Female oppression through quest for perfection
Your eyebrows are ‘on fleek’! Your hair is ‘on point’ – your outfit is ‘peng’ – all expressions and phrases that I have heard girls bandy about this week to compliment one another – the worrying undercurrent of all this ‘flattery’ is a dangerous obsession with appearance. Focusing on how girls look and not what they achieve was one of the alarming highlights of the annual survey of girls’ attitudes published by the Girlguiding association last week.
Social oppression of women is now being exerted not by divisions of labour, or the lack of a vote, but more by a quest for physical perfection and an expectation that women and girls will look and behave in a certain way.
Girls are doing it to themselves and to each other – putting too much emphasis on looking the part – it has always been thus, but now with social media the pressures are even greater and there’s no escape. This morbid fascination with make up, highlighters, contour kits and brushes is adding fuel to the national obsession with judging women on looks not achievements.
Women and girls are exposed to the airbrushed ‘body beautiful’ 24 hours a day via social media and it comes into their home, onto their phones and laptops and is insidiously chipping away at self-confidence and self-esteem. Girls as young as seven say they feel under pressure to be perfect and many feel they fall short.
Not surprisingly perhaps, the report showed that 93% of women agree that they feel they are judged more on their appearance than their abilities and a terrifying 66% of eleven to 21 year olds who took part felt they were not pretty enough, with nearly half believing their looks held them back most of the time. What a sad indictment of society that in the 21st century young women are obsessing about their looks and that over 80% feel it is the single most important thing about them.
More worrying still is that many respondents feel their looks and not being pretty enough has held them back and stopped them from trying new things.
We know that girls in mixed schools can be deterred from taking part in sport because they don’t want to look less than perfect in a PE lesson, or hot and sweaty after a sports match. But a new frightening phenomenon emerged in the survey that for some girls, the way they look can even deter them from answering questions in class or socialising.
As a society we are all to blame for creating this current horror show – inadvertently we all fuel the fire – and we need to check ourselves when talking to and praising girls. Some say it starts in the cradle, and the way people talk to babies – with girls complimented for being pretty in pink and boys for being clever.
We need to shift the focus away from looks and beautification to the achievement chart and report card. We want our girls to strive not for the unattainable and transient ‘perfection’ espoused by current beauty trends and superficial celebrity ‘It’ girls; we want them to be inspired by women of achievement and to celebrate their own achievements, not their contouring prowess and make up application.
Remember to heap praise and give credit where it is due – and sing it from the rooftops #YouAreAmazing #GirlsAttitudes
Hilary French, Headmistress at Newcastle High School for Girls, also blogs at Hilary’s thoughts .