We see it in Hollywood, on Facebook, in the classrooms and in our own communities, beautiful girls and women with low self esteem that leads them to drink, smoke, and become addicted to drugs and abusive relationships. And we ask ourselves how can someone so beautiful have low self-esteem? Well the answer is simple – well, okay, so it is perhaps admittedly, enigmatically and paradoxically simple – societal pressure.
In post-modern societies, there is a behavioural expectation that is imposed upon an individual, based on their appearance. If you are a beautiful woman, it is assumed that you will be a ”bitch” (women’s view), and a whore (men’s perspective……or desire) when you walk into a room, for totally unsubstantiated reasons women will hate you, and men will want to….lay pipes, or destroy you (they say, ”take you down a peg or two”). And it seems that for every smooth crest that you get to float on, based on your beauty, you get a flood of Cribbars riding in in its wake.
For those women who are both beautiful and strong, they therefore become adept at riding the tide, absorbing the shock, and moving on resoloutely towards their objective – and for that strength and resilience added to the price they already pay for thier beauty, they gain the additional societal label of being the ”cold, emotionless bitch,” or even more pointedly, ”the ice maiden;” a sobriquet, I have by the way, grown to embrace. For the women who are not as strong or intestinally prepared, well, they are prone to all the maladies, which are here the subject of discussion.
Fair or not, it is what it is, and these impressions and impositions shape the psyche of the individual, and not always in the best of fashion. This then factors in greatly to the ”wrong turns” and bad choices that are common with these sylphs, and the paradigms of dysfunctionality that often plague many of them for life.
In my own life, and in speaking with many other women who are in the category of being termed ”beautiful,” ”exotic,” or as one fellow succinctly exclaimed ”goddamn,” there are many common societal myths that surround our life and personality. Here are 7 myths about ”beautiful” women, and the startling reality that at the prima facie, you many have never considered.
1. Topping the list at numero uno is the myth that beautiful women are all arrogant. Yes, I can see how assertiveness can be mistaken for arrogance. Heck, they are spelt the same, they sound the same, and they even mean the same, right? Why, that would make them homonymic (yes, I just created that word)! But there really is a difference between the two – besides spelling and sound.
Assertiveness is knowing and understanding your abilities (meaning that you actually have abilities), arrogance is knowing and understanding that you do not have abilities, thus, you posture and pretend. Arrogance is thus based on empty boasting, while assertiveness is standing firm in your self-assurance. And a beautiful woman (as we all are), standing firm in the belief of her value is not a crime; abusing her beauty is when the issue moves out of the realm of assertiveness and becomes something else, but that is not the topic of discussion here, so we will not thus digress.
Along this vein of thought, however, here is something to ruminate on – a great majority of the beautiful women you see, have been victims of rape, sexually molestation, childhood abandonment, domestic violence, and other violent crimes. So if they appear arrogant, they do actually have something to be ”arrogant” about though, and it may not be all empty – many of them have survived ( with great success in life) without drugs, alcohol, or even jail term for murder! And while that is not an accolade they post on Facebook, or may never get the Lifetime Achievement Award for, it is one certainly worth considering before you think to lump them arbitrarily in the ” arrogant bitch” category.
2. They are couquettish and have several black books full of names and phone numbers. Here is another startling revelation – beautiful women do not have many friends! Yeah, I know you never guessed that! In fact, they are some of the lonliest people on the planet; Facebook does not count, I am speaking of real friends. Facebook, BTW, is the facade (for many, not just beautiful women) that is created from societal dictate. If you are beautiful, it is expected that you should be popular, so there are many who strive (unwittingly) to fill that myth…..often unsuccessfully. Then there is the other more recent communal behest to have a Facebook account in order to be hired for a job. My own Fb account is scarcely 6 months old, and was created solely for the purpose of business networking – hey, we live in a numbers society, we have to show how popular we are, right!
Very often, acquaintances would say to me, “I thought to ring you Saturday night, but I felt you were out partying with friends, so I didn’t want to disturb you.” Yeah! I was partying with my computer until about 3am, after which I moved the party to the gym, where I got totally inebriated from the endorphins, then crawled home at about 7am. So yes, I know it looks totally suspicious seeing that I typically awaken at about noon, or 2pm – case in point of how appearances can be deceiving!
3. Beautiful women ”have it made” with a revolving door of opportunities. Contrary to popular belief, life is not exactly a cream puff, and paradoxically, being ”beautiful” means that you are held at a higher standard because of your looks. Very often (much more than one can believe, beautiful women are overlooked, and we do not even get the breaks (often impelled by sympathy) that the ”plain” girls enjoy. The general concensus is that your beauty is a passpost to every opportunity, thus there are those (many) who feel then that it is their job to balance the scale by denying you opportunities, and placing roadblocks in your way.
