat: some stuff is out of reach. Not everyone can be or do everything.
No. I'm not 'redefining the meaning of the word'. Beautiful means 'attractive and pleasing to the eye'. There are no measurements, no criteria for what makes someone or something attractive and pleasing to the eye, because it is a subjective quality. It's not a measurable quantity like being a certain height, or of a certain ability on the football field. It's completely within the eye of the beholder.
I find my girlfriend beautiful. I also find her sexy, attractive, alluring, and all those other words that mean she ticks my boxes, flips my switches, whatever. Now, you might not find her beautiful yourself, but does that mean that I am wrong? No. Does that mean she is not beautiful? Hell no.
Beauty is subjective. There are no goalposts to move because we can't hold people to one objective standard. The fact that we try to is the basis of multitudes of self-image problems, eating disorders, and other problems that come from trying to measure up to something impossible and untrue. This is not the same as saying "this is a hill, you cannot walk up it". It is saying "this person does not find you attractive. this one does. this one would like you better if you had shorter hair." Everybody has their own criteria and the point of saying 'everyone is beautiful' is because everyone is. Not all to the same people, and not all for the same reasons. But they are.
I agree, focusing on beauty can be hurtful, and it's not a good way to judge someone at all. But I can guarantee you beyond a shadow of a doubt telling a girl 'beauty isn't important, but by the way some people are just plain ugly, period' is a great way to fuck up her thinking and give her a complex that will last years. Unless you can change everything about how society functions letting her believe that some people are just plain ugly and unattractive will have her constantly wondering if she is one of those ugly people; she'll starve herself to fit into those ideals, diet and primp and destroy her self-confidence to fit into a mold. How does telling her 'you are beautiful, even if you don't look like an airbrushed model on a magazine cover' hurt her? She might get rejected by going for people who aren't into her - but she would have anyway, and at least now she has the self-confidence to take that rejection and move on to someone who does dig her. I just don't see how it fucks up society to encourage that sort of self-image at all. I don't get it.
Oh, you did not just compare ugliness to disability.
You are defining beauty and lack thereof as objective - they're just not. This isn't an arguable point; it's a demonstrable fact. I could post a picture of anyone - of anyone - on my journal, with a poll, and I guarantee you that there would be no firm consensus on whether or not that person was beautiful.
They could probably make a judgment on whether that person was 'conventionally physically attractive' completely separately from their own personal opinion - but that's a set of factors laid out by society, rules for us to follow, not a definition that anyone actually adheres to, whether they say they do or not.
Why do you think people have 'embarrassing crushes' or 'guilty secret fantasies' involving people who are considered by mainstream media to be unattractive? It's because those people are attractive to them. Andrew Lloyd Webber found someone who wanted to shag him just like anyone else, even if you and I consider him a disgusting little homunculus.
These people are beautiful (no matter what you say, words can't bring me down etc etc). But seriously, are you telling me that you buy into mainstream society's message that there's really such a thing as objectively 'pug ugly'? Really?
And yes, of course some people appeal to a narrower band of admirers than others - of course biological factors play a part in attraction and if you have asymmetry/a non childbearing figure/what-the-hell-ever then yes, the pool of people who consider you beautiful narrows, bit by bit. But the ability to successfully apply biological absolutes to the concept of beauty does not make 'beauty' itself an objective concept, anymore than Mozart having a wider appeal than Shostakovich due to being catchier and more accessible makes 'good music' an objective concept.
"You're not beautiful, but that's okay - some people are just ugly" is the wrong answer. Oh my God, Joachim. How could you say that? Think about it for a minute. How could you?
The right answer is, "So not everyone finds you beautiful. But some people will, and do, and so should you."
We're not telling people to go try out for America's Next Top Model here. We're telling them that what society tells them is beauty is fine for some, and not for others. And as those others, we need to find what makes us beautiful, and get right on celebrating it.
> But the ability to successfully apply biological absolutes to the concept of beauty does not make 'beauty' itself an objective concept, anymore than Mozart having a wider appeal than Shostakovich due to being catchier and more accessible makes 'good music' an objective concept.
You're kind of making my point for me... to that I say, why not? Obviously it's naive and very limiting to constrict the whole range of qualities of a piece of music to a single metric of good/bad. It's a huge complex multidimensional thing, same as how we find people attractive. But somehow, some stuff is at the bottom of the heap and some at the top.
But it's not. There's very little (and possibly nothing) that some people out there don't actively prefer. There is no objective standard for beauty, just lots of subjective people making separate judgements.
Or let's take the music thing from another angle: some people will write a song that lives in the hearts of others for years, whether it's Greensleeves or Let it Be.
Some people will write a song that nobody but their mum likes.
...and thus to me 'You're all beautiful' is like saying 'You'll all write wonderful songs' in a world where songwriting is obsessed over and excessively used to judge people's worth.
