Bored and Privileged White Housewife Post #02: Prettiness isn't a rent you pay for being a woman.

On Fartloaf, every curve, concave, droop, dimple, and wrinkle gets celebrated in the comments underneath. Round and old? "You’re beautiful.” Round and young? “Beautiful.” Dark and slim? “Beautiful.” Pale and lithe? “Beautiful.” Short and drooping? “Beautiful.” Some get more "beautiful" comments than others, but everyone gets a "beautiful". It's like the Oprah Winfrey show, where everyone in the audience is a woman.

Do you have a dirty room with clothes strewn across the furniture, though? Yeah, well, then you're unlikely to get those comments. Hetlifers don’t like dirty rooms, especially with dirty mirrors. Does the poster of the photograph make disparaging comments about her weight? Again, not so many "beautiful" comments will go her way. Fratlifers love to troll, and troll they will. Criticise yourself and you will be criticised. It's how the cookie crumbles.

But present yourself as you are, with your insecurity hidden away from the monitor, and Fartloafers will tell you you’re beautiful. They’ll also tell you you’re fuckable, lickable, and a ‘good girl’. These are not always welcome comments, but we are getting more than what we’d get on the rest of the Web, where one large woman wearing a tight orange dress travels Facebook in a day of mockery that reaches billions.

Kudos, Hetlife! F@@king kudos to you!

A year ago, I posted this Erin McKean quotation (misattributed to Diana Vreeland):

“You don’t have to be pretty. You don’t owe pretty to anyone. Not your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not your co-workers, especially not random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilisation in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked ‘female’."

That statement was a revelation to me. F@@k, it made my bad hair day feel like I was wearing Prada. A friend replied, “She has to say that. Look at her.”

I said, “She’s exquisite. If I look like her when I’m eighty-five, I will start to believe in god.”

He said, “You’re far prettier than she’s ever been. You’ll be far prettier than she is now when you’re eighty-five.”
I said, “Oh, yeah?”

He said, “She’s ugly. She looks like a horse”
I said, “Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

Well, okay, I didn’t actually say that, but I wish I had. I always wish I’d said that (or something equally cutting) to people who’ve labelled others "ugly". Inordinately, what I’m looking at when I’m hearing the word “ugly” is the dark and unkempt/disheveled side of what classic beauty is deemed to look like.

I’ve sat at the table with a sixty year old man with a beer gut and the world’s wiriest, dirtiest, scraggliest wizard beard and heard, “Either that’s the world’s ugliest tattoo or that woman’s been drawing on her arm.” I wanted to say, “Either that’s the world’s ugliest beard or you forgot to wash your face again.” But I didn’t.

I’ve thought long and hard about why I never give voice to such responses. Honestly, I think it’s because every single time I’ve heard those words said to me or about others, I’ve not had enough cruelty to hand them back to the person who used them. That is how I measure their cruelty: If the words are so difficult to say that I think I might cause real damage to the person to whom I’m saying them, why is it so easy for others to say these thoughtless words every single day? All over the Web, all over the world, all over Facebook, people type them. On the Web, every day has its own ugliest person, if not more than one.

If I had a friend with a negative body image, I might advise her to see a shrink. I would certainly suggest that she start posting photographs of herself on the good old golden-brown loaf. Here, there is "pretty" in everyone, and someone who’ll say, “Beautiful”!

Today I changed my Facebook profile photograph. I’ve learned over the years that a particular "friend" will rag me if I post anything wearing spectacles, anything that isn’t smiling, anything that isn’t "gamine". He believes "gamine" is what I, personally, owe the world, that this is my best look, and this is the look that he wants to see. For years, I have posted gamine photographs on Facebook in order to avoid these quips from him:

"You look like a teacher."
"You’re not smiling."
"This is not as pretty as your last photograph."

Today, I took a walk on the wild side and didn’t post a "gamine" photograph. I posted a "me" photograph to suit my "me" mood. From him, I got a dissatisfied, "Meh".

I said, “F@@k you. I don’t owe pretty to the world. Also, you need to lose ten KGs, trim your beard, and wear a better shirt. F@@k you.”

No, I didn’t, but I wish that I had. Instead, I deleted the photograph and posted the prettiest, most gamine photograph that Facebook has ever seen. “F@@k you, Facebook. I owe pretty to the world, and I have plenty of it with which to pay you.”

On Fartlife, everyone bullies everyone in text conversations, especially direct messages. Photographs seem to get different treatment. People criticise from time to time — my spectacles are not sufficiently rose-coloured to miss it, but on Facebook, the only pretty is a racehorse — muscular, lithe and tall, slim and wide-eyed. On the loaf,, the pretty has droop, dimples, sags and wrinkles. It has convex or concave thighs; it is lithe and dark and round and pale. Hetlife has a “Beautiful!” for everyone.

F@@k, yeah, that's beautiful!

Lead image: A "photograph" generated by This Person Does Not Exist