The Handsome Man and Ugly Wife #victorian #prettyprivilege #history

🥳Socials

Join this channel to get access to perks:

📚My books:

(This email goes directly to my management and not to me.)

📪 Abby Cox
642 N. Madison Street
Bloomington, IN 47404

[the.empress.missjena]

Once again highlighting how a book like Jane Eyre was considered wildly controversial, to have a poor, plain woman appeal up to and then leave a wealthy man who wanted to marry her (the fact that hes described as ugly aside.)

[SAOS]

Don't forget about the ugly laws that kept undesirable (tm) people out of public view. If you were visibly disabled, fat, had a facial difference, or otherwise were "unseemly" you could be fined or arrested. A man like that would have been considered a blessing to someone with no other prospects. Isn't that awful? And some people are trying to bring that back.

[nemostarrx]

next season on "why women kill"

[madelinekimbro]

And then when they got tired of their pretty wives, they could just have them committed to an asylum.

[Xamerax]

Long story short: a dude I dated once told me his parents didn’t want him to date a pretty girl, so they would be very happy to see him bring me home.

[S_Carol]

I don't have to go that far back. My own grandmother and great-aunts lived in a world of pretty privilege.
They were a societal high-class family fallen into economic low-class, so they were raised being taught that a woman having to work a common job was shameful and expected to marry as far "up" as beauty allowed. They basically competed with each other for materials for dresses, favors (each specialised in some type of house work, including sewing, embroidery, lace, so the more favors they gathered the better they could make a dress), permission to attend events, suitors, ... It was even weirder than it sounds and I swear someone could make a tv drama out of their lives.
Contrarily to what they were taught to expect, most of the ones that married up ended up with horrible, abusive, cheating and/or alcoholic husbands who squandered their inheritances and they ended up having to work. Only one lucked out and got a nice guy. One sort of ran away abroad to avoid the madness. And one was born with a hemangioma on her face, deemed unmarriable, and subsequently sheltered her whole life (she has an absolutely vile personality as a result of that, btw).
Most of them are still alive. Husbands all long dead. Nowadays they compete for who has the best family. We're signing them up for a Guinness World Record as a joke, because they hate being reminded that they're old (therefore "ugly") but they're likely the oldest set of 5 siblings currently alive.

[paulapridy]

I am choking on how much of what you said has been part of my own life. I am 70. Single. And without monetary assets. But I have never been more comfortable in my own skin😎

[krism.]

Pretty privilege still exists. At least “unattractive” people don’t rely on marriage to save them anymore. They can save themselves.

[trinkab]

If you didn't have beauty, you had better have breeding (money/lineage/land), if you didn't have either you had better know how to cook/clean.

[ilahjarvis]

This is really transparent in older British fiction- Jane Austen, and even mysteries by Margery Allingham from the 1920's-1950's There is so much emphasis on whether a woman was considered beautiful or not. Either you were or weren't, and your value as a woman and a human being depended on it.

[eatwhatukiii]

“If a man ever said that to me…”😒🤣 my thoughts exactly!

[OcarinaSapphr-]

Or- be like my great-grandparents in 1920's-30's Queensland; my grandma got basic schooling, & then was made leave school at 13, working until she married her first husband (her parents agreed when she was 17/ 18)- but her sister (who was 'plainer' than my Nan)- it was decided that because she was less likely to marry than my Nan, needed further education & a career to support herself, was sent to what Nan called 'Rule School'- it might have been an early version of TAFE, & she attended what sounded like an advanced version of Home Ec classes, learning things like cake decorating, dress-making, tatting, & what-have-you; they were skills that took her all over the country. She never did marry - my Nan endured an increasingly sh*tty marriage, 'til she met my Grandad (who was younger than her, & from the few photos- quite good-looking {You go get it, Nan!})- eventually, she left her husband- but wasn't allowed to take her kids with her; her father said, "Go make a life for yourself & Charles- no man wants to raise another man's children"
I _still_ find it hard to fathom how their thought-processes worked, back then- picking & choosing who got beyond basic education; it wasn't just my Nan & her sister- I think only 2 of Nan's 5 brothers went on to higher education...

[mplwy]

It always blows my mind to hear people talk about our grandparents and great+ grandparents in this manner. The ladies on both sides of my family have been pretty spunky for several generations. And many of their husbands have been mild tempered. Most were not wealthy and had to work hard, but they weren't mistreated.

[danylleedson]

That's why arsenic and old lace was a thing back in the day.

[cross-eyedmary]

I was pretty- but high school was more about being popular than beautiful. Being pretty only ever hurt me-never helped.

[jeanmartin]

I have lived 67 years and have NEVER seen a truly ugly woman.

[lootownica]

Kaz's cringe at the end was gold xD

[idrils]

No wonder why there used to be so many more mysterious deaths by poison 👀👀

[Tinyflypie]

Read any Greek or Roman mythology being pretty often resulted in being raped by a god pretending to be a swan, a bull etc. And being turned into a stone a tree or a flower afterwards.

[emb]

Women are still frequently penalised for not living up to the stereotype of how a woman should look and behave, especially in the corporate world.