This is an analysis of the factual worthlessness of beauty. 

If you looked at my title and frowned your face then I can assure you that you are in for a delightful ride. Grab your anti-blue light glasses, let me explain to you how worthless beauty is,  especially in the system we exist in —patriarchal capitalism.

I want you to think of the most beautiful creature you know, it’s a woman, isn't it? We can agree that women are a quintessential of beauty however, how has that helped them as a social group? Women have lived as second-class citizens since time immemorial. Suffering from oppression asserted by people who have been advised to decentralise beauty.  And you would ask, why then is pretty privilege echoed in our society? That's because human beings are fickle. Men are fickle and the world has deceived women. 

Human beings get easily swayed by aesthetically pleasing things. If something is pretty, then it gets greater attention. But attention has never been enough. Attention gets you nowhere. There is a reason Beyonce responds to nothing. She knows it’s just a matter of time and everybody's attention is redirected to something else. 

When the eyes beholding beauty are men, then it gets really interesting. Once you have a man’s attention, you become an object, one he wants on his bed as quickly as possible. The high-maintenance girls will tell you to invest heavily in your appearance to attract the right men, but I promise you that the same man who lies with Megan thee stallion can lie with you. It's just a matter of proximity. 

I believe the world sets women up by constantly preaching about pretty privilege. If you live in an area where most people are struggling, nobody is clearing your cart in the supermarket just because you are pretty. Women are determined to attain beauty to attract men, while beautiful men are often told that their beauty affords them nothing if they don't attain the skills that will help them navigate capitalism. Women are told beauty is power, but men are apprised to chase the real power — money  

 A tweet triggered this essay, it’s a tweet by Damilola Owah. She wrote, “I feel for the babes who were beautiful in high school. There’s a visible grappling I see in the ones I know. Because they come to find out beauty is not exclusive, everyone becomes beautiful, beauty alone is worthless and will not save you.” A lot of people believe she hasn't healed from being an “ugly girl” in secondary school; That's just their attempt to be facetious. 

I don't know if Damilola was an ugly girl in secondary school, but I do know that even if she were, why can’t she mourn it? I went to an all-girls school and I can attest that beauty was a real currency in secondary school, people would want to be your friend, and they could even offer you things because of how beautiful you are. Notwithstanding that, I have watched beautiful people be deemed unattractive in secondary school because they did not have the confidence to carry their beauty. It was the confidence that truly made people see your beauty. 

Beautiful is indeed merely an adjective. It needs to be attached to something to keep you anywhere. A beautiful lawyer. A beautiful musician. A beautiful actress. A beautiful singer. A beautiful model. A beautiful influencer. It has never provided sufficiency on its own. 

As Damilola said “Everybody becomes beautiful” Beauty is supposed to be exclusive, but it has proven to be false over time. JT, a US rapper and the former member of the duo city girls, on Instagram Live said: “ You talking about she pretty, she pretty,  I don’t know no ugly bitches in 2023. Bitches dun glow up, bitches dun got they teeth done. I don’t know no ugly bitches”. Everybody is beautiful when they decide to be. Maybe you are one lash extension away from beauty, one good hair day away from beauty, one lip filler away from beauty, and one Gucci dress away from beauty. Beauty is for everybody, and when something can be obtained easily by everybody, what true value does it have? 

The fickle nature of beauty standards is another nauseating factor. I have watched the Western beauty standard move from one thing to another with just a few people calling the shots.  Big lips used to be deemed unattractive, now we have lip fillers, tall girls used to hissed at, and now we have stallions. And while curvy has always been the beauty standard in Africa, it wasn’t the same for Westerners who thought a straight-sized woman was the epitome of womanhood. 

Even the notion that beauty standards are different around the globe calls us to question beauty. A person can be pretty in Nigeria and suddenly lose all the worth if they travel to Korea.  What a hoax! if I carry a yen (Japanese currency) out of Japan, it’s still a yen. 

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is an adage that has survived the test of time. A man I was entertaining once asked me to list out the qualities I liked in men. I was hesitant since I knew he wouldn’t clear the list. I sent it anyway. I was bedazzled that he believed he satisfied the criterion that my partner had to be attractive, I did not think him attractive. There were people who I believed were not visually pleasing, but my friends thought otherwise. In fact, I have this theory that everybody sees themself as embodying physical beauty until they come outside and are either affirmed or told otherwise. 

Additionally, I have discovered that beauty is more of a feeling. Even the most adorable individuals feel ugly. Sabrina Carpenter, the breakout pop star of the year whose beauty is often lauded to the extent that a lot of people believe she’s resetting the beauty standard to unattainable, again. It wasn't surprising that in a visual interview with Vanity Fair, which was uploaded as a short on YouTube, Sabrina tells the interviewer that she feels ugly sometimes. You can ask the prettiest person you know if there are times their physical appearance feels distorted, and I can bet you that the answer is in the affirmative. 

Beauty will make things a tad easier for you (hopefully). Pretty privilege may make you a target of lustful men. It may even get you great acquaintances. However, the more we age, the more we realise that it doesn’t really matter, it sheds its childish value. That is why when beauty is centralised by young women, it’s perilous.