In Response to "Beauty My Dear"

TW: sex shaming, white feminism, Christianity, body shaming

For those of you who didn't already know, my cousin Abby also has a blog. It's called My Life's Pick and is mostly about her art and the book she wants to write. But last July, she wrote a post that really bothers me. I'm only responding to it now because I only just found out about it; I'm staying with our grandma and she told me.

The post is called "Beauty My Dear", and I'm going to be talking about it here.

First of all, Abby is a Christian. She was raised in a conservative Free Methodist home and never really given room to ask any question that fell outside of her authority figures' comfort zone (I think her parents support Donald Trump, that's how bad it is). And I used to have a lot of the same social and political viewpoints as her and her sisters (Ella and LiLi). So in a weird way, I can sympathize with her.

And because Abby is a Christian in America - especially a white, cis, middle-class Christian - she's sitting on a mountain of privilege that she has never really examined. She doesn't really seem to take seriously that some people - that a LOT of people - aren't Christian or have been seriously harmed by Christians.

I can understand that, sort of. I once wrote a very similar post, pleading with girls to be "strong" by not being promiscuous and not wearing low-cut shirts, by not being sexy to please boys (I'd already known I liked girls, which makes my heteronormative assumption even more screwed-up). Another feminist fiercely called me in, recognizing the misogyny I'd internalized. Her name was Willow. I hated her then, but today I wish I could track her down and thank her.

So now, I'm in the same position Willow was - having to call in a young queer girl (Abby's aromantic and heterosexual) with internalized misogyny, making allosexist and heteronormative assumptions about women's lives and bodies, making the assumption that women and teenage girls are sexual for cishet men, not for themselves. I mean, she's making a decent point about systematic socialized fatphobia and misogynistic beauty expectations, but the post is still white feminist as hell.

These are my thoughts on why it's so white feminist:

1. Women and girls shouldn't have to be "modest" to be respected.

2. Nobody has to conform to your personal ideals about beauty, modesty, and religion.

3. Women of color, especially black women, are constantly pressured to straighten their hair and to surgically "fix" their bodies in order to conform to white people's standards of beauty.

4. The identities of trans women and other AMAB trans people are often delegitimized if they don't appear feminine, with makeup and surgeries that alter their natural features, like "real" (cis) women. In addition, many of them have surgeries in order to curb dysphoria. For some transfeminine people, gender-affirming surgery and conformity to traditional western-centric femininity is a form of survival.

5. For lesbian, bi, pansexual, and other women-loving women, appearing femme and beautiful according to heterosexual gender roles can be a form of social protection.

6. Fat women are pressured to "fix" their bodies and lose weight. Shaming fat people for their choices about their own bodies is fatphobic.

7. Shaming and policing people for dressing "immodestly" and getting cosmetic surgery (unless you're, say, a black person calling out white people for appropriating your natural features - in that case, carry on!) is still body shaming and body policing.

8. Because of the way multisexual women are systematically hypersexualized and demonized, our expression of beauty and sexuality may not be objectively immodest. But it is often perceived that way by our oppressors.

9. Many teenage girls I know who have been sex-shamed because of their "immodest" appearances are asexual. Don't assume someone's sexuality because of their appearance. Sexualizing ace women without our consent is part of rape culture.

10. Just because you're queer yourself, Abby, doesn't mean you get a pass on being transmisogynistic, lesbophobic, acephobic and sapphobic by ignoring the unique needs of trans, asexual-spectrum, and women-loving women.

11. As a white girl, you absolutely don't get a pass on the sexualized, gendered racism you are (inadvertently) perpetuating by ignoring the needs of women and girls of color.

12. And do I really need to repeat this? Not everyone is Christian. Non-Christian women do not have to, and often do not want to, conform to your Christian-influenced, religiously privileged views on their bodies.