The Perils Of Being A Beautiful Woman: Feminism’s Ugly Legacy
May 13, 2009 / 12:55 pm • By Dr. Melissa ClouthierDon’t be a beautiful, smart and successful woman. Men will be intimidated. Women will hate you. And gay men will tear you to shreds consumed with vagina and breast envy.
Its okay to be a stupid, beautiful woman. It’s okay to be a smart, handsome (but not beautiful) woman. It is not okay to be a beautiful, smart woman. And if you’re a liberal and an average looking woman, expect the press to objectify you and spend lots of ink explaining why you’re a beautiful woman.
Please note: If you’re an obviously smart, beautiful, successful, and worst of all, conservative, woman here’s a succinct message, in case you haven’t gotten it via the media yet: Shut The Fuck Up.
Up until today, I haven’t written about Michelle Obama’s sculpted biceps or Carrie Prejean’s breast implants and view on gay marriage. I find the left and the press’ need to objectify any (on the right or left) woman abhorrent and disgusting. Jon Stewart, of all people, sums up the convoluted mess that Feminism, yes Feminism, has wrought against women:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M – Th 11p / 10c | |||
| The Pageant of the Christ | ||||
|
||||
Media Lizzy writes a must-read piece about beauty and women, and ultimately, truth:
For years, I have watched as the feminist movement pretended to care about women. From Gloria Steinem, Patricia Ireland and Margaret Sanger to Kate Michelman and their pro-abortion advocacy to Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth. They are contempuous of beautiful, feminine, intelligent and successful women. For a time, I read Naomi Wolf with some interest… she is charismatic, has an Ivy League education, was aesthetically beautiful and talked about the oversexualization of girls at too young an age… things I have been interested in all my life. Somewhere along the way, she fell victim to the Leftist ideals of feminism, never realizing how the vaguely masculine Patricia Irelands of the world are all too happy to kill the spirit of a beautiful woman. Modern feminism, with the glaring exception of Camille Paglia, is about hating men and stamping out their seed. It is about hate. They can wrap it up in “anti-Patriarch” ribbons and bows, but that does not make it so.
I too, have read Ms. Wolf, and in fact have her book Misconceptions on my shelf. I had hope for the next wave of feminists, that for once, they’d embrace the feminine, the female. Alas, it was not to be. They too, are consumed with envy. Gay men like Andrew Sullivan and Perez Hilton share with feminists the same trait: desire for what they cannot have. To be taken seriously, a liberal woman must be ugly or make herself ugly. To be accepted by God and/or the culture, a gay man should have been born a woman. These untenable positions make the trapped person very angry. So feminist women hate their ovaries and breasts and so do gay men.
The solution, then, is to shame and silence those who have what the jealous person cannot have. Feminists will participate in the destruction of Sarah Palin right along side Andrew Sullivan. Feminists will discuss a beauty pageant winner’s artificial breasts right along side Perez Hilton. They are consumed with jealous, impotent rage. It makes them hideously ugly.
Media Lizzy gets to another truth. Beauty serves as motivation to higher callings:
MY primary criticism of Ms. Gregory’s work, and many others, is the assertion that Anne was raped by King Henry VIII. Why imply such a thing? For literary enrichment? No. To accomplish two things: paint Anne as deserving of rape. And to paint Henry as a rapist – depicting a powerful, passionate man as an animal. Why again? Because, if Anne loved King Henry – and he loved her… then his break with the Vatican (and the spark that ignited the Reformation) was due in no small part to beauty, love, passion, and intangibles most simply can not grasp. King Henry VIII was not sitting around looking for a way to stick it to Rome.
Beauty can provoke love which can provoke noble action. I would submit that it is impossible to be otherwise. A beautiful person is not necessarily more loving, but a loving person is always more beautiful. Always. And a lifetime of hate and loathing makes one anything but beautiful. It shrivels the soul…and often, the face. Noble action is never sparked by hate. Noble action is ignited by love.
Truth is beauty and beauty is truth? Very often, beauty is love and love is beauty.
14 Responses to “The Perils Of Being A Beautiful Woman: Feminism’s Ugly Legacy”
May 13 2009 / 7:59 pm
Reply
I’m not sure of the provenance of the quote (and Google is not coming to my aid), perhaps it is just something distilled down from general cultural wisdom but here it is:
“There is no one who is more cruel to women than other women.”
May 13 2009 / 8:05 pm
Reply
Very good website.
May 13 2009 / 9:20 pm
Reply
I frankly think that many angry fem’s are angry at attractive women because attractive women didn’t have to “work” for what they have.
I’ve noticed as a relatively intelligent guy (which I am, relatively) I recognized 2 things. Intelligence is sexy in a woman, and the most intelligent women I know are also rather hot. Not in the “seeing the mind” kind of hot, but actually physically hot.
I came up with an opinion when I was in highschool, “good looking people don’t need to look for acceptance, everyone tries to accept them, so they can focus on learning stuff.”
I think a lot of anti-Y fem’s are angry because they want to make people who are actually happy with life by being attractive and intelligence work to join their exclusive clique of ugly pseudo-intellectual scum.
I just think that beating someone down for no good reason proves your ignorance, and your less than noble goals rather than validating them.
May 13 2009 / 9:23 pm
Reply
that wasn’t directed at you, it was towards the people who are happy to focus on beauty, ignoring thought, like the every so pearish Olbermann.
May 13 2009 / 11:28 pm
Reply
You must be a nuclear warhead, Doc. Because you’re so right on target!
The Apostle Peter put on writing the exact words that can describe the feminists of our age: “While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption”. Their ignorance and hate corrupts them and all those around them.
May 14 2009 / 6:42 am
Reply
I will never forgive N.O.W. and other so-called “Feminist” organization for not sticking up for Carrie. They are also silent on female journalist taken prisoner in Muslim countries. They are mute on Female Circumcisions and Female Child marriages for Islam.
May 14 2009 / 1:15 pm
Reply
We’ve got Carrie Prejean, Mary Katharine Ham, Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin, noble beauties all.
They’ve got Hillary!, Nancy Pelosi, Helen Thomas and Andrew Sullivan, soul-shriveled harpies all.
May 14 2009 / 3:58 pm
Reply
My wife doesn’t care about feminists. She is one of many setting the new standard for women. Capable of doing most anything but making priority choices. Just knowing they have options helps.
May 16 2009 / 6:32 am
Reply
My 22 yo daughter has this problem; she’s a master’s degree student, 6′ tall, drop-dead gorgeous sorority girl, former cheerleading captain and Watermelon Queen…and a rabid right wing conservative. (Like her mother.)
Every semester, she seems to get at least one class where she is made the class target and scapegoat by (almost always–she is an Urban planning major) a liberal professor in one of her environmental classes. She has been subjected to everything from mockery to undeserved bad grades when replying to a question that requires her opinion on something. She has been told to “shut up.” She has learned to try to avoid classes like “collaberative government” unless they’re absolutely required. (They usually are.)
It’s not just women and gay men persecuting the bright, pretty, and conservative. It’s the entire “progressive” movement.
May 19 2009 / 11:42 am
Reply
Have to say, I’m at the age now where women aren’t seen anymore. In my younger years, I figured out how to use my sexual power in a classy, graceful way, to be effective without scaring the **** out of (most) men. My frustration is with the hypocrisy of the Women’s Movement. Why didn’t they applaud our first BLACK female Secretary of State? Why don’t they stand strong with Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Could it be that their leadership is threatened by other extremely intelligent, provocative women, who have different points of view than their own? It’s time to call a spade a spade. They’re not for women’s rights. They’re for their own self-aggrandizement.