Pretty Privilege or White Privilege?

by Anna McClean | Design by Emma Hill

It’s no secret that “pretty people” have a bit of an upper hand in our world, as opposed to those who don’t necessarily check all the beauty standard boxes. But what defines that standard? Is it someone’s hair? Their skin? Body type? What about facial features?

The establishment of what is conventionally attractive in Western society today dates back to the lives of the celebrities who seem to be setting the bar in its impossibly high current location. In the 1600s, a French physician named François Bernier conducted work that sociologist Sabrina Strings explains in her book, Fearing The Black Body, as “the attempt to pin down fundamental physical differences between Europeans and non-Europeans, with an intense focus on the women in various categories. These differences were to serve as proof of European superiority.”

As you can imagine, an idea like this ever established as science would have extensive impacts, even four centuries in the future. Even at the beginning of the 20th century, cosmetics and beauty very closely meant whiteness. Companies in the beauty industry emphasized being thin, blonde, having untextured skin, and narrow features. These standards are considered “ideal” in our society not because every white person looks this way but because it allows for the exclusion of non-white people.

Beauty is subjective and influenced by the values of one’s cultural background; someone cannot be objectively good or bad looking, but our society has done well to overpower this truth by teaching there is a true physical ideal. This “ideal” was carefully constructed to serve as a weapon of white supremacy. In her book Thick, Tressie McMillan Cottom shares an experience that I think highlights beauty as a social construct; she writes, “Unlike home, where much of my social world was filtered through my mother’s preference for African American history and culture, at school I learned that nothing was more beautiful than blond…A whole other culture of desirability had been playing out just above and beyond my awareness.”

It is true that, to some degree, beauty standards have changed over time, but only to allow a subtle shift in power for those already a part of the hierarchy. Only in ways small enough to ensure that non-white people remain on the outside, looking in.

The system does not allow for the nonwhite parts of someone to be contributing factors to their beauty. As Strings points out in her discussion of Bernier, “Nevertheless, he certifies Black women’s attractiveness by using the existing standard for white women: ‘aquiline nose, small mouth, coral lips, ivory teeth, large bright eyes, gentle features.’ In this way, the Black women who were good-looking could lay claim to that title only because of their similarity to the neoclassical ideal of Venus.” It is a person’s proximity to whiteness that is most influential in determining if they are “conventionally” attractive.

Studies have shown that “pretty” people are most likely to be perceived as intelligent, capable, and overall likable, earning the respect of others much faster than someone who is not considered “pretty.” This has tangible outcomes in daily life, including education opportunities, job offers and promotions, and even reduced prison sentences. So, it’s vitally important that we acknowledge and understand where the roots of our definition of beauty lie and that we’re careful not to brush over occurrences of white privilege by offering a different title for it.

In the workplace specifically, it is very common that these biases are overlooked and mislabeled in this way. Black employees’ natural and protective hairstyles are so often perceived as “unprofessional,” that law had to be created banning hairstyle discrimination. Meanwhile, I have shown up to work in the messy bun I slept in and received nothing but compliments. My coworkers and friends who I spoke with about this have attributed it to my “pretty privilege,” but I know if my hair was a different color and texture, my unkempt look would not have evoked the response that it did.

To be clear, acknowledging what you find beautiful about someone who happens to be white does not make you racist. That is not the point I’m making. The problem is in our continued allowance for the existence of one exclusive beauty ideal and in the processes aiding the objectives of white supremacy from which it initially emerged. We cannot ignore the history behind “pretty privilege” because it was not an accident, and it’s deeper than just what meets the eye.