Pretty Privilege and the Body Positivity Myth

Source: Free download from Pixabay/No-longer-here

My experience of being a girl and talking to hundreds of girls about their physical appearance tells me that we feel exposed to greater scrutiny, judged more harshly, and become more hung up on how we look than boys and men. But why?

Evolutionary theory suggests that the reason is in our DNA. The theory goes that males are attracted to females with a pretty face and an hourglass figure because these characteristics symbolise fertility and so these characteristics evolved. Females, meanwhile, are attracted to wealthy males who are physically strong because these traits show they can take care of us and our future offspring. The theory only accounts for heterosexual partner choice and doesn’t apply to independent women or those who choose not to reproduce.

Evidence from cross-cultural analysis of Lonely-Hearts columns in the 1990s showed that females tended to promote their physical beauty, whereas males emphasised material possessions and status.¹ Internet dating profiles have been analysed in a similar way with similar findings, suggesting that the evolutionary theory still holds true.²

Feminist author Naomi Wolf explored what she called “women’s obsession” with physical perfection in her book The Beauty Myth.³ She argued that the pursuit of beauty entraps women and enslaves them to men. She coined the term “iron maiden” to describe an unrealistic and unreachable ideal, perpetuated by fashion and beauty industries, and used to punish women for failing to achieve and adhere to it.

But women and girls learn about “pretty privilege” long before we start dating or being interested in fashion. The term is relatively new, but the hypothesis that society favours beauty is not. In ancient fairy tales, beautiful girls are principled, clever and kind. They marry their prince and live happily ever after, while the ugly ones are stupid and evil and don’t. Psychologists call this the “halo effect”, whereby someone who is judged positively in one domain, such as beauty, is assumed to possess other positive attributes, such as compassion and competence. Research suggests that attractive women are more likely to be successful at job interviews, be promoted, earn more money and be more confident than those deemed less attractive.⁴

Fairy tales gave rise to the first Disney princess in 1937. Snow White was slim and pretty, with pink lips, brown eyes and skin as white as snow. Her eyes were later changed to blue, presumably because blue eyes on a girl were perceived as prettier than brown. Cinderella also had fair skin, blue eyes, pink lips and an hourglass figure. Ditto Sleeping Beauty. Ditto Ariel the Little Mermaid, who was slim, pretty and scantily clad. In 2023, the movie Barbie was said to explore feminism and patriarchy, yet advertisers bombarded us with yet more stereotypical, culturally biased images of what “pretty” should look like. Barbie the actress, Margot Robbie, just like those Disney princesses, is fair-skinned, blond-haired and blue-eyed with an hourglass figure.

So, what’s changed?

The reality is that women and girls still strive to squeeze – sometimes literally – into unrealistic and unreachable beauty “ideals”, which are now perpetuated by filtered online images and fuelled by “tweakments” and jabs. We know that “pretty” still bestows privilege, and that “body positivity”, the social movement that encouraged us to challenge prevailing standards and love our bodies no matter their shape and size, is the myth.