beautiful

This is probably not the post you think it’s going to be.

Unless, by some chance, you divined from that title that this would be the first installment in a series of undefined length in which I explain why I have chosen to identify myself as a feminist.

For a long time, I had self-identified as a “dictionary-definition-feminist,” by which I meant that I supported equal rights and opportunities for men and women based on the assumption that they are of equal intrinsic worth. I wanted to avoid all the bra-burning baggage that comes with that loaded f-word: feminism. Ugh.

That was my reaction, too. As far as I was concerned, since women are pretty much legally equal to men, there was no need to resort to such violent radical causes.

So what changed? What incited me to take this loaded adjective and apply it to myself? I think, for me, it began with the courage to take this word, somehow both infamous and nebulous, and mold my own definition. The moment I realized that I was more than a shy dictionary-definition-feminist—that I felt pressed to define it for myself and then pin it unflinchingly to my identity—was the moment I realized that there are serious problems with the expectations and treatment of women today: problems that are uniquely feminine.

That, for me, is feminism: looking beyond legal equality to acknowledge the ideological problems with the treatment of women in the world. And I mean the modern, Western world, in what I would call mainstream society. There are obviously sick and disturbing issues that affect women in other countries and, illegally, even in our own—legal inequalities and sexual slavery, to name just a couple—but, rather than dwelling on issues that all of us easily condemn, I want to address subtler injustices.

[A side-note here: Men, my self-identification as a feminist does not imply any belief that there is nothing wrong with the cultural views, expectations, and treatment of men. I’ve rolled my eyes at those sitcom dads, too. However, arguing that men are misrepresented or mistreated is not a valid argument against feminism; it is a separate argument altogether. You can call it ‘masculinism’ if you like. I will not comment on it in this post.]

There’s a boy band playing on American radio stations right now called One Direction. The band is made up of five English and Irish teenagers named Louis, Harry, Zayn, Liam, and Niall (embarrassingly enough, I knew all those names from memory), and their number-one song is an infectiously catchy piece of work called “What Makes You Beautiful.” The boys are cute. The song is cute. It’s in my Spotify library. It’s not my intention to pick on One Direction—I mean, I doubt they actually write their own music, and even if they do, they’re a teenaged boy band—but I think this song is an excellent example of the subtle unfairness levied against women. I could have picked another example (“You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt is pretty asinine) but this one seemed particularly relevant. The lyrics are automatically endearing, especially the bridge and chorus:

Everyone else in the room can see it

Everyone else but you

(chorus)

Baby you light up my world like nobody else

The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed

The way you smile at the ground it ain’t hard to tell

You don’t know (oh oh)

You don’t know you’re beautiful

If only you saw what I could see

You’d understand why I want you so desperately

Right now I’m looking at you and I can’t believe

You don’t know (oh oh)

You don’t know you’re beautiful (oh oh)

That’s what makes you beautiful

 My initial reaction, like most of the females below 40 in America, was “Awwwwww.” Harmless, right? And really sweet. But the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.

The song appeals to us as women because, to put it bluntly, we all think we’re ugly. Maybe not all the time, maybe not even most of the time, but we have been conditioned to hunt down our flaws and spend all our time loathing them and loathing ourselves. Believe me, I’ve spent enough time consumed in self-hatred to write pages more on it, but I don’t think I need to. We are all well-versed in this. The idea that some cute British boy is in the corner watching you flip your hair and about thinking how beautiful you are, even as you’re wallowing in the misery of your ugliness—that’s pretty appealing. So “What Makes You Beautiful” is a positive message for women, right? It encourages them to believe that they are beautiful, even when they don’t believe it.

Not quite.

Jeopardy-style, if the question is the title of the song, “What Makes You Beautiful,” then the answer is (roughly summarized) “your ignorance of your own physical attractiveness.” By comforting us in our self-consciousness and self-loathing, the song affirms that it’s our insecurity that makes us attractive.

