A Man Is Ugly. A Woman Is Fat. Are We Still Allowed to State These Facts?

 

A Man Is Ugly. A Woman Is Fat.
Are we still allowed to state these facts?

Anouk Aimee, the exquisite star of the classic 1966 French film A Man and a Woman, passed away on June 18, 2024. She was 92. Willie Mays, the "Say Hey Kid," who hit 52 home runs in the 1965 season, also passed away on June 18, 2024. He was 93.

I joked to a friend, "Death comes in threes. Now another long-lived celebrity from the 60s must die."

As if to mock me, Death delivered. Donald Sutherland died on June 20, 2024. Sutherland's first big movie was 1967's The Dirty Dozen. Sutherland was 88.

I discipline myself not to respond emotionally to celebrity deaths;. My only contact with Sutherland is watching his films, and I can certainly continue after his death. But I felt more than a twinge.

In 1971's Klute, Sutherland knocked me out. I didn't feel like I was watching an actor. I felt like I was watching a cop from Tuscarora, PA, the part he played. And Sutherland was far from "movie-star handsome." In fact with his weird eyes and bat-wing ears, his creepily ambiguous smile and marionette chin, you could call him ugly.

But boy was he erotic dynamite. It was in watching Klute that I decided that a working stiff from a small town who didn't have a pretty face could be the hottest guy in the room. Sutherland's performance made me reassess the dog-face working stiffs from my own small town and see their erotic possibilities that I, drunk on movies and novels, had previously dismissed.

The New York Times opens its obituary with the words "unsettle" and "repulse" – what Sutherland could do to audiences. "With his long face … and wolfish smile," Sutherland "was never anyone's idea of a heartthrob … He recounted how he was once rejected for a film role by a producer who said: 'This part calls for a guy-next-door type. You don't look like you've lived next door to anyone.'"

Sutherland was not able to enjoy the bliss of ignorance. Schoolkids called him "Dumbo." His own mother disabused him of any delusions.

"When I was sixteen, I went to her, and I asked, 'Mother, am I good looking?'"

She could not lie to her son.

"I went and hid in my room for at least a day." Sutherland, an old man, with the weathered face that time eventually assigns even to the once most handsome, teared up and choked up when recounting this memory in a 2017 interview with Anderson Cooper.

Cooper asked, "Did what she said stay with you?"

"Not really," Sutherland replied airily. "Just for the next sixty-five, sixty-six years. It's not easy, Anderson, to know that you are an ugly man in a business like I'm in."

"Do you think of yourself as an ugly man?"

"Unattractive is a gentler way of putting it."

CBS titled the interview, "An 'Ugly Man' in a Glamorous Business."

The same actor who made me fall in love with him in Klute chilled me to the bone in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He made me laugh till my sides hurt in Start the Revolution Without Me and Kelly's Heroes. He was a convincing Russian general in Citizen X and a flawed but loving gentry patriarch in Pride and Prejudice. I'm no conspiracy theorist but in Oliver Stone's J.F.K. Sutherland made me believe that he had the Illuminati on speed dial. In Eye of the Needle he was that twisted fantasy, the Sexy Nazi Ubermensch who makes love as expertly as he wields his stiletto. Normally these types, that romanticize Nazis, make me want to hurl. Sutherland inhabited his character's demonic evil, his sensuality, and his dedication to Vaterland so seamlessly that I didn't cheer as enthusiastically as I otherwise might have as his lover chopped off his fingers and shot him three times.

And I've never even seen M*A*S*H, Ordinary People, The Great Train Robbery, Don't Look Now, The Hunger Games, 1900, or Animal House. He played completely different characters in all these films, and, critics say, he did so convincingly.

Let's review: a man can overcome the heartache of being told he's ugly. He can do so by doing what most of us less-than-perfect humans do. He does not focus on his deficits. He does not exploit them by playing victim. He does not order others to refrain from using the word "ugly." He does not order others to abandon standards of beauty.