Better to change the perception and see that while not everyone has it, it's only one of many things that make people who they are.
But everyone does have it. You do not love a person that you do not find beautiful. You do not look at a face that you consider to be ugly and love that face's mouth and want to kiss it, love that face's eyes and want to stare into them forever. You find beautiful the things you love.
Let's say we are trying to define beauty here. Why would you want to define it in this way? Why would you want to take one of the tenants of our society, one of the pillars on which it stands, and rather than pull everyone up on their own pedestal, with their own admirers and their own view, you would dig holes for them and tell them to get used to it, and remember that they have loads of other things going for them and that they don't actually need that view? What purpose does that serve? Why does that need to happen?
Again you've got a single point of measurement there. And music is actually a great example. People are told that their music is shit because it's not bland pop music that will be bought by 12-year-old-girls. But not everyone likes bland pop music. Some people like rap. Some people like heavy metal. Some people like psychedelic jazz. The only way to find out whether a song you've written is music is liked by people is to get it out there and have people listen to it - and then it doesn't matter if 99% of people hate it with a fiery passion, if you can find a tiny audience.
There is almost nobody out there whose face is so unusual that nobody will look at it and think "Gosh, they're gorgeous". There are plenty of people that aren't "mainstream", but telling people that they're ugly and will therefore never find anyone because they're not mainstream is what causes all of the body issues.
"Sorry, nobody likes breasts that shape. This year, noses are 3mm shorter than that. You have freckles - everyone hates freckles." - this leads to people who loathe their bodies, when actually there are plenty of people out there who don't care that your breasts are slightly uneven, your nose is above average and love freckles.
There may be no objective (in the sense of would convince a ghost of perfect emptiness) beauty. Nevertheless there are facts about what sort of thing most people within a culture like, plus maybe some things that most humans like. Similarly, there are facts about what people don't like (and in fact, I'd say there are more likely to be cross-cultural facts about that).
These facts do serve the same sort of role as an objective standard in a lot of the cases of interest. I don't see why everyone is getting so excited about that fact.
Because the fact that these subjective factors serve as an objective standard - for whatever reason that is - is one that makes an awful lot of people desperately unhappy. Deeply, suicidally unhappy in some cases. It means that an awful lot of people don't get what they want in life. They don't get the jobs they deserve. They don't get the friends they could have in school. They don't get the lovers they might have, had they had confidence in their own appearance, their own beauty. Society tells them they're ugly, and they believe it.
I didn't say it served a purpose, I said there were such facts about our preferences.
In some cases, they are probably facts because they do serve some sort of purpose (maybe an evolutionary one, for example), but not necessarily a moral purpose.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't seek to change these facts (after all, I agree are contingent) or to put them in a proper context (that is, to say that someone's worth is not defined by their beauty) where they cause harm to people, but neither do I see the value in denying that they currently exist.
I don't think people on this thread have overtly denied it, I think there's a tacit denial implicit in the claim that everyone likes something different: of course they do, but our likes and dislikes cluster around some common standards. I think those standards are what momentsmusicaux is talking about.
And I'm saying that those standards are not objective, and calling into question what purpose there could possibly be in framing them as being so.
We could absolutely decide to have a semantic argument about whether beauty is (a) in the eye of the beholder or (b) the number of dots above the line you draw in an arbitrary place on the chart of 'common standards', but I don't think that serves much of a purpose either.
Let me rephrase my previous question: What harm does it do to tell people that they should love their faces and bodies and find beauty in them? What harm can it possibly do to tell people that they are beautiful?
I agree that those standards aren't objective (but that's not news: I'm not convinced there are objective standards in many fields), although they're pretty pervasive. In common with morality, I think it makes sense for momentsmusicaux to use ordinary language about those standards.
I don't think it does any harm to tell people that they should love their own faces and bodies.
If people were kept in blissful isolation before releasing them into the cruel world, I think it might do some harm to give them unrealistic expectations about how other the world would rate them aesthetically. But in fact that hardly ever happens: most people are only too aware of where they stand: it cannot do them harm to tell them they are beautiful by the standards of their society, but it probably doesn't do much good either.
OTOH there's telling someone they're beautiful as an expression of your personal preference or affection for them, which I think does do them some good (assuming they care about what you think).
The whole point is that cultural judgements of beauty are affected by the common cultural notions. If we tell people enough times that being "Ginger" makes you ugly, and nobody want you, then it becomes true, despite the French (for instance) thinking that redheads are gorgeous.
Telling people they _are_ ugly, rather than that _less people fancy your type on average_ gives them something much harder to deal with (as well as being untrue).
I don't know why you haven't replied to my comment yet, but if you don't want to address all of it at least tell me what harm it does to tell people they're beautiful. How does that harm them and society? I really want to know what your reasoning is so I can attempt to understand your statements.
