White women anti-racist? Not without rejecting the power of beauty
In order to be an 'ally', we have to be willing to be 'ugly'
Can white women actually be anti-racist? I’ve wondered that a lot myself. As a white woman who always questions her own complicity, I know I’ve let things slide that I shouldn’t and I know that I don’t always choose allyship when I definitely should have—and could have. And I know that this is the case for all white women. Why? Because we’re conditioned into the rules of a concept that doesn’t allow for the ‘ugliness’ required to be anti-racist: beauty.
White women, we’re going to get into it—and to be honest, this might be an uncomfortable one.
As the title suggests, we’re going to be talking about anti-racism; something that a lot of us are still struggling with, even after all the “reading and reflecting” we’ve been doing for years.
Some of us have been working on this journey for a long time. And a lot of us joined the movement after 2020. But if you ask any Black person, nothing much has actually changed.
We can’t be trusted.
Because when it comes to performative solidarity with people of color, we’re great. We write all the right Instagram posts, we read the books and we are quick to jump into the comments of social media posts to fight yet another racist white person either spewing hate or not saying the “right” thing.
When it actually comes to actions?
We 100% lack the ability to make a real change. When it comes to speaking up or going against the micro-aggressions we see happening in the real world, we usually side with our white male counterparts and look at other white women to decide whether or not we’ll interfere.
When it comes to the non-performative action, white women —including me—are lacking.
And it’s because we’re obsessed with one thing and one thing only: power.
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White women's oppression
I still feel like I have to state the obvious here: white women are oppressed.
Because all women are oppressed.
Depending on where you live in the world, this happens in very obvious (arranged marriages, etc.) and less obvious (gender pay gap) ways. Women have been oppressed since the start of the patriarchy, thousands of years before the common era.
Ever since men’s ascension to power, women’s autonomy slowly started to disappear. And that means that women slowly handed in power to the men that claimed their bodies as their own personal guarantee for pleasure and reproduction.
Women have been the subject of oppression and sexual violence and have had to deal with their power being taken away from them for a long time. It’s not hard to understand that women are constantly looking for ways to claim that power back. To feel the autonomy that they’ve been lacking for so long.
In fact, it’s very human to crave power. In any shape or form.
But this craving for a dominating version of power is especially strong in white people. And specifically, the white people who have been benefiting from the power of white men for centuries: white women.
White women find power through men
Even though it can be hard to imagine for white women who have felt powerless their whole life, we do live in closer proximity to power due to the white men that father us, marry us, or that are birthed by us.
White women benefit from their closeness to the white men they surround themselves with.
Because these white men have learned through their own patriarchal conditioning of oppression that these white women are theirs. That’s their “in-group”—in the hierarchal sense.
Since the start of the patriarchy, white women have always been seen as a white man’s property. And these white men need to protect their property. Proximity to white men means proximity to power through white men and hopefully, the exemption of the white man’s wrath. But there are conditions.
Conditions of beauty, to be exact.
White women's beauty is power
So, what does power have to do with beauty? In order to discuss this subject fully, we have to do a little refresher on the Beauty Myth as coined by Naomi Wolf (I know, I know, I don’t agree with her opinions on all the other things).
Because the lies women are told when it comes to beauty and their appearance, are very much related to the power they receive.
In a white supremacist culture, whiteness equals a certain amount of power and privilege. Especially when that whiteness is connected to manhood and wealth. For white women, there is only one way to come close to the power that white men have: through beauty. Through being deemed beautiful enough to be protected by men.
Attractiveness equals worth, which makes a woman more desirable for the white men around her. Desirable enough to be associated with him. And that means that a beautiful woman is one that gains closer proximity to whiteness.
And I’m not talking about your skin color. Whiteness, just like beauty, is a concept. Which includes a certain set of behavior. Behavior that is very much related to the Beauty Myth as Naomi Wolf discussed it.
I’ve written about the concept of whiteness before in the blog about the Wickedness of White Women. I wrote that whiteness very much relies on obedience. On submission and compliance. The obedience of white men to structures of power (“it is what it is”, “that’s how the world works”) and the obedience of women to those same structures of power and the men obedient to those systems.
A woman is in service of “the man” by being in service to a man.
The anti-racist white woman rejects power
The Beauty Myth underlines this concept for women specifically: to be beautiful as a white woman (this goes for every woman but the rules work a little differently for women who are not white), you have to be nurturing, quiet and polite.
Beauty is completely tied up in behavior and that means that a loud, opinionated woman can never be pretty.
Our beauty determines whether or not we’ll be seen as worthy of love and respect. Our beauty makes sure we won’t face public scrutiny and it keeps us safe from the violence of men (in theory).
Beauty is power for women.
It can get us proximity to protection and power and it can keep us free from the scrutiny of men. Ironically, it will only get us more scrutiny from other women. But that’s OK—we hate them anyway. They’re not the ones who can grant us power; a woman left behind means one less roadblock on the road to success. The lies of attractiveness that are told to us make sure that women will constantly chase that beauty—and with that, power—while throwing other women, or other people who are considered lesser than us, under the bus.
Because beauty is about whiteness and whiteness is about obedience.
That vague promise of power means that in order to be considered beautiful we have to tone ourselves down. We have to change our behavior and bite our tongues. We have to listen to other people and weaponize our empathy to “protect the peace”.
We have to let other women be eaten by flames so we can still be deemed ‘pretty’ by the people who just burned her at the stake.
A white woman who is actively anti-racist can therefore never be considered beautiful.
Because she has to reject the notion of “nice girl” in order to stand up against the very status quo that determines her worth in the first place.