He – and all of us who do so – overcomes by focusing on his assets. He "accentuates the positive." He masters skills he does have, for example, a tremendous talent as an actor. An ugly actor can, with talent, be hot. Such an actor can bring off a decades-long, highly regarded career.

Given how much power relativism wields, it may as well be our state religion. We are not supposed to use the word "ugly." Everything is relative. One person's "ugly" is another person's beauty. To differentiate between ugliness and beauty is to be judgmental, and our state religion forbids being judgmental.

Sometimes relativism applies. When I was a nurse's aide working with the elderly and dying, my patients were beautiful to me. When we aides took their photos, the photos shocked me. The camera didn't capture the beauty we saw.

On the other hand, there's plenty of evidence that there are objective features that humans around the world assess as beautiful. I recognize those features, just as everyone else does. I knew that my patients, with their wrinkled, transparent skins revealing blue veins, their clouded eyes, and their scalps sprouting sparse hair, were not objectively beautiful. I knew that Klute was not a handsome man. My love transformed what I was seeing, but that transformation occurred in my eyes; a camera did not capture my vision.

Scientist David M. Buss has published on beauty. "The theory that 'beauty is in the eyes of the beholder' in the sense of being superficial, arbitrary, and infinitely culturally variable can safely be discarded. I regard it as one of the 'great myths' perpetrated by social scientists in the 20th century," Buss writes. He insists that beauty is the word we humans apply to symmetrical features, a body whose proportions loudly announce a hormonal state of high fertility and health, and smooth skin that is clear of, as Buss so romantically puts it, "sores or lesions."

The ability to differentiate truth from lies, the courage to speak the truth, and a society that welcomes truth are all necessary if we want to keep the civilization we have inherited. A society that demonizes truth because truth gets in the way of power politics and a wanna-be state religion is on a precarious course.

Learning how, when, and to whom one tells the truth is an important set of skills. A mature adult does not go around telling ugly people that they are ugly. Donald Sutherland's mother, who loved him enough to tell him the truth, softened the blow by telling him that his face had character. We don't speak unless asked, and, if asked, we say, "You are pleasingly plump;" "You look strong;" "I love your intelligence humor;" "Looks aren't everything." We find ways to speak the truth while protecting the people we love and the relationships we need.

My childhood milieu was not as delicate as Sutherland's mother. I was informed, every day, by family members, by kids on my block, and yes, by teachers that I was "fat," "ugly," and "retarded." I seek that "fat pig," that "Minnesota fats" in old childhood photos, and I see a girl who is head-and-shoulders taller than her age peers, very sturdily built, and not thin, but also not particularly fat. I didn't realize this as a kid, of course.

Beautiful women, members of the church of Woke and who practice its relativism, sometimes try to imitate magnanimity with me and insist, "If you think of yourself as beautiful, you will be beautiful to others." I tell these women to go to Hell. I do not allow them to use their lies to me as badge of their own superiority, interior and exterior. Their condescending and presumptuous preaching belies their insistence that all women are equal. They are beautiful; therefore, they can tell ugly women how to feel. I reject their thought control religion and I demand to retain the words "beautiful" and "ugly."

I demand the words "beautiful" and "ugly" to chart my own life course. Beautiful women and ugly women carry different passports. We must master different lessons. Beautiful women learn to let men down easily. Ugly women learn to pay their own way. Our primary task is to learn how to respond to men who tell us, "You'd be pretty if you smiled more … or lost the attitude" or whatever their plan for us is. The proper response, of course, is to walk away from interactions that offer us nothing.

I demand the words "beautiful" and "ugly" not just as necessary signposts for my own life. In spring I travel to a snooty town, home of the Presby Memorial Iris Garden. This year, I finally found my favorite, the "Gilt-edged Bond Bearded." The lower three petals of this flower are periwinkle blue; the upper three are white; the beard is gold. Gazing at this flower, I quivered. I felt as if my torso was a lump of bread dough kneaded by beauty alone. I teared up. I was so happy. Beauty did to me, for me, what nothing else could do. I will not allow relativists to take beauty away from me. Not the concept. Not the word. Not the truth so named. Not its power. I want, I need, them all.

