Oppressing the overdog

[Julie (a.k.a. Viola)]

*delurking* This is one of those topics I can never seem to leave 
alone. ^_^

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., rainy_lilac at y... wrote:
> I have had to deal 
> with this kind of abuse a lot. It is really amazing how otherwise 
> perfectly nice people will suddenly think it is okay to savage 
> someone because of how they look. I have actually had people say 
> straight to my face that because I look the way I do I have had the 
> good breaks "all" my life, have "always" enjoyed favor and 
attention, 
> and now they are going to "even the score" a bit. 

And when those people are in positions of power, it becomes 
discrimination.

Now, I make no claims on great beauty - I've certainly never modelled 
like Suzanne ^_^ - but I am self-aware enough to know that my looks 
"type" me. I'm in my mid-twenties, blonde and reasonably attractive 
- and I work in an extremely male-dominated industry. The genre 
entertainment industry is run by about the biggest Boys Club there is 
- and it's assumed (rightly so in some cases) that attractive women 
get where they are because they fulfill some comic book babe fantasy 
for the boss.

In my career, I've been accused of using my looks to get ahead more 
times than I can count. One boss took too much "professional" interest 
in both me and a co-worker of mine - who was also blonde and 
twenty-ish. When I finally got a female superior, she happened to be a 
lesbian. All the "boys" called me her "lipstick." Nice. And, recently, 
I was thoroughly appalled to discover my former colleagues spreading 
the rumor that I was shagging my newest boss. 


> was thirty. I am well rounded, bright, went to Smith College, and 
> have published my work. No matter how well I have done academically 
> or at work, though, I have been assumed a bimbo until I have proven 
> otherwise.
> 

I think this is a _big_ problem. I'm a staunch feminist, but I do 
think some aspects of the women's movement have lead to devisiveness 
amongst women - especially as regards physical appearance. Margaret 
Atwood actually makes this point very well in "The Handmaid's Tale" - 
the extreme right uses the tension between women because of physical 
appearance as a justification for subjugating _all_ women. "At least 
our way everyone's equal" is the general sentiment. I always think of 
that scene whenever this topic comes up.

We receive so many conflicting messages about this stuff. Is it better 
to be Cinderella or an ugly stepsister? As a child of the post-Judy 
Blume era, I honestly don't know.

> I am not a born winner. I was not a cheerleader. 

And I happened to be a very good cheerleader, so I spent my 
adolescence with an enormous chip on my shoulder because no one would 
take me seriously. It amazed me that my choice of extracurricular 
activity could so totally determine me.

I didn't do it because I wanted to be some Barbie Doll figure of 
conformity - I did it because I was a dancer and a gymnast, had a 
competitive spirit and _liked_ performing. But the stereotype remains 
- and it isn't just your peers. I remember being thoroughly floored 
the first time a teacher told me my writing had promise. I was a 
senior, and before that the only other time a teacher had singled me 
out was to interrogate me about whether I was anorexic.

> away, "Yep, it's true. I am beautiful. And I am not born yesterday."

What a _great_ sentiment. ^_^ We should all be so healthy.

"Looksism" cuts both ways - and it's wrong, regardless of which end of 
the spectrum you find yourself on. There's a certain amount of human 
nature at work, of course, but in our society it's really out of 
control. 

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Ebony" <ebonyink at h...> wrote:
> Anyway.  What pisses me off the most is when people don't think that 
> thin women have just as many body image issues as larger ones. 

Or, that if they do, it's somehow wrong and shameful. In college, I 
was totally shocked by the attitude toward eating disorders. I was in 
a sorority - an institution which has some very unflattering 
statistics body image and eating disorder-wise. So to rectify this, 
everyone was being "proactive" about eating disorders. The upshot of 
this was everyone running around madly trying to prevent disordered 
thinking from "spreading" and making their chapter look bad. I will 
never forget a group of us being dragged in front of our chapter 
"standards" board as "likelies" - in my case, because they found out 
I'd had a borderline eating disorder in high school. Just for 
reference, this is the same treatment you'd get if you were a serious 
behavior problem - stealing from the house or using illegal drugs, 
etc. The implication was that we might somehow influence the younger 
members and turn an isolated problem into an epidemic. I couldn't 
believe what I was hearing, and was shocked and angered by the total 
lack of compassion. 

> And women need to realize that all the divisiveness is unnecessary, 
> and counterproductive to our aims.  No matter what we look like, 
what 
> our sexual preference is, what our socioeconomic status is, or where 
> we live in the world, the fact remains that we are all women... more 
> than one-half of the human population, and still so very subjugated 
> and oppressed in much of the world.

A big "amen!" to that. ^_^

-Julie (who likes to blend peanut butter, bananas and vanilla frozen 
yogurt and drink it - which isn't actually a sandwich, but _does_ 
contain peanut butter)