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Beautiful women and natural law
Dan Rottenberg
The gorgeous-woman problem
DAN ROTTENBERG
In his review of Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things, Steve Antinoff suggests (along with LaBute) that a beautiful woman is an irresistible force (at least among men) and wonders whether gorgeous women ever suffer for their beauty. These are disturbing thoughts if you believe (as I do) that there are laws of compensation in nature, and that each of us lacks some dimension.
To be sure, male barriers are more easily breached by attractive women than by plain Janes. That is why, for example, pharmaceutical companies now routinely hire cheerleaders as sales reps rather than, say, reps who know something about pharmaceuticals. When a male doctor's day consists of an endless stream of miserable patients and their maladies, whom do you think he’d rather see?
I think here also of Katy Bernstein, a girl I dated in high school. Katy spent that year in a math class taught by a man who was infamous for terrifying and humiliating kids who failed to meet his standards. I had never had this teacher myself and asked Katy how she suffered his outbursts.
“I’ve never had a problem with him,” she replied matter-of-factly. “If I’m unprepared for class or if I anticipate any kind of problem, I just wear a sweater that day and there’s no problem.” At the age of 16, this wise-beyond-her-years girl grasped one of life’s great truths: Whether the male in question is your pimply adolescent classmate or your pompous principal or the president of the United States, if you show a little cleavage or a little thigh, he will dissolve into a helpless blob of gelatin.
My Julia Roberts problem
Fortunately, I’m happy to report (based on my own admittedly limited experience) that the laws of compensation are alive and kicking as far as beautiful women are concerned. For one thing, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and every beholder’s taste is different. Julia Roberts, to cite one widely acclaimed Hollywood definition of beauty, just doesn’t do anything for me. Thousands of Broadway theatergoers paid big bucks to see Nicole Kidman nude in The Blue Room and Kathleen Turner nude in The Graduate. But if I walked into a hotel room and Kidman or Turner was lying on a bed, I’d probably open a book or flip on the TV.
More to the point, beautiful women do suffer for their beauty. I think here of my late friend Sandy Rubin, who was voted best-looking girl in her class at Overbrook High (Class of ’55). Sandy was a flaming redhead in the classic Suzy Parker/Rita Hayworth mode, so dazzling that her intimidated male and female classmates kept their distance. As a result, as Sandy told it, her high school years were actually very lonely.
Many years later Sandy ran into a male classmate who confessed to a schoolboy crush on her. “I put you up on a pedestal,” he said. “I worshipped you,” and more words to that effect.
“Instead of worshipping me,” Sandy replied, “why the hell didn’t you ask me out?”
And as for attractive writers…
I can testify that attractive women writers suffer a distinct disadvantage when dealing with me, because as an editor I’m subconsciously biased against them. Whenever I run into a beautiful writer, I instinctively presume that she got where she is on her looks rather than her talent or hard work. If she shows me impressive clips, I assume that some infatuated male editor worked extra hard to make her turgid prose come alive.
Of course this prejudice is terribly unfair. To cite one exception, the writer Lisa De Paulo, a longtime contributor to magazines like Vanity Fair and GQ, is a striking woman with bedroom eyes who possesses a knack for inducing powerful men to make fools of themselves in her presence. (Governor Rendell, when he was mayor of Philadelphia, once propositioned her in the middle of an interview and jestingly asked if she wore a spiked metal bra.) She’s also a very hard worker and a tireless investigative researcher. But she had to stick at it for a very long time before I, at least, gave her the credit she had always deserved.
“If I have one life to live,” the TV commercial used to say, “let me live it as a Clairol blonde.” Well, that’s your choice. But you will lose something in the bargain— for example, you’ll have skeptics like me wondering what you really looked like before you used the bottle.
To read responses, click here.
DAN ROTTENBERG
In his review of Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things, Steve Antinoff suggests (along with LaBute) that a beautiful woman is an irresistible force (at least among men) and wonders whether gorgeous women ever suffer for their beauty. These are disturbing thoughts if you believe (as I do) that there are laws of compensation in nature, and that each of us lacks some dimension.
To be sure, male barriers are more easily breached by attractive women than by plain Janes. That is why, for example, pharmaceutical companies now routinely hire cheerleaders as sales reps rather than, say, reps who know something about pharmaceuticals. When a male doctor's day consists of an endless stream of miserable patients and their maladies, whom do you think he’d rather see?
I think here also of Katy Bernstein, a girl I dated in high school. Katy spent that year in a math class taught by a man who was infamous for terrifying and humiliating kids who failed to meet his standards. I had never had this teacher myself and asked Katy how she suffered his outbursts.
“I’ve never had a problem with him,” she replied matter-of-factly. “If I’m unprepared for class or if I anticipate any kind of problem, I just wear a sweater that day and there’s no problem.” At the age of 16, this wise-beyond-her-years girl grasped one of life’s great truths: Whether the male in question is your pimply adolescent classmate or your pompous principal or the president of the United States, if you show a little cleavage or a little thigh, he will dissolve into a helpless blob of gelatin.
My Julia Roberts problem
Fortunately, I’m happy to report (based on my own admittedly limited experience) that the laws of compensation are alive and kicking as far as beautiful women are concerned. For one thing, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and every beholder’s taste is different. Julia Roberts, to cite one widely acclaimed Hollywood definition of beauty, just doesn’t do anything for me. Thousands of Broadway theatergoers paid big bucks to see Nicole Kidman nude in The Blue Room and Kathleen Turner nude in The Graduate. But if I walked into a hotel room and Kidman or Turner was lying on a bed, I’d probably open a book or flip on the TV.
More to the point, beautiful women do suffer for their beauty. I think here of my late friend Sandy Rubin, who was voted best-looking girl in her class at Overbrook High (Class of ’55). Sandy was a flaming redhead in the classic Suzy Parker/Rita Hayworth mode, so dazzling that her intimidated male and female classmates kept their distance. As a result, as Sandy told it, her high school years were actually very lonely.
Many years later Sandy ran into a male classmate who confessed to a schoolboy crush on her. “I put you up on a pedestal,” he said. “I worshipped you,” and more words to that effect.
“Instead of worshipping me,” Sandy replied, “why the hell didn’t you ask me out?”
And as for attractive writers…
I can testify that attractive women writers suffer a distinct disadvantage when dealing with me, because as an editor I’m subconsciously biased against them. Whenever I run into a beautiful writer, I instinctively presume that she got where she is on her looks rather than her talent or hard work. If she shows me impressive clips, I assume that some infatuated male editor worked extra hard to make her turgid prose come alive.
Of course this prejudice is terribly unfair. To cite one exception, the writer Lisa De Paulo, a longtime contributor to magazines like Vanity Fair and GQ, is a striking woman with bedroom eyes who possesses a knack for inducing powerful men to make fools of themselves in her presence. (Governor Rendell, when he was mayor of Philadelphia, once propositioned her in the middle of an interview and jestingly asked if she wore a spiked metal bra.) She’s also a very hard worker and a tireless investigative researcher. But she had to stick at it for a very long time before I, at least, gave her the credit she had always deserved.
“If I have one life to live,” the TV commercial used to say, “let me live it as a Clairol blonde.” Well, that’s your choice. But you will lose something in the bargain— for example, you’ll have skeptics like me wondering what you really looked like before you used the bottle.
To read responses, click here.
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