I really wish men and women could body swap for a day so we could better empathize with each other. Most men don’t really see that the world tells women “the most important thing you can be is pretty”. Whatever else you might have accomplished in life really pales in comparison to your looks. It’s just the way it is. This holds especially true outside the Bay Area bubble. Many of my wonderful male friends are just astonished at how much time and energy and money that I spend to be beautiful. I don’t think they understand how much society judges me on my looks. How it forces me to constantly compare myself to other women. How awful those moments are when I feel that I don’t have it. How women are acutely aware of and expected to “fix” our physical “shortcomings”: the hair on our face and legs and armpits and bikini lines and backs, our even-slightly-blemished skin (how dare we have pores), our thick ankles, our fleshy arms and stomach, our facial features (everything from thin lips to nose shape can be “fixed”), our hair color and texture, cuticles and unpainted nails on both hands and feet, callused feet, moles, under eye darkness and bags and wrinkles, thigh cellulite, breast shape, flabby arms, creased forehead and cheeks, short or saggy neck, unlifted lashes, low cheekbones, eyebrow shape, jaw and neck definition, etc etc. and especially, any signs of aging. We don’t ever become “silver foxes” or look “distinguished”- aging is the enemy.

In today’s world, the scrutiny of men’s appearance will never even come close to the microscope that women live under. Truly. An ugly man can make it way further in life than an ugly woman.

And worse, women are brought up to really care what others think of them, and to make everyone else comfortable at their own expense. So you can’t just “stop caring what people say”. That would really screw you over in this world.

I imagine that beauty is for women what money is for men. It’s our currency and often what makes us valuable to the group of the shallow “others” in this society.