The rant I made about the idea that a good looking woman has something to “fall back on” if she doesn’t have brains reminded me of things I’ve often heard said about women that are really just faulty leaps of logic and I wish people who claim to be intelligent would fucking think about for five minutes and realize the fallacy of their ways.
As a first example of this, don’t ask me why I had to listen to this for a time but I did, there’s this radio DJ named Tom Leykis who is on my list of people I would arch were I a super villain, and he’d always say things like if women have good looks they don’t bother becoming CEO’s or lawyers and such because they can just land them a rich man and not have to work and expand their own horizons. As proof of this supposed phenomenon he cited magazine articles about the world’s most powerful businesswomen and said they were all homely, or something like that.
First of all, this whole idea disappears in a puff of logic once you realize that any person, male or female, who has become a great success in the business world is obviously not going to be twenty fucking years old. If then you saw pictures of said women when young and came to the same conclusion, I think this logic is STILL faulty because of one thing.
Looking “hot” in the plastic Barbie sense takes effort, desire, and work. For everyone. Don’t believe me? Google “celebrities without makeup” sometime. Underneath the concealer and rouge everyone looks like a human being.
I’ve mentioned before how guys on various law school forums lament the lack of “hot” women in law school–and in particular one comment I saw said “intelligent women” are not hot in any field, whether it be law, engineering, science, etc, because they don’t wear makeup, they don’t wear hot clothes, etc.
Any woman with the privilege to be in a program of graduate study, which is expensive, could buy makeup and wear revealing clothing if she so chose. Any such woman could spend student loan money on a boob job, and on a tummy tuck, and on a nose job, and decide to go on a 900 a day calorie diet to become appealing to someone who only cares about these things if her desire was to land a man rather than to be instrumental in the procurement of equal rights for all people or to discover the cure for cancer. Really, plastic surgery is so cheap we’re a tiny bit of free will away from becoming that twilight zone episode where every person gets to choose between two models of what to look like and then has surgery to conform.
The thing is–these women aren’t trying to attract these dudes. It is really the height of narcissism to come to the conclusion that if a woman doesn’t look like Carmen Electra she’s forced to become an astrophysicist because otherwise she’d prefer to be a desperate housewife because that’s the pinnacle of achievement for a woman. Even women who want to be housewives and want to stay at home with the kids rather than have jobs don’t all look like Angelina Jolie and they STILL don’t all want to attract the kind of dehumanizing tacofucker who thinks women are like blow up doll objects one acquires, kind of like a speaker system or a Lexus. They want someone who, err, sees raising the family as an important job that deserves as much respect as anything else. Like someone who has ever used the phrase “upgrade” when speaking about women would ever think that in a million years.
Think about it.
They don’t wear makeup?
They go around in shirts that say “Hyperbole is the best thing ever” and comfy blue jeans rather than tube tops and stiletto heels?
Is it really outside the realm of possibility that they do not care if assholes find them hot? Is it so hard to believe that they might–gasp–not even WANT anything to do with these stupid asses?
I mean, it’s hilarious that Tom Leykis and dudes like him really think that smart women would be with THEM instead of blazing trails if only they were hot enough.
What, like Melinda Gates? Valedictorian of her undergrad class with a degree in computer science and with a masters from Duke who was a product manager for many years before meeting Bill Gates? Like Michelle Obama who got an undergraduate degree at Princeton, a law degree at Harvard, makes goo gobs of money working for hospitals was Barack Obama’s mentor at the law firm they worked at before they fell in love and married? Oh you’re so right dudes, all men would rather just have a supermodel if they could, and all women would just be trophy wives if they were just hot enough. There must be some bullshit going on with the Gates’ close relationship and philanthropy and the Obamas’ affection and fist bumping that belies the natural order that would exist were that bullshit not there. I’m sure all of the women who are CEOs and partners at major law firms would rather be with dudes who think women talk to much and aren’t worth shit once they start to wrinkle rather than whatever men or women they are with who respect them, if only they could!
