Pretty Privilege: Emilie Autumn’s “Thank God I’m Pretty” and Cameron Russell’s TEDtalk

I ran into these two videos, and thought they made an interesting duo.

In the above video, via Rebecca at The Mary Sue, model Cameron Russell talks about the ups and downs of “winning the genetic lottery” and being a model. She’s self-conscious about the problematic nature of someone who makes a living off being privileged (white, thin) talking about the negatives of that privilege, but is also bothered by the little girls who tell her they want to be models when they grow up, when they could instead hope to “Be my boss. Because I’m not in charge of anything.”

And in “Thank God I’m Pretty” (which I found via The F Word), the musician Emilie Autumn also talks about being pretty – but describes it as an almost entirely negative experience with only trivial advantages:

Thank God I’m pretty
Every skill I ever have will be in question
Every ill that I must suffer merely brought on by myself
Though the cops would come for someone else
I’m blessed
I’m truly privileged to look this good without clothes on
Which only means that when I sing you’re jerking off
And when I’m gone you won’t remember
Thank God I’m pretty

(Full lyrics here.)

I’m not sure what to think about “Thank God I’m Pretty” (and I’m not the only one). It’s a wonderfully bitter pushback against the cultural assumption that pretty equals happy, and against the stereotype that pretty people are vacuous and untalented. But at the same time, the song shows little awareness that – despite her obviously considerable musical talent and work ethic – Emilie Autumn’s ability to make a living has benefited a lot from being a thin, pretty white woman, and an equally talented hard-working woman who was also (say) fat would find it harder to earn a living from her music.

It’s a little bit like affirmative action. It sucks for talented, hard-working people who have worked their way into a good position in a competitive field to be objects of suspicion – “maybe they wouldn’t have gotten where they were without help from AA/help from being pretty.” (Or as Autumn says, “Every skill I ever have will be in question.”) On the other hand, bad as that is, it’s better than potentially not having gotten that position at all.

Also, I found it interesting that both Autumn and Russell incorporate changing their outfit into their performances.

I think Alas readers might also be interested in Autumn’s song “Girls Girls Girls,” which is very showtuney, and makes a parallel between being women in asylums (Autumn is herself an asylum survivor) and performers in a freakshow. (Lyrics here).

You see, they’re really more like animals than people
Which has been proven haven’t any souls at all.
The only bits that aren’t inferior are bosom and posterior
And these are only useful in a seedy music hall

They don’t bite, well they might
I say this one does look hungry tonight
So get your picture with an inmate
But be sure she’s locked up tight.

Happy holidays!

This entry posted in Feminism, sexism, etc, Gender and the Body. Bookmark the permalink. 

86 Responses to Pretty Privilege: Emilie Autumn’s “Thank God I’m Pretty” and Cameron Russell’s TEDtalk

  1. 1
    Sebastian says:

    The Halo effect exists, and is very much a net positive, for attractive people. To me, her song is mostly a whine.

    Yes, someone may question how she got to where she is. Everyone else will actually give her more credit than her accomplishments deserve.

    Odds are, compared to less attractive people, she will also make more money, receive milder sentences, be judged more competent, intelligent, kind, trustworthy, etc, etc, etc, ETC… she will also marry a partner that earns more.

    My heart really goes out to her. I’m programmed for it.

  2. 2
    jc says:

    It’s not enough for leftist radicals to treat everyone equally, they have to make anything considered good seem shameful to bring them down. This is just the latest example. It practically burns them admit that someone is simply superior to them in some way. This is why western thought should not be allowed to spread.

  3. 3
    AW says:

    @JC,

    Oh please. Pretty people getting prefered treatment isn’ t a ‘good thing’, nor are, say pretty people who have my talents ‘superior’ to me. I was drawing Disney and comics before I was five. I had hemangiomas on my face. The were removed and left one hell of a scar. There were two others in school, who were about half as good as I was.

    In elementary school All I got from peers and adult individuals were disbelief and incredulity, ~even when I was drawing in front of them~.

    Guess who got the recognition in high school?

    Wasn’t me. I finally gave up on the contests, et al, since they wete mainly judged by the student body.

    Fuck your great breath of ignorance.

  4. 4
    myselfandme says:

    As a former “pretty girl”, now an old woman, I must say…….that pretty girl Emilie’s whining is sooooo unattractive and completely without merit.

    An attractive person, be they male or female, ALWAYS has the advantage (it’s human nature to prefer the pretty), and should be wise enough not to complain re their pretty status, particularly as complaints about it are generally perceived as seeking to draw attention to the pretty one’s prettiness.

    Does that make sense?

  5. 5
    Copyleft says:

    Interesting acknowledgement that even membership in a ‘privileged’ group has its drawbacks.

  6. 6
    RonF says:

    I bet Cameron Russell is in charge of a rather hefty bank account. Probably to the extent that if she wants to be in charge of something she can go out and buy a company and set herself up as CEO. Whether she’d be successful at it is an entirely separate issue ….

  7. 7
    Eva says:

    RonF, do you really not appreciate what Ms. Russell is saying? She is allowing people to take photographs of her for a living. That’s it. She doesn’t decide who photographs her, or when, or where. At some point, because she is clearly intelligent and insightful, she will stop doing this for a living on her own terms, and hopefully be in charge of her own life, which she is clearly heading towards right now. She probably does have a considerable amount of money saved. But I think it’s rather cynical of you to say she could buy a company and be in charge of it by buying it. And so what if she did? Would you admire her then for her honesty when apparently right now all you can think about is how much money she has, therefore she doesn’t deserve respect or compassion? Get a grip.

  8. 8
    Grace Annam says:

    Ron,

    Yes, she probably has a good income, and may or may not have saved any of it.

    How is that relevant to what she said? Is her thesis invalid or irrelevant because she is presumably well-paid?

    Grace

  9. 9
    Grace Annam says:

    myselfandme:

    completely without merit.

    You don’t think there’s any validity at all to the notion that, while she benefits from being pretty, she doesn’t like the objectification and the denigration of her other abilities when people assert that she only succeeded on the basis of beauty? That isn’t real at all?

    Grace

  10. 10
    mythago says:

    Grace Annam @8: Perhaps RonF was making a point by parodying those who despise Russell for being pretty, and thus presumably undeserving of her success?

    Amp, I think you’re missing the point in a rather surprising way. You’re saying we can discuss how the patriarchy values women for their looks and how patriarchal oppression affects women who fit the ‘right’ mold, as long as it’s not those actual women doing the talking . It’s like listening to activists who bemoan the plight of sex workers as long as no actual sex workers join the conversation. Or perhaps the leftist version of Limbaugh’s argument that feminism is useful to women who aren’t beautiful.

  11. 11
    Ampersand says:

    I’m not saying that at all, mythago; that’s an entirely unfair reading of my post.

    Where I didn’t like about Autumn’s song was that she seemed to be depicting all advantages pretty people get as trivial and unimportant. I don’t think that’s accurate. Disagreeing with something she says is not the same as saying she shouldn’t speak at all.

    And – as i think was pretty obvious in my post – there were other things about her song that I did like.

  12. 12
    mythago says:

    No, Amp, I don’t think it’s unfair at all. If a poster here said that having large breasts meant she was a target of harassment and stares and being treated as if she were stupid, would you huff that she was clearly unaware of how many advantages she received from fitting the cultural model of women’s bodies better than others? I doubt it, and yet that’s exactly what you’re doing to Autumn. She’s not whining about too many boyfriends or being harassed by the Ford modeling agency. She’s talking about how the rewards of being conventionally attractive are that the patriarchy treats you as a useful piece of property instead of one unworthy of attention. I don’t get why you’re displeased that a song focusing on that issue doesn’t also hastily assure the listener that, gosh, she’s aware that not being “pretty” has drawbacks too.

  13. 13
    Ampersand says:

    What you said — which, i’ll remind you, was that my post is saying that “we can discuss how the patriarchy values women for their looks and how patriarchal oppression affects women who fit the ‘right’ mold, as long as it’s not those actual women doing the talking” – was entirely unfair, and completely untrue. If it was fair, then quote me my own words where I ever said anything like that.

    in your new comment, you shift the goalposts and make some new claims, also unfair. It’s not that her song “focused on the issue” of being treated as a useful piece of property that i objected to; rather, I objected to the way that she actively described the advantages of being conventionally attractive as if they were entirely trivial.

    Since we’re making analogies, I’d say her song is like an MRA saying that being male means that you’re expected to deny many emotions, to toe the line on a bunch of stupid masculinity standards, but sarcastically acknowledges that least he gets to wear pants and walk alone at night even if that does mean a greater chance of being mugged. I don’t disagree with him that being male has drawbacks; what I do disagree with is the way he’s summing up the advantages as if they were entirely trivial and unimportant.

  14. 15
    mythago says:

    I’m not shifting goalposts, Amp. I’m pointing out some rather ugly implications of what you said, and you don’t like it. You’re putting words into her mouth – accusing her of dismissing the advantages of being good-looking as if they were “trivial”, when in fact what she’s doing is pointing out the price of admission for those advantages.

