I met a distant relative today (a kind, jolly old man). The first question he asked me after we introduced ourselves made me very uncomfortable. It shows that even a kindhearted man, with good intentions, can saw something inappropriate and sexist. Here is our short conversation: He asked:
> “How’s it going with your boyfriend?” (pretending to assume that ‘of course I must have a boyfriend’).
Ø “What boyfriend?” I said.
Ø “How can a pretty little girl like you not have a boyfriend?” Unsure what to say, I just smiled, embarrassed. And the conversation came to a dead end.
Six reasons why his question made me angry:
1. he assumed I want a boyfriend. He assumed all young women hate being single, that we can’t enjoy being single. He assumed that we derive our primarily value from our value to guys (whether guys are attracted to us; whether we have a boyfriend).
2. he assumed that the main thing that guys go for in women is whether we are attractive. If that is true, it hardly makes me want to date guys ever.
3. he basically told me that my primary value and measure of success in life was whether I had “succeeded” in getting a boyfriend; to achieve this success in life I must be beautiful.
4. How I look is so superficial and unrelated to who I am/my real worth. So it makes me scared and angry when someone tells me once again how necessary being attractive is for women. This man told me I was “pretty”. When people comment on how I look it makes me self-conscious. It makes me aware of just how much how I look matters to them, and to society, and to my perceived chance of “future success” in life. To a plain looking lady this is very worrying. I can’t do anything about how I look, but I can sort the important parts of myself out.
5. this man would never have asked an obviously ugly young women about whether she had a boyfriend or not. To him, he would see this as pointing out her “unfortunate luck with looks”, and putting his foot in it. So it makes me very uncomfortable that he will compliment me for my plain luck in looking ‘good’. It sets me apart from those who ‘don’t’, and emphasises just how important this thing to do with genes and not our hard work is.
6. This man’s assumption that women have to be attractive to succeed in life is very demeaning and belittling. Apparantly, we can be valuable if we are just a “pretty face” (and body). This puts a very low expectation onto us and it removes our agency/control over our success. Either we passively ‘received’ beauty on conception or we did not. It also belittles our successes in other areas of our lives (e.g. education, career) by making these less important than how attractive we are (by making these “successes” less important to a guy wanting to date us than our attractiveness).
Why I didn’t like this man calling me a “Pretty Little Girl”:
- He assumed that to ‘get’ a boyfriend I had to be attractive to guys.
- To be sufficiently attractive he assumed I had to be little/slim and young (“cute”). This seems patronizing and belittling to me. I don’t want to be “cute” or a “girl” – I want to be an adult!
Tags: assumed that women, attractive for a guy, attractive girlfriend, attractive to get a guy, beauty standards, being sexy, belittling, demeaing, dumb assumptions, have to be attractive, how to be sexy, how to get a boyfriend, how to get a date, how to succeed in life, important to look good, infantilizing, patronizing, pretty little girl, primary value, sexist old man, success in life, ugly woman, ugly women, what girls want
