A woman’s beauty is not a public good

The burden of beauty and how it is not an invitation

Today, I flew with my kids.  None of us were sitting next to each other.  One child and I hoped for an empty seat between us.  The flight was completely full.  The other child teased us mercilessly that the “wrong” person was going to sit between us.  I won’t say the various denigrating ideas that were batted around and how funny they became.  They did involve body odour, eating, noise, behaviour, etc.

What transpired instead is that the most gorgeous willow of a woman came and sat between us.  She slept the whole way.  A perfect seat neighbour.

But it got me thinking.  She was beautiful.  She wasn’t hiding her beauty.  She was very visible.  But what of the people who wish to slip through unnoticed.

Why do you wear what you wear?  How much of our clothes reflect our mood?  How much project our mood?  Most people get dressed and want to look good.  We choose our clothes to feel good about ourselves.  The language is almost always positive.

Dress for success.  All dressed up with no place to go. Dress to kill.

We choose our clothes because they say something about us.  That we are professional.  Competent.  Fun. Sexy.  So many things.  How do you get dressed in the morning?  Do you know already the day before what you are going to wear?  Do you plan out your holidays or trips already imagining a day-by-day selection of outfits?  I do.  I even pack that way.  My suitcase is filled with small bags where outfits are kept together.  Looks.

Sometimes we change our mind.  It doesn’t feel right once we put it on.  And then the search begins for what better captures our feeling, or the feeling we wish to convey. If I want to know what I am going to wear tomorrow, I need to think about it a lot today, and then I might change my mind tomorrow. Several times.

Clothes are complicated.  Function is just the start.  Unless we allow for the aesthetic to be the core of function.

Most of us just want to look as good as possible, to be flattered by what we wear.  I think this is true for all men, even ones who are not “vain”.  It is also true for most women, but some don’t, at least at times.

What is going on here?  Sexism.  The male gaze feels different than the female gaze.  Every woman knows this.  There is something menacing, possessing, predatory about the male gaze.

Even though we have expressions like “she was asking for it,” because of how she dressed, and any woman will tell you that she dressed for herself, not for ‘you’.  But this is not a like-for-like world.  Men don’t contend with this.  The need to be invisible.  The idea that what you wear is giving permission for someone else to objectify you. It isn’t.

It is at its most potent for a woman who is profoundly attractive.  She, whoever she is, will have a lived life of unwelcome attaction and attention.  In the public sphere, her beauty, her looks, her clothes, are consumed by men as if they are a public good.  Only they aren’t.  They belong to her and her alone.  But most folks didn’t get the memo.

So that happens next?

The other day one of the most beautiful women I have ever met popped around my place.  She was “in disguise”.  She was wearing a baseball hat to hide her features, and frumpy if not elegant clothes.  It was her invisibility cloak.  

I should be flattered that she removed her invisibility cloak for me.  That this uniform was her way of ensuring that she could travel without being hassled or harassed.  In other words, the choice of clothing was intended to make herself less desirable, “ugly”, or at least not worth noticing.  But in the public sphere isn’t that true for most of us?

We generally don’t want people commenting on our looks.  From a guy, it might come across as creepy, also because of the phrasing, but from a gal, it is usually not so bad.  Because you know she doesn’t want something else, that she won’t take any reply as an invitation.  

But there is a deeper point here about society and its structure more generally.  Over cocktails with a lovely woman who I am sweet on, she stated “there isn’t a woman out there, no matter how ugly she is, who if she decides to pull, can’t walk into a bar and walk out with a man…at least for a one-night stand.”  Few men, if any, can really do that.  That is part of why I find it wild that women so often lament, HARD, about how hard it is to get a man, or to be treated right by a man.  Is this just because it is a particular man?  Is it because the only male defense to the obvious imbalance of power is indifference?  The thing that drives her to distraction about him is also what fuels attraction, and later, dissatisfaction.

This imbalance of power is the thing that patriarchy takes aim at most profoundly.  The fear of a man, of men, of the male in society, is that they don’t get to choose.  Women do.  That is why the irony of a loss of a woman’s right to choose is not even ironic, but a direct function of what men think is their best interest.

And there is so much nonsense built around the ideas, the philosophical underpinnings of patriarchy.  But they are all wrong.

I have to write a separate post about this particular woman with whom I was conversing, and I will, as I feel that she has ridden into my life on a trusty steed and that she will be here in permanence.

I shared with her my own thoughts on men and women, power, and departed from the starting point that she gave.  

“Men rail against this female power, and it is powerful.  A woman fully in her power can absolutely control a man, not by telling him what to do, but making him ache inside to serve her, to worship her, to take care of her.  It is a sexual power.”  