    And yes, you really are implying that she needs to STFU, or at least, be sure to footnote her complaints by noting that she’s perfectly aware of how much worse it is for those who don’t fit the patriarchal mold as well. Shall we now scold women who talk about abusive boyfriends by pointing out they haven’t acknowledge if they had abusive girlfriends the victim-blaming would be much worse?

  15. 16
    A.W. says:

    “accusing her of dismissing the advantages of being good-looking as if they were “trivial”, when in fact what she’s doing is pointing out the price of admission for those advantages.”

    I thought the point on those advantages was there is no admission? She’ll get those advantages whether she wants ’em or not.

    And I do think she’s dismissing them. Very, very much so.

  16. 17
    A.W. says:

    “Every ill that I must suffer merely brought on by myself”

    Well, no, as far as ills go, they’ll blame disabled people and fat people for their own ills, but I’ve never heard of someone getting blamed for, say, a broken leg due to being pretty.

    “Though the cops would come for someone else
    I’m blessed”

    When has a cop not shown up because someone was pretty?

    “I’m truly privileged to look this good without clothes on”

    At least in this Western society, yeah, you are.

    “Which only means that when I sing you’re jerking off
    And when I’m gone you won’t remember
    Thank God I’m pretty”

    You remember the bit on american idol where not-so-pretty people dare compete? Susan Boyle is a good example. They put ’em out there to spice things up. Put the two artists together with that lyric up there and compare ’em. On the one hand some people objectify you via your looks. On the other, you don’t get to compete at all. Would you like to know what I found Boyle under on youtube?

    American Idol ugly lady.

    So, most of her lyrics in that particular song at least are, pardon my nonexsistant French, a crock of shit.

  17. 18
    mythago says:

    She’ll get those advantages whether she wants ‘em or not.

    And she’ll get the drawbacks whether she wants them or not. She doesn’t get to say “Yes, please pay more attention to my music than you would if I were fat, but don’t grab my ass or think I’m stupid and only got attention because I’m pretty.” It’s a package: you can be a fat ugly bitch or you can be a stuck-up attention whore, your choice!

    But good job, A.M., on playing the patriarchy’s game. The root problem of what she’s complaining about and what you’re complaining about are the same, i.e., a system that thinks women are the sex class, and get slightly less-shitty treatment depending on how well they fit into that role.

  18. 19
    Ampersand says:

    Mythago:

    You’re putting words into her mouth – accusing her of dismissing the advantages of being good-looking as if they were “trivial”, when in fact what she’s doing is pointing out the price of admission for those advantages.

    False dichotomy. The song does both, not just one or the other.

    And yes, you really are implying that she needs to STFU, or at least, be sure to footnote her complaints by noting that she’s perfectly aware of how much worse it is for those who don’t fit the patriarchal mold as well.

    Criticizing someone’s song (or blog post, or comment, or comic, or whatever) is in no way implying that they should shut up. Period.

    I do think that her song would have been more accurate if she hadn’t trivialized the advantages of being conventionally attractive. I think she could reasonably respond that she was writing a pop song, not an essay, and that calmly listing the pros and the cons would have undermined the tone of bitter, angry sarcasm she was going for. That’s fair enough, but I don’t think that makes me wrong for pointing out a way I think her song is inaccurate.

  19. 20
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Amp – you keep saying that Autumn is dismissing the advantages of being good looking as trivial, but you’re not giving examples, and to be honest, I can’t see her doing so from the lyrics. Can you please explain how you think she’s doing that?

  20. 21
    Ben Lehman says:

    I’m not Amp, but the systematic benefits of being attractive are fairly widely documented: you are more likely to get a job, once you have it you will have a higher salary, you are better reviewed and better regarded. Daniel Hamermesh at UT seems to be the main researcher. Interestingly he seems to find that this bias is present for male and female subjects, and is stronger for male subjects than female subjects, although by such a tiny amount I’m not sure if it’s a real thing.

    Being beautiful definitely gives you a somewhat-unearned advantage in life (I saw “somewhat” because of course some beauty is performative rather than inborn.) It’s a fairly minor one, not like being white or male, but still detectable and significant. Whether this constitutes a form of privilege worth commenting on is another issue, of course.

    yrs–
    –Ben

  21. 22
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Ben – just to make it clear, I’m not disputing that there are advantages to being attractive (though I am unsure as to whether it is correct to treat these as advantages as a privilege in the sense of male, white or heterosexual privilege). I’m just unclear as to why Amp says Autumn is trivializing these benefits. I can make educated guesses, but I’d rather give Amp the opportunity to expand on what he meant rather than respond to what I think he might have meant.

  22. 23
    nobody.really says:

    What Does It Feel Like To Be a Hot Girl Who Gets Old?

    I do miss the days of a flawless complexion, endless flirting from strangers, and a thick mane of hair. What I DON’T miss is the automatic assumption that I wasn’t smart because I was attractive.

    I even put on 40 pounds from stress, and an amazing thing happened besides my ass being the size of a barn. All the men I was doing my marketing pitch to all of a sudden quit staring at my boobs and looking at me with lustful daydreams.

    They actually listened to me, respected, and agreed with my presentation! How sad that I couldn’t be as attractive and get that same respect!

    * * *

    I don’t miss all the women at a new job instantly hating me and having to go overboard to show them I’m just a caring good friend. I have many great friends, but in my younger days I had to prove my sincerity and compassion so they could get past it. I don’t miss being hit on in the elevators at the corporations I worked for. That was terribly confusing and uncomfortable.

  23. 24
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Perhaps it is more realistic to analyze the song in the context of “things she wrote” instead of holding it up individually. And it might be more realistic is we remember that it’s a song put out by a professional musician, not a book of lyric poetry or a thesis in Gender Studies. She clearly is pretty self aware. Doesn’t make sense IMO to demand even more disclosure.

    What’s next: demanding that all love songs include a “assuming he isn’t a misogynist pig who hits me, at least” line, or a “although with love i must admit / i’ve been blessed by fortune to get down with it / i acknowledge the people back at home / who don’t have such luck and who die alone” stanza?

  24. 25
    Ampersand says:

    Eytan, for example:

    Thank God I’m pretty
    The occasional free drink I never asked for
    The occasional admission to a seedy little bar

    These advantages – a free drink, getting into a bar – are petty advantages that no sensible person would think a big deal, and her tone in mentioning them is pretty clearly sarcastic. That’s the sort of thing I was referring to.

    G&W:

    And it might be more realistic is we remember that it’s a song put out by a professional musician, not a book of lyric poetry or a thesis in Gender Studies.

    That’s a good point. No one should ever analyze pop culture or think about what a song is saying; thinking about things is always bad.

    Also, you’re right to suggest that criticizing a song is the same as making demands of the musician. Who the hell do I think I am, commenting on a song lyric as if discussing the social and political implications of a song were a legitimate thing to do?

  25. 26
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    No one should ever analyze pop culture or think about what a song is saying; thinking about things is always bad.

    But of course we should analyze pop culture… in context.

    You might reasonably ask that folks interpret your post in the context of your many other posts, thus leading me to conclude that you don’t think that pretty people should walk around with giant “I’M SORRY!!!” T-shirts. (Which I get; I’m not in the Amp pile-on, you know.)

    I am pointing out that I think it might be more reasonable to analyze her song in the context of her other songs. At least it is if you’re trying to reach the question of “does she have awareness of this issue?” rather than “did she happen to express that awareness in that particular song?”

    because mainly, when you say

    But at the same time, the song shows little awareness that – despite her obviously considerable musical talent and work ethic – Emilie Autumn’s ability to make a living has benefited a lot from being a thin, pretty white woman, and an equally talented hard-working woman who was also (say) fat would find it harder to earn a living from her music.

    I don’t think that’s true.

  26. 27
    Ampersand says:

    because mainly, when you say

    But at the same time, the song shows little awareness that – despite her obviously considerable musical talent and work ethic – Emilie Autumn’s ability to make a living has benefited a lot from being a thin, pretty white woman, and an equally talented hard-working woman who was also (say) fat would find it harder to earn a living from her music.

    I don’t think that’s true.

    I’m finding this a little unclear. Are you saying that it’s not true that the song shows little awareness? Or are you saying that an equally talented hard-working woman who was fat would not find it harder to earn a living as a pop singer?

    I suspect what you’re actually saying is that Emile Autumn, being a smart person, is in fact aware of all that. I would agree with that. But I was discussing the song, not the person.

    When I create a comic book, before I actually write and draw it I imagine that the finished comic will have elements A B C and M in it. In practice, the final comic might have only A and C in it, even though I was aware that it should have had B and M as well. Criticizing the comic for lacking B and M is fair, and doesn’t really imply that I’m unaware of B and M; it might just mean that I didn’t succeed in getting everything I wanted to into the finished product.

    Sorry if that’s a little opaque, but the point is: I think it’s valid to criticize a song for lacking elements, even if I’m sure the song writer is aware those elements exist.

  27. 28
    Robert says:

    My takeaway: Amp didn’t put enough BM in his latest book, and now he regrets it. Decline of Western Civilization, man.

