Pretty Privilege and the Pick-Me Girl
Pretty privilege is defined as “the idea that people who are viewed as more attractive or “prettier” than others receive more opportunities, attention, and rewards” on Penn State’s Applied Social Psychology page.
Not only are those perceived as attractive treated better in most situations, but they have a stereotype of being more social and more intelligent than those who are not perceived as attractive.
Now, we all know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but there are also certain beauty standards that people as a whole have maintained for a long time. Everyone knows how beauty standards work–no matter what a person looks like or how many qualities they have that fit the standard of beauty, they will always feel inadequate when they compare themselves to others.
Pretty privilege can happen to different people at different times in their lives because of the notion that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but in general, I do not consider myself to be someone who has it.
Growing up especially, there were a lot of absolutely gorgeous girls I went to school with that always stood out while I fell into the background. Of course, I thought all of the girls were pretty, but not all of them had pretty privilege. They way my high school worked, being so small, was that only the prettiest girl from each grade had pretty privilege.
The rest of us accepted that we weren’t the “it girl,” so some of us coped by becoming “pick-me girls” or just acting tough like we didn’t care what anyone thought of us.
Dictionary.com (my best friend when I’m writing) defines the pick-me girl as “a woman who obsessively desires male approval and validation, often at the expense of other women.” As unfortunate as it is, the girls with pretty privilege fought hard to keep their social standing high, and the pick-me girls fought back so guys would like them more.
It’s awful to me that our environment pinned us up against each other like that. It’s also quite unfortunate that pick-me girls are often made fun of for catering to men, when that’s really all our culture has known for so long. Maybe if our culture taught women to love themselves there would be no pick-me girls to make fun of.
On the bright side, I’ve never been stalked or followed around by anyone, though I’ve had my fair share of dealings with creepy men who couldn’t care if you were a supermodel or a rat.
I still catch myself today seething with resentment for pretty girls when I see them being treated a lot nicer than I typically am. I’m still learning that it’s not their fault.
While some with pretty privilege like to perpetuate it (I honestly would too if I had it), I can’t hate a person based on how others treat them, and I can’t hate our culture for the standards of beauty we’ve set up.
What I can do is educate myself on pretty privilege and implicit bias, which is “bias that results from the tendency to process information based on unconscious associations and feelings, even when these are contrary to one’s conscious or declared beliefs” (thanks again Dictionary.com).
We all have biases, many of which happen in our unconscious since our brains like to take shortcuts. Pretty privilege falls under implicit bias, which people perpetuate through stereotypes.
Of course, pretty privilege applies to men too, but I’m speaking from my experience as a woman who was part of a predominantly female graduating class. We were always trying to impress the boys in the grades above us.
We have even seen with the Barbie movie how men took a disliking to Margot Robbie now that she wasn’t Harley Quinn, object for the male gaze. This is a movie where every woman is beautiful in her own right, not by anyone else’s distinction, and all of the women work together and root for one another. I’ll talk more about the Barbie movie in another post.
The term “pretty privilege” gets even more complicated when you bring intersectionality into it. Standards of beauty are often attributed to thin, young white people who are naturally confident in themselves. While the terms “thin” and “young” are pretty relative to the individual, it’s still very hard to fit that mold. Again, no matter how many standards of beauty a person conforms to, most people still don’t feel good enough.
Pretty privilege may be alive and well now, but I feel an uprising coming, and I can’t wait to see what women accomplish next. Remember, women are powerful because of their differences, not in spite of them.