In fact there are those self-appointed ”Equalizers,” who set about deliberately intending to crush you, trip you, derail, and deflate you. This is not wild conjecture, these are all acknowledgements from the horses’ mouths. But I will give here an illustration, where you can all get to play Sherlock Holmes (as we all love to do).
Several years ago, I was walking through Las Vegas airport, pulley bag in tow. To get to baggage claim, I had to walk though the general area of restaurants, where a middle-aged woman sat eying me as I was making my approach. As I walked past her, minding my own business, intent on my destination, she stuck her leg out just enough to catch the wheels of my bag, thus causing it to be yanked out of my hand and dropped to the floor, thereby upsetting what may have appeared to her to be my smooth, effortless, perhaps even ”arrogant” flow. Now, why did she do that? Do I know her? Did I harm her in any way to have cause this reaction? Needless to say, her reaction was to look away and feign disinterest. No she was not on the plane, I didn’t steal her luggage space, nor her boyfriend’s attention!
On another occasion, in the post office, in Washinton, after patiently waiting my turn in line, I was told to step aside and wait while another customer was served. When I questioned why, I was told by the not too handsome fellow behind the counter, ”Well, you think that just because you are beautiful that you will just waltz in here and be served?” Well to be honest, I wasn’t thinking at all, I just assumed that if it is my turn in line to be served that I would be served. But that was my fault for assuming equality exists…….and, that segues perfectly to the well-worn claim that beautiful women are not smart.
4. Beautiful women are all boobs and no brain. So far from the truth it’s not even funny! Yet, no one actually sees that, as the cliche is so engrained that, even when it is stridently obvious that it is not true (a great majority of women are not naturally endowed with a size double anything! And yes, I am aware that the fact that they scramble for the surgical enhancements, do not serve much to dispel the myth about their intelligence quotient).
No one examines your brain or any other value, they see only your beauty. Correction, they see how your assets (outward appearance) can improve their life if they were to be able to sport you as a bedpost notch, or display you prominently as arm candy. And whether or not they scored a roll in the sack with you, word on the street will be that they did, and when a man speaks, well, it is gospel, right!? And as is typical in our society, even if we know that a man is just bragging, if he spreads the word that he is making whoopie with a woman, then that woman’s reputation is irrepairably smeared…..well, in today’s society, (sadly) her FB score improves.
To illustrate this point of how the intelligence gets subjugated to a woman’s physical appearance, I’ll use an example from my college years. While a student in grad school, I also worked at the university, so I spent much time on campus. A particular classmate enjoyed my company in and out of the classroom (he hung out on campus and would ”coincidentally” be standing by the coffee shop whenever I took a coffee break. I was so naive into believing that he was studious and really enjoyed my brilliant mind that I failed to notice all the predatorial signs, such as the fact that he knew my break times and work schedule, and was always able to remind me where I was parked, when I could not remember (grad school does that to you!)
One year later, it perhaps became apparent to him that what I had said in the beginning (that I was not interested in getting into a relationship with anyone, including him) was in fact true. Realising that his patient trolling was not paying off, he literally came out of a bag, became very abusive by phone and email, relentlessly, despite warnings of me seeking legal remedy for this unprovoked onslaught. The end result? I had to file a restraining order in court. Yes, I won, but not before the judge (Good Old Boy type) insinuated that I was this young chickadee, who had set about to seduce him then decided to jump back and play hard to get.
In other words, based on my image (totally ignoring all my supporting cogent documentation) and perhaps our ethnic and age variances, I was assumed to be a prick-tease (because I had no better reason to enroll in a masters program than to tease and seduce older men). Thereafter, everytime that I had to explain that restraining order, I had to explain the reason, and subject myself to enduring the accusing eyes, penetrating my ”cold, emotionless literati shield (one of the more affectionate discriptions I’ve been appropriated).”
Needless to say, post situational PTSD, I very quickly abandoned the naïve notion that men are interested in having intelligent conversations with me (now don’t get your g-strings in a tangle, I am not saying that all men are created equal!! We’re discussing the rule here, not the exception). Moreover, I now rarely accept coffee invitations, as I still have not managed to figure out how that relationship went from ”coffee” to ”I felt that God sent you into my life to be my wife, and you were too evil to see it, so I needed to help you to see it (that was his argument in court).” Again, the old Messianic complex rears its ugly head!
5. Beautiful women just have to snap their fingers to get what they want. Now there’s a joke! First, I will say (red-facedly) that I have never perfected the art of finger snapping, but importantly there is a HUGE price tag for beauty – we pay double the price for services, then we pay again….in many other ways (and I don’t mean sex).
