Pat Archbold at the National Catholic Register writes on the Death of Pretty:
This post is intended as a lament of sorts, a lament for something in the culture that is dying and may never been seen again.
Pretty, pretty is dying.
People will define pretty differently. For the purposes of this piece, I define pretty as a mutually enriching balanced combination of beauty and projected innocence.
Once upon a time, women wanted to project an innocence. I am not idealizing another age and I have no illusions about the virtues of our grandparents, concupiscence being what it is. But some things were different in the back then. First and foremost, many beautiful women, whatever the state of their souls, still wished to project a public innocence and virtue. And that combination of beauty and innocence is what I define as pretty.
By nature, generally when men see this combination in women it brings out their better qualities, their best in fact. That special combination of beauty and innocence, the pretty inspires men to protect and defend it.
Young women today do not seem to aspire to pretty, they prefer to be regarded as hot. Hotness is something altogether different. When women want to be hot instead of pretty, they must view themselves in a certain way and consequently men view them differently as well.As I said, pretty inspires men’s nobler instincts to protect and defend. Pretty is cherished. Hotness, on the other hand, is a commodity. Its value is temporary and must be used. It is a consumable.
Nowhere is this pretty deficit more obvious than in our “stars,” the people we elevate as the “ideal.” The stars of the fifties surely suffered from the same sin as do stars of today. Stars of the fifties weren’t ideal but they pursued a public ideal different from today.
The merits of hotness over pretty is easy enough to understand, they made an entire musical about it. Who can forget how pretty Olivia Newton John was at the beginning of Grease. Beautiful and innocent. But her desire to be desired leads her to throw away all that is valuable in herself in the vain hopes of getting the attention of a boy. In the process, she destroys her innocence and thus destroys the pretty. What we are left with is hotness.
Hotness is a consumable. A consumable that consumes as it is consumed but brings no warmth.Most girls don’t want to be pretty anymore even if they understand what it is. It is ironic that 40 years of women’s liberation has succeeded only in turning women into a commodity. Something to be used up and thrown out.
Pat nails it in his article. Girls have turned themselves into a “commodity,” into, “A consumable that consumes as it is consumed but brings no warmth.”
This is the pivot point of a civilization in decline. Contraception and abortion are the bulwarks which buttress and facilitate a girl’s ability to persist in the lifestyle that comes with hotness, with wanting to be desirable and desired, “A consumable that consumes as it is consumed but brings no warmth.”
Whereas hotness is aggressive, pretty waits. Pretty invites a man in, and then it makes demands of the man. As Pat notes, “…the pretty inspires men to protect and defend it.” Therein lies the great practical value in women holding their dignity, making themselves known to the men they find attractive in a dignified manner, and then waiting to be recognized and approached by the man.
When a girl retains and lives pretty, while eschewing hotness, the bulk of men who cannot appreciate the virtue behind pretty will move on to more fruitful hunting grounds in the pursuit of immediate gratification. Pretty requires too much energy to overcome. While there are some who relish the challenge of destroying innocence, pretty attracts the noble, the good, like a magnet.
It’s self-selective for its complement in men.
With CDC reporting 1 in 4 American girls contracting a sexually transmitted disease before the age of 19 (48% among African Americans), with 35% of all throat cancers being caused by human papilloma virus, new HIV infections increasing steadily, all STD’s (with three temporary exceptions) rising steadily since the 1960’s, some 80% of STD’s occurring in those under 25, with a 540% increased risk of the most deadly form of breast cancer for women who begin oral contraceptives prior to age 18, something needs to give.
Hot is deadly.
Not to mention what hot does to our immortal souls or emotional well being.
We destroy ourselves in the quest for the same level of emotional satisfaction in momentary, meaningless encounters that our grandparents found in life-long love. We look down upon the innocence of their age, when men sough to be worthy of their brides, and women were on pedestals.
And we dare to call it freedom!
Thank you, I work in a Public High School and I see young girls dressed inappropriately every day. I feel so sad for them, society feeding them a message that will hurt them for years, and they do not see the deep meaning of why. I will forward this to a few friends. Rosalinda
So many times I have told my children that “hot” is not a compliment! The “hotness” attitude in our culture is pervasive, however, and it is almost impossible to keep it from influencing our daughters. When they see that “hot” girls get the guys, they believe they have no choice but to follow the trend. I’ve read comments from young women who say they really were influenced by what they saw at the grocery checkouts from a very young age – those articles that tell them what they should look like, what will make them popular, desired and maybe even rich. It makes me sad when I see an innocent little girl of 6 or 7 skipping happily by, knowing that in a few short year she, too, will become a commodity. Shame on our culture!
Thank you for sharing this very true, well written article. I will also forward it along to my friends. I have a daughter (27), and three young boys, 11, 10 & 7), and the number one thing I try to do is protect their innocence. I understand that while the culture doesn’t place a value on innocence because they cannot sell it, something more sinister does, and he will stop at nothing in trying to steal it away from our children. This became obvious to me when I was a young, single mother to my daughter. And I see it even more now today.
Very sobering and right on the money.
Thanks Gerard—-your article confirms what I have felt and believed for a very, very long time—–It is tragic that young women don’t understand this.
Well explained and disconcerting!
“Hot” implies that the girl or woman has no centre or self esteem and is desperate to please and be popular with the opposite sex. When modern hot females develop a real sense of self worth and confidence, being hot will be irrelevant and boring. Men who are only attracted to hot girls lose interest after a while because there is always someone hotter around the corner and the chase is always tempting. Everyone seems to be chasing the ephemeral and fantasy rather than building real relationships.
I have no use for “hotness,” but I’m old enough to remember the bad parts of “pretty,” too. Does anyone else remember when the choice was between pretty OR smart, but never both? The ideal woman during the era of “Pretty” was a cowardly, dimwitted weakling who only had her fading looks to offer. At least “hot” implied confidence and competence, and doesn’t involve things like expressing terror at mice or denying knowing the rules of baseball. I really wish we could encourage men to find competence and intelligence in women as primary traits rather than merely physical things like “pretty.”
I think I need to expand on my comment a little. The original post, and too many in the same vein, praise some bit of the past without analyzing the thing being praised. The Golden Age waybackwhen was a pagan myth and shouldn’t be part of any Christians’ worldview. I do think that both men and women should strive to be attractive, but making “pretty” the standard hurts any woman past 25 or who doesn’t conform to the current fashionable standard for weight or skin color. We need to form a new standard, based on genuinely important qualities, not old movies.
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Dr. Nadal,
Neither “pretty” nor “hot” are attributes any woman should desire to attain…the attempt to “project” either come from attitudes and behavior learned from other people in their environment, whether parents or parent-figures, looked-up-to people such as older siblings, acquaintances, people in the public eye, whoever. Furthermore, to think it is necessary to give the impression that one is something that one truly is not flies in the face of what is really good, perfect, and–yes, I’ll say it–godly. This thinking could be born out of the constant messages women receive from the time they are wee lasses: you are no good; you need to be better; no one wants to be with you; you need to ________ if you expect ________…
As always, those virtues listed from the Word of God (see 1 Corinthians 13:4-8; Galatians 5:22; James 3:13, 17-18) stand the test of culture, fashion, and time. It is far better for women and girls to be seen in the eyes of God as precious than either “pretty” or “hot” in one’s own eyes or in the eyes of the world. It is far better to believe that what God thinks is more important than what any man (except Jesus Who died for His Bride) thinks.