Zero-Sum Beauty Work

Why it's healthy for cultures to shame people who overinvest in how they look

I think it’s obvious that, on average, women spend more time and money on their appearance than men do, performing more of what Naomi Wolf calls “Beauty Work”. While this isn’t necessarily a problem, particularly when a focus on appearance is directed towards health promoting behaviors, much of this Beauty Work is ephemeral, zero-sum or both. This could be a neutral fact, and some women who engage in a lot of Beauty Work claim it is, that it’s fun, that it’s a part of their self-expression. But others resent the time suck that their Beauty Work entails but nevertheless feel that they must perform it in order to make themselves attractive, or even just acceptable. And in those cases, who is it that’s enforcing this work, setting this standard that these women feel they must meet?

We could say it’s “the patriarchy” but what do we actually mean by that? Is it that men demand women perform this Beauty Work? Is it that they primarily value women based on how they look? Is it that women are constantly bombarded with media, advertisements and subtle implications that their beauty is their most valuable asset?

I think most people would agree that, relative to hetero women, hetero men are less likely to date someone who they don’t immediately find to be physically attractive. Looks are treated as less fungible with other attractive attributes which women bring to a relationship. While a woman might over time warm to seeing a man who she finds physically ugly as a romantic prospect in light of his humor, intelligence etc. this seems to happen much less frequently for men. This point was humorously made by Jared Freid, on an episode of Girls Gotta Eat when he observed that it’s not uncommon to hear women, recounting their early relationship with their now husband or long term partner, say things like “oh, I was NOT into him at first, he wasn’t the kind of guy I’d go for, but he grew on me!”. But that you’ll never hear the same sentiment from a man talking about his wife.

The way I see it is that the average man has an “attractiveness bar” below which he’s