And that is why so much of how patriarchal systems seek to control women manifests itself in the sexual realm.  The idea that the female ‘reproductive’ system is a reproductive system and that this has come to be how it is defined…and yet, it is the control centre for all things female.  Above all, it regulates health and well-being, happiness, growth, resilience…but also sexual pleasure.  Could you imagine referring to a cock and balls as the male reproductive system?  Would anyone still be into CBT (cock and ball torture) if that were the case?  Would it not be banned as a threat to democracy?

“I know that I can walk into a room and have almost any man there.”

“Yes you could, and you should.”

“Men hate that.  They can’t stand that I could pull two men.  I could probably get them to sleep together even if they aren’t gay just so they can be with me.”

“They do hate it.  At least they are taught to.  Many of them do.”

“What about polyamory?” she asked.

“I don’t know.  I have a tendency towards one partner, but I think I could do it, though it would change the nature and the dynamic.  But as a trans woman, it is really easy to get my head around the idea of offering something different.”

“Yes, I can see that.  Men, on the other hand, hate sharing.”

“Men don’t know what’s good for them.  They always say that a man wants monogamy because he doesn’t want to raise someone else’s child.  But this is BS.  It is patriarchal nonsense.  They cite biological imperative and preserving their genes as the justification.  But it doesn’t work this way.  Whether Joe Smith has kids is irrelevant in the discussion about what is best for humankind.  And I can tell you, what is best for us from a genetic standpoint is that women have as many partners as they can, and men have just one.  Groups of men should exist in service to one woman.”

“That’s hot.”

“It isn’t silly either.  The vagina is designed to filter semen.  A woman who fucks multiple men is far more likely to get pregnant than a woman who fucks as often or more often with just one man.  The body loves novelty.  But it isn’t just the novelty, her body actually sorts through different “strains” of sperm to select the one that is best.”

“But what of these men who say they don’t want to raise someone else’s child?” she asked.

“It is so self-centred to think that way.  Primitive societies lived in community.  What mattered to the community was the survival of the community.  There was communal child-rearing, and men and women both participated in raising the children of all community members, of feeding, protecting, etc.  It is also common among the animal world.”

“I love it.”

“I got into this online pissing match with a biology professor at Stanford who was so unbelievably entitled about his “right” to monogamy and found my thinking dangerous.  Plus, he was rude.  Mansplainer in chief.”

“That’s hilarious. What did he say?”

“He came up with all kinds of pseudo-scientific stuff to prove his viewpoint that the only way society could function was with a man keeping a woman, and providing for her, to keep her from straying from a nest that was filled with their children.”

“Sounds like Handmaid’s Tale.”

“Too right. Do you know the Harvard Professor Richard Dawkins?”

“I’ve heard the name.”

“He teaches biology and evolution.  He wrote this book The Selfish Gene, fabulous.  His central premise is that DNA is the most successful virus in the history of the universe.  That our bodies are simply hosts for this incredibly molecule, and that all this discussion about individual reproductive success is just noise.  That at the species level, what any one person desires is totally meaningless.”

“Could you live that way?” [Did this question of hers to me mean what I think it did?]

“I think so.  What matters is just communication.  The setting of boundaries.  Being clear about feelings.”

“It sounds so adult.”

“But the idea that you are going to get everything you need from one person is a recipe for pain and disappointment.”

“How does it work for you?”

“Come and stay with me and let me take care of you.”

“I’d like that.  And I would like you to come and see me.  I will give you my schedule.  Perhaps you could join?”

“Would you allow me to be your assistant?  You don’t need to pay me anymore than a symbolic amount.  This isn’t an open-ended commitment, just a discussion about having an exploratory working relationship.”

“In principle, yes.  I will tell you when I would need you.”

“Wonderful.”

I go back to the rare beauty of the woman who stood on my doorstep in a baseball hat.  Hiding is a uniform.  What kind of society have we created that a woman, simply because she will attract unwanted, entitled, male attention, has to wear a uniform to hide her features, to make herself “ugly” or at least invisible?

Surely we can do better.

P.S. on the return journey, we sat in the same seats, and once again, my kids joked about how someone unfortunate was going to sit there and how gross it would be. As it happened, I noticed her feet first, and then had the pleasure of looking up, and up, and up until I met her face, and she smiled at me, and pointed to the seat next to mine. Wordlessly I rose, wordlessly I took her bag and put it up, curtsied, let her pass, and then made myself as small as possible at the edge of her space so that she could enjoy her flight. After, when we landed, I did the same in reverse. Everyone noticed her. It was impossible not to. While we waited for the bags to come, she stood so close to me we might as well have been together. It was lovely, but this too is a reflection of the baseball hat. She was standing next to me to make it look like she wasn’t travelling alone. Her gentle and curious smile showed me this. We said goodbye to each other…the only words we spoke.