Bridgerton is a Netflix series loosely based on wildly popular romance novels by Julia Quinn. It debuted in 2020. Shonda Rhimes, a highly successful TV writer and producer, set Bridgerton in an alternative universe, where Regency England is populated by whites, blacks, and Asians.

Bridgerton's popularity, the passion of its fans, and its alternative history of Regency England is fertile ground for social analyses. I watch the show for what it tells me about pop culture, about women and what powerful people sell to women, and about mass psychology. The folk tales we once told, the TV shows and movies we now invest in, reflect our hopes and dreams – and also our politics.

I also watch Bridgerton because the wigs and costumes are more extreme than the bar scene in Star Wars. Authentic Regency attire was understated. A typical dress might look to modern eyes like a rather dowdy and uncomfortable nightgown. Regency blogger Beatrice Knight describes "pastel" colors. Gowns were "primrose, blush, apple blossom … Those colors were soft and delicate … whites and pastels dominated."

On Bridgerton, though, modern, chemical dyes and wildly patterned, modern fabrics assault the eyeballs. Dresses are so psychedelic they look as if Woodstock ate a craft store and threw up. The signature Regency profile is traded for silhouettes from any era. Lady Featherington would be at home in the 1940s. Penelope Featherington wore 1940s film star Veronica Lake's signature hairstyle. Dresses have so many ornaments, so much net, sequins, feathers, jewels, appliques, ruffles, lace, fruits, flowers, moon rocks – okay maybe not that last – that if a dress transformed into a jet pack and a character blasted off it would not surprise.

Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) wears a different wig in every scene. One wig was a couple of feet high, and, like a Faberge egg, contained an oil-painting backdrop and motorized swans (see here). Because Queen Charlotte is, of course, black, the wigs are sometimes dreadlocks.  Another, a three-foot wide Afro, was inspired by Beyonce.

Kathleen Newman-Bremang is a black journalist who is "thrilled" by Bridgerton's alternative universe. "Seeing that hair and that face reign over a fictional kingdom is thrilling … Abolish the monarchy — except for the fake one in which its queen rocks two-foot 4C hair." 4C hair is a reference to black people's hair. Newman-Bremang writes of the Faberge wig. Motors "hadn't been invented yet but this is a world in which interracial couples dance blissfully ... to covers of BTS and Pitbull."

Rosheuvel says, "It was very important for the Bridgerton hair designer to deal with different Black textures to really celebrate my Blackness." The wig meeting made Rosheuvel cry. "All of these iconic Black women that we see now that are up front and center in these stories for Black women, I think all of them are incorporated in Queen Charlotte."  

While watching Bridgerton 3, I noticed that Victor Alli, the actor who plays John Stirling, Earl of Kilmartin, is ugly. His ugliness astounded me. Bridgerton, after all, is all about eye candy. Not just the performers are good looking. There is not a single smudge on a single wall. Dresses have clearly never been worn previously and will never be worn again. Not a speck of mud sullies a single carriage. Horses do not poop. Servants do not sweat; no smallpox scars disfigure any face. After thinking that it was surprising that a show that is so dedicated to the superficially pretty hired an ugly actor, I, of course, thought the next inevitable thought. "I'm not allowed to think that Victor Alli is ugly because he's black."

I paused the video and went online for the inevitable melee. Google, as they say, is your friend. "Victor Alli" and "ugly" turned up punch fests worthy of a Waffle House. Combatants cited the idea that "If you can't see it, you can't be it."

"If you can't see it, you can't be it" is not just an internet meme. The phrase steers government policy. Here's the idea. If you are black and you grew up never seeing a black doctor on TV – or never see a black romantic lead –  you never become a black doctor – or lover – and white people never believe that black people can be doctors – or lovers. Showing a black doctor, or a black romantic lead on TV, is a beneficent act, because doing so will elevate black people and eliminate the racism that keeps black people back. This same argument is applied to women. Women don't become cardiologists – because they can't see it; see this peer-reviewed article. Similarly, women don't become inventors for this reason. And this is why black kids don't do computer science or own stores.

