I used to think my nose and my forehead were the only things standing between me and true love. I know that sounds insane, but that’s really what I thought.
Like many of you reading this, I grew up in an era when female celebrities’ looks were picked apart in tabloids, when women’s magazines ran constant articles on how to “minimize” your body’s “problem areas,” and when TV makeover shows made it seem like a haircut and a flattering pair of jeans could fix your entire life. As an intrepid young romantic, I studied these texts like field guides, always seeking the secret knowledge that might transform me from a quivering, boy-repellent wallflower into a beautiful belle of the ball. I believed love mattered more than anything else (I still believe that), and I believed the only way to find or deserve love was to be pretty. (That one, I only sometimes still believe… and I’ve spent a lot of money on therapy to get to that point, thank you very much!)
One thing that strikes me now, looking back at all the media influences that tried to teach me how to be a Hot Girl, is how fake it all was. These types of articles frequently instructed readers to “be yourself!” while simultaneously offering scads of advice on doing just the opposite. Cut bangs to veil your big forehead, throw on a wrap dress to cinch your belly, slip into some control-top tights to mask your cellulite – hide more and more of yourself, basically, until you become an approximation of acceptable attractiveness – and then and only then, somebody might actually like you.
This struck me as unhinged and nonsensical at the time, and yet it was constantly presented as “just the way things were,” at least in the cis-het dating sphere (I thought I was straight back then). In addition to its misogynist attempts to curtail women’s personhood and spirit (not to mention finances), there’s something vaguely misandrist about this type of messaging, too – it seems to insist that all men/boys want the same things, and that they care about a woman’s looks to the exclusion of literally everything else, which simply isn’t true. Even the shallowest, shittiest fuckboys I’ve ever met must have some standards – they won’t date a woman who’s in a cult or an MLM, say – and yet dating advice aimed at women and girls in the oughts was so often just: Be blonde, thin, hairless, and agreeable, and you’re golden.