I’ve been looking through the Library of Congress flickr stream and at Shorpy today and reading comments and….
The pictures that seem to garner the most comments are the ones containing people. Of those, the ones picturing black people and women get by far the most comments.
Because the Library of Congress has titled all of its photos with the original title (from the very late 1800s to the 1940s), most of the comments on the photos of people of color start out with a request to change the language of the title. Then someone explains that the titles are historic and then the subject of the photo is addressed.
In the photos of women, particularly the photos of women workers during World War II, there are inevitably comments about how these women were truly feminine (in the posed photos where the women are wearing makeup and dress clothes while riveting) and how women are SUPPOSED to look.
Over at Shorpy, every photo of woman involves commentary on the worth of the woman/women pictured according to her/their looks. There’s a photo of 5 women from a college – the first comment is thanking heaven for modern dentistry and modern cosmetics. Because, you know, one of the girls has a gap in her front teeth. And another, according to another commenter, looks like Sean Penn in drag.
It’s enough to almost ruin my enjoyment of the photographs, this constant and incessant emphasis on how women SHOULD look, on how women OUGHT to be, on how women really are, it would seem, just kept around for their aesthetic value.
Combined with a recent Fats post where people are defending the hiring practices of a doctor who has a reputation for only hiring young and pretty things….
And, you know, I have a certain amount of privilege here that I have to acknowledge. I was feeling bummed this weekend because, as a fat woman with a skewed sense of taste, I don’t look like anyone else. We went out for sushi and the restaurant has this mirrored wall and…. There is something brutal about comparison – and I always find myself to be lacking.
But, my weight aside, I have a socially-acceptable body shape and, even though I am hyper-aware of my face’s flaws, my face has a lot of conventional markers of attractiveness (even though I’m not blonde and/or blue-eyed). I have “good” hair – which is SUCH a freakin’ loaded descriptor and it made me cringe every time, during my recent hair cut adventure, someone would touch it – and I don’t mean my hairdresser – and tell me I had “good” hair. I have green-hazel eyes, and small feet, and I don’t struggle with acne, and I don’t have a large amount of body hair, and I’m neither too tall nor too short (though I AM, unfortunately, too short for pie still*), and a dozen other markers of in the column for general attractiveness.
I have never had a shortage of people telling me I am attractive. That privilege makes my life easier in ways both defined and undefined.
AND I AM STILL SICK TO DEATH OF THE INCESSANT JUDGING OF WOMEN BY THEIR LOOKS ALONE.
I’m sick of “oh, well, MODERN women look like slags so there is nothing wrong with these girls” being some sort of noble defense, too.
And I hate that I feel reluctant to actually post this because I don’t want to deal with “OMG, you’re so PC” and “Stop making such a big deal about it” and “Well, aren’t you vain” comments.
And, on a totally different note, it’s amazing how many, “Oh! These people look so MODERN!” comments there are. Because, you know, fashion is never repeated throughout history and people have never, other than in modern times, played games or horsed around or done anything other than stand perfectly still and posed for photographs. *headdesk*
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Combined with a recent Fats post where people are defending the hiring practices of a doctor who has a reputation for only hiring young and pretty things…
Ooof yeah. I lacked the will to address that today (at work, under deadline, and sick sick sick) but that really bothered the heck out of me, too.
Sometimes I’m struck at how “modern” people look in old photos, too. Not so much their style, but just their faces. I don’t know what I expect, other than I am still disabusing myself of some idea that history is far, far in the past. So far that people would have different facial expressions, I guess? Similarly, I am a big fan of English medieval and I’m always struck when I stumble across a face in modern life that resembles a Holbein portrait in some way. I’m rambling here. I mentioned that I’m sick, right?
It almost seems inevitable anymore, this judgement. And it comes from EVERYWHERE. The nod of approval or sneer of derision might be expected (though, not in my book ACCepted) from the male race, but most women I know are even worse about it. They constantly judge the appearances of women around them against their own, and so we consequently judging ourselve in the process. It’s almost as if that action gives others the permission to make the same judgements — So much so that it’s not easy to discern where that judgement starts in this modern age. Is it still external, or does it now start within? Perhaps the most effective defense we women can have is a refusal, at even our most inward levels, to participate.
One of my favorite things in the universe to do is people-watch. Yes, I’ll admit, it’s 60% because I write and need character descriptions, but the other 40% is just amazement at the variety of people out there in this world.
This weekend was the first bout of good weather we’ve seen in Oregon this year, so I staked out a table early on one of our main drags and commenced a-watchin’. Problems arose when two hipster girls sat down at the next table over and ordered a salad to split. I started to wish I’d brought along my headphones.