There are problems with this argument. George Washington Carver was born in slavery. Marie Sklodowska Curie was born in Russian-controlled Poland; she had to study in secret, and on the move, to avoid detection by czarist police. Both Carver and Curie became world-class scientists. 

There are problems with the argument that viewers find Alli unattractive because they have never seen a black man in a romantic role. Here's the problem: Harry Belafonte, Nat King Cole, Sam Cook, Greg Morris, Sidney Poitier, Mario Van Peebles, Billy Dee Williams, Richard Roundtree, Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, Djimon Hounsou, Will Smith, Idris Elba, and Michael B. Jordan. There have been hot black men on American screens at least seventy years. Harry Belafonte starred in the lavish, multiple-award-winning, critically and economically successful Carmen Jones in 1954. Sidney Poitier rose to the top box office draw in the 1960s, when Jim Crow was still in force. In spite of racism, viewers recognized hotness and talent in these hot black stars. Denzel Washington's net worth is estimated at $300 million. Idris Elba, son of two African parents, is officially a former "Sexist Man Alive." Michael B. Jordan's Black Panther broke box office records.

I don't possess David Buss' evolutionary protractor and I can't calculate why Nat King Cole, clearly black, was handsome and charming, and Victor Alli, at least as he appears in Bridgerton, is not. But them's the breaks. Life is not fair. Young Dennis Quaid was hot. His brother Randy Quaid is not.

And there's one more problem. A publicity photo emerged of Alli shirtless, his chiseled six-pack on display. Women proclaimed, "Hey, they should keep him shirtless on the show!" They recognized, and appreciated, his other assets. They just weren't "romanced" by his face.

I spent hours reading thousands of fervent words by Bridgerton fans on social media, primarily Reddit, for example here, here, and here.

Below, I summarize some main points.

* People think Victor Alli is ugly because they have never seen a black man in a romantic leading role. That is why it is necessary to place black actors in roles that were initially white, in, for example, a historical romance during a period when characters would have been white. Doing this will beneficially engineer people's erotic desires and their inner thoughts, and social change will follow. People must be "forced" to go through this process.

* The Bridgerton fandom is "racist AF." Posters are "terrified" for the black actors on Bridgerton because fans will hurt them.

* Those who judge Victor Alli as ugly are not just racist, they are also evil.

* The prevalence of white faces in American and British media is unjust and unfair. Because this prevalence of white faces has continued since film was invented, reparations will only be reached when most onscreen faces are non-white.

* White people need to be "allies" and uncritically support black people's complaints on this topic.

* White people are in denial, or simply unaware of how racist they are. Or white people are hypocrites and do not say what they mean; therefore, a white person saying that she finds Victor Alli attractive cannot be believed.

* White people can't understand this topic because they have never experienced injustice so they should remain silent and listen to black people.

* White people should apologize.

* It's possible that the show's producers purposely made Alli less attractive to sabotage him. They "did him dirty." They "stripped him of all his hotness."

* Words like "attractive" have no real meaning.

* Black people who don't acknowledge all the racism are in denial and don't respect themselves.

* It is racist to suggest that an historical drama set in a period where most people were white should be cast with white leads. It is racist to suggest that Rhimes should have produced a successful series focusing on actual black people and their unique stories, for example in Africa, which is "bursting with stories."

* "Misogynoir is running rampant in this fandom."

One can see, in internet discussions like this, how, if a true believer is firmly attached to a belief, that person can construct a rhetorical maze whose every turn conducts the accused to one terminus – "You are racist." Given that these internet discussions take place in echo chambers, the true believer is never challenged. That lack of challenge, and the mob's repeated cheers, cements the false belief for the true believer.

And here's a kicker. Even if a white woman says, "I am not racist. I find Victor Alli handsome," that statement alone identifies the speaker as – you guessed it – a racist.