Don't you dare try to turn this into a semantic argument. We are not arguing about different concepts here - we are both talking about physical appearance, about what society says about physical appearance, what the majority say about physical appearance, and whether that standard can be considered to be an objective concept and whether doing so is harmful or otherwise.
I don't understand how you commented supportively on my post yesterday and yet you can say things like this. If you want to change things you're going to need to do things that make you uncomfortable, including look at your definition of 'beautiful' and the way it's used in society and then changing how you use it.
I'm not going to say 'wonderful' because that's not what I mean. I mean 'beautiful' because I believe that everybody is attractive to somebody, and that telling them that is not setting them up for failure but instead hopefully contributing to a positive self-image so that they can find that someone (if they want to) someday.
Criticize the American dream all you like but I don't understand how telling someone something positive about themselves is ensuring disappointment. That seems defeatist and untrue.
I certainly wouldn't love her any less, but if she grew up to be short and round with gap teeth and spots and had her heart set on a tanned adonis football player, I'd have to tell her she's probably going to be disappointed. It *may* be he falls for her sense of humour or her intelligence or her general charm and poise. But saying she has an equal chance to the leggy blonde would be a cruel lie.
It's like I said about the American notion that all can succeed -- it sets you up for a fall and the ensuing disappointment is all the more unbearable.
But that's a terrible sentiment! I'm not espousing lying to kids, but it's not lying to tell your daughter she's beautiful and that other people will think that as well, no matter what she looks like. You don't know what this tanned football player fancies - if she's going to get her heart broken she might as well understand that it's because maybe she's not his particular brand of beautiful, not because she's just plain ugly and won't have a chance with anybody.
Well I certainly wouldn't say she doesn't stand a chance with anybody!
But it's about probabilities. Take just one simple component, like height. If you're a really tall woman or a really short man you're not going to have as big a pool of people who might find you beautiful. I doubt anything is going to change that.
You may not be able to widen the pool to include as many people as are going to buy into the lowest common denominator ideals of beauty, but there is a hell of a lot that can change the size of that pool by a huge amount. See my comment re: 'ugly' guys getting 'hot' chicks when it doesn't ever really work the other way round.
I am short and round with wonky teeth and I traditionally get exactly what I want - including conventionally gorgeous adonises (or rather aphrodites), should the mood take me.
Now, I know what you'll say - that's because I'm confident, charming, and let's not forget exceptionally talented.
And I used to agree, but then I realised that that was bullshit. There is singly no chance in hell that a gorgeous girl would turn around to me and tell me how sexy I was if I wasn't able to believe it of myself. No way in hell.
Furthermore, this whole concept is deeply sexist, and reeks of the P-word. Nobody has ever questioned whether 'ugly' dudes have just as good a chance of pulling gorgeous women as good looking ones - it's demonstrably the case that they can. Why should men shoot for the stars and women dial back their expectations?
What? Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me here? If you're disagreeing, you're wrong. Famously ugly men almost always marry famously beautiful women.
Yes but they're still ugly! And Dudley Moore may have been a hit with women but he had other things to make up for it that every short guy has going on as a sideline.
There's double standards. I may be guilty of them. I'm going to go away and think about it but I'm mostly going to go to bed because it's late.
And you wouldn't believe how many good-looking women I've not dared go anywhere near.
No, they're not! Not according to their wives/girlfriends! If they have women in love with them, those women find them beautiful. Sure, there may be the odd exception here and there who really are cows who're just with them for the money/status, but mostly if someone's prepared to sleep with you, they think you are beautiful. Generally speaking you do not fall for someone if you have no physical attraction to them. People who fall in love with 'uglies' are not an exception to this. Ergo these people are demonstrably not objectively ugly.
I haven't. On balance, I know way more men going out/hooking up with women conventionally 'out of their league' than women going out/hooking up with men out of theirs. I'm not saying that no 'ugly' guys have problems, I'm saying that a disparity exists.
Besides, sticking with known quantities, can you name me any famously ugly women dating famously beautiful men? The closest I can think of are older women with younger men, but every one of those women were once (or still are) very beautiful. I'm sure I don't have to tell you what different an absence of role models makes.
Now, I really don't want to get too deeply into this because I think the issue is tangential to the material point, but there are as I see it two reasons for this.
1. It doesn't hurt that male standards of beauty are far, far wider than women's. I'm not saying guys aren't still under pressure to look a certain way, and increasingly so as time goes on, but nobody can tell me that they get the same crap women do, not by a long shot.
2. No boy's dad would ever tell him he couldn't go for whatever girl he wanted, even if she was the personification of Helen of Troy and he was 'pug ugly'. Men are actively encouraged at every step the way to shoot as high as they can; they're taught that determination and self-confidence can get you anywhere and everywhere, they're largely proven right, and they have plenty of role models to support the concept.
