Because If I’m Perfect Enough, Maybe You Won’t Hate Me Anymore

(The Divine Proportions of Hypatia, found at Hypatia Lovers)

I read a post at Pandagon at lunchtime today and it really got me thinking. There is an article at Alternet titled The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body:

We must get A’s. We must make money. We must save the world. We must be thin. We must be unflappable. We must be beautiful. We are the anorectics, the bulimics, the overexercisers, the overeaters. We must be perfect. We must make it look effortless.

Although the Alternet article is primarily about weight and body image, Amanda riffs off it to propose that perfectionism in general is the tribute that many women pay to sexism:

Women are acutely aware at all times of how they are being watched carefully for signs of inadequacy that can held against them . . .If you’re smart or witty, then you know damn well that threatened men are seeking ways to insult your figure and find you insufficiently fuckable—after all, most of the time, they’ll make sure you know that you’re being judged. Because your fuckability is held against you regardless of the appropriateness, most women absorb the duty to appear as thin and beautiful as possible at all times to render “You’re just X,Y, or Z because you’re too ugly to get a man” ridiculous. But the drawback to being very pretty is that people will seek ways to discredit you on looks alone, implying you’re a slut or a bimbo. So the pressure to be bright and witty doubles up again. You can see the spiral here . . .

. . . So if ambitious women are neurotic in general, they are perversely rational. Because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you. You have to be, as my father said, twice as good to be considered half as good and women know it. But it’s not the fault of feminism that opened up the opportunities, so much as it’s the sexism that demands that women be constantly proving themselves worthy of the opportunities in a way that men don’t have to prove themselves.

Anxious. Perfectionistic. Overachieving. Neurotic. RATIONAL. It all makes sense now. I appreciated Dorothy (from The Chaff) observations in the comment thread:

To me, this is the crux of the whole supermom/must be the best at everything kind of bullshit: Why can’t you keep up? Are you inadequate as a woman? Don’t fail! You’re representing your entire gender!

And then there’s the razor-walking you have to do, too: be attractive but not too slutty; be accessible but not too easy; be assertive but not too bitchy; be competent but don’t bruise the fragile male ego; be loving but not needy and smothering, etc. etc.

Feminine perfection wasn’t a mountain to be climbed so much as a tightrope stretched over a chasm: one false step and you plummet irrecoverably. And the whole time you’re walking it, a whole audience of family, friends, coworkers, and random strangers are shouting criticisms of your every step.

Of course, Twisty at IBTP knows why we feel we must do this dance: Deep down, we get the feeling men don’t like us so much. Please understand that I’m generalizing here; certainly the occasional individual man occasionally truly loves the occasional individual woman. I’m talking about the way our sexist, male-dominated culture loathes women as a class.

(What’s wrong with this picture?)

We live in a relentlessly misogynistic world where women are considered inferior to men, and put on earth to do men’s scut work. So many obviously sexist men insist that they “love women.” I call bullshit on all of them. “I love women” is actually code for “I love using women.” As in, let’s say, toilets for their sexual incontinence (analogy by Twisty). Arm candy and status objects. Incubators of their spawn. Cheap labor. Free houskeeping services. A stand-in for Mommy. The audience for their odd performance art. The everpresent laugh track. When a man like this says “I love women” he means it in the same way he says “I love beer.”

(The average guy thinks this is funny. If you’re dating one of them, dump him.)

Meanwhile, for these same jerks the word “pussy” is the worst thing a man can call another man. Actually, that pretty much says it all: Pussy = woman = weak = worthless = loser. The “pussy” is the guy who takes shit and can’t do anything about it. He’s both fucked and fucked-over, someone else’s “bitch.” In other words, a lowly female. For instance, as part of the “War On Terror” CIA put women’s underwear on prisoners’ heads, thinking this would make the prisoners feel so degraded that they’d break down and talk! What the hell? I guess we know what the State Department thinks of the world’s females! Bottom line: Any man who uses the word “pussy” to degrade another man thinks women are the lowest of the low, no matter what he tells you.

Anyway, back to Pandagon and the drive for perfection:

To be imperfect in front of men is to offer “evidence” that women don’t deserve equality at all.

This is the crux of the issue: Women’s frantic efforts at perfection are not meant for us to feel better than other women; rather these efforts are (probably misguided) attempts to just make us feel better, period. Women want to be accepted by men as their peers. Liked, even. Hired. Promoted! Treated with respect, instead of insulted, harrassed, abused, raped, or murdered for the sin of Existing While Female. How about friendship and love instead? Okay, perhaps we’ll just take men not actively hating us. We’re talking theater of low expectations here.

The financially dependent woman thinks, “Maybe if I am perfect enough, he won’t leave me.” The financially independent woman thinks, “Maybe if I am perfect enough they won’t fire me.” If we’re perfect enough the’ll let us remain in the public sphere, treated like real people, making a living, and capable of choosing autonomy over dependence. Deep down a little unconscious part of the high-achieving woman still fears that men will take her personhood, her freedoms and our choices away from her. Some of these fears are not unfounded. As Germaine Greer said:

“Women don’t realize how much men hate them, and how much they are tought to hate themselves.”

(Image found at Santacruz Independent Media)