As social beings, we have taken it upon ourselves to create boxes, place ourselves in them and label each box based on who we feel is more deserving of respect and who is not. Discussions surrounding privilege have become increasingly prevalent in conversations about gender equality. Privilege, in this context, refers to the unearned advantages, opportunities and preferential treatment afforded to individuals for simply belonging to a certain gender. While we may all have heard about male privilege— the special advantage given to a person for the mere fact that they were born with a penis— there is a growing interest about the existence, as well as the implications of Female Privilege.
What Do People Say Female Privilege Is?
While there has been no general consensus on what “Female Privilege” is, considering the historical and ongoing discrimination against women in many societies, a significant number of people (read: men) can swear that many aspects of the female experience are seasoned with privilege. How?
Receiving Free Gifts: It’s not uncommon for women to receive unsolicited and free gifts from men, whether online or in person. Women joke about leaving their wallets at home because they plan on paying with their “face card” (I.e., their beauty).
However, the notion that all or even most women receive free gifts from men is not only universally flawed but also reinforces harmful stereotypes. For far too long, men have invalidated the hard-earned success of women by suggesting that they slept their way to the top. In the same breath where men are shouting that female privilege consists of all the “free things” women receive from men, these men will also argue that women are sluts who must have fucked for said “free things”. So…what is this privilege they cry about?
“Female privilege” and it’s just an extremely attractive woman getting favours from men being sexually attracted to her and expecting something in exchange, while unconventionally beautiful women either get treated badly for being “unfuckable” or just harassed without getting anything in return.
Zero Expectations to be the Family Provider: Historically, society (read: men) typically placed no expectation on women to be the primary breadwinners and instead relegated them to supportive roles. However, this isn’t necessarily a privilege but rather a result of entrenched gender roles, which limit women’s opportunities and perpetuate inequality.
Yet, in today’s world, double-income households are the order of the day. Men and women are now family providers. There are even many situations where women are the sole primary providers, but scenarios like this are always hush-hush because the woman won’t want people to know that her husband isn’t the one catering to the financial demands of raising the family.
Why men still obtusely say that there are zero expectations of women to provide for the family baffles me. Misogyny really rewires the brain to make people spew pathological lies.
More Opportunities for Female Empowerment: Some argue that more empowerment initiatives are tailored towards women, but this can be seen as society’s attempt to rectify past injustices. Women have historically faced barriers in professional settings—rampant sexism in the workplace, the gender wage gap, and seemingly harmless notions that women are better suited for nurturing roles like nursing and men for complex roles like tech.
So, if empowerment schemes are geared towards women in contemporary society, isn’t society just bridging a gap that they created? “Female privilege” is hinged on the benevolence of men who deem women who uphold patriarchal standards worthy. This leads me to explore the most talked-about subset of female privilege: pretty privilege.
What is Pretty Privilege?
Pretty privilege, also known as lookism or pretty bias, refers to the benefits given to a person who conforms to conventional beauty standards. Although some men have claimed to have reaped from this privilege, the real recipients are women who are considered beautiful. For a long time now, beauty has been one of the strongest currencies women use to navigate, as seamlessly as possible, the misogynistic world we belong to. Society’s definition of beauty has specific features that have proven to be immutable— this beauty is light-skinned, able-bodied, has straight hair, and if the beauty must have curls at all, it should be loose. This beauty has smallish facial features, this beauty is slim.
Apart from these old ass requirements, new ones are created, accepted and discarded every day. For this generation, our butts are expected to be bigger, waist slimmer, lips fuller, body curvier and skin clearer. This is where the problem begins. The thing about retaining your pretty privilege membership in a misogynistic society where beauty ideals radically change everyday is that you can’t just BE beautiful, you have to KEEP UP with being beautiful. There is no room to be perceived as anything less. How exhausting it must be for women to always have to pull and tug and cut and wax and trim and contort and bedeck ourselves to have our humanity validated. How, then, can pretty privilege be said to be a privilege in the truest sense of the word?
While some may argue that pretty privilege affords benefits, it often comes at a cost to women’s mental and physical health and finances. Not to mention that it perpetuates harmful beauty standards. Women are left in a constant state of war with our bodies and beauty politics. Handsome men who attest to enjoying pretty privilege do not have to subscribe to excessive standards of beauty or risk being unnoticed. In this unforgiving culture of beauty, they do not have to apologize for showing up bare-faced during Zoom call meetings. They do not, as much as women do, have to get a dozen cosmetic surgeries and be content with it until a ‘better’ type of makeover pops up. They do not have to feel threatened by the presence of another attractive man who is vying for the same spot as him. Women simply do not have the luxury of being considered ugly. A shocking study by the National Bureau of Economic Research reported that women earning’s tend to fall as their BMI goes beyond 23. For a lot of women, being beautiful equals safety. It is not enough to be called pretty; we have to continue being pretty. We have to accept whatever society tells us is the latest beauty standard and embody it.
The ugliest thing about pretty privilege is that it rationalizes society’s expectations to look a certain way, creating pressure to be impeccably groomed to appeal to the male gaze at all times. The ridiculous emphasis on a woman’s appearance leaves no room for mistakes if she desires to move ahead in her social or professional life.
Pretty privilege was designed to keep women in a bubble, constantly pandering to society’s insane beauty standards and, ultimately, the male gaze. With years of women being married off as children, disenfranchised and economically disadvantaged, gender equality is still only but a mirage. Let us look at pretty privilege for what it really is: a tool wielded by women to survive the harsh realities of a man’s world. Trans women, too, use beauty as a means of survival, even at the expense of their mental and physical health. The infamous ‘Instagram body’—a tiny waist and a round ass—flourishes among young women despite BBLs being considered the world’s most dangerous cosmetic surgery. There is an overwhelming need to look the part in order to navigate the world as a woman with a little more ease. The basic instinct to survive has trapped a lot of women in spaces where they constantly make detrimental sacrifices in order not to fall out of the good graces of those who deem them worthy.
Pretty privilege is pretty ugly. It is wielded by women to insulate themselves from the violence of patriarchy. But in its true essence, this privilege is another form of violence. Violence that the patriarchy told us we should be grateful if we receive. Violence that pits women against each other. Violence that makes women harm themselves to be considered something as subjective and fleeting as ‘pretty’.
Do you know what true systemic female privilege will look like? Governments of the world keeping their hands off our reproductive decisions, corporate organizations not paying a higher salary to a male employee when his female counterpart has the same or even higher qualifications than him, little girls not being married off to older men in the name of culture or religion, organizations and statutory bodies ensuring adequate representation of women in corporate and political positions, etc. Yeah, I’ll take any of this, any day, any time, over, “Hey, you’re quite stunning and dainty. Let me buy you a free drink.”.
