The Smart Set [Jessa Crispin]: Beauty and the Beast
There are no ugly girls, no old hags in popular culture. Every week we are supposed to pretend like Tina Fey is ugly on 30 Rock, that America Ferrera was hideous even beneath the glasses and the braces on Ugly Betty, that every homely girl is a pair of contact lenses, short dress, and good haircut away from being prom queen.
If that is the epitome of public ugliness, well, then the actual hags are way below the line of visibility. Women are allowed to have some power, but only if they’re hot. So we have 12-year-old girls in thongs and an emphasis on perfect femininity that we haven’t seen in decades. Despentes[—author of “King Kong Theory” from Feminist Press at CUNY—] writes, “The overbranding of femininity is an apology for the loss of masculine prerogative, a way of reassuring ourselves by reassuring them… ‘Don’t be afraid of us.’” Of course no matter how hot you are now, no matter how many times you go under the knife to restore tautness and smoothness, if you live long enough, you’ll find yourself slowly disappearing.
Via ascendingcoherence on her Google Reader feed.