Results:
"ugly men with beautiful women" - 2,750 "ugly men with pretty women" - 406 "ugly men with good looking women" - 490
"ugly women with beautiful men" - 3 "ugly women with handsome men" - 47 "ugly women with good looking men" - 8
See?
I will also observe that most of the results scanning down the women's pages were quotes from lines like "Why do we always see ugly men with beautiful women but never ugly women with beautiful men?" so the majority of those few hits they do have may well be false positives.
Joachim would tell his hypothetically plain daughter that she should probably scale her expectations back a bit if she had her sights set on Beckham, and concentrate on the equally ugly men who'll apparently be more likely to love her for her sparkling personality instead of her looks. Maybe he'd say the same thing to his plain son who set his sights on Angelina. But I doubt it.
I'd argue that we have less billionaire women who can thus attract whatever man they like. And definitely less ugly billionaire women, because they'll be even less likely to be successful, due to the usual negative societal effects.
I've heard men told repeatedly that women are out of their league. Been told it myself on numerous occasions. Possibly it's not the kind of thing men tell each other in front of women so much?
I'll dgive you the one on wider standards of beauty for men though :->
I suppose I'm thinking of women who assume that because they were glasses, no-one will find them attrractive. Or who are pale or freckled or short or whatever. Nerd culture often prizes these qualities, which I suppose helps to an extent.
But I've known a few who are gobsmacked that those qualities might be desired. Makes you wonder where the pressures come from, exactly.
I get thrown when I'm talking to people about sexism and conformity, and they clumsily point at the mythical boardroom of men (with cigars, obviously) ticking lists of fashions, standards, hemlines and recommiting to ensuring how awful bras are.
Hell, here I am in a children's charity, where I'm one man for 5,000 women. It's been run by women for 80 years. They're in charge. Except that there's something they're buying into. All this power and responsibility, and we give out teddybears with pink t-shirts for prizes. It really gets to me.
I think the Patriarchy is to blame for setting the standards, across the board, no question whatsoever. But just because it's called the Patriarchy doesn't mean that all the movers and shakers are men.
My issue with the phrasing of "the patriarchy is to blame for setting the standards" makes it sound like there's an actual organisation deliberately setting standards, which is clearly nonsense.
Something like "the patriarchical slant of society causes the standards to be the way they are" would seem less conspiracy-minded to me.
But semantics are important. They affect people's understanding of what you're saying.
If you're saying "The Patriarchy set our societal standards!" then a reasonable sized chunk of the population are going to look at you as if you were saying "The Communists are in charge of the Media!" or "The Lizard People eat our children!".
If you say "The patriarchal slant of society affects our standards" then you've got a more nuanced statement which doesn't push people away so much.
But I'm not discussing this with a reasonable sized chunk of the population. I'm discussing it with people I expect to understand that I'm not a crazy conspiracy theorist, and that I only need to say once "When I say 'the patriarchy' I'm not talking about the mythical cigar-smoking boardroom." I then expect to be able to use shorthand and have people remember that.
I'm not actually 100% clear what you do mean by it though, because we've never discussed it, and I've picked up my (vague) understanding of what people mean by it by being involved in internet "discussions". Do you mean "the slanted way in which society tends to provide better outcomes for men"? Or something else?
You know, I've never done this before, but I'm getting bored with tolerating derailing behaviour and have decided not to bother. The longer this goes on the more sarcastic and less interested I'm going to be, and so it's better I don't continue. This was not the argument I became involved in - not every discussion that takes place, even on your own journal, is a reason for you to chase around expecting people to clarify and qualify and define everything they say for your benefit.
When I say The Patriarchy, I mean The Patriarchy. I'm not using some mysterious personal definition. Go look it up yourself. One last time, I've done it for you:
Within feminist theory, patriarchy refers to the structure of modern cultural and political systems, which are ruled by men. Such systems are said to be detrimental to the rights of women.
And I'm not derailing, I'm discussing. If you don't want to take part in this discussion then that's fine, but don't expect me to stick to whatever guidelines you want put in place for a discussion on my journal. Discussions _wander_. It's one of the great things about them. We can start of talking about elephants and end up talking about South-African politics, via how much we like kittens. If somone dislikes the term patriarchy then they are absolutely within their rights to discuss that when the term is used in a way they dislike. That doesn't mean that they can't discuss the other points that are going on as well - that's one of the great things about threaded discussion forums.
But why is it a *patriarchy* if some of it is women setting standards for women?
Elsewhere, I'm having a conversation about how I'm likely to want to stay home and raise the hypothetical kids. Both women and men have told me that's weird. In one case, that I was probably a paedophile.