THEN they started cutting down every woman who walked by. Some guys who were dressed nontraditionally also got comments, but every single woman got looked up and dressed down.
It made me nauseuous and I had to leave for greener pastures. They probably made fun of me as I left, but at least I’m not an asshole.
TR where can I find this stream? I am still kind of Flickr stupid. I can hardly work my own stream much less find ones I want to look at.
This is the precise reason why I tend to just not read comments on photos at all ever anymore. It’s not worth the rise in blood pressure.
HERE is the link to the flickr stream! Sorry, should have linked to that.
Thank you TR my darling. Were your ears burning I was JUST writing about what you said here. Well am still working on it anyway.
I’m almost afraid to ask, but would you be willing to email me a link to the “Fats post about the justificiation of docs hiring pretty young things”?
Perhaps it’s just how my innate female masochism comes out, but I’m in favor of opposition research because you can’t fight them if you can’t anticipate their tactics, whoever the “they” might be.
Andrea, IMO this needs to be shouted endlessly from rooftops on the repeat. The most vicious women critiquers seem to be the Stockholm Syndrome-suffering types who look for all their validation in male approval, who think it’s necessary for their survival (and, frighteningly, sometimes it still is). Like Charlotte Allen. And Lauren Weisberger (who once interviewed that “talking about people” was “just something to do”).
They internalize it, which is why they harsh on themselves, and then they turn it outward on any woman they think is going to “compete” for the male attention that they’re desperate for. I’m pretty convinced it’s the basis for fat-hating, competitive shopping to the point of injury, and a whole bunch of other heinous but simultaneously self-flagellating behavior.
Make it stop.
That would be “justification”.
*sigh*
Perhaps the most effective defense we women can have is a refusal, at even our most inward levels, to participate.
Agreement here again. I’ve noticed that some people I know have not gotten out of the body criticism loop even though they try – they have sort of taken to criticizing what’s popularly seen as beautiful, but not in an abstract way, in a “she’s not pretty” kind of way. It’s an effort, but they’re just using the same tactic against people who don’t normally receive criticism, and that’s not necessarily constructive.
I refuse to participate in any talk like this, but it doesn’t mean I am not subjected to it anytime I hear others conversations or read such comments.
Perhaps that is why I still do compare myself to people more ‘normal’ than me and wish I were different. Why do I have to have the bad hair, bad body shape, bad feet and bad facial hair and even bad brain.
As much as I know the why is not important I still feel it would be easier without all the ‘bad’. It is an unobtainable fantasy though
Hi, this is Em from the Fats post, and thanks for the rant, MY GOD, I NEEDED THAT!
That is just what’s bugging me. Yes, this is the real world, yes, we get judged my appearances, I know that, I don’t mind it and I pay tribute to it every day, and I think I’m doing ok.
But MY GOODNESS, sometimes it’s like you could replace all women with Realdolls™ and no one would even notice. And that way of judging women’s worth by their looks only, is not limited to sexist assholes, it’s everywhere, it’s people who love us and care about us, our friends, our parents, and sometimes it’s even in Fats, too.
I am the Resident Assistant for an all-girls house in the residence halls at my college. In the two years that I’ve had this job, I’ve been trying to make a conscious effort to address, through body image programs and general role-modeling, this whole “judge women solely on appearance” thing. I agree rather wholeheartedly with the post and the subsequent comments, and it’s far too early in the morning for me to be anything but incoherently “Grrr” on the whole subject.
This came up (of course) in comments to the Beth Ditto interview that Kate linked to. And it’s like this referendum on how a woman looks and whether you would screw her–and picking apart of the tiniest details like the tooth gap you mentioned as evidence that she “needs” plastic surgery or electrolysis or hair extensions or or or–is so entrenched now that there is no way to get rid of it. These folks were regular posters (from what I could tell), not trolls, and they seemed to have zero capacity to understand that whether they would screw a woman should have nothing to do with the discussion at hand. At least this used to be a new and shocking idea to trolls, but these days people ALREADY KNOW THIS and they just REJECT IT as a concept. They are immovable. They don’t care. As I read this over I realize it looks like I’m foaming at the mouth over something obvious, but it seems to have gotten much worse lately in a way that is hard to describe.
Nobody is listening but I’ll say it again anyway because I don’t want to give up on saying so even if it’s just shouting into the wind: IT DOES NOT MATTER WHETHER YOU FIND THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTO ATTRACTIVE. THAT IS NOT THE POINT OR EVEN *A* POINT. AND YOU DON’T GET BONUS POINTS EVEN IF YOU DO FIND HER ATTRACTIVE. THAT IS ALSO IRRELEVANT. Why can’t people understand this?!
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