Whites saying they find blacks attractive "seems affirmative" but it's actually "insidious" "racism." "Throughout the media … darker skinned" men are "fetishized" as "stronger, virile and hypermasculine … Fetishization often continues the racism we are attempting to eradicate," writes Janice Gassam Asare, PhD.

It's kind of like Schoedinger's cat. Hot black men both exist "throughout the media" and they also do not exist at all. Whichever reality one promotes at the moment, that reality proves that media are racist and oppress black men.

Irish actress Nicola Coughlan plays Bridgerton 3's lead romantic female, Penelope Featherington. Coughlan is fat. Bridgerton Inc has a schizophrenic relationship to Coughlan's fatness. Penelope has been a pitiable character. She is a wallflower. She loves Colin Bridgerton, and overhears him telling his too-cool-for-school crew that he would never court Penelope, presumably because she is his inferior. Cressida Cowper, a pretty blonde, bullies Penelope with impunity. Lady Featherington favors her two slim daughters over Penelope. The viewer understands: we are to root for Penelope because she is an underdog and she is an underdog because she is fat, and Bridgerton is performing a social service by casting a fat girl as a romantic lead. At the same time, we are not to say out loud that Coughlan is fat.

Vogue congratulated Coughlan for saying, "If you have an opinion about my body, please, please, don’t share it." Vogue columnist Emma Specter, who identifies as fat, went on. "Coughlan’s post was instantly familiar to me as a fat person who’s had to ask countless loved ones to stop centering my weight in conversations." Specter acts out the self-contradicting approach. She's pushing her own fatness forward, and telling people not to talk about her fatness. "Frankly it makes me sad to be writing about her body instead of her talent. Still, I choose to do so because, until we acknowledge the outsize pressure we put on fat people ... we have no hope of lessening it."

Specter goes on. "I love fat people. I love our courage, our beauty, our hard-earned pride in our bodies" in spite of "a world that doesn’t want us." There's the problem. You can't say "I love fat people" unless you are allowed to acknowledge that some people are, indeed, fat. Note that Specter insinuates that fat people are in danger of a fatphobic genocide. As long as victim status is valuable, it must be played to the hilt.

Rebecca Shaw, in The Guardian, took the same "We should not talk about fatness / I am here to talk about fatness" approach. "I don’t want to argue about Nicola’s body … It pisses me off that I have to talk about this." Shaw is a social justice warrior, talking about fat so that we don't have to talk about fat. "Anything that might expand the narrow societal dictates of desire makes some people lose their minds … people will try to convince themselves that this woman is unappealing …  We have created this problem by only allowing a few fat people in the public eye at once … Society has always hated fat people. Industries have been built by making sure society keeps hating us."

The word "fat" is only negative "only because it has been weaponised against us for decades by hate."  "It’s important" that Coughlan exposed her breasts in a sex scene. "She is hot, she is fat and, if there’s ever been a time to note this – it’s now … I dream of an existence where the only response to Nicola getting her heaving bosom out is an appropriate level of horniness." Again, not finding Coughlan hot is not an expression of an evolution-engineered appetite. It is, rather, an oppression created by bigoted, fatphobic "society." Fatphobia, like racism, can be fixed by "forcing" "imaginations" to change through representation on screens. If you see it, you can be it, and you can want to have sex with it.

The New York Times, CNN, The Independent, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, The CBC, and thousands of other news outlets and websites also focused on Nicola Coughlan's fatness by saying that we should not talk about her fatness.

At least one mainstream publication published an attack. I found no such viciousness directed against Victor Alli for being black. In The Spectator, Zoe Strimpel published a malicious op-ed insisting that fat people can never be hot. "She is not hot," Strimpel insists. "A fat girl who wins the prince" is not "remotely plausible." Strimpel crosses a line. To state that Coughlan is fat is to state a truth so obvious it doesn't need to be stated. To say that a fat person can never be hot is false. There are men who find Coughlan hot and they have made their voices heard on the web.

One problem with diversity and inclusion is that it is a protest movement, and those who choose protesting perceived badness rather than building new goodness is that, choosing protest as a stance means that you must always find something to protest and there must always be new problems.