If I'm getting it from both ends, so to speak, why is it a patriarchy?
Because it, in the large majority of the cases, it means men do better. Sure, men get caught on the wrong side of things too, but on average, men do better.
If we're talking childrearing, or primary school teaching (I broke off a friendship with a girl over that one - 'male primary teachers just aren't natural'), or paternity leave, not so much. If we're talking those roles even being valued, then not so much.
That's why 'patriarchy' is a harmful term. It obscures who's penalised.
Originally (when I was 15), I assumed it meant men in charge, and the mythical boardroom. How awful, sure don't want to be one of those villains. Later, I learned it was more general and described male dominance - how awful, I'll try not to be one of them either. But when I read arguments about how there's a patriarchy dominating, say, a woman-run charity, I lose track of what problem is being described.
That's not a terribly useful response. He's asking a question which a lot of people do.
And it highlights what I was saying in my other comment - if you're going to engage with people online then then they aren't going to know what you mean, or what your background is, etc. So using terms that are ripe for misunderstanding and confusion is going to make life harder.
The mass media. If 50% of people like X then any TV show that wants to kep its ratings will appeal to X. Doesn't matter if thre are 10% liking each of Y, Z, A and B, the TV shows are terrified of being cancelled, and will thus take no chances in putting anything other than The Thing Most Likely To Succeed out there. They magnify our tastes, feed them back to us, and leave (young) people assuming that the centre of the mainstream is all that exists.
Beauty is subjective, we all find different things beautiful. The issue is that a certain type of someone's perceived beauty, extrapolated to impossibility, is a standard of beauty we should all aspire to but one which we should all aspire to desire, also. Even though it is physically impossible.
Precisely. It's the notion that we should all aspire to it. And yes, there is much wider variance in what's perceived to be beautiful than what the media shows us and what we feel we accept.
But Andrew Lloyd Webber is plug ugly by anyone's standards.
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andrewducker) wrote2010-06-22 12:01 pm
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Interesting. Because women buy into and feed and propagate that constantly.
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1) sometimes when people don't get one, they're both women.
2) if you've been told all your life that you have to conform to certain rules, and you see someone you think is breaking them, you lash out at that person.
3) As far as I know, men aren't sat down at a young age* and told "this is how to keep women in their place" - the patriarchy is a self perpuating sustem ingrained into our society. Everyone is exposed to that society, men and women alike. (Everyone is told how to play the ugly card, everyone gets to play it.)
4) Crab buckets.
And stuff. My brain isn't here.
*though maybe they are! I've always wondered what the boys were told when the girls were told about tampons
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> if you've been told all your life that you have to conform to certain rules, and you see someone you think is breaking them, you lash out at that person
That's just our hardwiring as social animals -- behaviour is to be conformed to. Triumph and tragedy all in one.
> I've always wondered what the boys were told when the girls were told about tampons
Ha! I can't remember, but whatever we were given to do we were mostly speculating on what on earth the girls would be told. I really think it might be better to tell everybody at once: this happens to girls, deal with it. I'm sure the thinking is that the girls would be embarrassed, but then taking them to one side to do it is surely only demonstrating that there's something to be embarrassed about in the first place.
And I'm sure it's already long grained in by then.
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I don't understand the word 'just' in this statement. Of course it's part of our existence as a social animal.
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I think that's one of the reasons I find the word 'patriarchy' distracting and unhelpful. Similar structures tell guys they can't cry or can't be nurses. But 'patriarchy' implies someone's in charge, and it's probably the men.
I work in an all-female charity and we had a staff night out. My colleagues opened the conversation with a discussion of women's roles and stereotyping from men and how awful that was. Maybe 30 minutes later, they were bitching - in a very personal way - about some other colleagues. I brought that up and obviously got a lot of surprised looks.
Oh, I remember. I'd mentioned a friend who does glamour modelling, and my colleagues assumed she must be under some guy's thumb.
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It's the 'you are beautiful, all of you' thing.
No, you're not. This is the same mentality that powers the 'anyone can make it' American Dream, and it fucks up US society top to bottom because not everyone can. Not everyone is academically gifted enough to go to university, not everyone can earn above average wage, not everyone can play the guitar like Eric Clapton or football like Beckham.
Some people are plug ugly, and I don't mean only those with facial deformities. Some are just kinda not that good looking. As a friend of mine remarked after he put his picture on Am I hot or not, he's accepted he's a 7.5. There is an aesthetic ideal, like it or not, and that it is heavily warped by society and the media is a bad thing, but no, we're far from all being beautiful. Saying we are is just a plain lie.
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I think doing that kind of shifting goalposts is the wrong way to go about it. Far better to accept that beauty is something that not everyone has, *but* that it's not that big a deal.
