On Femcels
I truly, genuinely believe that every human is beautiful.
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Regarding the recent Atlantic article about “femcels”:
I’ve written a lot about incels since 2014, because they spawn dangerously violent men, men who kill women because they, the men, are desperately lonely.
That’s not what “femcels” do. If anything, they hate themselves for falling irrevocably short of the cultural beauty standard. The “femcel” phenomenon—the women’s equivalent to “incels,” involuntarily celibate men who blame their intense loneliness on women’s perceived obsession with male status and beauty—is a beauty phenomenon. In sharp contrast to incels, femcels do not feel entitled to anything.
These (mostly young) women blame their intense loneliness on men’s perceived obsession with female beauty, while they self-identify as “ugly,” not meeting cultural standards. They have extensive internet forum conversations related to beauty tips and cosmetic surgery to help them conform with ideals, and some of them give up, deciding they’ll be “attractive” enough (i.e., conform more closely to the ideal.)
Right near the end of her article, journalist Kaitlyn Tiffany writes,
It’s easy to feel like an outsider, and it’s also easy to feel like you’ve been lied to: If traditional beauty standards don’t matter, then why are they still celebrated all the time? What are we, stupid? “I think for girls, it just feels kind of infantilizing,” [Amanda, who used to be part of femcel groups] said. “Like, we’re not allowed to think of ourselves as we really see ourselves.” It was illuminating, for a time, to have a word for that.
“We’re not allowed to think of ourselves as we really see ourselves.”
And “as we see ourselves” was, for Amanda, and is, for many in these forums, ugly. As the article says,
When she started identifying with the term femcel, it was partly because she felt a resentment toward a style of feminism that challenged traditional beauty standards mostly by asking those who fell short of them to feel beautiful anyway, regardless of their lived experiences. “I’d rather be able to talk about being ugly than just try to convince myself that I’m pretty,” she said.
Now, there are places in Come As You Are and Burnout in which I talk about cultural beauty standards and their negative impact on sexual and overall wellbeing. As an alternative narrative, I suggest that everyone is already beautiful, regardless of how well or poorly they match the culturally constructed aspirational beauty ideal, as dictated by what Amelia and I call the “Bikini Industrial Complex” or BIC.
I’ve been asked a few times why I “think everyone should tell themselves they’re beautiful.” I was asked so often after CAYA was published, that there was actually a draft of Burnout in which Amelia and I offered the alternative of celebrating one’s “ugliness.”
Readers hated it.
The word “ugly” has been so effectively weaponized that just the suggestion that someone embrace such a label made people want to stop reading. Amelia and I couldn’t find a way to write about the idea of “reclaiming ugly” that resonated with, well, anyone.
So, as much as some people tell me they would like a cultural discussion that includes people proudly self-identifying as ugly, that’s a conversation for which readers seem intensely unready.
But maybe one reason I can’t write about it effectively is that I actually do, truly, genuinely believe that every human is beautiful. I don’t ask that everyone “should tell themselves they’re beautiful.” I only say that actually everyone is beautiful, and suggest people try looking at their body without the distorting lenses of the BIC.
Actual human beauty is liberated from the BIC; it is inherent in our existence as living creatures on this planet. If every marmoset is beautiful, then so is every human. If every fern is beautiful, then so are we. Hell, if every rock and river and other non-living object that’s part of our planet is beautiful—and I would argue that they are, simply by virtue of their existence, and not, contrary to what the silly 19th century intellectuals wrote, only certain ones that match some ideal they made up—then every human is beautiful.
I want to say that to the young women in the femcel forums. I want to tell them that the problem isn’t them and it isn’t men, it’s the Bikini Industrial Complex, which profits from their self-hatred. It has a vested interested in forcing people to see themselves as inherently flawed and forever searching for the product or service that will “fix” them.
Let me take it a step further, even.
The BIC is inherently racist and ableist. Tiffany does not mention the race of any of the people she interviews (though she does mention that the Anti-Defamation League’s report on the intersection of misogyny and white supremacy” included incels’ sense of entitlement to sex), nor does she mention disability, including physical disability. She mentions that they’re young, so I can’t help imagining them as young, white, and able-bodied.
People of color, especially Black people, and visibly disabled people already know they’ll never conform to the BIC, because their bodies are excluded by default. Kinky, coily hair and dark skin, bodies in wheelchairs, these and many more bodies never get to the starting line, never mind the finish line, of the BIC. As Tracie Gilbert writes in her book, Black and Sexy: A Framework of Racialized Sexuality, many of the African Americans she interviewed
“…appeared well aware of the expectations presented by mainstream society to reject black femininity and black beauty, choosing instead to value them anyway. And in their own way this particular act of resistance— choosing one's self when there is no external incentive to do so - serves as a source and mechanism of sexiness development in and of itself.”
And, on top of being racist and ableist, the BIC is, of course, a weapon of the patriarchal gender binary. Women are shunned for failing to be pretty enough. We are described as undeserving even of unwanted sexual advances and acts of violence, if we fall short of the beauty ideal. And we are punished for our failure, with acts of sexual, physical, and emotional violence. When people worry about being “pretty enough,” they’re worried about something real. They’re worried about the violence of misogyny.
(Of course, beautiful women may be punished for being “too beautiful,” a temptation for men, vain, etc., etc. There is no way to escape, entirely, the violence of misogyny except for us to work toward ending it.)
And that misogyny doesn’t just impact cisgender women. I can’t help noticing the parallel between these femcel conversations and the conversations in some particularly heartbreaking corners of forums for trans people, where they’re worried that they can never come out because they’ll never be attractive enough. And they’re not even wrong that “passing” or being “pretty enough” matters, because they, too, even more than cisgender women, are targets of violence, and “pretty privilege” can be at least a faint wisp of protection.
So. Again. I am not suggesting that anyone “think of themselves as beautiful.”
I am suggesting that you, whoever you are, are beautiful, the way a horse in a pasture is beautiful, the way every newborn is beautiful, the way life itself is full of fucking miraculous, wondrous, awesome and awful beauty.
And I am suggesting that when we practice seeing ourselves that way, it will help us to see everyone else that way, which will help protect those among us who are most vulnerable to oppression from the violent consequences of people’s conviction that cultural beauty is the only “correct” beauty.
Don’t believe the misogynist, capitalist lies. You’re already beautiful, and that has nothing to do with the culturally constructed aspirational beauty ideal. And so is every single other human you will meet today.
Today, this one day, practicing seeing human bodies and thinking, “That person is beautiful.” Even the people who don’t conform to the BIC ideal. Even the people you don’t like. Even the people you perceive as dangerous to the wellbeing of the world.
Try it today. Just see.
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Stay safe and see you next time.
