PRETTY PRIVILEGE AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT

Deconstructing beauty standards.

Growing up, I never considered myself beautiful.

There were other words that described me more accurately, words I heard so often that they became part of my identity. Intelligent was one of them, mostly because I had good grades and answered questions in class with too much confidence for a child my age, so it was hard not to be noticed. My teachers had already decided I was going to become a doctor, and somehow my parents agreed too, so the prophecy followed me around for years.

Another word was quiet.

Quiet appeared in almost every term’s report card. One teacher described me as “ice-water,” which was funny in hindsight, but at the time it felt painfully accurate. I was always colder on the outside than I felt internally. Reserved. Careful. Watching everything.

I was also two years younger than most of my classmates, which meant childhood felt a little harsher than it should have. I dealt with bullying for the most part, at least until I eventually learned how to stand up for myself. But even after that, something still felt off socially. I carried this awkwardness around, this feeling of being slightly misplaced in every room.

Social anxiety became familiar very early. So I found comfort in a few friends who also seemed to exist outside the “acceptable” categories. The ones who were not considered cool enough, pretty enough, tall enough, loud enough. The ones who floated quietly around the edges of social circles instead of standing confidently at the center of them. Those were my friends.

Other words followed me too. Stubborn. Proud. Antisocial.

None of these descriptions ever felt foreign.

But beautiful?

Compliments were made specifically on my body parts. Aunties would say in Igbo whenever they came around, “O yitere nna ya,” meaning she looks like her father, and they would compliment my long legs, pointed nose, and diastema. Looking back now, it is strange how girlhood teaches you to separate yourself into parts before you even fully know yourself as a whole.

I remember one Christmas when I was around eight years old. Wool extensions were trendy at the time, and I had my hair styled into two buns sitting proudly on both sides of my head. I thought I looked beautiful.

Around that time, I started noticing a man standing across my mother’s place of business whenever I was sent on errands. Much older. Probably in the late thirties or forties. Every single day, standing in the same corner, staring without shame whenever I stepped outside.

At first, I didn’t fully understand it. I only knew it made me uncomfortable.

My mother noticed too, either because I complained or because mothers notice everything before words are spoken. I still don’t know which came first.

The solution was immediate. My hair was shaved off that January.

And that was the beginning of everything.

Looking back now, there’s something sad about that memory. Not just the fear, but how quickly girlhood learns to make itself smaller for safety. How early some of us become aware that being perceived can be dangerous. How easily softness becomes something to protect instead of something to enjoy.

I did not consider myself beautiful throughout my teenage years either. There were girls I admired from a distance, girls who seemed to naturally belong to the world of femininity. Girls with long hair and endless hairstyles. Girls who knew how to dance, how to move confidently, how to exist without overthinking every little thing.

I would sit quietly nearby while conversations drifted toward hair, makeup, crushes, cute outfits, and all the things that seemed to come naturally to everyone else.

I never contributed much. Not because I didn’t care, but because I didn’t think I belonged in those conversations.

I thought those girls were beautiful. Effortlessly cool in ways I could never explain. And beside them, I felt strangely unfinished, like I had missed some secret lesson on how to become a girl properly. Like there was a proper way of becoming a girl.

I convinced myself I just wasn’t girly. That maybe femininity belonged to other people. I preferred being around boys because it felt easier, less performative somehow. I even wished I was one sometimes. Not because I hated being a girl, but because boyhood seemed simpler, freer, untouched by the constant awareness that came with being perceived.

In high school, there were boys I found attractive, but I knew they didn’t see me the same way. They saw me as one of them, or as the little smart box that sat in front of the class. So, at that point, I became okay with being friends with the boys. I tried to flow with them. I didn’t like the things they liked, but it was easier laughing at their dry jokes than sitting with the girls who didn’t think I was part of them.

Technically, I didn’t belong anywhere.

This is a summary of what my early teenagehood looked like. After high school, things changed a little. I started to express myself and tilted more into the feminine direction. I started growing my hair, taking care of my face, using lip gloss. I would worry about the little acne on my face and try to dress to impress the opposite gender. Maybe not impress, but at least it mattered to me then that the boys I found attractive found me attractive too.

In my late teenage years, it was no longer just about friendship with boys. Their compliments sincerely mattered to me. It could make my day when someone called me beautiful, and ruin it when nobody did. I have come to realize how easy it is to slowly hand over your self-worth to the eyes of other people without even noticing it happening.

Looking back now at how much my perception of beauty has evolved over time, I have learned not to attach my self-worth to how I look because there is no real attachment.

I’m no longer the bald, tall, lanky thirteen-year-old. It has been ten years now, and a lot has changed physically for me. I am far more beautiful and far more confident in how I look. But even with that confidence, there is still this struggle of trying to look a certain way, trying to appear correctly, trying to meet standards that seem to change regularly.

I am learning that beauty standards are social constructs, and it is frightening how easy it is to fall for constantly changing trends that dictate how women should look and feel about their bodies. The pressure is subtle until it isn’t. It shows up in the mirror, in comparison, in overconsumption, in the endless feeling that there is always something to fix.

Now, who are “society”? Primarily men.

One could argue that women love to look good for themselves and not for men, and I agree. But there is also a performance attached to femininity. An awareness that attractiveness is rewarded socially. It has been repackaged as ‘pretty privilege’.

In the past seven or eight years, I have watched the beauty and fashion industry more as a spectacle than an active participant, taking note of the changes and trends.

And honestly, it is exhausting.

The standards never stay still. The lens through which women are viewed is constantly shifting, constantly demanding something new. Skin. Weight. Curves. Hair. Lips. Waist. Everything is examined.

Sometimes I think about how much of womanhood is spent trying to become acceptable before we even get the chance to simply exist.

I think beauty means something different to me now. Less performance. Less permission. Less desperation to be chosen.

More comfort.

More self-recognition.

More freedom.

I hope you fall in love with your yourself, enough to exist confidently in your own skin. Enough to change anything you aren’t comfortable with, but not because of societal acceptance.

Till I write you again,

Chisom Judith❤️