Given - Women Dont Owe You Pretty: The debut book from Florence Given

FLORENCE GIVEN (SHE / HER) is a 21-year-old London-based artist and writer. In 2019, Florence was named Cosmopolitans Influencer of the Year. She has more than 300K followers on Instagram and has been interviewed on BBC Breakfast to discuss the stigma around being single, and NBC News to discuss the campaign she led against fatphobic show Insatiable. She has worked alongside Always on their #EndPeriodPoverty campaign and her post received more than 200k likes, with each like resulting in a free sanitary product for those in need.

Contents

1 FEMINISM IS GOING TO RUIN YOUR LIFE (IN THE BEST

WAY POSSIBLE)

2 WOMEN DONT OWE YOU PRETTY. BUT...

3 YOU ARE THE LOVE OF YOUR OWN LIFE

4 HOW TO BREAK UP WITH YOURSELF

5 REFUSE TO FIND COMFORT IN OTHER WOMENS

FLAWS

6 ARE THEY INTIMIDATING, OR AM I INTIMIDATED?

7 STOP SCROLLING IN THE MORNINGS

8 PROTECT YOUR ENERGY

9 TO DATE OR NOT TO DATE

10 MAYBE ITS A GIRL CRUSH, MAYBE YOURE QUEER

11 LOVE SEX, HATE SEXISM AND NEVER FAKE AN

ORGASM

12 IF ITS NOT A FUCK YES, ITS A NO

13 WHAT DID SHE EXPECT, GOING OUT LIKE THAT?

14 WOMEN DO NOT EXIST TO SATISFY THE MALE GAZE

15 STOP PUTTING PEOPLE ON A PEDESTAL

16 LIFES SHORT, DUMP THEM

17 YOU DONT HAVE TO GET MARRIED (NO, REALLY) 18 STOP ASSUMING

19 ACCOUNTABILITY

20 CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE

21 LET THAT SHIT GO

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AN INTRODUCTION

You dont owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You dont owe it to your mother, you dont owe it to your children, you dont owe it to civilization in general.

Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked female. Erin McKean

This quote changed my life and inspired the title of this book.

Throughout feminist history, women have expanded on the concept of prettiness as a currency from their different standpoints, and there are a lot of variations on this idea out there. For example, Naomi Wolfs book The Beauty Myth unpacks in-depth how our beauty standards are linked to capitalism; Chidera Eggerue touches on prettiness in her book What a Time to Be Alone and in her #SaggyBoobsMatter movement to promote a message of anti-perfection; and trans activist Janet Mock speaks on how she felt she gained pretty privilege as she began her transition. This book Women DontOwe You Pretty is my interpretation.

This phrase sent me on a journey of unpacking my identity, forcing me to properly examine myself for the first time and ask why the hell I was carrying out these invasive, expensive, time-consuming and at times painful beauty rituals. I realized how much of my self-worth was determined by whether or not I appeared desirable to men, and whether that prettiness would be enough to encourage them to treat me with respect. But most of the time the attention that my prettiness garnered meant that men viewed me as an object, and men dont respect objects. After all, objects are something we view to be used

without reciprocity its a one-sided relationship. Its why they didnt handle my rejection well and called me names like

frigid, because objects arent supposed to be empowered.

Theyre objects. Acknowledging this was both uncomfortable and liberating exactly what growth is supposed to feel like.

This phrase also forced me to examine the kinds of standards against which someones prettiness is measured, and what pretty constitutes. Our collective idea of what makes someone pretty in society is based on their proximity to whiteness, thinness, being non-disabled and being cisgender.

This helped me to see how my own prettiness has enabled me opportunities, opportunities that women who fall outside of what society deems as pretty have to work harder for. Whether I thought I was attractive or not, for the first time I had to acknowledge the objective fact that I sit high on societys scale of desirability, by being slim, non-disabled and white. As women we dont want to admit that we have pretty privilege

because we have been taught that we should be unaware of our beauty, and to respond to compliments with self-deprecation and remarks such as No Im not, look at my...[points to

flaws]! In order to acknowledge that we have this privilege, we must first call ourselves pretty. Which, due to insecurity, is near impossible for most women. This is how our desirability privilege is silently maintained, and how as a society we continue to go about de-politicizing our dating preferences as if they arent problematic and heavily loaded with racist, fatphobic and sexist bias.

Theres a discussion about whether desirability really is a privilege, since its benefits are rooted in the objectification of our bodies, not respecting them. My prettiness is both the thing that allows people to treat me better, and also the thing that has led to the most traumatic experiences of my life. Men dont look at pretty women on the street and think Shes pretty, so I wont sexually harass her or follow her home. Its

the opposite. I walk about life with constant vigilance

anxious for the next man to stick his head out his car window and shout something at me, spike the drink that my

prettiness encouraged him to buy for me and stop in a shop before I go home to check Im not being followed. Keys between my fingers, heart racing, checking over my shoulder, strategizing my safest route home even if it means spending money on a taxi this is what navigating public spaces looks like for a lot of women. I cant tell you the amount of times I have contemplated shaving my head to rid me of male attention and sexual harassment almost entirely overnight.

But I realized that to do so would imply that its my responsibility to prevent this harassment, not theirs.

I was taught how to count calories, have boundaries with and say no to food as a young girl, before I learned about the importance of having boundaries and saying no to other people. What do you think that taught me about being a woman in this world? I learned that it was more important for me to be an object of desire, than it was to have my own needs met and be respected as a person. These harmful belief systems and low self-esteem landed me in abusive relationships as my boundaries were non-existent and I didnt believe I deserved better. I was just happy that someone wanted me.

I often wonder what my life would look like if I had learned that my body belongs to me, and me alone, first; that the way my body looks and its purpose is not to please others. I wonder what my life would look like if I had understood that I do not owe anybody nice, perfect, petite or pretty; that the best version of myself is not the one that is broken down in order to fit into the room afforded for women in a mans world, but is the version that stays whole in spite of other peoples reactions whether there is space for me or not.