pretty white girls.
So I went to this show at The Mint last night and, well I starting getting very angry and depressed. Now that I think back over it, I was PMS-ing, so that probably had a lot to do with my emotional overreaction.
There were so many beautiful white women there that I began to feel, well…
Imperfect.
Welcome to LA where image towers over substance and I began thinking, it really doesn’t matter how much substance you have or what you have to offer, if your image isn’t perfect, you don’t have a chance. And my image will never be perfect because I’m not white. I guess I’ve been doing too much work in the area of race lately, race and beauty:
Race Ethnicity and Beyond
I became consumed by this last night, and began having overly emotional intelligent discussions, which often degrade into me hating society’s expectations and my inability to meet them. I began to bandy about the term “pretty white girl.’ I guess I’m writing this because I feel slightly guilty about it. I didn’t realize that “pretty white girl” could be a derogatory statement, especially when that’s what I wanted for the longest time.
Or maybe subconsciously I recognized that it was a derogatory statement, and I used it inappropriately in a bully fashion to hype myself up. Either way, it was wrong.
I realize now that “pretty white girls” recognize their position as such and what that means in our culture. Yeah, postmodern self-reflexivity! Funny how most of the things we desire most, are the things that other people are desperate to be free of. I think maybe I was just intimidated by them.
It’s a shame too because I started to have a potentially amazing conversation with a smart, sexy woman, who happened to be white. I think I opened with a confrontational statement, but that was the Jagermeister talking [smile]. Hopefully she’ll forgive me because I’m terribly interested in the experience of the Other.
NOTE: The Other is a psychoanalytical term which states that the Other is not the Self, which can exist with respect to all aspects of identity including gender, race, sexuality, etc.
Definition of the Other
posted by charisse @ 2:08 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
I have done some thinking about beauty as a kind of capital. withparis hilton in mind, i was wondering how much value specific traits canhave relative to a sort of "overall" or less tangible kind of beauty?Paris isn't that attractive if you ask me, but if you list off herattributes she sounds pretty damn great: long legs, long blond hair,blue eyes, pink lips, etc. (not to mention rich). Granted, I couldn'thave long legs, but i could potentially have or develop all of thoseother things. Would I be more beautiful? Is beauty just that easy? If
white girls could all be that skinny, dye our hair blond, get coloredcontacts, wear pink lipstick would they be more beautiful than theirotherwise more "natural" selves? Would they go from being white girls to
"pretty white girls"? Have we come into an era of a kind of Mr. PotatoHead beauty ideal? So much can be bought and altered that used to beleft up to nature. I would think that would normally tend to encouragepeople to seek visual pleasure in the few remaining things that can't be
bought. But that hasn't happened yet as far as I can tell. In thatworld order, I would think that bi- tri- and generally multiracial folkswould end up being considered more beautiful than the mono racial peoplejust because they couldn't be easily copied. (also, I personally think
that multiracial people tend to be more attractive which leads me tothink about the averaging of different racial types...I guess that mustbe pleasing to the eye).
I have a feeling that for the most beautiful among us, whoever they might be, their very beauty can compensate for
deficiencies in other areas (like, say, brains or intuition or tactfulness or qualifications on the job market, etc.). So if that is the case, if beauty really does matter, how much does it matter? Does itmatter for everyone or does it really only matter for the extreme cases,the very beautiful and the very ugly? I think your comment seemed toindicate that, at least in LA, beauty capital is extremely valuable foreveryone, not just the extreme cases. I wonder what the "pretty whitegirls" would have to say about this? I wonder if they even feelattractive. I wonder if they would think it might be easier to feelattractive if they didn't look like all the other "pretty white girls"in the room?
--Laura Noren
"... the dumb, shapely, ditzy blonde with too much power, which she often used impetuously. hyperfeminized... she often behaved and was treated like a child." --Susan Douglas
i think that's a perfectly good image to despise as a woman. don't you think? i mean, how would you feel about, say, amos and andy if that was the epitome of black masculinity? i find munroe's behavior offensive, and yet it is the perfection of american femininity. i had to watch a munroe film on Wednesday, and it only reminded me how much i despise her and her creation of what has come to be known as the "pretty white girl." of course this doesn't mean that all pretty white girls are like marilyn. the problem is, and what i'm ashamed of (as described in the blog entry), is that i confused the description, pretty white girl, with the construct "pretty white girl."
not to be politically incorrect or whatever but seriously, I don't see a logical following in "I will never be perfect BECAUSE I'm not white". I personally think I'll never be perfect because I have short legs. I would trade my skin color for
1. two extra inches of legs
2. curly, sumptuous hair
and/or
3. half an inch more distance between my eyes
but of course I AM white so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about...
--Ioana Uricaru
Wow,
This piece is powerful. Your so open about the whole thing.
It makes me feel good to be able to read other people experiences.
Many times I used to feel the same way, out of place. You know, not enough of this for one group, and not enough of that for another.
Please, keep updating this piece, because other ethinically ambiguous individuals need to know that they are not going thru this sort of thing alone.
T (U know who -wink*-wink*-)
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