  28. 29
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    I suspect what you’re actually saying is that Emile Autumn, being a smart person, is in fact aware of all that. I would agree with that. But I was discussing the song, not the person.

    Yes, that’s what I’m saying.

    And I’m saying that therefore I think your position is wrong.

    There are certainly times when it’s reasonable to take something out of the larger context. But that’s usually the case when someone is offensive. If Autumn had written a song lambasting ugly folks, for example, then she would rightly be held to task.

    but that isn’t the case here. This is a song which arguably attempts to ADMIT that pretty folks have benefits, which is presumably something you agree with. It just doesn’t… what? Admit it strongly enough? point out the opposing side strongly enough? I don’t think that in that context, it’s reasonable to judge the song as you do.

  29. 30
    mythago says:

    Amp, try looking at it this way: Who is being addressed in this song?

    That’s not a rhetorical question, because it’s right there in the lyrics: “you”, the guy who’s masturbating while she sings because he’s looking at her, not listening to her. She’s not singing “oh, poor fat middle-aged black musician, please pity me, I suffer more than anyone”. It’s directed to the guy who thinks that being pretty is a huge advantage because men want to buy her free drinks and get all “tongue-tied” around her. And she quite directly points out that others have it even worse: that even when she’s blamed for “ills” (which I think in the context of this song is pretty clearly implying sexual assault), that the cops “would come for someone else”.

    I’m also a little puzzled at the idea that “when it’s dark outside/I have to run and hide and can’t look behind” is a trivial complaint.

  30. 31
    Ampersand says:

    I’m also a little puzzled at the idea that “when it’s dark outside/I have to run and hide and can’t look behind” is a trivial complaint.

    The song describes advantages (and trivializes them) and disadvantages (which are not at all trivial, and she does not trivialize). That’s clearly a disadvantage, not an advantage.

    (Although it’s more a disadvantage of being female, than a disadvantage of being pretty; i.e., plenty of women who aren’t conventionally pretty still have to worry about sexual harassment or worse if they walk alone in the dark.)

    I’ve never said or implied that her complaints are trivial.

  31. 32
    Ampersand says:

    Every ill that I must suffer merely brought on by myself
    Though the cops would come for someone else

    Mythago, I think you must be reading this lyric very differently than me (which may mean I’m reading it wrong). I think she’s saying that because she’s pretty and dresses “all stocking and curl,” the cops will blame her if she gets sexually assaulted, whereas another woman they’d take seriously and come to help.

    So this isn’t an example of Autumn pointing “out that others have it even worse”; it’s an example of her thinking (wrongly) that non-pretty girls who are sexually assaulted can count on the cops taking them seriously.

    As I said, I’m open to the possibility that I’m reading the lyric wrong. Can you spell out how you’re interpreting it?

  32. 33
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Well, I understood that lyric in a way that seems different from both you and Mythago; I thought it meant that the cops will come to arrest someone else, but that she will still receive the brunt of the blame blame.

    It’s worth noting that she’s a rape survivor, so she may be talking about an actual incident. Though from what I gathered (mostly from Wikipedia), she was raped as a child, not an adult, so I don’t know how that experience relates to her adult experience.

  33. 34
    Ampersand says:

    This is a song which arguably attempts to ADMIT that pretty folks have benefits, which is presumably something you agree with. It just doesn’t… what? Admit it strongly enough?

    That is “arguable,” but it’s not an argument I agree with. To repeat what I said to Mythago earlier, I’d say her song is like an MRA sarcastically acknowledging that least he gets to wear pants and walk alone at night even if that does mean a greater chance of being mugged.

    I don’t disagree with him that being male has drawbacks; what I do disagree with is the sarcastic way he’s summing up the advantages, as if they were entirely trivial and unimportant.

  34. 35
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    To repeat what I said to Mythago earlier, I’d say her song is like an MRA sarcastically acknowledging that least he gets to wear pants and walk alone at night even if that does mean a greater chance of being mugged.

    The way that you know it’s sarcastic and problematic is that your hypothetical guy is an MRA, right? Because if RJN said that, you might consider it to be ironic (and reasonably so) rather than carrying the MRA intent. And, how do you know he’s an MRA? Why, by the context of his OTHER actions.

    Why is why I’m arguing the “context” issue.

  35. 36
    Ben Lehman says:

    So, being attractive is (for men and women) a form of unearned advantage. (I’m using the term “unearned advantage” because we’re uncomfy about the term “privilege.”)

    This is a song complaining about “oh my unearned advantages are _SO HORRIBLE_” is sort of … tacky?

    What I find weird is that we talk a lot about “thin privilege” on Alas and no one bats an eye. That is obvious a part of a larger “physically attractive privilege” but that’s apparently too much the swallow?

    yrs–
    –Ben

  36. 37
    Eytan Zweig says:

    G&W – seriously? I may not agree with Amp’s stance here, but it’s far more sensible than the notion that you can only evaluate a work of art in the context of the writer’s other work.

    Personally, I’m finding this thread very challenging, and I’m trying to figure out what that’s telling me about myself. In essence, something feels very off to me about Amp’s position, but I can’t figure out what it is, and I’ve literally spent hours composing responses but not managing to write one that isn’t more problematic than the point I’m trying to counter.

  37. 38
    Eytan Zweig says:

    This is a song complaining about “oh my unearned advantages are _SO HORRIBLE_” is sort of … tacky?

    But that’s definitely not what the song is about, is it? It’s “my unearned advantages aren’t that great when compared to the disadvantages that come with them”. Amp’s argument is that she is being selective about the advantages she lists, and that really the advantages are greater than she presents. But I really can’t see how one can take this song as saying that the advantages themselves are horrible.

  38. 39
    Ampersand says:

    …and I’ve literally spent hours composing responses but not managing to write one that isn’t more problematic than the point I’m trying to counter.

    Oh no!

    Maybe you should post some of that stuff anyway, with a note saying that you think your comment is problematic and you’re not committing to agreement with the position you’re staking out? Sometimes discussion can help clarify things.

  39. 40
    Ben Lehman says:

    EZ: I feel like your characterization of the song is in line with Amp’s: “I am in an (apparently) privileged category, but it is actually not privileged because there are so many disadvantages which totally outweigh the trivial advantages.”

    The thing is that this isn’t actually true. Attractive people are privileged over non-attractive people, in a small but consistent ways that add up to something significant over the course of a lifetime. There are downsides, because there always are downsides, but they are not sufficient to counteract the upsides.

    Like, I could write a sarcastic song “thank God my family paid for my college” which could talk about how people who know that about me dismiss me and get angry at me, and the guilt I have around that. Which is all true. And in that song I could minimize the advantages that having totally-paid-for-college has given me. But I don’t think that Amp would be out of line for criticizing me about singing that song, because really what I’m doing is dismissing my class privilege and trying to turn myself, as the privileged person, into a victim.

    In this case, of course, it’s less clear-cut, because “pretty” isn’t actually a synonym for “attractive,” as in it applies much more to women and a lot of the things she talks about in the songs are disadvantages that she has from being a woman, rather than from being attractive. So it is somewhat a song about objectification and how much it sucks to be a woman vs. being a man. But because it is trying to do these two things at once, it ends up kind of muddled and confused, as indicated by Amp’s post and the linked cartoon.

  40. 41
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Ben – that’s different from what you said. You’re taking the same line as A.W., saying that attractiveness is overwhelmingly advantageous and therefore the song is just wrong. I don’t agree, at least as far as women go – and see Mythago’s posts for several good reasons – but that’s a claim about the song being incorrect.
    What you said in your post above is that the song says the advantages are horrible. That’s would be equivalent to you writing a song “thank God my family paid for my college” which talks about how it’s horrible to have a college education. If Autumn said “I’m pretty and it got me a job which sucked”, then that would be along the same lines, but that’s not what she’s saying.

    Amp – I’ll see if I can write a post about what I have to say in a coherent enough fashion a bit later this evening.

    (On a side note, I’ve spent enough words defending Autumn’s lyrics in this thread that I feel the need to balance it out by pointing out that there’s absolutely no possible moral or other justification for the music that accompanies them.)

  41. 42
    Ben Lehman says:

    Ah, yes, I see I did say that. It was an accident. It’s a problem emerging from substituting “unearned advantage” for “privilege.”

    Being attractive is a (somewhat*) unearned advantage, aka privilege. Of course, it is a whole collection of things some of which are positive, some of which are negative. But, on the whole, it is a small-to-moderate advantage, which can be a big deal over the course of a lifetime.

    In terms of income, it seems to be about 3-5% (low end for women, high end for men.) Compare to the male-female wage gap for a sense of scale. I don’t think that is “overwhelmingly advantageous,” I just think it is, in fact, an advantage. If I had to classify the size of advantage I’d say “small but significant, particularly over the course of a lifetime.”