Sure, protesters point out, Bridgerton includes blacks. But where are the handicapped? Bridgerton 3 includes very brief scenes of a character in a wheelchair and the use of sign language.

Bridgerton's viewers are so obsessed with DEI that they perceive characters as "diverse" even if these characters are not advertised as such. Fans identify Francesca and John, two shy and quiet characters, as "neurodivergent." Fans label Eloise, a funny and articulate feminist, a "lesbian."

Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) is a middle brother. He lacks his older brother's dedication, direction, and authority. He's more of an aimless, ironic party boy. In Bridgerton 3, Lady Tilley Arnold, a horny and beautiful widow, seduces Benedict. After they've had sex, Tilley sits Benedict down and asks him if he'd like to orgy with a man. Benedict says no, he's not attracted to men. Tilley persists. This beautiful woman gives Benedict an almost religious lecture. Sex can be fun with any human body, she instructs. Benedict then engages in deep kissing with another man, and then he participates in threesomes with Tilley.

These scenes were more about manipulation than entertainment or art. We need handicapped characters? Check – here's a wheelchair. We need neurodivergence? Here's some shy people. We need LGBTQ +? Let's take a character we haven't done much with and have him, after he says he doesn't want to, have sex with a man. A comparable scene, where a beautiful woman turns a gay character straight, would be anathema. But turning a straight character "pansexual" serves the Revolution.

Bridgerton's labored, fan-service, oh-so-Woke DEI will never be enough. Francesca's character, in the novels, struggled with infertility. The TV version of Francesca will eventually end up as a lesbian, married to a black woman. The novel's fans are disappointed. They argue that lesbian awareness and race awareness has eliminated infertility awareness.

Miss Emma Kenworthy  (Sesley Hope) is an ahistorical character who covers a couple of diversity bases. She is black, and she is obese. In the eight-plus hours of Bridgerton 3, Miss Emma Kenworthy is onscreen for mere minutes. She is one woman in a fancy dress in a room full of women in fancy dresses. She has no significant dialogue or action.

But Miss Emma Kenworthy has enthusiastic fans. "Shout out to this plus-size queen ... you better treat her right or you'll be on my s--- list," writes a social media user. In her online photograph, the poster appears to be a middle-aged white woman. Another woman, again, who in her photo appears to be a white woman of a certain age, agrees. "She is stunning!" "The very best diverse cast that ever existed. It's awesome." Another older white woman agrees; "I love you," she says. Another white woman, "I loved her too!!" And another, " I love it!!!! She was an awesome character and I hope we see her in future seasons!!!!" And another, "YESSSS!! Every time she came on my screen she immediately caught my attention. Considering she had such little screen time I absolutely loved her character!"

These middle-aged white women don't love Emma because she does what fiction does at its best – tell important truths about humanity in entertaining ways. They love her because she is black, and she is fat. To trade the powerful gifts of fiction for DEI is to lose a great deal.

I have been called both "ugly" and "fat." I live my life as it seems to me Donald Sutherland lived his. I cultivate my gifts and pay as little attention to my deficits as I can. Bridgerton fans both obsess on and yet also demonize mention of ugliness and fatness. They insist on inserting fat people into eras when obesity was rare. They are not helping me. For one thing, they erase my unique, real story as a fat, ugly working class woman. My story is not a story of wearing psychedelic dresses, riding in carriages, gliding past servants, and marrying princes. My roots, my people, my triumphs are all way more interesting than that. The irony is that storytelling that more accurately depicts Regency life – a Jane Austen novel say – that doesn't contain fat women or ethnic minorities – is much more "representational" than all of Rhimes' exploitative stunt casting.

Storytelling, both fictional and fact-based, has played a significant role in my life. Scarlett O'Hara, Jane Eyre, Gladys Aylward, Maria von Trapp, women with whom I have pretty much nothing in common, inspired me and changed the course of my life. I'm not alone. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was inspired by Nancy Drew. We need language. We need storytelling. Let's keep both.

Danusha Goska is the author of God Through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery