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Do you think you are pretty?

I have a good friend who I have seen through a dreadful marriage and a few fairly long term relationships that ultimately didn’t work out.  We are well-educated middle-aged professionals.  In the hearts of my friend’s relationship issues my advice has always been “What exactly do you want in your relationship?  Is that where your relationship is going?  If it is, great, if not, perhaps it is not a good relationship for you.” She has appreciated that simple advice.  However, I fear that my friend, like so many people, compromises what she finds acceptable simply out of a fear of being alone. 

We were recently talking about issues of finding dateable men. I expressed dismay over how many men were focused on whether a woman met their criteria of “pretty” before even considering them.  Why can’t we be humans first?  We are people who are interesting, thoughtful, enjoy things.  But no, since we, my friend and I, and so many women, are not pretty we aren’t even considered. My friend fell silent for a bit before the conversation moved on.

Later she called me to tell me how hurtful it was for me to say that she is not pretty.  I apologized for hurting her but was astounded.  I said that truly I did not consider myself or her to be pretty.  We are middle-aged women who are not physically extraordinary.  Pretty might describe a percent of children and young adult women, after that it becomes rare. It doesn’t describe us.  Why should we even supposed to be pretty? Shouldn’t being interesting and worthwhile human beings be enough?  I have been contemplating having a more in depth discussion with her on this subject.  We are both feminists, and I was astounded that she was insulted by my original remark.  I want to ask her if she thinks that the vast majority of all women are pretty, I want to ask her if she thinks that being pretty is an essential part of being a woman and if you are not it is a sign of failure, but I am afraid to.

Perhaps my bar for “pretty” is high.  Perhaps hers is low.  I don’t know.  Is my friend deluding herself?  Does it matter? If someone were to tell me that my eyes were pretty, or they liked my hair, or they enjoyed my short and very tapered fingers I could go with that and be pleased.  But if someone were to say “Oh you’re so pretty” I would assume that they are out to flatter for some reason and they would get the hairy eyeball from me.