    This is to say that attractiveness or lack thereof is a mixed bag but a bag that is decidedly mixed in favor of the attractive people. Of course, as I noted about “pretty” isn’t quite the same as “attractive” because it’s significantly more gendered female, and a lot of the disadvantages of being pretty that the singer talks about are, in fact, disadvantages faced by all women, attractive or not. So you could consider those disadvantages of being “pretty” inasmuch as the group of “pretty” people consists of mostly women. And pointing out the unspoken problems that women have is good. That said, unattractive women have the same disadvantages, and don’t have the advantages of being attractive, and the song seems to indicate that they don’t? Anyway, it ends up being a kind of muddled song: some good parts, some bad parts. Which I think is roughly in line with Amp (and the linked cartoon.)

    * somewhat because, of course, attractiveness is performative as well as innate.

  42. 43
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Ben – thanks for clarifying, I think we’ve managed to resolve the misunderstanding about what we both were saying. And I think your latest post actually helped me finally figure out what my more general problem here is.

    It’s as follows – I’m not sure it makes sense to me to try to add up the advantages and disadvantages and decide whether one side outweighs the other. Privilege is not a game of sums; the advantages don’t cancel out the disadvantages and the disadvantages don’t cancel out the advantages. And the overwhelming discourse we get in society – in media, in interpersonal connections, anywhere, really – is that being attractive is an extremely desirable virtue. And almost always, when there’s pushback against that, it’s because people point out how unfair this is towards the people who do not measure up on the attractiveness scale.

    You say that being attractive is a small but significant advantage. That’s not the message that society is selling us. But while with other forms of privilege, the message tends to be to de-emphasise and rationalise the privileged class’s advantages (“sexism? racism? why, we got rid of that years ago”), in the case of physical attractiveness, we are faced with a media that exaggerates the benefits. Pick up a teen magazine, you won’t read that being pretty is a small but significant advantage, you’ll read that it is the key to all your desires.

    So, my problem is as follows – there isn’t anyone denying that being attractive has many advantages. It’s not a secret that society favours the good-looking. But what we don’t hear enough is that it is not a panacea. That being pretty comes with its own set of disadvantages, especially if you’re also a woman, and even more especially if you’re in the public eye. And then, when you try to tell people that you have problems, then they dismiss that, because obviously, you’re so pretty nothing can be wrong in your world.

    I agree with you, Ben, and with you, Amp – most of the problems she lists in the song do not arise from her being pretty. And maybe the song is over simplistic in suggesting that they are. But it’s important to point out that these problems do not go away because she’s pretty, that they are made worse.

    So, to sum up, I think my problem with Amp’s post is as follows – she’s not trivializing the advantages of physical beauty; what she is trivializing is the normative depiction of beauty as a solution to life’s problems. And I think that the problem at the crux of this thread – and definitely the problem at the crux of the Mythago/Amp disagreement, as I see it – is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to break out of the normative pattern here while also acknowledging the fact that there are actual advantages as well. Which means that by saying that she should have acknowledged the real advantages, Amp is effectively – though I don’t believe at all intentionally – implying that he doesn’t believe she should be able to counter the cultural norm.

  43. 44
    Charles S says:

    Eytan,

    I really like your analysis of this.

  44. 45
    Mandolin says:

    That said, unattractive women have the same disadvantages, and don’t have the advantages of being attractive, and the song seems to indicate that they don’t?

    That was how I felt when I read the lyrics.

    I’m not going to contribute more than that; I’m actually going to stop reading the thread now, but I wanted to second this.

  45. 46
    mythago says:

    Attractive people are privileged over non-attractive people

    As you admit later, Ben, we’re not talking about “attractive people”, we’re talking about “pretty women”, that is, women who through some combination of genetic lottery and performative femininity, meet a cultural standard of how women ought to look. You can’t separate that intersectionality.

    Eytan, what I’m putting my finger on as problematic, in part, is the spectacle of a dude lecturing about how a pretty lady has all these advantages and privileges because she’s pretty, so she should stop whining about all the male attention she gets and think about how lucky she is to be pretty. (Though of course, Amp’s putting a feminist gloss on it.) That’s exactly the kind of thing MRAs say, and exactly the kind of attitude Autumn is singing about. But you get free drinks! But guys listen to you more (even though it’s really just to stare at your tits)! How can you complain about men hassling you? (I guess Amp wouldn’t append “you stuck-up bitch” on the end of that; “privileged” here is the more polite, progressive version of that phrase.)

    And that’s why I boggle at the utter stupidity of Amp analogizing this to an MRA. To Amp, a pretty woman talking about how “not shit on quite as hard by the patriarchy because pretty” comes with some very big drawbacks is exactly like an MRA playing the victim card. Really, try that again: a pretty woman is to not-pretty woman as an MRA is to women in general.

    That said, unattractive women have the same disadvantages

    You can’t really have it both ways here. If Autumn is getting more attention from men because of her looks, that attention isn’t magically limited to positive attention, or attention that she finds helpful. There is no intellectually-honest argument that being pretty means she gets more attention paid to her songs, but not to her ass; that men are more likely to follow her to a music show, but not to her car. It’s disingenuous to say, well, all women put up with harassment, or being not-pretty doesn’t protect you from harassment. Autumn’s talking about the type of harassment that comes with being pretty: the assumption that you find all male attention flattering, that you’re fair game for whichever guy ‘ranks’ enough to get your attention, and that you have no right to refuse it because who do you think you are.

    TL;DR, Amp is, from his position of male privilege, very much minimizing how the patriarchy treats all women, and how even the slim rewards women get for conforming to its dictates come with a huge, huge price of admission. And bluntly? His scolding comes across very much as a progressively-phrased version of “boo hoo, cry me a river” that MRAs throw at women.

  46. To me, what’s missing from this discussion is an awareness that “Thank God I’m Pretty” is an attempt at satire, not sarcasm, though whether it is a successful attempt is another question. That Autumn intends the song as satirical is is clear to me from the context provided by her performance, the costume–which is certainly not “pretty” in any conventional sense, though it is certainly revealing and plays, in some ways garishly, on tropes of prettiness–and even the tone she uses while singing. In other words, she is not simply talking about her own situation as a conventionally pretty woman; rather, she is–and I say this hesitantly since I’ve only watched the video once and given the lyrics only a cursory reading–satirizing the people who think that the advantages that come with being pretty (big, small, enduring or otherwise) represent real power. And so I guess I agree with Eytan when he writes that

    she’s not trivializing the advantages of physical beauty; what she is trivializing is the normative depiction of beauty as a solution to life’s problems.

    though I would substitute “satirizing” for “trivializing.”

    And this is where I think Amp’s reading goes off. If I understand him correctly,
    he’s reading the lyrics and the performance more as personal, almost autobiographical statement:

    But at the same time, the song shows little awareness that – despite her obviously considerable musical talent and work ethic – Emilie Autumn’s ability to make a living has benefited a lot from being a thin, pretty white woman, and an equally talented hard-working woman who was also (say) fat would find it harder to earn a living from her music.

    If Autumn were indeed writing about her own life, then this lack of awareness–even, I would argue, in a pop song–would indeed be a problem, since it would be an implicit denial of the complexity of her own position. I also agree with Mythago, though. Even if Amp’s reading of the lyrics and performance are accurate–and, as I’ve said, I don’t think they are–his MRA analogy is absolutely not.

  47. 48
    Elusis says:

    she’s not trivializing the advantages of physical beauty; what she is trivializing is the normative depiction of beauty as a solution to life’s problems.

    Which means she’s trivializing the subjective, imperfect, but very real feelings that I and many other non-beautiful women have about the advantages we see going to our pretty sisters. You think getting into a club is trivial? Try not getting into the club. Try not getting in when your friends all get in. Try not getting in when you’re supposed to meet someone there and you’re stuck on the sidewalk because they can’t hear their cell phone, or worse yet, don’t notice, because they’ve already got men lining up to buy their “trivial” drinks for them. (Having drinks bought for you is “trivial” unless you are living on a limited budget and you can’t explain to your pretty friend why it costs you more to go out than it costs her, so you can’t afford it.)

    she is–and I say this hesitantly since I’ve only watched the video once and given the lyrics only a cursory reading–satirizing the people who think that the advantages that come with being pretty (big, small, enduring or otherwise) represent real power.

    See above. Compromised power, problematic power, but power nonetheless. You think it sucks to be trivialized at work? Try not having a job. You think it sucks to be treated like a delicate princess? Try being treated like you’re subhuman. You think it sucks knowing that if you’re flat broke, your best shot at easy money is being a nude art model? Try being flat broke and knowing that no one is ever going to pay you for your body, short of subsistence-level street prostitution, so your option is that or hoping the temp agency finally calls.

    And that a pretty girl doesn’t come up for the same job you’re up for.

    Yeah, as a feminist, I struggle with all this. A lot. A very, very pretty (and much drawn, painted, and photographed) friend of mine posted a link to the Crabapple article on FB a while back and we nearly got into it because I am not in a place to hear how hard life is for women who get tons of attention and advantages that I really wish I got. Nope, I don’t have my shit worked out around that. It’s a process.

  48. 49
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Mythago: I understood that part of what you were saying, I just don’t feel comfortable commenting on it directly, for a variety of reasons.

