Truth be
told, there are days I feel like an addict. I’m on Facebook way too much, and
the impetus to take a few seconds to see if I have any updates is a strong one,
making me feel ashamed, like an out-of-control junkie.
But then there are those wonderful
Facebook connections, those times when you have that meaningful interaction
with someone you barely know, or don’t know at all, or maybe someone you
haven’t talked to in years, and you realize that but for Facebook, the
encounter probably wouldn’t have happened at all. It’s that feeling of
clicking, that someone gets you—and you get them in return. Maybe someone
swoops in to you lift you up right at that moment when you feel as though you
couldn’t possibly lift yourself. Maybe you find that someone shares a deeply
held belief that you thought might be yours alone. Sometimes a hilariously spontaneous
thread knits itself together right in front of your eyes like magic.The invention of social media has also brought to light a phenomenon that I find both fascinating and somewhat troubling, and again, it’s one of those things that I don’t think we would’ve discovered about ourselves if not for social media: Facebook acts as a sort of living high school yearbook. Instead of being a quaint bit of memorabilia stuck back in our teen years, though, it never ends. It just goes on and on, forever.
There
are those women on Facebook—we all know who they are—who can post of photo of
themselves and immediately get a string of responses like this: “Pretty!
Beautiful! You are so gorgeous!” etc., etc., etc. I have myself reacted this way
to photos of my attractive female friends on Facebook. The collective
human response to a beautiful woman is, after all, a powerful one: Like moths to the proverbial flame.
Then
there are the rest of us. I have never seen a similar response to any male
friend of mine who posts a photo of himself, even the dudes who are considered
good looking. I mean, sure, if a guy is deliberately mugging for the camera,
flexing his bicep, or wearing a tux for a formal event, people might say things
like, “Looking good, buddy!” or something else vaguely complimentary, but
there’s not the stop-dead-in-your-tracks reaction that occurs when we’re
looking at an attractive woman.When I post a photo of myself, I rarely get the “Pretty!” reaction. I might get, “You look so happy!” or “Nice earrings!” or “You look tired. Are you okay?” But never the cascade of compliments that an attractive woman gets. I would like to say that this doesn’t matter to me. That I have grown up and matured and come to be so comfortable in my own skin that not being pretty doesn’t hurt.
It still
does. Just like it did in high school. And I catch myself wondering what it
would be like to be one of those women who has the power to render others
speechless just by walking into a room.
Don’t
be like that. I tell myself. You have
no idea what it’s like to be pretty. Maybe it kind of sucks. Maybe it gets tiring to have people concentrate more on your looks than your abilities. Or your brains. That’s one thing I never have to worry about. I’m no genius, but I don’t normally worry about someone thinking I’m stupid. And if someone does think I’m stupid, I don’t give a shit because I know, deep within me, that he or she is dead fucking wrong. So screw that asshole. End of story.
But maybe
when you’re pretty once in awhile you’d like to post a photo of yourself and
have people say things like, “You look so happy!” or “Nice earrings!” or even,
“You look tired. Are you okay?” Instead of “Hubba, hubba!” or “Hot stuff!”
Maybe that sort of reaction starts to feel superficial after awhile. Maybe it
starts to wear on your soul.
And it makes me wonder what this
fixation on women’s looks does to all
of us women, the plain and the pretty.
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