I enjoy a laugh as much as the next person, and what had me chortling merrily this week was the latest iteration of “Boo-hoo! It’s so hard being beautiful!” But then I read something which may have changed my mind.
It began with this: model/entrepreneur Emily Adonna is so “fucking tired of being pretty” that she had to ‘sabotage’ her looks with a septum piercing and hand tattoos.
No she wasn’t just trying to be edgy!
Emily enjoys her ‘pretty privilege’ and admits beauty catapulted her career, but Emily wants none of the downsides: the unwanted attention, harrassment and sexualisation that occurs when one leverages one’s looks for profit.
This leads us straight into familiar territory. Behold Lucy Welcher‘s statement that she’s “too pretty to work”
Veronika Rajek‘s claim that her body is “too dangerous for the internet“
Dr Medina Culver‘s bombshell that you can be jaw-droppingly beautiful AND smart.
I mean, who woulda thunk?
But then I read an article from The School of Life which argued that beauties face legit problems us fuglies don’t. For example, beauties may never develop a personality because the world foists one on them!
Let’s call this beauty-trap, oh, I don’t know, stereotyping or something.
Beauty is often inadvertently intimidating to the non-beautiful, and as a result they face near-constant passive-aggressive hostility from the rest of us. Then there’s the loneliness of perfection — rarely do beauties get to meet interesting but conventionally unbeautiful people.
Like attracts like, right?
Attacked and alone, stuck with some Zoolander-type, beauties also suffer from a presumption of stupidity. While Dr Culver is the exception, few of us in real life have ever met an ingenue with intellect.
The flip side is that nerds on US tv shows always have to be hot.
Like the wealthy people they admire (then marry and divorce) beauties suffer from trust issues. “Hmm, is he only interested in my looks?” meets “Hmm, is she only interested in my money?”
Beauties tend to be both untrusting and untrustworthy.
But the biggest downside of beauty is … aging.
I guarantee Emily Adonna, Lucy Welcher, Veronika Rajek and even Dr Culver won’t be stamping their heels in 20 years time, except in despair at selfies that no longer resemble the thing in the mirror.
Maybe time to grow a personality of their own.
Mirror, mirror.
The so-called ‘Evil Queen’ was a former beauty eclipsed by Snow White at the age of seven.
In the original version, the Evil Queen’s attempted murder/cannibalism of young Miss White was punished by being forced to dance to her death in red-hot iron clogs.
She was the first person Disney ever killed.
Watch out Gal!
But before we heap more scorn on the pretties’ petty predicament, a thought for how it must feel the most important thing about you being so ephemeral. Nothing more than a fleeting reflection in a sheet of glass.
Aww.
But does that mean I feel sorry for these princes and princesses? Nah. Let the fuckers weep pretty tears and rage against the dying of the light, just like the rest of us.