Ok, so I come back and I have a comment pending. Something that does not happen often with this terrible blog. It was on that post I made about what I should call people from the U.S. if not Americans. It said:
Miss Teen South Carolina answered that question badly, but she’s still got her looks to fall back on…
What? Isn’t that what she was DOING trying to become Miss Teen anything? Using her looks to get ahead? I wonder if this comment means “hey at least she can find a shallow man to marry her for a few years before he tires of her stretch marks after she bears his child and leaves her to ‘upgrade’ to a younger model.” Woo! How fulfilling. I totally wish I had the IQ of a sack of potatoes but was AMG HAWT, because then instead of being married to my best friend that I do everything with and love I could temporarily have access to an asshole’s money and buy a bunch of shit and not mentally fulfill myself in any way. And I say temporarily because I’m pretty sure there aren’t any rich dudes looking for trophy wives left who are too stupid to get a prenuptial agreement. I suppose even these agreements are often pretty lucrative, but maybe I’m alone in thinking “falling back on” something that only lasts about 20 years is not such a good idea.
I don’t think being good looking resigns one to this fate of course, but I think it’s what people usually mean when they say a woman can “fall back on” her looks? No matter how stupid or uninteresting or lacking in ambition for personal achievement and fulfillment she can always just marry a rich dude? Or maybe this person meant she could be a stripper? They make good money. Work at hooters? Eh. A model? Well look at her–
I dunno if modeling is in the cards. As conforming as her looks are to societal standards of beauty, she does look like she occasionally ingests calories. I think you need to at least be somewhat smart to become an actor and read lines. If she strips or poses for playboy or gets into porn or something and she really is INCREDIBLY STUPID she probably won’t invest that money, might end up signing a terrible contract and all her money would go to an agent of some sort anyway, and then in 20 years will be back to being poor? I just don’t think looks alone set you for life because you have to be able to not squander the money you get, and you have to have a plan for when those looks eventually fade. Botox treatments and plastic surgery only extend one’s looks for so long.
Aside from the idea that one can find success through looks alone, I think it’s really unfair to assume Miss Teen South Carolina is a total idiot and has nothing but her looks going for her. I said this to my husband and he replied with, “did you LISTEN to what she said?” Well yeah, while shifting uncomfortably in my seat and gritting my teeth, but even smart people can totally space out and spew diarrhea from the mouth when faced with speaking in front of millions of people, right?! I mean I tried to think of how I would have answered that question. It was a stupid question. My first thought was actually, “you’ve got to be shitting me?” which I’m sure if that had been her response it would have been on youtube as well. That response, and the diatribe about how statistics are often flawed and biased toward the desired result of the observer and how I’d have to know more about the methods used to acquire this data to answer this question which would have ensued is pretty much why no matter what I look like I could never be involved in pageantry. I’d have been right, too, that question was an unfettered load of horse shit.
I don’t know–I’m just thinking it’s short sighted to think someone with the mental capacity of a sandbag will be set for life because of looks. I’m thinking most women who use their looks to their advantage to make money won’t sign a prenup that leaves her with nothing and will invest money made from the other endeavors one can make money in purely by looking good alone. I might think that never exerting your brain power to learn new languages or learn sciency things or read books or gain knowledge would be boring and unfulfilling, but I seriously doubt most women who make their living through being trophy wives or other jobs which don’t require anything aside from just looking pretty couldn’t expand their horizons if they wanted to and tried. I know a lot of women feel pressured to not appear smart so they don’t intimidate potential chicken shits who aren’t worth anyone’s time anyway husbands. I think that’s unfortunate. But I just can’t see it that a woman orchestrating a life where she uses her window of youthful good looks to acquire money doesn’t need intelligence in SOME way.
Of course, brains don’t last forever either, but at least when people are dead or their cerebral cortex is ravaged by stroke or Alzheimer’s they don’t need to star in porn anymore.