    I also did not mean to imply that what I take away from your argument is what either of you is actually saying; my apologies if it felt like I was putting words in your mouth.

  49. 50
    mythago says:

    @Richard, I think ‘satire’ is a good approach to it.

    @Elusis: Struggle harder. As someone who has been on both sides of being the pretty/not pretty girl, I am sick to the fucking gills of hearing allies and fellow feminists jump on the “shut up bitch, you get free drinks” bandwagon. Autumn isn’t singing about how harrrrrrd it is to keep her contacts lists straight because of all the boys asking to date her. She isn’t telling you how gosh-darn lucky you are not to be as pretty as she is. She’s talking about how, because we live in a culture that shits on women, pretty women get hit with a huge price tag for looking the way women are “supposed to”.

  50. 51
    mythago says:

    Let’s try it this way.

    Imagine that Autumn was of Japanese ancestry, and sung “Thank God I’m Asian”, about how fortunate she was to be a ‘model minority’ because she would totally collapse if white people didn’t think she was awesome at math, and how she constantly had to deal with white guys fetishizing her, being asked where she was “from” and assumed to be submissive, conformist and weak.

    Now imagine that a white dude hearing the song blogs about how she doesn’t spend enough time acknowledging that she has a lot more privilege than if she were black, that the fetishizing/interest probably helped her singing career in a way that she wouldn’t have had if she were black rather than Asian, and that the advantages of being Asian are not nearly as trivial as she made them out to be.

  51. 52
    Ben Lehman says:

    Mythago: I think I see the difference in your opinion.

    You are operating under the assumption that “pretty” women receive more harassment from men than “non-pretty” women. I (and I believe Barry) am operating under the assumption that this isn’t true.

    I … can’t really understand how one can possibly come to the conclusion that “pretty” women are more harassed. It’s a conclusion so alien to the experiences of my friends and family that it took me a fairly long time to recognize that that’s what you were saying. But poking around online turns up a lot of anecdata both directions and no actual research, so there’s no particular reason to believe one over the other.

    Obviously, if attractive women are harassed more frequently, that sucks and is terrible and worth discussing. I just don’t think it’s true. The women I know who are harassed most frequently / vilely / violently are women who are marginal, which includes various forms of “ugly:” fat, weird hair, scarred, whatever. Obviously, from this viewpoint, the song contains some pretty gross elements.

    Your race example is bad (particularly bad with your arbitrary choice of a Japanese person rather than, say, a Korean person.) Please don’t use it.

  52. 53
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Ben – it’s not a competition between different kinds of women. It doesn’t matter if attractive women are harassed more or less. If a woman is unattractive, she is harassed for being unattractive. If she is attractive, she is harassed for being attractive. You seem to be saying that because in other domains of life, women who are attractive may have an advantage, then the harassment that is directed towards them is somehow not something they should be complaining about.

  53. 54
    Ampersand says:

    You seem to be saying that because in other domains of life, women who are attractive may have an advantage, then the harassment that is directed towards them is somehow not something they should be complaining about.

    Ben didn’t say anything of the sort, as far as I can tell. Could you please directly quote where he said something that can be fairly interpreted as meaning that women who are attractive should not complain when they get harassed?

  54. 55
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Obviously, if attractive women are harassed more frequently, that sucks and is terrible and worth discussing. I just don’t think it’s true.

    (emphasis Ben’s)

    That seems to imply that if attractive women are harassed to a degree that is not more frequent, then it is not worth discussing. I don’t think that’s an unfair interpretation.

  55. 56
    Ampersand says:

    I interpreted that as meaning, “[if attractive women are harassed more frequently], that sucks and is terrible and [the more frequent harassment] is worth discussing.” In context, I think that’s a more likely interpretation.

    In other words, all sexual harassment is terrible and should be discussed; but the idea that “X group is harassed more frequently” is only worth discussing if it is in fact the case that X group’s harassment is more frequent.

  56. 57
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Oh – one point of clarification, as I realize my post above (at 53) is ambiguous in what I’m saying Ben did. I did not mean to say that Ben was saying that individual women who are harassed should be silent about the fact that they were harassed. He didn’t say that. What I meant was that he seems to be saying that the harassment of attractive women, as a group, isn’t something that is worth discussing; and after re-reading his post multiple times, I still think that’s what he’s saying.

  57. 58
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Amp @56 – I don’t see how that changes what you’re questioning me about. It still implies that the experience of attractive women with harassment isn’t a worthy topic of discussion, even if Ben thinks that the frequency of that harassment itself is a valid topic.

    I’d argue that if attractive women are harassed more, then that fact is worthy of discussion. If unattractive women are harassed more, then that fact is worthy of discussion. Sans actual data, though, all we have is anecdotal evidence. And the anecdotal evidence – including the content of Autumn’s song – is that both attractive and unattractive (and, by my guess, all the women who are neither particularly attractive nor unattractive) are harassed. And saying that it is tacky (to use Ben’s word) for an attractive woman to complain about her experience with harassment because she is attractive – and how that experience is affected by her attractiveness – is just as bad as saying that it is tacky for an unattractive woman to complain about her experience with harassment because she is unattractive.

  58. 59
    Ben Lehman says:

    EZ: No, I’m not saying that.

    I’m saying that discussing the harassment of women in such a way that implies that attractive women are the only ones harassed is, in fact, a problem.

    I’m also saying that discussing of being attractive in such a way that denies the real, tangible, benefits of being attractive (which apparently include making more money, living longer, and being happier) is a problem.

  59. 60
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Ben – ok then, let me direct Amp’s question at you – can you give me a direct quote from Autumn’s song where she implies that attractive people are the only ones harassed?

    Or indeed, explain what are the “pretty gross elements” that the song contains?

  60. 61
    Ben Lehman says:

    EZ: Sure. Here are a list of things which are true of all women, which the song attributes to being pretty.

    “Which only means that when it’s dark outside
    I have to run and hide can’t look behind me”

    “Every skill I ever have will be in question
    Every ill that I must suffer merely brought on by myself
    Though the cops would come for someone else”

    “It’s lucky I hate to be taken seriously
    I think my ego would fall right through the cracks in the floor
    If I couldn’t count on men to slap my ass anymore”

    The “pretty gross” thing is I think of my socially-considered-ugly friends who have been harassed and mistreated to the point of suicide attempts, and the ones who I’ve never met because they succeeded, and then this song makes my skin crawl. Pretty girls are not the only victims of misogyny.

  61. 62
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Ben Lehman says:
    January 10, 2013 at 9:39 am
    I’m saying that discussing the harassment of women in such a way that implies that attractive women are the only ones harassed is, in fact, a problem.

    Is it implying that they’re the only ones? I don’t think it is: I think it just happens to be talking about pretty women in particular.

    Think of it this way: a song about how it “sucks to be teased because I’m very short” would not be expected to also acknowledge the problems of the extremely tall.

    I agree that there ARE some situations where you really do have to at least acknowledge the other side. But those require some really serious power differentials: a “why it’s hard to be a white dude” song, for example. (ETA: …and would obviously be horribly racist. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.)

    Are you saying that you think pretty women have such an advantage that they fall in the “really serious power differential” category? Or do you think this song has other issues?

    I’m also saying that discussing of being attractive in such a way that denies the real, tangible, benefits of being attractive

    Don’t you mean “fails to mention?” (Where are you seeing denial?)

    This is an important distinction. I see a big difference between saying “there’s no privilege!” on the one hand, and failing to actively state “there’s privilege!” on the other hand.

  62. 63
    Mandolin says:

    I said I wasn’t going to comment further, but I will, because this conversation breaks my heart a little.

    Pretty/not pretty is not a dichotomy. I suspect a lot of the problems here would be resolved if we had language around that. It’s definitely a spectrum. A spectrum that I’m going to borrow Kinsey’s numbers to badly describe:

    1. Aggressively gorgeous
    2. Very pretty
    3. More attractive than average
    4. Less attractive than average
    5. Considered very unattractive
    6. Considered ugly

    May I suggest that people who are saying “I used to be pretty but now I’m not” or Eytanz’s example “I used to be pretty but then I gained 40 pounds and now my backside is the size of [inhuman object, because we all know that 40 pounds makes you inhuman]” are not experiencing a slide down to 5 or 6.

    Even the idea of this as a spectrum is not particularly helpful; I was “pretty” for a few years, but I was still also fat, and I continued to receive harassment for my weight, as well as being blocked from my chosen profession. Fatphobia adds a depth to this. So does setting. Disability. And oh so definitely class.

    I don’t give a fuck about getting into clubs. I do give a fuck about not being able to get jobs.

    Maybe Emilie means her song to compare positions 1 and 2, or 1 and 3, or god knows. But “not pretty” encompasses a large number of people, and yeah, ugly girls get harassed. They may be trivial targets for sexual harassment or rape because “who would believe anyone would bother to harass them; they should be grateful for the attention.” But, constantly, they are harassed because they are *ugly women.*

    I can’t go out at night without worrying about being attacked–like the singer. I also can’t go out in casual clothes, or eat indulgent foods in public, without undergoing a significant penalty in perception and treatment from people around me (according to a study that made rather an impact on me that Amp posted here a few years back). That’s a light example, even though it increases the cost of being in public in terms of finances and time, and lit’s not like leaving the house is inessential. There are worse examples, but I don’t wish to go into specifics.

