Effortlessly What?

According to a recent study, women spend 90 more minutes each week than men doing things they do not enjoy. I spent those minutes at the installation ceremony for University President Drew Gilpin Faust. I was wedged between an old crone who kicked things off by substituting “sisterhood” for “brotherhood” in “America the Beautiful” and a small dog who looked even less happy to be there than I was. Eventually his owners took him away, clearly realizing that it would be considered cruelty to animals to force him to listen to any more speeches. As I stood there, feeling all sensation leave my extremities, I began to wonder: Would I—or President Faust—be having a better time if I were male?

Other recent studies have found that today’s women, on average, enjoy themselves three percent less than their male counterparts. To use a real-life example, if 100 men and 100 women are at the same party, three more men than women are having a good time. I like to think that these men are talking to the women, ruining their evenings. Yet why is there this enjoyment gap? One theory posits that today’s women—especially high-achieving young women—combine all the pressures of their male counterparts with an imperative to be “effortlessly hot.” This generates a kind of constant pressure on par with having to hold your stomach in at an orgy.

But what creates this drive? Is it still an unspoken rule of our traditionally male-dominated society that women must combine talent with beauty if they hope to succeed? Few people would go so far as to claim that attractiveness is more important than intelligence and competence in determining success. But this does not prevent them from encouraging you to gussy up and don that cute skirt before your interview.

Even at Harvard, a veritable cesspool of overachievers, it is hard to find women who do not groom themselves extensively. My roommate spends an average of half an hour daily sprucing herself up—and that’s just the eyeliner. Yet when I ask other girls what drives them to perform this elaborate daily ritual, the answer is telling. As the women in the many time allocation surveys agreed, this is an activity that makes them happy. On a happiness scale from 1 to 6, “wash, dress, personal care” scores a solid 4.31, above cooking, “voluntary activities” (whatever those entail) and watching television, and just behind reading. As this suggests, and as numerous Cosmo articles proclaim, we are “doing this for us.”

Yet if this is true, it is almost more disturbing. There is nothing wrong with having high standards for beauty. But women seem to be the only ones with such standards. For the most part, men—other than a few beleaguered metrosexuals—seem contented to look as though they have just fallen out of bed. Indeed, one begins to glimpse the absurdity of the double standard when one contemplates men making typically “female” remarks like, “I feel so fat today,” or, “What a great hair day I’m having.” Coming from the mouth of your run of the mill Joe Hetero, these remarks sound ludicrous. Men, for whatever reason, seem largely content with themselves as they are. Noel Coward, not your typical Joe Hetero, admitted, “First thing in the morning I have a face like a woolen mat. And yet I am the most desirable man in the world.” The world could stand more women who share that sentiment.

We women may enjoy getting dressed up and claim that we try to look beautiful “for ourselves.” But this enjoyment has an unpleasant corollary. Bad hair or a flawed outfit can poison our delight at any given moment in a way that our male friends never have to fear. Perhaps it is not, in fact, a solid hour and a half of displeasure, but 90 individual minutes of self-doubt that prevent us from enjoying ourselves fully.

This is why, dull speeches and frozen fingers aside, I have great expectations for the new Harvard president. For when I think of Drew Gilpin Faust, “effortlessly hot,” is not the first phrase that springs to mind. Nor is it the second, third, or tenth.

In this context, Faust shines like a beacon of hope. Perhaps her election will inspire more of us to set down the make-up bag and toe buffer—or whatever that horrifying-looking implement is—and find more productive ways to spend our time.

Alexandra A. Petri ’10 is lives in Eliot House. Her column appears on alternate Tuesdays.