Musings on Female Hotness

So, I stumbled upon a Twitter post the other day in which a woman was pointing out the fact that so much of what we tend to view as a “hot” woman is wrapped up in concepts of age and youth. Why can't women over 25 be hot? she mused. The thread rightfully emerged as an empowering declaration for those of us who are over 25 and very much in tune with our hotness. Okay, that sounds a little haughty, but bear with me. It was a good thing, I promise.

My first reaction was “well of course women over 25 can be hot”, but when I began to unpack why that isn’t always the default reality in our culture, it made me think about a few things, and that’s why I’m here to spew my thoughts into print.

I started with the realization that so much of my self identity, comfort with myself, and the ability to think of myself in a positive way as attractive is wrapped up in my sexual orientation. The shift to viewing myself in a positive way is very much linked to my viewing myself from the perspective of being a woman and being ok with that. So much of the negative baggage that we, as women, put on ourselves in terms of physical attractiveness and beauty is caught up in the notions and sensibilities of the perceived straight male gaze. Society views everything by default through the lens of a straight male that we take on many of these viewpoints in our lives as a matter of course.

To illustrate my point, let me venture into the realm of erotica. There is no better example of the divergent viewpoints than looking at the difference between lesbian porn and lesbian erotica/romance. Take a cursory look into the world of lesbian porn, and you will see it is overwhelmingly tailored to the perceived straight male audience. The characters are mostly shallow, typically attractive in the culturally normal western stereotypical way, and above all...young. The mean point for lesbian porn is a couple of teens or twenty-somethings going at it in “scandalous” ways. The mean for lesbian erotica is certainly just as “scandalous” in terms of settings and plot, but the mean age skews WAY older. You don’t find novels or short stories about curious young lesbians much in erotica at all. The characters you find in lesbian romance and erotica are almost always older and more powerful, established in life with a career and all of that. The ideal of what is attractive is so much broader and involved than the purely physical that the physical characteristics of the characters are almost completely unimportant. The lust and desire come so much more from who the person is, not just their physical characteristics. You don’t get that in porn, because the perceived audience is so much different. Yes, I get that there are inherent differences between visual and print media, but those don’t wholly account for the differences that we see.

So what’s my point? I’m not sure I know. But I think the world would be a better place for all of us if we all were just a little more cognizant of our inner lesbian. :)