    When fat girls are at high risk of being bullied, sometimes to suicide, do you think that’s not an indication of high levels of sexualized harassment?

  63. 64
    Mandolin says:

    Oh, hell, it looks like I already said what I wanted to say on the issue. Not that I couldn’t expand.

    https://www.amptoons.com/blog/2010/08/31/pretty-ugly-plain/

  64. Elusis:

    Compromised power, problematic power, but power nonetheless.

    True. My use of the phrase “real power” was a quick and careless shorthand for all that and I did not intend it to mean that there is no power attached to being conventionally pretty. This question is complex and fraught enough as it is and I am sorry that the way I wrote what I wrote made you feel like your experience was being completely denied.

    Ben quoted these lyrics from the song:

    “Which only means that when it’s dark outside
    I have to run and hide can’t look behind me”

    “Every skill I ever have will be in question
    Every ill that I must suffer merely brought on by myself
    Though the cops would come for someone else”

    “It’s lucky I hate to be taken seriously
    I think my ego would fall right through the cracks in the floor
    If I couldn’t count on men to slap my ass anymore”

    It’s true that all women have to deal with these kinds of treatment, but it is also true that a woman who is conventionally pretty is likely to experience them differently from a woman who is not–and difference does not, I want to stress, imply hierarchy–because of the social, cultural, patriarchal attitudes and assumptions about the fact of her prettiness; and one of those attitudes and assumption–as per mythago above (at least I think this is implied in her comment)–is that her prettiness somehow compensates for or ameliorates that treatment, or even renders it null and void. To criticize conventionally pretty women for talking about this as their particular experience of patriarchy, regardless of how many or how few women experience this how often or how rarely, does not seem to me at all reasonable. This is why I think it’s important to treat Autumn’s song and video as satire and to ask whether or not she has successfully satirized what she wants to satirize–which means figuring out precisely who and/or what her target is–rather than to debate the question of who gets harassed more or less, and so on.

    Edited for clarity by removing my half-told story, which I have put in another comment.

  65. 66
    mythago says:

    Richard @65 said what I was trying to say much more eloquently. Nonetheless:

    You are operating under the assumption that “pretty” women receive more harassment from men than “non-pretty” women.

    Ben, do I AGAIN need to point out that I have been in both of those roles at various times in my life, so I don’t really appreciate the fucking mansplaining as to what pretty or non-pretty women do or don’t experience in their lives? Apparently I do.

    Let me try this one more time: you cannot credibly argue that pretty women receive more attention than not-pretty women, and it’s all objectively positive attention. I cannot fathom how you can argue that Autumn receives more respect and attention paid to her music because of her looks, but she cannot possibly receive more unwanted sexual advances because of her looks.

    Your use of “sexualized attention” is also rather disingenous. Someone backing you into a corner and insisting on getting your phone number is sexualized attention. So is someone screaming “Eat a salad, whore!” as he and his buddies drive past. But do you really argue that those different types of sexualized attention are equally likely to happen to a thin, pretty young woman as a middle-aged fat woman? Or that if the woman in the first situation complains about her harassment, that she deserves a lecture on how she isn’t thinking hard enough about the woman in the second?

    @Mandolin, I know it’s not as simple as pretty/not pretty (and to be clear, I’m using those to refer to cultural norms, not objective measures), and that there’s also a huge level of intersectionality with race, and class, and weight. (A woman who is of average build and average looks is going to be treated vastly better than a woman who is pretty but fat.)

    And may I suggest that it’s pretty bad form to assume that nobody who’s ever been pretty can possibly understand things from the other side, or must be full of shit if they claim they’re no longer pretty.

  66. 67
    Eytan Zweig says:

    May I suggest that people who are saying “I used to be pretty but now I’m not” or Eytanz’s example “I used to be pretty but then I gained 40 pounds and now my backside is the size of [inhuman object, because we all know that 40 pounds makes you inhuman]” are not experiencing a slide down to 5 or 6.

    Excuse me? Why are you attributing that example to me? I never said anything of the sort.

    Mandolin – I think I’m obviously missing something here, because both you and Ben, and to a lesser degree Amp, seem to be taking this song as denying the experience of women who are not “pretty”, and those of us here defending the song as somehow subscribing that. So let me make something completely clear – I in no way intended to say anything that implies that the level of harassment suffered by women who do not fall into the category of “pretty”, and especially the women who are considered “ugly”, is not extremely high. I do not for a moment have any doubt that the kind of treatment you discuss in the post you linked to happens, nor do I have any doubt that we, as a society, need to get it to stop, ASAP.

    But at the same time, women who are considered pretty are also facing constant harassment. And I think that it’s also important to discuss that harassment. And I don’t think discussing the harassment of “pretty” women in any way diminished from the discussion of the harassment of “ugly” women.

    It’s obvious that Autumn’s song is problematic because it’s clear that it can be interpreted as saying that there’s a causal relationship between her “prettiness” and her fears, and if you take it that way, it feels like she’s saying that had she not been pretty, she would have nothing to fear. But everything that I’ve said above, and everything Mythago said, is an argument as to why that is not the correct interpretation, while your post makes it sound like there are people in this thread who agree with that interpretation.

    It seems to me that the people concerned with the harassment of women considered “ugly” and the people concerned with the harassment of women considered “pretty” should be allies. Autumn is probably not being a great ally, because she’s not acknowledging that the other group exists, though as Amp pointed out, she’s writing a pop song, not an essay. But as far as she sins in her song, she sins by omission. Why are people treating it as if she’s explicitly negating the experience of other women?

    There’s more I want to say here, not about the song itself but about my personal experience and why I think that both Autumn’s message AND Mandolin’s message are important and why I think the two should not be in any way viewed as negating each other, but it’s just been pointed out to me that I’ve spent the spent the last hour writing this blogpost rather than getting ready for work, so it will have to wait until later.

  67. I have moved this comment here from #65:

    This whole conversation puts me in mind of an experience I had when I was in my twenties and working at a sleep away camp in upstate New York. There were two girls, friends, one who was stereotypically gorgeous and the other who was not. Each one was miserable. The conventionally pretty one because no one took her or her talents seriously, because the boys were only interested in one thing, because people treated her all the time because she was a “dumb blond,” etc. and so on. The one who was not conventionally attractive was miserable because the boys were not paying attention to her, because while people appreciated her singing voice, that didn’t translate into their valuing who she was or in seeing her as attractive, and so on. She was desperately jealous of the “pretty” girl, while the “pretty” girl talked about how she would have been very happy not to be so pretty.

    Last night, when I wrote the original comment this was part of, I said that the “pretty” girl had been able to understand the “not-pretty” girl, but that the reverse was untrue. Having thought about it, I’m not sure that memory was accurate. What I can say is that these two girls had been friends and that this situation made it so that they were practically unwilling to talk to each other–which made things difficult because they were both in the camp’s drama program, were both talented singers and so had to work together. More importantly, though, it only increased their misery because each missed the other. Clearly the divide-and-conquer strategy that is at the heart of the way patriarchy privileges “pretty” in women had worked with them.

  68. 69
    closetpuritan says:

    Excuse me? Why are you attributing that example to me? I never said anything of the sort.

    That was nobody.really @23.

  69. 70
    Schala says:

    Being attractive is a (somewhat*) unearned advantage, aka privilege. Of course, it is a whole collection of things some of which are positive, some of which are negative. But, on the whole, it is a small-to-moderate advantage, which can be a big deal over the course of a lifetime.

    In terms of income, it seems to be about 3-5% (low end for women, high end for men.) Compare to the male-female wage gap for a sense of scale. I don’t think that is “overwhelmingly advantageous,” I just think it is, in fact, an advantage. If I had to classify the size of advantage I’d say “small but significant, particularly over the course of a lifetime.”

    There is more advantages, that people actually still care about, that don’t involve income.

    Health and concerns thereof, living longer and concerns thereof, being valued as a person (not simply your contributions, which can be simply judged on their own merit), being happier, being approached more often for romance or friendship.

    All those are not numerically quantifiable.

    And I’d add one that counts for a lot to me: Being seen as a cis girl, even a “better looking than average” cis girl, rather than being seen as trans (and thus, in many people’s mind: ugly). Many advantages to that, not the entirety of cis privileges or female privileges (because many of them go away forever if my trans status is known), but it makes a HUGE difference. NOT 5%. More like 75% better quality of life than the alternative.

    The intersectionality of ugly and other characteristics has more power than the intersectionality of pretty and other characteristics. In other words, between pretty, plain and ugly, there is an exponentially diminished returns calculation. Or a square root formula. It’s similar to an endgame dungeon in a game I’m playing, DFO. Otherverse has a pre-requisite amount of Exorcism parameter you need to enter it, depending on the difficulty. You get penalized up to 70% in stats (HP, MP, attack, defense) for not meeting that amount. If you have above that amount…you get up to 5% bonus in stats. In real life, ugly is HUGELY penalized, while being pretty has advantages that are “the cherry on top”. As if being ugly “ate” in your Maslow imperatives, while being pretty only added stuff after your basic needs were already fulfilled. Hence the cost/benefit ratio is lesser.

