Beauty Privilege

[Epitaph]

Frankly, I wouldn't want to ever put the words "Beauty" and "privilege" together.

 

Am I privileged because I can reach the top shelves at my job site and nobody else in the store can? No. My bones grew to that size because of genetics. And I can't change that. That wasn't a right granted to me by anybody. Very much in the same way that you can't change your appearance, or how attractive it is to some people or societies at large. (Technically you could via the power of plastic, but.....)

 

However, if somebody made a restaurant for instance, and said "nobody below six feet tall can enter," am I privileged then? Not exactly. Some picky fool is simply picking favorites and idiotic enough to believe that height merits much of anything important other than how far your reach is and how quickly your knees are going to get fucked as you age.

 

Now then, if the government passed a law that said "everybody below six feet tall has to pay more taxes," that could be defined as privilege. I believe we can define something as privileged the more it leans into concrete rules that affect greater amounts of people.

 

So in some instances, you're going to be meeting people that were simply biased in choice because of a certain factor, and in other instances, you'll bump into systemic instances. The two are hard to separate. And even worse is the political climate surrounding the word "privilege" these days. Want a quick way to demonize somebody pretty easily? Call them privileged for something.

 

Funny you should ask about life being affected. I notice that lately, since I live in a city environment, I'm exposed to a lot of people. I can spot a good chunk of the women trying to come on to me. And there's some that are painfully obvious by making comments. I'm surprised about the amount of comments I get about my ass for some reason. I wasn't expecting that out here honestly.

 

But honestly, no. Nothing life changing for me. Although I'm dude mc duderson. The variables are different when it comes to being a woman.

 

Is it as big an issue as race? Is it even an issue? Yes and no simultaneously. All depends on the context of the situation.

[The Dryad]

15 hours ago, Ardoise said:

One element of beauty that no one's really brought up on this thread so far is that fashions change.  The "preferred" body type, skin color, and so on shifts from generation to generation.  Whatever preferences we have for people who look a certain way can't be just a biological reaction.  Social conditioning plays into it, too.

I was thinking of this too, but a lot of beauty standards are inherent and universal- for example, many models and actors in the industry tend to look very similar, I'm not going to say that human construction hasn't played a role in this, especially with blatant racism, but I think that there's something about certain people that make everyone, regardless of preference and stigmas, think that they're beautiful.

[starweb]

I've thought back over my life and realized something and I have no idea if this is related to ACEness or not.  I was never jealous of other women who happened to be prettier than me. If someone said so and so was beautiful, I would agree and move on.  To me it was like saying 'this picture of the ocean is beautiful' or that ruby ring is beautiful'.  I could appreciate the aesthetics but didn't feel threatened by them, if that makes any sense. I never felt we were in competition.  They were just...people. 

 

I honestly don't know the answer, its something I just realized.

[uhtred]

1 hour ago, The Dryad said:

I was thinking of this too, but a lot of beauty standards are inherent and universal- for example, many models and actors in the industry tend to look very similar, I'm not going to say that human construction hasn't played a role in this, especially with blatant racism, but I think that there's something about certain people that make everyone, regardless of preference and stigmas, think that they're beautiful.

Its interesting to look at old artwork of beautiful women and see how styles have changed over the centuries.