Compare: if you're short, you're always going to be short. Saying 'Oh, you're ALL of great stature' is just ludicrous. And you won't get ticked as much at speed dating. Similarly if you're disabled: if you can't walk, you can't walk, and no amount of mealy-mouthed rephrasing is going to make a jot of difference. If you're in a wheelchair, you're not going to be climbing up Arthur's Seat: some stuff is out of reach. Not everyone can be or do everything.
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I find my girlfriend beautiful. I also find her sexy, attractive, alluring, and all those other words that mean she ticks my boxes, flips my switches, whatever. Now, you might not find her beautiful yourself, but does that mean that I am wrong? No. Does that mean she is not beautiful? Hell no.
Beauty is subjective. There are no goalposts to move because we can't hold people to one objective standard. The fact that we try to is the basis of multitudes of self-image problems, eating disorders, and other problems that come from trying to measure up to something impossible and untrue. This is not the same as saying "this is a hill, you cannot walk up it". It is saying "this person does not find you attractive. this one does. this one would like you better if you had shorter hair." Everybody has their own criteria and the point of saying 'everyone is beautiful' is because everyone is. Not all to the same people, and not all for the same reasons. But they are.
I agree, focusing on beauty can be hurtful, and it's not a good way to judge someone at all. But I can guarantee you beyond a shadow of a doubt telling a girl 'beauty isn't important, but by the way some people are just plain ugly, period' is a great way to fuck up her thinking and give her a complex that will last years. Unless you can change everything about how society functions letting her believe that some people are just plain ugly and unattractive will have her constantly wondering if she is one of those ugly people; she'll starve herself to fit into those ideals, diet and primp and destroy her self-confidence to fit into a mold. How does telling her 'you are beautiful, even if you don't look like an airbrushed model on a magazine cover' hurt her? She might get rejected by going for people who aren't into her - but she would have anyway, and at least now she has the self-confidence to take that rejection and move on to someone who does dig her. I just don't see how it fucks up society to encourage that sort of self-image at all. I don't get it.
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You are defining beauty and lack thereof as objective - they're just not. This isn't an arguable point; it's a demonstrable fact. I could post a picture of anyone - of anyone - on my journal, with a poll, and I guarantee you that there would be no firm consensus on whether or not that person was beautiful.
They could probably make a judgment on whether that person was 'conventionally physically attractive' completely separately from their own personal opinion - but that's a set of factors laid out by society, rules for us to follow, not a definition that anyone actually adheres to, whether they say they do or not.
Why do you think people have 'embarrassing crushes' or 'guilty secret fantasies' involving people who are considered by mainstream media to be unattractive? It's because those people are attractive to them. Andrew Lloyd Webber found someone who wanted to shag him just like anyone else, even if you and I consider him a disgusting little homunculus.
These people are beautiful (no matter what you say, words can't bring me down etc etc). But seriously, are you telling me that you buy into mainstream society's message that there's really such a thing as objectively 'pug ugly'? Really?
And yes, of course some people appeal to a narrower band of admirers than others - of course biological factors play a part in attraction and if you have asymmetry/a non childbearing figure/what-the-hell-ever then yes, the pool of people who consider you beautiful narrows, bit by bit. But the ability to successfully apply biological absolutes to the concept of beauty does not make 'beauty' itself an objective concept, anymore than Mozart having a wider appeal than Shostakovich due to being catchier and more accessible makes 'good music' an objective concept.
"You're not beautiful, but that's okay - some people are just ugly" is the wrong answer. Oh my God, Joachim. How could you say that? Think about it for a minute. How could you?
The right answer is, "So not everyone finds you beautiful. But some people will, and do, and so should you."
We're not telling people to go try out for America's Next Top Model here. We're telling them that what society tells them is beauty is fine for some, and not for others. And as those others, we need to find what makes us beautiful, and get right on celebrating it.
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You're kind of making my point for me... to that I say, why not? Obviously it's naive and very limiting to constrict the whole range of qualities of a piece of music to a single metric of good/bad. It's a huge complex multidimensional thing, same as how we find people attractive. But somehow, some stuff is at the bottom of the heap and some at the top.
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Or let's take the music thing from another angle: some people will write a song that lives in the hearts of others for years, whether it's Greensleeves or Let it Be.
Some people will write a song that nobody but their mum likes.
Some people will never even write a song.
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Better to change the perception and see that while not everyone has it, it's only one of many things that make people who they are.
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Let's say we are trying to define beauty here. Why would you want to define it in this way? Why would you want to take one of the tenants of our society, one of the pillars on which it stands, and rather than pull everyone up on their own pedestal, with their own admirers and their own view, you would dig holes for them and tell them to get used to it, and remember that they have loads of other things going for them and that they don't actually need that view? What purpose does that serve? Why does that need to happen?
