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How the pressure to be 'pretty' is suffocating women today
JK Rowling. Photo: Ben Pruchnie
Rebecca Adlington. Photo: Clive Rose
Ashley Judd
Frankie Boyle
Johnny Depp can appear in a ripped hat without a word being said
MEP Nessa Childers was criticised after it was suggested she airbrushed her posters
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So apparently you can write a series that sells over 400 million copies, delighting hordes of children around the world, and donate millions to charity — but it's your hairstyle that really matters.
JK Rowling has just revealed she felt under pressure to get “her act together” after being criticised in the media for “messy” hair and an “unkempt look”.
The Harry Potter author told a Radio 4 interviewer that she'd taken pains to change her look but still found the negative scrutiny hard to take.
“I would be a liar if I said I don't care. Yes I care, I found it very difficult,” she admitted. “So I did tidy myself up a bit. But I do often resent the amount of time it takes to pull yourself together to go on TV, I really do.”
It's a similar tale to UK swimmer Rebecca Adlington who, despite winning four Olympic medals, was still picked on by comedian Frankie Boyle over the size of her nose and athletic body. Meanwhile, Wimbledon champ Marion Bartoli was dismissed as not a “looker” by Radio 5’s John Inverdale (for which he subsequently apologised).
A newsreader in America recently used Anti-Bullying Week to address a letter she'd received from a member of the public chastising her for daring to appear on TV while overweight.
Even academics find themselves rated on their sexual appeal above what they say. When Cambridge University professor Mary Beard appeared on the BBC's Question Time last year, she found herself subjected to an onslaught of bile.
“My appearance on Question Time prompted a web post that has in the last few days discussed my pubic hair (do I brush the floor with it?) and whether I need rogering,” she wrote on her blog. “It would be quite enough to put many women off appearing in public, contributing to public debate.”
It seems whether you read the news, write a book or have become an expert in your field — it all means nothing if you're not deemed hot.
If you're a woman that is. Let's face it, it's hard to imagine the media suggesting that Bret Easton Ellis might want to run a comb through his hair or giving a hoot about Bryan Dobson's vital statistics.
Likewise male actors like Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell are given a free pass to appear scruffy in public.
But actresses and female TV presenters are expected to explain the slightest weight gain or deviation from accepted physical standards.
Just last month actress Ashley Judd felt compelled to respond publicly to widespread speculation on her “puffier-than-normal” face saying: “The conversation was pointedly nasty, gendered and misogynistic and embodied what all girls and women in our culture, to a greater or lesser degree, endure every day.”
The reason why women come in for this kind of physical scrutiny is imbedded in years of practice. According to Dr Kaye Cederman, from the Women and Gender Studies faculty at Trinity College Dublin, we've been programmed over centuries to judge a woman's worth by her appearance — be it having the “pure and virginal beauty” that intimates good marriage material or “child-bearing hips” for procreation.
“Notions of one's worth as a human being were passed down from generation to generation,” she explains. “Each culture has its own way of talking about the worth of each child based firmly on gendered ideas about appearances. Consider the way we talk about babies today: ‘Oh, he'll be a fine rugby player’ or ‘she'll be a heart-breaker’.”
We're also still emerging from millennia of men's voices being the most dominant. “As feminist theory tells us, the histories of key ideas shaping western culture and thought have invariably been male viewpoints,” says Dr Cederman.
“The male way of thinking about bodies, minds, experiences, activities, truth and beauty therefore became the gold standard against which everything was measured. Thus women's experiences have been — and still are — silenced because (mostly white) men control governments, economics and all socio-cultural systems.”
We can see this attitude ingrained at virtually every level of society. Not long ago the US president referred to the Californian attorney general, Kamala Harris, as the “best-looking attorney general in the country”.
Similar institutionalised sexism here sees our female politicians here having to deal with being labelled ‘Miss Piggy' or contend with the sexiest female politician polls that appear online every election.
This year has seen MEP Nessa Childers come in for criticism over suggestions her election posters may have been air-brushed. “This once again highlights the many difficulties that women in politics face,” she said responding to the allegations. “Mick Wallace can turn up to the Dail in a sports jersey but his female counterparts have every aspect of their appearance scrutinised. Hair make-up, clothes, shows, weight — it is all commented on.”
Yet as women move to break the glass ceiling and enter into traditionally male employment, the practice of judging female body image seems to be escalating rather than improving.
“Things have got a lot worse for women since I wrote The Female Eunuch,” Germaine Greer observed in an interview last month. “I never thought once you had social media there would become this terrible grab bag of loathing of women.”
Dr Cederman believes this disappointing trend is down to consumerism and the way we're bombarded with photo-shopped images on a regular basis hammering home an ideal body image (as specified by male thinking) that women are expected to buy in to.
“We're subjected to a constant barrage of these perspectives, which is unprecedented in former times,” she explains.“Like never before in the history of human experience, girls and women are overwhelmed by the ideas of female beauty and worth regurgitated by movie screens, TV and advertising. They set impossible standards in the interests of consumerism.”
One of the most worrying consequences of this fixation with female appearance is the way attitudes filter down through society, impacting on the self-esteem and confidence of younger generations. A survey carried out by GirlGuiding UK found 87pc of girls aged between 11 and 21 believe that women are judged on their appearance, not their abilities.
According to a new Dove Global Report, nine out of 10 women feel bad about themselves when they look in the mirror and are constantly checking in reflective surfaces ready to see negatives.
In cases of online abuse, 40pc of attacks are cruel jibes about the victim's appearance.
“Worryingly, this problem doesn't just impact on celebrities,” says Dr Deirdre Cowman, a psychology lecturer at All Hallows College and advocate of the Endangered Bodies campaign.
“In research conducted with young people in Ireland, 60pc said that they feel pressurised to look good for other people and not surprisingly girls are far more likely to say this than boys.
Happily Dr Cowman feels the tide might be turning, with more high profile women acknowledging the pressure to look perfect and some, including Lily Allen and Lady Gaga, calling out commentators making observations about their weight or appearance.
Having being told she needed to lose weight for roles earlier in her career, Jennifer Lawrence recently appealed for an out and out ban on “fat shaming”.
“I think the media has to take responsibility for the effect it has on our younger generations,” she told TV host Barbara Walters. “All of a sudden being funny is making fun of the girl that's wearing an ugly dress. And the word fat! I think it should be illegal to call someone fat on TV. If we're regulating cigarettes and sex and cuss words because of the effect it has on our younger generations why aren't we regulating things like calling someone fat?”
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