The Green Monster

 Read another great post by Sophie Hischfeld over at She Thought this morning and I thought it was a good opportunity to put some words over here.
She Thought: The Curious Case of the Beauty Queen Bias

If you’re too beautiful, we don’t want you to tell us about it and we don’t want you to use it in our social, academic or eccentric social groups. Why? Because we’re too immature to handle it.

I couldn't agree more.

Now, I think I'm reasonably pretty with effort.  I was cuter when I was a Narrow-American.  I was also cuter before my abnormal androgen levels mandated effort to look pretty.  Life's a bitch.

But I'm confident because I have a nearly nonexistent image of myself.  That wasn't always the case because when I was younger I was cute enough --and got whole boobs at 9-- that I was targeted with emotional and sexual bullying by students, teachers, and administrators.  And it all centered on those tits.  Those tits that meant I must be hypersexual in high school.  No kidding, I was forced to buy a new costume  and bind myself for a musical in 10th grade because my "enormous" C cups were "moving" (gasp!) when I was dancing on stage.  (I didn't quit the drama club because I was lazy.)  Those tits that still mean I have to dye my hair brown to be taken seriously even though I'm a Round-American now.  Those tits that make clothing shopping impossible and bra buying expensive to say the least.

I think some of Mrs. Brick's pictures are prettier than others, but I would definitely agree that she's attractive enough that people expect her to pretend to be a troll.

I once met a stunningly beautiful woman.  She was on a group trip with me in high school.  I thought I had seen beautiful women before.  I was wrong.  But she had (at the time) a huge beauty flaw.  She refused to tame her eyebrows--which some of you may recall was still a mortal sin in the late-nineties-early-aughts.  She did this on purpose.  She had once dedicated a lot of time to getting her brows "right," she confided as I was fussing with my tweezers.  She decided it was bullshit and her eyebrows were good enough the way they were.  And they were generous, but they fit her and they were every bit as lovely as she was and didn't diminish her a bit.  (I don't mean this to sound as weird as it probably does.  They're just eyebrows.)

The relevance of this is of course that she was perfectly beautiful and yet society thought she had to acknowledge and correct this "flaw" to be perfect.  And then of course it would have abused her even more.

It is a curious thing that society treats attractive people so well, paying them better, exposing them to less stress, allowing them to receive better care, and ultimately letting them live longer.  But also seeks out every opportunity to devalue them.  We just can't stand that we're nice to some people.  We just HAVE to find something to pick at until we destroy each other.  But it isn't just the Attractive(tm) people.  It's people with any physical asset (or frankly any asset).  But nothing is quite so important to us as the physical assets.  

Let's take Narrow-Americans.  We fucking love skinny people.  They have self control (or at least fat people don't).  They get to wear whatever they want without being poked at for pretending to be prettier (skinnier) than they are or dressing wrong for their shape or showing "too much" skin.  But oh they're too skinny.  Or they have an eating disorder.  Or they should eat a sammich (I'm guilty of this one).  Or they're RUINING OUR DAUGHTERS' SELF ESTEEM!!  (Really?  By existing?)  But, if you're narrow, you already know don't you DARE gain a pound because someone will be all over you about your healthy, are you pregnant?, gee you're letting yourself go, will people still hire you?!  People who naturally have something we want better not ever use it or mention it--or moreso ought to belittle it!--but you better fucking keep it up or we'll let you have it!  Absurd.  Can't fucking let people be.

As Sophie mentioned, we really hate it when confident, big, beautiful women lose weight.  We accuse them of selling out.  But they better not gain anything back.  Oh no!  Any wonder why famous women with weight struggles become basket cases?  They're horribly abused at every turn.  But it isn't just those women either.  Just pull your eyes away when the fat guy walks into the gym just long enough to look at everyone else judging and assaulting him for being a horrible, fat person; for being vain enough to try to change his body; for OMG sweating too much.

And then there's the abuse we dish out for being too smart or too stupid or not having "street smarts" or being too funny or too boring or being smart but not serious enough or whatever combination of existence that happens to annoy people at any given moment.

Generally, people are just too immature to deal with the fact that other people exist and consistently feel the need to pick, pick, pick at each other just in case that guy has something you haven't got.