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There is almost nobody out there whose face is so unusual that nobody will look at it and think "Gosh, they're gorgeous". There are plenty of people that aren't "mainstream", but telling people that they're ugly and will therefore never find anyone because they're not mainstream is what causes all of the body issues.
"Sorry, nobody likes breasts that shape. This year, noses are 3mm shorter than that. You have freckles - everyone hates freckles." - this leads to people who loathe their bodies, when actually there are plenty of people out there who don't care that your breasts are slightly uneven, your nose is above average and love freckles.
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These facts do serve the same sort of role as an objective standard in a lot of the cases of interest. I don't see why everyone is getting so excited about that fact.
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Can you tell me what purpose that serves?
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In some cases, they are probably facts because they do serve some sort of purpose (maybe an evolutionary one, for example), but not necessarily a moral purpose.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't seek to change these facts (after all, I agree are contingent) or to put them in a proper context (that is, to say that someone's worth is not defined by their beauty) where they cause harm to people, but neither do I see the value in denying that they currently exist.
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We could absolutely decide to have a semantic argument about whether beauty is (a) in the eye of the beholder or (b) the number of dots above the line you draw in an arbitrary place on the chart of 'common standards', but I don't think that serves much of a purpose either.
Let me rephrase my previous question: What harm does it do to tell people that they should love their faces and bodies and find beauty in them? What harm can it possibly do to tell people that they are beautiful?
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I don't think it does any harm to tell people that they should love their own faces and bodies.
If people were kept in blissful isolation before releasing them into the cruel world, I think it might do some harm to give them unrealistic expectations about how other the world would rate them aesthetically. But in fact that hardly ever happens: most people are only too aware of where they stand: it cannot do them harm to tell them they are beautiful by the standards of their society, but it probably doesn't do much good either.
OTOH there's telling someone they're beautiful as an expression of your personal preference or affection for them, which I think does do them some good (assuming they care about what you think).
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Telling people they _are_ ugly, rather than that _less people fancy your type on average_ gives them something much harder to deal with (as well as being untrue).
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Well, of course it doesn't. You have to put in a bit of effort with Duruflé. Duruflé isn't initially easy to like - something can jar about what he does with harmony, you've got to really explore him, let him grow on you. Some people - most people - will never like Duruflé. He's kind of an acquired taste.
I guess that means he's a bit shit?
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But I think Messiaen is dreadful.
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Say 'wonderful'. I have no problem at all saying that everyone is wonderful, and will be especially wonderful to some other person.
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I'm not going to say 'wonderful' because that's not what I mean. I mean 'beautiful' because I believe that everybody is attractive to somebody, and that telling them that is not setting them up for failure but instead hopefully contributing to a positive self-image so that they can find that someone (if they want to) someday.
Criticize the American dream all you like but I don't understand how telling someone something positive about themselves is ensuring disappointment. That seems defeatist and untrue.
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It's like I said about the American notion that all can succeed -- it sets you up for a fall and the ensuing disappointment is all the more unbearable.
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But it's about probabilities. Take just one simple component, like height. If you're a really tall woman or a really short man you're not going to have as big a pool of people who might find you beautiful. I doubt anything is going to change that.
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Now, I know what you'll say - that's because I'm confident, charming, and let's not forget exceptionally talented.
And I used to agree, but then I realised that that was bullshit. There is singly no chance in hell that a gorgeous girl would turn around to me and tell me how sexy I was if I wasn't able to believe it of myself. No way in hell.
Furthermore, this whole concept is deeply sexist, and reeks of the P-word. Nobody has ever questioned whether 'ugly' dudes have just as good a chance of pulling gorgeous women as good looking ones - it's demonstrably the case that they can. Why should men shoot for the stars and women dial back their expectations?
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as good a chance of pulling gorgeous women as good looking ones
Of course they have. And short ones too.
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There's double standards. I may be guilty of them. I'm going to go away and think about it but I'm mostly going to go to bed because it's late.
And you wouldn't believe how many good-looking women I've not dared go anywhere near.
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No, they're not! Not according to their wives/girlfriends! If they have women in love with them, those women find them beautiful. Sure, there may be the odd exception here and there who really are cows who're just with them for the money/status, but mostly if someone's prepared to sleep with you, they think you are beautiful. Generally speaking you do not fall for someone if you have no physical attraction to them. People who fall in love with 'uglies' are not an exception to this. Ergo these people are demonstrably not objectively ugly.
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I've seen men-of-non-mainstream-looks have just as many problems in dating as women-of-non-mainstream-looks.
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Besides, sticking with known quantities, can you name me any famously ugly women dating famously beautiful men? The closest I can think of are older women with younger men, but every one of those women were once (or still are) very beautiful. I'm sure I don't have to tell you what different an absence of role models makes.
