Last week I saw “Whisky Tango Foxtrot,” a movie based on the story of journalist Kim Barker’s war reporting in Afghanistan. Something about the movie struck me as unusual. Unlike many heroines in action movies, she was unabashedly portrayed as naïve and uncool at the beginning of the movie. Unlike beautiful fellow journalist Tanya Vanderpoel, Barker did not know how to navigate parties or find her way around Afghanistan. But despite her initial struggle and, according to her peers, her lack of beauty, she was the winning protagonist. I realized that the movie seemed unusual because female heroines on screen are almost always effortlessly beautiful and, therefore, cool. The explicit importance of heroines’ beauty in movies, compared to the insignificance of the appearance of male heroes perpetuates the idea that true validation for an onscreen (and sadly, sometimes off-screen) heroine lies in her beauty.
Action movies like “Whisky Tango Foxtrot” are popular among young people and often exaggerate social norms that actually exist in real life. They provide insight into social patterns and sometimes even perpetuate them by portraying these hierarchies as positive. Although Vanderpoel was a mere side character, the other journalists’ eagerness to accommodate Vanderpoel’s needs, in addition to frequent remarks about her beauty, illuminate real-life gender expectations suggesting that beauty ranks above all other positive attributes. Despite her initial inexperience, Barker quickly finds success when she braves an explosion and records it on camera. Nevertheless, she is ignored and almost replaced, essentially, by Vanderpoel. Women in action movies, such as the main characters in “10 Cloverfield Lane” or “Suicide Squad” may be tough, but the action-filled plot often seems to center on their sexual prowess, if trailers are to be trusted. They gain the most power out of distracting male villains with their beauty. And if they are impressive, they’re not allowed to have a troubled past filled with hard work like male superheroes such as Batman or Spiderman. Similarly, off-screen treatment of female celebrities reflects this need to be effortlessly beautiful too — getting plastic surgery without admitting it, being fit but looking flawless when exiting the gym.
What is the motivation to find professional success if only beauty and sexuality can bring true validation for a woman? Quoted in The Telegraph, designer Johnnie Boden says his daughters “always mention another girl’s looks before anything else, as if this is the most important thing about them.” The constant portrayal of women as pretty first, and heroic second, projects and maintains a parallel in the real-life professional world. According to a 2010 poll in Newsweek, 72 percent of people think good looks help a woman land a job, and people perceive discrimination by good looks as a phenomenon that affects women more than men.
This problematic double standard may be due, in part, to the need for male validation. Even George Clooney’s wife Amal Clooney, a lawyer who works for the International Court of Justice, has often been praised for her beauty rather than her professional accomplishments. A Google search of “Amal Clooney news” will turn up articles such as “All of Amal Clooney’s Most Glamorous Looks” on ABC News and a blog titled “Amal Clooney Style.” The focus is on her physical appearance as a factor in her marriage to George Clooney implies that a woman’s goal is male attention. Another factor may be that hard work — in its unglamorous, brutish and sweaty manifestation — is still perceived as masculine. In her book, “Why Not Me?” Mindy Kaling writes, “There is a certain type of greasy hair that you get only when you are writing with no breaks. And I had it, big-time. If I breathed in deeply, I could smell my unwashed scent, and it was intoxicating. It smelled like hard work.” In the book, Kaling argues that being a hard worker has become a backhanded compliment, that it appears dirty and uncool. Being a hard worker seems to have been used especially as an insult towards women as a way to undermine their success. The kind of sweaty work that Kaling describes is stereotypically masculine; as a result, the need to seem beautiful and effortless keeps women confined to stereotypical gender roles.
Although they are fiction, movies can promote highly structured, problematic ideas about female and male heroism. “Whisky Tango Foxtrot” was a pleasantly surprising movie where the audience wants the underdog — a “plain,” “uncool,” true underdog — to win. But generally, women on screen are often valued for their beauty and their ability to gain male validation. Despite many positive qualities such as courage or intellect, beauty is required to be worth something in our current society.
