A little while ago I worked on a piece about beautiful people which got spiked. The editor sat on it for a while and then told me they weren’t going to run it because the section was changing what it covered. I don’t know if this was true, it is one of those excuses which is vague enough to sound both true and like a lie. He may just not have liked it, you really can’t tell sometimes.
I did get paid in full for the piece so I wasn’t too annoyed, and I had written it so much in advance of it eventually being spiked that I had long forgotten the effort which had gone into it. Also, shortly after that covid happened, so I forgot about it and didn’t try to place it elsewhere. But I do think of the “reporting” I did for it often, and I thought I would write about that a little here.
For the piece I spoke to some beautiful women about the way that people interact with them, and what their lives are like, and the impact that the way they look has on their lives.
I don’t remember why I spoke only to women. It is possible I spoke to a beautiful man for my piece and just didn’t remember the conversation because I found it less interesting. But I suppose I do think that women are judged more on their appearances than men, and that, as a culture, we tend to ascribe a higher moral weighting to the way that women look than men.
By that I mean that, in my observations, unattractive women tend to be treated as if they have failed at something or done something wrong and I don’t think unattractive men are treated that way. It may be harder for an unattractive man to have sex but I don’t think he faces the same open hostility that an unattractive woman does. I have seen women angrily jeered in the street because of the way they look, for example, and I have never seen this happen to a man. Another example of this is the way in which trans women (who I believe experience an elevated version of misogyny) are expected to conform extremely rigidly to beauty standards to ensure their basic safety.
I also don’t think this is just our culture, if you think of the way female beauty is represented in myths and fairy tales for example. Ugly old hags or ugly step sisters are always poisoning, or otherwise acting out their malevolence of spirit, on beautiful princesses. And transforming to become beautiful is often the reward for good behaviour, or experiencing some kind of strife, which speaks to its equivalence with morality. (I wrote about this a little here). The handsome prince, by comparison, is a sort of mute figure, swooping in at the end to save the day.
So anyway, either I was more interested in talking to women or they ended up saying more memorable things. The reporting went like this: I spoke to some exceptionally good looking women who I know. If I’m working on a piece like this I prefer to interview people I know because I think the conversations will be more interesting, partly because they trust me, and partly because I trust them.
And it was an interesting form of conversation. The relative attractiveness of people you know is one of those things which tends to go unacknowledged except via subtext, so it was interesting to talk about this openly. And I felt they were generous and honest in our conversations, they all said they had thought a lot about this topic and never got to talk about it really, because to do so would look self aggrandising and conceited.
I was interested in some of the tropes that exist around beautiful women, for example, the idea that they have to deal with a lot of jealousy from other women. This is the kind of thing an actress might say to make herself sound more relatable, that she was terribly bullied at school and only realised it was because she was astoundingly beautiful when she ran away to Hollywood and, to her shock, was discovered on her first day there, walking around on the beach.
I have tended to observe that the opposite is true. I think a lot of women behave obsequiously, rather than viciously, to beautiful women. I think this is partly because they assume an association may elevate themselves, and partly because of the moral dimension we ascribe to beauty.
Actually I think some women are scared to admit they feel any empathy for unattractive women, lest they be tarnished by the association. This is one of the many things I find interesting about Nicole Flattery’s work; she is beautiful and her female characters are not. It speaks to her capacity for empathy I think. We all see very clearly the ways in which certain kinds of people are treated better than we are, but not many of us notice it the other way around, and Flattery does.
The women I spoke to did agree with my observations on that front. They had always found it easy to attract friends and people, both women and men, tended to always be affable, hyper accommodating, and polite to them. But they also said there were some strange elements to being received in this way. One mentioned feeling that she was treated as the “dominant” friend in all her relationships, a person who the other was scared to lose, and so ascribed a power she didn’t necessarily want.
Another (who I know to be extremely kind, generous, soft and shy) said her shyness was generally assumed to be haughtiness or snootiness. An assumption, I suppose, underlined by the idea that, in certain situations, she could and would rather be somewhere better. Which again affords her more power than she feels she has or wants.
One woman spoke about not knowing exactly what people want from certain interactions, particularly work interactions, and finding that friendliness can tend to mutate into a sexual advance of some kind which she then has to manage. Many women will have had this happen in a work context, but the volume of it had made her feel frequently disappointed in people, and consequently quite wary.
Another thing we spoke about is the idea that their lives are easier in some ways, but only to a certain extent and the sense that this can be disappointing. When we talk about privilege these days, we tend to talk as if it manifests in a very straightforward and predictable fashion: If you have X quality, you automatically get Y and Z. But I don’t think life is really like that.
With work, for instance. Even most very beautiful people don’t really use their looks in their work, unless they model or act or work in hospitality. That was something which came up in our conversations, the ways in which a life which has felt charmed in many ways, to a certain point, can start to feel disappointing.
I find the idea of this extremely sympathetic, for reasons I can’t really explain. I feel I notice it a lot in other contexts too, say with people who have gone to those universities which promise such extravagantly glittering careers that most jobs will feel like a let down, or people with very successful parents. It feels like an extreme version of the gulf we all experience, between what life is supposed to be and what it’s actually like.
Recent work and book stuff!!
I spoke to The Guardian about my book, for this piece which I thought was great, on grouping together novels by women and certain trends.
The first review of my book was so lovely, I couldn’t have asked for it to be better, here is an excerpt:
More than this, Lazy City exhibits an understanding of the importance of our homeland as the container that shapes us. Erin’s unhappiness – “I’m in so much pain,” she whispers to one sleeping partner. “I wish I could tell you” – is uniquely informed by a society with its own collective trauma from the Troubles, yet it’s also Northern Ireland’s plastic-Jesus religion that provides her with unexpected comfort. Erin feels better after visiting a church; I felt better after reading this book. Connolly is a writer in whom I have faith.
It’s out in the UK next week so the time for the hard sell is upon us. The pre-order links for Lazy City are here!!!
And here is a link to an event at the Edinburgh book festival with the lovely Michael Magee. Please come if you are in town :).
I also wrote a piece for the Guardian about the immersive Van Gogh experience and repetition in art.
Flowers: