The Cutprice Guignol

Picture the scene. You’re watching some show where the characters are really up against it – maybe it’s post-apocalypse, maybe zombies have overrun the nation, maybe they’re fighting for their lives in the wilderness. The camera pans to a male character – grizzled, greasy, grimy, probably sporting a beard for good measure, because shaving certainly isn’t at the top of his list of important things to do today as he fights for survival. But what’s this? The camera continues, and it lands on the female lead – eyebrows freshly microbladed, legs shaved, a neutral smoky eye and armpits that couldn’t have been waxed more than six hours ago.

As a fan of genre fiction, I can’t count how many times I’ve seen some version of this comparison – the male characters allowed at least a semblance of their actual human body to show, while the women are buffed and plucked to perfection, maybe with a streak of dirt artfully contoured over one eyebrow to try and sell the fantasy. And, look, as both a writer and lover of genre fiction and a woman, I am writing this in the hopes of imploring other creators to let their female characters exist in actual human bodies.

But, as a woman myself, there is nothing that yanks me out of a story like the sudden appearance of a pair of hairless legs or freshly-plucked eyebrows in the middle of an apocalypse without reasonable explanation. It’s particularly galling when a story is so dedicated to building this gritty, grimy world that claims to be based in the real world (ahem), only to fall at the first hurdle of allowing women to have body hair – it’s not just sexism, it’s bad writing, bad character design, bad world-building.

Listen to me: your stories will be better if you allow women to be ugly. And when I say ugly, I mean not unattractive, but rather not slavishly adhering to the beauty standards that they would be expected to meet if they were not in the high-stress scenarios that they are currently enduring. I think the effort that has been put in by media at large to depict women’s natural state as one that effortlessly aligns with cultural beauty standards has made it so a lot of writers and creators perhaps don’t even realise how demanding they actually are. And make no mistake, that’s by design – women’s beauty has to seem effortless, or she falls prey to the curse of trying too hard, and that might even be worse than just being ugly in the first place.

But the time it takes to actually preen and primp yourself into the standards laid out by culture at large is not insignificant, and, if your female characters are taking the time and resources to do that, I need to know how and I need to know, most importantly, why that is something that matters to them (and, if it’s a fantasy setting separate from our world, I need to understand why their beauty standards happen to align so specifically with ours). There are ways you could work these aspects into a story that make sense, but, if we’re being honest, the vast majority of examples of this are clearly borne from creators reluctant to show a less-than-idealized version of a woman’s body. I can only read those choices one way: a woman’s beauty, or at least her adherence to gruelling beauty standards, is fundamental to her inclusion in and value to the story.

So, consider this my invitation to writers and creators of all stripes to allow their female characters to look a bit ugly. I promise your stories will feel richer and more realistic as a result. I would love to hear takes from other women on this topic – is this something that you’ve noticed in media, and have you found it distracting or difficult to look past? Let me know in the comments below!

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(header image via Slashfilm)