The patriarchy wants us to chase power
It’s a perfect system actually: the patriarchy actively recruits women in enforcing their own oppression by pitting them against every other marginalized group—including ourselves.
Think about it: by chasing beauty (and with that, acceptance), we can never stand up against the very thing that keeps us down. Because doing so by default means that we’ll face even more oppression for being “ugly”.
It becomes even more messed up when chasing that beauty could also get us hurt or even killed. Because when we become too attractive for men, their entitlement to our bodies victimizes us further.
The Beauty Myth makes us believe that there’s some sort of sweet spot that we can reach where we’re free of all oppression. Where we’re finally liked and admired without the constant objectification and danger that comes with being a beautiful woman.
But that place doesn’t exist.
Even the most beautiful women will still pursue beauty—even when they already look like everything that us regular people would aspire to be. And—unsurprisingly—the “ugly” and fat girls get assaulted too. There is literally nowhere to be safe in a patriarchal society and even though a lot of white women know this, we will always still choose that false sense of safety over anything else.
Because that’s the lie that we’re being sold.
That respect for us—equality for us—actually exists in the ‘comfort zone’ of oppression.
Power isn't for non-white people
This lie of power is especially debilitating for racialized people and puts them in an impossible position.
Because every beauty standard that we in our western civilization know, is a Eurocentric standards of beauty. The white, blonde, blue-eyed skinny women with fair skin and perfect features. She’s slender but voluptuous. She has perfectly symmetrical features, shiny hair and the perfect shade of pink on her cheeks and lips.
Sure, white men can appreciate the beauty of racialized people in a fetishizing way, but when it comes to beauty, the features of white women are what makes up—and has made up—the beauty standard as we know it.
And that means that beauty—and power—is an even more unattainable thing for people who are far removed from those features.
Impossible actually.
The Beauty Myth is a constant pursuit of whiteness that just can’t ever be achieved by women who are not white. Unless they actively participate in their own oppression. And then it’s still never enough.
A lot of racialized women have learned early on that the system isn’t set up for them. A lot of them know that their appearance will never bring them power in this system—other than fetishization—and adhering to the white standards of beauty isn’t going to fix their oppression.
For white women, power still feels close
To some white women, this might seem like a blessing: the lie that white women are so eager to believe is harder to sell to racialized women.
That is until you realize that those women are dehumanized and even further removed from the power they need in order to make a change. Those women are fighting against their own oppression while knowing full well that the people who need to make a change are white people. The people who have set up the system in a way that only they, the ones with actual power, can change the rules.
The power is with white men. And with white women who are still so swept up in their own pursuit of acceptance, that they’ll never discard beauty. Especially not for someone who could only pull them further away from the recognition they so desperately crave: people who aren’t white.
Racialized people know that acceptance in a white supremacist system will never come. That breaking down the system is the only way to actually gain the acceptance deserved. And that realization–– the understanding that acceptance was never really an option within our current system––is what white women need more of. Because ultimately, that is what will make us reliable fighters in the war against oppression.
Not power, but the active rejection of the possibility of it.
Because the truth remains that through patriarchy and white supremacy, power was never actually an option for white women either. Within the system that exists right now, power—real power—will never be a woman’s right.
No matter how close you feel to it.
No matter how much you think you can get there if you just… There is no power for women––any woman––in our patriarchy. And the sooner we realize that, the sooner we can start to find our power elsewhere.
How white women weaponize their power
But instead, we use the little power we have—and our proximity to it—to build our own dynasty’s.
We aim to build a better future for our children—but let’s face it: mostly our sons, cause for our daughters we’re not doing shit—and hope for the best.
We work towards beauty so we can marry white men who can give us money, security and a family. Where we can play “master of the house” while not really being master of anything at all. We have our children and play mother—some women in authoritarian ways—just to feel some sort of hierarchy. Maybe we’ll get a pet, you know, something to make us feel like we’re in charge.
And back in the day, we’d get an enslaved person to dominate.
This is an uncomfortable truth that a lot of white women refuse to hear so I’m going to repeat it: white women had their own enslaved people who they treated the same (and worse) than the very white men that had been dominating these women for centuries.
White women have always used the backs of racialized people to feel powerful. And we didn’t stop.
While there are plenty of white women who actively oppress by, for example, calling the police on Black people, other liberal and leftist white women use their silence as a weapon in their fight for power.
They close their eyes to the oppression of others and stand there and watch while a big part of humanity is mistreated. They know that silence equals complicity but it doesn’t outweigh their need for safety, security and acceptance.
White women are notorious people pleasers (yes, it’s me) and have a hard time standing up for what is right if that is in direct conflict with the status quo and the rules that regulate our patriarchal, white supremacist society.
White women have to dare to be 'ugly'
But the truth remains that no matter how quiet we are, no matter how we try to suck up to the white men around us and how loud we declare “I’m not with them!!”, that man-level of power will never be ours.
We will never not be oppressed.
It doesn’t matter that we do everything “right”. It doesn’t matter how beautiful we are—or not. We will never be safe until we dismantle the whole system of hierarchy and oppression that places men above all else. That is why one of the key components of becoming anti-racist is to actively reject beauty––as it is framed within the concept of whiteness.
Because only when we dare to be seen as ‘ugly’ (loud, opinionated, disruptive), can we become reliable allies to the people we claim to support.
As soon as we stop caring about the opinions of others, we can start behaving in ways that align with our moral compass. No matter how unattractive that makes us.
That’s why I’m such a big advocate for decentering men: once we stop focusing on the male gaze––and with that, beauty––our desire to be seen as desirable will fade away. That is what we need in order to become the allies we so desperately want to be.
The actual allies—not the self-proclaimed ones that we now think we are.
