A small rant
I just watched a video in which a male actor talks about his epiphany of interesting women being overlooked by men due to not meeting societal ideals of physical attractiveness. This was brought about by his playing a woman in a movie and while he was able to be made up to look convincing as a woman the people in charge of such things were not able to make him into a woman he thought was beautiful. when he saw himself on screen he realized that he was an interesting woman in his role and yet he himself would not have interacted with himself as a woman. It was supposed to be a feel good story.
My reaction is not one of glee and validation though, it's overwhelmingly irritation. How often and how long have women been complaining about having to meet stringent beauty standards and falling outside of them rending one invisible in even nonromantic situations. Why does a story about a man realizing his own prejudices because he was not as beautiful as he thought he deserved to be suddenly become something to be happy about? Why does his statement hold more weight than a woman's experience?
I've seen the same phenomenon with thin people donning fat suits and coming back with "revelations" about the abominable treatment of fat people in society or white people donning dark make up and being black for a day to get the minority experience and reporting about the injustices experienced by black people daily. People with plenty who take food stamp challenges (most who don't actually try to feed a family of at least 4 on the allotment while living on a tiny sliver of their actual income at the same time so it's already a skewed experiment). Why isn't the word of the people who actually live in those realities held higher than those who slip them on for a few hours, a day, a week, a month? If the people say wow that shit is hard, then we as a society are more likely to look twice at those hardships for a brief moment with compassion before going back to our own bubbles of complacency, insulated in whatever personal privileges we may have. And if they come back with reports that repute the difficulty of what the people who experience whatever the topic of the day is then we pat ourselves on the back for our ability to bootstrap ourselves into a better position and shut our ears to their "whining". Hasn't it been proved that what they are saying has no merit? Critical thinking be damned and nuanced examination of multiple factors affecting differing outcomes is simply a way to shrug off responsibility by the masses that want to cry victimization. Sometimes I despair.
My reaction is not one of glee and validation though, it's overwhelmingly irritation. How often and how long have women been complaining about having to meet stringent beauty standards and falling outside of them rending one invisible in even nonromantic situations. Why does a story about a man realizing his own prejudices because he was not as beautiful as he thought he deserved to be suddenly become something to be happy about? Why does his statement hold more weight than a woman's experience?
I've seen the same phenomenon with thin people donning fat suits and coming back with "revelations" about the abominable treatment of fat people in society or white people donning dark make up and being black for a day to get the minority experience and reporting about the injustices experienced by black people daily. People with plenty who take food stamp challenges (most who don't actually try to feed a family of at least 4 on the allotment while living on a tiny sliver of their actual income at the same time so it's already a skewed experiment). Why isn't the word of the people who actually live in those realities held higher than those who slip them on for a few hours, a day, a week, a month? If the people say wow that shit is hard, then we as a society are more likely to look twice at those hardships for a brief moment with compassion before going back to our own bubbles of complacency, insulated in whatever personal privileges we may have. And if they come back with reports that repute the difficulty of what the people who experience whatever the topic of the day is then we pat ourselves on the back for our ability to bootstrap ourselves into a better position and shut our ears to their "whining". Hasn't it been proved that what they are saying has no merit? Critical thinking be damned and nuanced examination of multiple factors affecting differing outcomes is simply a way to shrug off responsibility by the masses that want to cry victimization. Sometimes I despair.
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