Now, I really don't want to get too deeply into this because I think the issue is tangential to the material point, but there are as I see it two reasons for this.
1. It doesn't hurt that male standards of beauty are far, far wider than women's. I'm not saying guys aren't still under pressure to look a certain way, and increasingly so as time goes on, but nobody can tell me that they get the same crap women do, not by a long shot.
2. No boy's dad would ever tell him he couldn't go for whatever girl he wanted, even if she was the personification of Helen of Troy and he was 'pug ugly'. Men are actively encouraged at every step the way to shoot as high as they can; they're taught that determination and self-confidence can get you anywhere and everywhere, they're largely proven right, and they have plenty of role models to support the concept.
See?
I will also observe that most of the results scanning down the women's pages were quotes from lines like "Why do we always see ugly men with beautiful women but never ugly women with beautiful men?" so the majority of those few hits they do have may well be false positives.
Joachim would tell his hypothetically plain daughter that she should probably scale her expectations back a bit if she had her sights set on Beckham, and concentrate on the equally ugly men who'll apparently be more likely to love her for her sparkling personality instead of her looks. Maybe he'd say the same thing to his plain son who set his sights on Angelina. But I doubt it.
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I've heard men told repeatedly that women are out of their league. Been told it myself on numerous occasions. Possibly it's not the kind of thing men tell each other in front of women so much?
I'll dgive you the one on wider standards of beauty for men though :->
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Just in your experience. Dunno if there's a paper on this.
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I've certainly know enough men who would have relationships with women (and love them) they didn't consider beautiful.
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I suppose I'm thinking of women who assume that because they were glasses, no-one will find them attrractive. Or who are pale or freckled or short or whatever. Nerd culture often prizes these qualities, which I suppose helps to an extent.
But I've known a few who are gobsmacked that those qualities might be desired. Makes you wonder where the pressures come from, exactly.
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That's a rhetorical question, right? The answer is obviously The Evil Media And Those Who Buy Into The Standards It Sets.
The answer to who's to blame for nearly everything is The Evil Media.
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Well, yes.
Well, sort of.
I get thrown when I'm talking to people about sexism and conformity, and they clumsily point at the mythical boardroom of men (with cigars, obviously) ticking lists of fashions, standards, hemlines and recommiting to ensuring how awful bras are.
Hell, here I am in a children's charity, where I'm one man for 5,000 women. It's been run by women for 80 years. They're in charge. Except that there's something they're buying into. All this power and responsibility, and we give out teddybears with pink t-shirts for prizes. It really gets to me.
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Something like "the patriarchical slant of society causes the standards to be the way they are" would seem less conspiracy-minded to me.
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Nevermind. This is so not an interesting road to go down.
*wanders off muttering to self* Avoid semantics, avoid semantics, avoid semantics.
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If you're saying "The Patriarchy set our societal standards!" then a reasonable sized chunk of the population are going to look at you as if you were saying "The Communists are in charge of the Media!" or "The Lizard People eat our children!".
If you say "The patriarchal slant of society affects our standards" then you've got a more nuanced statement which doesn't push people away so much.
IMHO, of course.
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When I say The Patriarchy, I mean The Patriarchy. I'm not using some mysterious personal definition. Go look it up yourself. One last time, I've done it for you:
Within feminist theory, patriarchy refers to the structure of modern cultural and political systems, which are ruled by men. Such systems are said to be detrimental to the rights of women.
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Which is why I didn't do that.
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Elsewhere, I'm having a conversation about how I'm likely to want to stay home and raise the hypothetical kids. Both women and men have told me that's weird. In one case, that I was probably a paedophile.
If I'm getting it from both ends, so to speak, why is it a patriarchy?
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Because if we're talking average salaries, sure.
If we're talking childrearing, or primary school teaching (I broke off a friendship with a girl over that one - 'male primary teachers just aren't natural'), or paternity leave, not so much. If we're talking those roles even being valued, then not so much.
That's why 'patriarchy' is a harmful term. It obscures who's penalised.
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Because I basically agree with you. I know _why_ it has the name it has, but I don't find the general phrasing of it very useful.
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Originally (when I was 15), I assumed it meant men in charge, and the mythical boardroom. How awful, sure don't want to be one of those villains. Later, I learned it was more general and described male dominance - how awful, I'll try not to be one of them either. But when I read arguments about how there's a patriarchy dominating, say, a woman-run charity, I lose track of what problem is being described.
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And it highlights what I was saying in my other comment - if you're going to engage with people online then then they aren't going to know what you mean, or what your background is, etc. So using terms that are ripe for misunderstanding and confusion is going to make life harder.
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That's not helpful. I'm asking to learn.
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This should be fun.
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But Andrew Lloyd Webber is plug ugly by anyone's standards.
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I know someone who proves that statement is wrong.