I’m one of those people who wears heels on campus. You can catch me doing high-knees as I power my way up North Lawn or swinging from tree to tree as I teeter-totter across the Plaza of the Americas.
Why do I purposefully make it so each day on campus could pass as a scene in “Mission Impossible”? It’s not because I like Tom Cruise, because I really, really don’t.
To be honest, I don’t really know — or rather, I do, but the answer is embarrassing.
It makes my legs look nice. That’s it. I’m willing to endure blisters and pain for a nice pair of shoes. I can say the same thing about the uncomfortable clothes I wear or the time I put into applying makeup. I spend a lot of time trying to make this big forehead cute and these features fit the Western standard of beauty. To me, it is worth it because my appearance makes things easier.
It is more than wearing a suit to an interview. It is about appealing to those around you and receiving better treatment when you do. This means conforming to what others find attractive, suppressing your opinion so it doesn’t make others uncomfortable, even modulating your voice so it sounds softer and more inviting.
It is a bad message to subscribe to, but sometimes I can’t help giving into the pressure because I know the results are better. Feminine-presenting individuals shouldn’t have to be considered attractive to be taken seriously, but the sad reality is there is a relationship between credibility and appearance.
And it’s a shame I can’t hit you with theory after theory to prove the existence of things like lookism, the idea that appearance affects success at work. The truth is, I don’t know enough about it. There are a lot of things out there, from studies published by the Psychology
of Women Quarterly or even research conducted by
UF. And instead of listing them here, I encourage you to look at them for yourself. I am still checking
myself daily when I notice myself falling into
these behaviors, and I think others could benefit from looking at their choices critically as well.
Do we ever really sit back and think about how gendered our world is? Because it’s not just women who are affected. Men also experience pressure to present themselves in a masculine way and are ridiculed when they don’t. Everyone is affected by the existence of a gender binary. We are taught these behaviors by those we love at an early age, and they shape our self-awareness. We see them enforced through institutions like our religion or government, but we don’t think to question it. It is really not that surprising, then, that I had been objectifying myself.
We are never taught to be critical of gender roles because knowledge would give you something to fight back with, and they don’t want that. We just have to find them out for ourselves. Those with masculine privilege have to teach themselves to use their privilege to combat gender oppression. They can make the choice to bring attention to the fact that the women in their clubs or organizations are being spoken over, for example. We all have to learn first to recognize it, then address it.
“(Girls) are taught to view their bodies as projects that need work before they can attract others, whereas boys are likely to learn to view their bodies as tools to use to master the environment,” said Sarah Murnen in the journal Sex Roles. I’m still learning to look at myself as more than a project. I can’t tell you how to get there, but I do think focusing on the things you like about yourself that don’t depend on the validation of others is a good start. On that front, I’m still running up that hill.
Brooke Henderson is a UF journalism and international studies sophomore. Her column appears on Mondays.