    Some trans women are willing to spend in the 6 digits in facial surgery just to look acceptably recognized-as-female (not movie-star pretty), not just because patriarchy is desiring them to, but because they know that ugly-disadvantages are huge, and can afford to change that. Going from a trans woman seen as a cis man who is a 3-4 on this scale, to one who is a 6 when transitioned, is a huge move (and a huge paralyzing fear for most trans women I’ve known, one that usually reveals false if young, after a few months).

    1. Aggressively gorgeous
    2. Very pretty
    3. More attractive than average
    4. Less attractive than average
    5. Considered very unattractive
    6. Considered ugly

    This scale from a post above.

    I went from a 4-5 seen-as-male (considered too thin, too unmuscular, too short, too hairless, too small shoulders/skeleton overall*) to a 2 or 3 seen-as-female (who has small hips and breasts). I wouldn’t even WANT to be a “1”, because it takes work (I’m lazy for stuff I consider a chore), and it’s highly superficial (and I’m against it on principle, I hate superficiality except in art), plus the advantages of being a 1, while non-trivial, are not ones I actually even want.

    *I look “fat” at 140 lbs for 5’6½”, my skeleton is made very small. To have no tummy showing I’d need to go down to at least 125 lbs. My 5’9″ brother weighs in at 170 lbs, and has no tummy. He’s also much larger overall.

    I do think the song is trivializing the benefits of being a 1-2 person, or woman specifically, by saying its not worth it even for people who benefit (and like those benefits, unlike me – ie they work in a domain taking advantage of it, something others could never do).

    “Which only means that when it’s dark outside
    I have to run and hide can’t look behind me”

    I think this is everyone (men, women, pretty or not). If you think you’re Hulk and are invincible, you’re just unconscious. That men are trained not to fear going out in dark streets at night is just a sign of what we WANT men to do (being fearless), nothing about their actual safety. Same for rape. Men are trained to think it won’t happen to them, when it very much can, at rates much higher than probably 99% of people suspect (both men and women underestimate the rape risk of men, thinking it’s about 0.001% except in prison, or that they’re lucky if it happens, thus not rape because you can’t rape the willing).

    Every ill that I must suffer merely brought on by myself
    Though the cops would come for someone else
    I’m blessed

    In the context of sexual assault and rape:

    Women are blamed for how they were dressed, how they trusted the perpetrator, how they might have been careless with watching their drink, or how they took risk.

    Men are blamed for…being male (maleness implies consent, and only deadly violence proves you resisted – plus resisting a woman needs to fit in a patriarchal narrative: she is either too ugly, too old, or you’re gay for refusing).

    Trans women are blamed for…being coerceively assigned male at birth (and thus presumed to not be female). Wee trans-misogynandry.

    I also think prettyness (or attractiveness overall) is not a factor in who gets raped. Especially given how it’s mostly someone known to the person. Unless you count your facebook friends as “people you know”, or have a HUGE extended family, this should be a restrained count and averaged for most people, not 3x more for pretty people.

  70. 71
    mythago says:

    So, Schala, we’re back to the argument that being pretty gets women attention, but only good attention; it gets them no more or less (and probably less) bad attention than if they weren’t pretty. Men are more likely to be interested in pretty women, but will not express that interest as harassment, entitlement or assault any more or less than they would as to non-pretty women.

    Of course being pretty isn’t a prerequisite to rape, harassment or crime. I’m just really not at all following the argument that Autumn’s looks have everything to do with her success as a performer but nothing whatsoever to do with whether men grab her ass or stalk her.

  71. 72
    dragon_snap says:

    I just thought I’d share this recent Autostraddle* post on femme privilege: http://www.autostraddle.com/femme-privilege-does-exist-a-little-153400/

    It focuses largely on the divergent experiences of being a masculine-of-centre queer-identified woman and a femme queer-identified woman, and thus is more relevant to the performative aspects of perceived attractiveness than the innate ones that this discussion has mostly focused on. I thought it was pretty interesting, though : ) ETA: The comments (those that I’ve read so far, at least), delve into many issues of intersectionality, especially race-related ones.

    *one of my very favourite websites, which I discovered via Alas! Thanks, RJN!

  72. 73
    Schala says:

    So, Schala, we’re back to the argument that being pretty gets women attention, but only good attention; it gets them no more or less (and probably less) bad attention than if they weren’t pretty.

    For someone who wants it, the price of admission is worth it for the benefits.

    It’s like being a man and male privilege. Or a woman and female privilege. The former is not worth it one bit to me (because I personally find maleness abhorrent, poisonous and unattractive to my spirit – but also because much of the privileges are counter to what I want (I don’t want to be seen as a threat), and I don’t ambition being rich/famous or an entrepreneur), the latter is worth it more often to me (because I actually desire some of those benefits, like being presumed non-threatening, worth helping).

    Or trying to be a CEO. It’s very hard, will ask a ton of time, money, and probably will you don’t even have. But if you want to be rich, have powerful status, innovate and direct stuff, you’re at the right address. Ask Bill Gates, maybe he thinks it was worth it.

    The thing is, not everyone wants the CEO spot. Some people think that having past a certain amount of money matters not one bit (won’t improve your quality of life at all, or negligeably), and this amount is lower than 1 million. You’d ask them if they would want the CEO spot, and they would likely refuse, citing no interest. The cost isn’t worth the benefits, when the benefits have no value to you.

    Pretty privilege has benefits, mainly about positive attention, certain career opportunities and other things that come with extra attention (usually self-esteem). It also has a cost. Those she cites in the song about not being valued for other things than her looks, being presumed incompetent (you’re usually hired for a reason, if that reason isn’t about competence, people will think they’re more competent, at least in what they themselves were hired for). The one thing I think she has more to worry about is being abused for her looks, I mean someone manipulating or using her without just compensation, or in an abusive way. A non-pretty person would be useless to such a manipulator, since they want benefits from the looks (probably indirectly). A model agency owner or high official could be such an abuser, for example. This abuser could very much be a woman, too.

    Though the rape or physical assault risk and such are not things that are costs to being pretty, it’s a cost to being alive (male or female). If you want to say she still runs a high risk of rape, sure. But it’s not particular to prettyness. Hence irrelevant in her song.

    If MOC women are able to walk home alone at night without being bothered, it’s not because of “masculine-of-center privilege” — it’s because of male privilege. Nobody is letting her pass because she’s masculine, they’re letting her pass because they think she’s a he, and it’s never a guarantee that she’ll be read that way or for how long.

    From the Autostraddle post.

    Apparently, even as a seen-as-cis trans woman, I benefit from this “does-not-get-harassed” privilege. I can walk home at night, alone, without a problem. I didn’t do this in Montreal since transition (I’ve lived in “smaller towns” of “only” 70-100k people. Montreal is 2 million). I don’t need to be perceived as male. I just need my emotionless “what are you looking at” face (which isn’t hard to do when you’re not used to expressing emotions on cue anyway). I also look forward as if I haven’t even seen other people (I do give them a glance, but never more). I look past them.

    It’s funny that I don’t get harassed, because I’m more or less terrified when I’m walking alone, even during the day. And that was pre-transition too. Social anxiety (probably due to extensive physical bullying over the elementary years), but I sometimes had to go out anyway.

    I think harassment has more to do about neighborhood and how many people there actually are out on the streets than wether you are attractive, feminine or masculine presenting. And harassment, like rape, is about power and control, not about sex. It’s a desire to bother people, maybe specific-to-that-harasser people (maybe he or she does hate women), or just anyone he or she can get their hands on.

    I’ve mostly been harassed in school, elementary and high, mostly by students, and one teacher. It was psychological and physical, no sexual assault (and no one ever did anything about it, besides tell me to stop making them do it). I don’t remember there being sexual harassment. Though I have been harassed by a select few over being seen as gay. I don’t think my perceived maleness ever protected me from this harassment either.

  73. 74
    mythago says:

    For someone who wants it, the price of admission is worth it for the benefits.

    As a reply to the point you quoted, this is a non sequitur. Yet again: you can’t, if you’re being intellectually honest, pretend that being pretty gets extra attention of the good kind, but gets no more extra attention of the bad kind. If harassment is “not particular to being pretty”, neither is having someone listen to your music. Yet you reiterate this logical fallacy – nobody is saying being not-pretty protects you from harassment, are they?

    By itself, it’s irrelevant. Autumn’s entire point is that she is getting benefits she either doesn’t want (the ‘compliment’ of having her ass grabbed’) or that shouldn’t depend on her looks (an audience for her music), and that she pays a high prices of admission for these unwanted and unfair benefits. Are there some people who think it’s worth the cost? Sure, and I bet there are a couple of Asian women in the world who think that the ‘cherry blossom’ fetishizing is a small price to pay for being assumed to bet STEM whizzes; so what?