Yeah, that’s harshly put. And (gasp) heaven forbid that women run to the other extreme: vanity, that most quintessential female sin. There are certainly enough stereotypes about women spending all their money on beauty products and all their time in front of mirrors. But here’s a hint: a woman who spends all of her time looking in mirrors isn’t doing it because she feels good about herself. 

Sure, there are songs about women who feel good about the way they look. But quite frankly, the woman in said songs tends to portrayed as, well, a witch-with-a-capital-B. Obviously, in reality, there are women who fall between the two extremes. But for One Direction, at least, an attractive woman (er, girl?) is one who doesn’t know that she’s beautiful. The whole romantic attraction narrated in “What Makes You Beautiful” hinges on the fact that the female in question feels bad about herself. Lines like “You’re insecure, don’t know what for…Don’t need makeup to cover up / Being the way that you are is enough” seem to imply that the male speaker in the song wants the girl to feel good about herself, but the bottom line is that her appearance has earned his approval. And if she doesn’t remain in this place of self-consciousness, then she will cease to be beautiful. Here it is: “You don’t know you’re beautiful—that’s what makes you beautiful.” It’s an impossible standard to meet: women are expected to be attractive, but not try; to be beautiful, but not know it.

But the real problem with the song is the one implicit in the song’s title, the one that isn’t even addressed in the song at all because it is so obvious to us: the idea that being beautiful is enough. If physical appearance weren’t the utmost standard for attractiveness, we’d listen to “What Makes You Beautiful” and say, “…so what?” Obviously, there are plenty of songs addressed to women that talk about more than beauty; there are even a few that don’t talk about it at all. But there are songs like this one and songs like “You’re Beautiful” that fall into that heinous fallacy: what is beautiful is good and desirable.

Based on my observations, this is overwhelmingly (if not entirely) a female problem in the music industry. Look, I’m not a guy, I’ve never been a guy, I don’t know what it’s like to be a guy, and I know that society places unfair expectations on all of us to be physically attractive. But the word beautiful—used only in reference to females, unless you’re being ironic or hyperbolic or singing about Jesus—has somehow become the highest piece of praise you can hand to a woman. Somehow, it’s taken on implications of worthiness and value that it, quite frankly, doesn’t  and shouldn't have.

 Imagine, with me, if James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” were addressed to a male from a female, instead of vice versa. The lyrics have been preserved below, with the word handsome substituted for beautiful (the closest equivalent I could come up with) and the appropriate gendered pronouns substituted where necessary.

Ahem.

My life is brilliant, my love is pure

I saw an angel, of that I’m sure

He smiled at me on the subway

He was with another [girl]…

(chorus)

You’re handsome, you’re handsome

You’re handsome, it’s true

I saw your face in a crowded place

And I don’t know what to do

‘Cause I’ll never be with you.

Not only is it a little creepy, it’s absolutely absurd. When it’s a male fantasizing about the beautiful woman he saw on the subway with someone else, it seems romantic; when it’s a woman who fantasizes about the handsome man she saw on the subway, it’s odd and glaringly shallow. “You’re handsome, it’s true”? Really? No one would buy it. And yet observing a woman’s beauty is enough reason for a man to declare her an “angel” and apparently fall in love with her, despite the fact that she’s already taken.

Which is why I consider this an issue of feminism. This is a female problem, and not, at least to the same extent, a human problem. Regardless of whether or not the glass ceiling still exists or whether or not there’s a wage gap, women are being told that to be desirable in every sense of the word is to be beautiful. The cultural expectation of a desirable man, by contrast, might include attractiveness, but is far more likely to be based on his successfulness. And while I am certainly not condoning this standard, at least it is based on something a man has achieved instead of something over which he has no control: a lucky combination of genes that happen to conform to society’s passing whims.

For women, to be “beautiful” is tantamount. It is the highest praise we can receive. It is the feminine superlative.

And that’s a problem.