Example (I have many): Many years ago, I took my vehicle to a mechanic in Tacoma, Washington. He quoted $800.00 to fix the problem, I paid, dropped off the car (had a male friend accompany me so as to give me a ride back home), and returned the next day to retrieve the vehicle (had another (different) male friend drop me off).
The vehicle ran well for 24 hours. On the second day, en route to work, it stopped running. I rang the mechanic, he came out, examined it and looked me over like I was a big mac, dripping with au jou sauce and luscious tomatoes, and said, “Well, I would fix it for you, but you have too many boyfriends, for me.”
WTF?? When, within that 48 hour of liminal exchange, did we go from a business relationship to me auditioning to be his lover? Was I absent from that transaction? Oh, right, it is assumed that if you are beautiful you are automatically slutty, and possess zero standards or self-respect. So the price tag? I paid the cash, then I paid by the loss of the car, then I paid again by being viewed as a whore, then I paid again as I then had to be further obligated to my male friends (to whom I am now obligated) to assist me in getting around until I could get a vehicle! Boy, did I pay for that lesson!
6. Beautiful women are whores. And labouring under that assumption, men therefore approach you with the intention of not being your friend, but your FWB (friend with benefits). In other words, the lifespan of any interaction with them is based on the sole determiner of whether or not you will be a ”sweet girl,” or a ”good girl,” and ”put out.” I have gained popularity for many things, congeniality (sweet, nice, good), has never been one of them. Did I mention that I don’t have friends!? Yes, I guess I did.
You see, in androcentric societies, such as ours, when you don’t play along with the game of laying pipes, then you are known as a ”troublemaker” and the individual now has a personal impetus to ”take you down a peg or two.” This often manifests as ignoring or snobbing you (socially), because they feel that you are now an ”arrogant whore.” Why? Did you harm them? Do you owe them child support? No, but that is all irrelevant.
To illustrate: I have danced all my life, and in the dance arena there is fornication and inter-fornication that exists, so much that there can be several ”Friends” sitcoms created. I have a simple rule in life – I do not piddle in my own pool. Simply put – I am not dating anyone from an arena within which I vascillate on a regular basis, and position comes across very quickly in my interactions with others. It does nto take very long for their interest to dissipate. Whereas before I was a brilliant, beautiful, and favoured dancer, making ”great connections,” I am soon after snobbed, and left to shrivel and rot in a corner like tomatoes at a hotdog festival. No worries, I am an excellent solo dancer.
7. Beautiful women are high maintenance, thus not good marry material. Okay, to accurately qualify this myth, it applies to beautiful women with a brain who possess the capacity and ability to think independently.
Several years ago, I ran into a fellow model friend of mine in NYC. We had begun modelling around the same time – many years prior – so we popped into a bar (they are more ubiquitous in NYC than a coffee-shop) and caught up on each other’s lives over a cup of watered-down coffee, the kind unique to a beer-chugging establishment. Amidst the din and clatter of boisterous preppie talk – or should I say Heineken talk! – we commiserated about our career and all the lost loves, ambushed and interrupted opportunities in our past.
Not too surprisingly, it turned out that we were both, at different times in our lives, rejected, dumped, or abandoned for the plain girl. Why? The reasoning was very simple (they usually want you to know, feeds the ”empowerment” thing): The respective man felt that (1) being beautiful, we would soon leave them for someone more handsome and worldly, so they chose the (perceived) security of being with a plain girl; (2) they found our ”popularity” (totally exaggerated in their mind) too much to handle; they were looking for a ”simple” life, so our ”beauty” was too intimidating to their ego; (3) we were viewed as the object of every man’s desire, thus, (assumed) ”high maintenance.” And my personal favourites: (4) I was dumped by a fellow who stated that I had too much testerone for his liking (5) and then by another who claimed that beautiful women have double lives. Wow!
So, the testosterone thing? Yeah, I was raised by my father, so maybe I had cultivated an extra dose. And about the double life…….don’t we all have those?!
Now is it really the myths surrounding ”beautiful women that we should be examining here, or is it maybe the myths about ”The men that date beautiful women?” I think that that topic will fill volumes, and in summation, I think that a rejection or derrogation of someone else’s beauty or physical appearance simply boils down to one thing – personal insecurity.
As individuals in a globalising world, we all have our own crosses to bear. And we each have our own difficulties to face in maintaining our errant emotions and emotional reactions to the perceived inequities in life, yes in that sense, we are all created equal!
So when in the future you encounter a beautiful woman, who in response to the ”nothing” that you may have said or done, just stares at you in what may appear to be a cold, emotionless gaze (or smile), believe me when I say that she is really not as heartless as she appears. What she is really doing, is retreating inward to summon all the powers of her Zen and reserve Zen, to suppress the urge to choke the living shit out of you for calling her (or even implying that she is) a ”bitch,” because the fact that you escaped that encounter unscathed, is proof alone that she is not cold!