  74. Dragon_Snap:

    Thanks, but I think it’s Amp you want to thank for pointing you to Autostraddle, not me. This is his blog–unless I linked there in something I wrote and I just don’t remember it.

  75. 76
    dragon_snap says:

    Richard: the Autostraddle link was in one of your ‘What I’m Reading’ posts (it’s the first link mentioned: https://www.amptoons.com/blog/2010/02/14/what-im-reading/)

    But also, thank you to Amp for hosting and everyone else who writes posts and comments and moderates said comments on this blog. I’ve been mostly-lurking here since the spring of 2009, and it’s one of my favourite places on the internet <3

    Back on topic: I think the general idea that, "for someone who wants it, the price of admission is worth it for the benefits," has merits in terms of facilitating understanding of how some of the people in this discussion arrived at their strongly-held yet strongly-divergent perspectives.

    To me, it seems like 'pretty' is being used as a stand-in for 'traditional femininity' in this context. And our society makes a lot of assumptions of what someone's personality is like, how they communicate, how they see the world, and how they want to be treated based on a combination of people's gender presentation* and how closely they match our rigid and largely arbitrary beauty standards. However, those assumptions are often incorrect, which can lead to a lot of discomfort and unhappiness for those people society and its gendered ideas so clearly misunderstand and misrepresent. Sexism also pervasively and perniciously affects the value judgments we place on place on the aforementioned traits.

    Which all means that some women pretty women may experience their appearance as having both benefits and drawbacks – "I love being able to brighten others' days days by smiling at them, but I wish my ideas about public policy weren't dismissed simply because I think being compassionate is important." However, women whose personalities, communications styles, etc. differ from those society assumes they have based on their appearance might experience the 'benefits' themselves as additional drawbacks – "Not only do I not get taken seriously as someone capable of having worthy intellectual and artistic insights, everyone assumes I love compliments about my looks and that I'm not interested in my favourite hobby, sports fandom."

    In short, I think it's perfectly valid to not want to have anything to do with the attention and assumptions that come with being pretty, as well as wish one were prettier, or be relatively content with the way your appearance modifies others responses to you (beyond basic sexism).

    (For more on this idea, focusing more specifically on how presenting as femme, androgynous or masculine of centre isn't necessarily related to one's personality, see this post, also on Autostraddle: http://www.autostraddle.com/im-neither-butch-nor-a-top-94950/)

    My specific thoughts w/r/t the song: I think its general message and tone are valid and important, though as others have mentioned, some of the lyrics obfuscate her point by referring to things that happen to all women. I think the song is best understood as describing her personal experience, rather than a generalizable one about all women who are pretty. That is, 'benefits' of looking and/or acting a certain way while being a women are relatively subjective and overall, we need to cut this 'let's make baseless assumptions about how people want to be treated except for the obviously necessary one of treating everyone as a human being worthy of respect' nonsense out.

    *approximately equivalent to the choices people (in this case women) make about their personal appearance – I'm not referring to gender identity, but rather what kind of clothes, jewelery and footwear they wear, how they cut and style their hair, etc.

    ps: sorry for the extreme length, everyone!

  76. 77
    Schala says:

    However, women whose personalities, communications styles, etc. differ from those society assumes they have based on their appearance might experience the ‘benefits’ themselves as additional drawbacks – “Not only do I not get taken seriously as someone capable of having worthy intellectual and artistic insights, everyone assumes I love compliments about my looks and that I’m not interested in my favourite hobby, sports fandom.”

    I can get that, that’s certainly how I felt with male privilege. Not seeing it as a privilege, seeing it as all costs, no benefits, with rewards I wouldn’t even want for free.

    Not only was I not defended from being beaten up, I was blamed for not beating them back and defending myself on my own, yet still considered more threatening than any other girl or woman. Physically and sexually. Something I never found as a perk.

    And the way to fix stereotype projection is…to stop relying on gross generalization when your brain can fathom individuals (ie you’re not at a basic organization level, you’re an adult with over 85 IQ, this should be cake). Treat people as individuals. Don’t use past experience to judge future encounters with people, only possible risk.

    It might sound a bit naive, and in a dog eat dog world, it would be suicide, yet it’s the only way to reach a level of understanding beyond stereotypes a 5 years old relies on to navigate the world (whereas some of them will swear honest to god that long hair and dresses make you female).

    We can judge people on their own merit, we don’t need soundbites, except for movies maybe (because they truly rarely have the time to present us developed characters). A TV series already can give us full-color characters that stand in for themselves, not their demographics. Firefly had very deep characters imo. Not cardboard cutouts.

    Real life should do even more so.

    And that some stereotyping is encouraged or is widespread is no excuse to do it ourselves. Blonde women aren’t automatically brainless airheads. Asian people aren’t all math wiz. White people can dance good. Black people can be bad dancers. Some stereotypes we denounce (like those based on racism), some we never encountered and might be surprised at how archaic our thinking is (ie people who never knowingly met a trans person reacting with childishness). We just need to keep an open mind. Treat people as individual people, mostly how you would yourself like to be treated.

    Given how rare this is applied, I would think it is a lost cause. People too lazy to accord basic courtesy.

  77. 78
    Nancy Lebovitz says:

    Just one more angle on prettiness: I read a piece (sorry, I have no idea where) by a woman who found that she could be beautiful, pretty, or plain at the same appearance– just by changing where she lived in the US.

  78. 79
    Summ says:

    Why is no one in the comments aware that Emilie Autumn is being sarcastic.
    This song is about the silly standards women have to live up to

  79. 80
    Sebastian says:

    When I hear a guy complaining how he couldn’t get a job because he’s white and the recruiters discriminate against white people, I want to hand him the research showing that people are judged more competent the whiter their skin, their name, or their background.

    When I hear a pretty person complaining that her skills are questioned because she is pretty, I want to hand her the research showing that people are judged more competent the taller, healthier or more attractive they look.

    When I see people who accept the research in both cases, and view both complainers the same way, I feel I’m in good company.

    When I see people who disregard the research in both cases, and side with the complainers, I shrug, because you can’t fix stupid.

    When I see people who run the Oppression Olympics in their heads, and tailor their reactions to the complainers according to the results, I want to voice my disgust out loud.

    Which I think I just did.

    —–

    Oh, and Summ, I am speaking just for myself, but even after rereading the lyrics, I still see no reason to think that this is a sarcastic song about the silly standards to which women have to live up. If you’re right about her goal, she should have aimed lower to reach clueless people like me.

  80. 81
    RonF says:

    “When I hear a pretty person complaining that her skills are questioned because she is pretty, I want to hand her the research showing that people are judged more competent the taller, healthier or more attractive they look.”

    Is there a difference on that between males and females – both as subjects and as respondents?

  81. 82
    Ben Lehman says:

    There is! Men get more pretty privilege than women. But both get a fairly huge amount of it.

  82. 83
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Sebastian says:
    May 2, 2013 at 5:46 pm

    When I hear a guy complaining how he couldn’t get a job because he’s white and the recruiters discriminate against white people, I want to hand him the research showing that people are judged more competent the whiter their skin, their name, or their background.

    When I see people who disregard the research in both cases, and side with the complainers, I shrug, because you can’t fix stupid.

    Why? They’re not in conflict. Here’s a simple illustration:
    In general, my sex means that I’m more likely to have my views respected.
    In general, my race means that I’m more likely to get a job.
    But on Twisty Faster’s blog, or in my old college’s Gender Studies class, the first statement is dead wrong.
    And if an employer is running a “Diversity Initiative” in hiring, to fix the fact that its faculty is 98% white, then unless I already happen to be tenured faculty member, the second statement is dead wrong.

  83. 84
    RonF says:

    Here’s what I”m asking – are men more or less likely than women to presume that a sexually attractive/”pretty”/whatever woman is or is not competent at her job. Are men more or less likely than women to presume that a sexually attractive/”handsome” man is or is not competent at his job?

  84. 85
    Sebastian says:

    gin-and-whiskey, I am pretty sure that Emilie Autumn was whining in general. You’d have to bend over backward to deny that her song implies her attractiveness makes people think that she is less competent than she actually is, IN GENERAL.

    Which is the exact opposite of reality.

    RonF, I’ll try to summarize what I remember from the three studies I have read on this.

    1. In general more attractive is judged more competent, in all four combinations.

    2. In F judging F, there is a subset of subjects where the effect is reversed. It’s less than 15%, and does not depend on the ‘judges’ menstruation cycle.
    In M judging F, there is smaller subset where the effect is reversed. It’s less than 5%.
    In F judging M, there is a very small subset where the effect is reversed, but it practically disappears in some portions of the menstruation cycle.
    In M judging M, there are almost no exceptions to the rule.

    3. Makeup exaggerating the tonal differences in females (i.e. making them more female looking) makes them appear more competent. The effect of makeup on males was completely reversed in the two summaries I just checked, so I have no idea. I think there is an effect but whoever was reporting it goofed.

    When you add it all up, it seems that men benefit more from attractiveness, because there are fewer deviations from the norm.

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