pretty interesting
Men are never pretty, are they? The exception is the "prettyboy," the actor who's very handsome and not very good at acting. For the rest of it, men aren't pretty: but women are supposed to be, and punished for not being. You're punished for not being pretty, but then if you are pretty you're punished for not being serious.
And then there's the other meaning of "pretty": you can be pretty smart or pretty good, but that's not the same as being smart or good. Can you be pretty excellent? Pretty superb? Pretty magnificent?
Isn't it interesting how pretty the quality works just like pretty the adverb, diminishing whatever it's attached to. As soon as it enters a phrase, it takes that phrase to the realm of — what? what's the word I'm looking for? — to the realm of the —
Distaff. That's it, isn't it. We're only now beginning to enter an era in which women can be actually smart and not just pretty smart, actually good and not just pretty good. They can even be superb and magnificent.
From the very beginning, "pretty" has never been an all-the-way compliment. Look at the trajectory of the word itself, originating in an old German word for "trick." First it meant deceitful, then cunning, then clever, then skillful, then pleasing, then nice. "Nice," of course, is the other word that binds women from childhood on.
Have we come far? Undoubtedly. I'm thrilled that my daughters are born into a world in which it's not only allowed for them to read, write, own property, vote, sit on a jury, and choose their own husbands, but it's in fact uncontroversial. ("Allowed!" That's the way it was until only yesterday.) Every single one of those hard-won things, wrestled into women's hands with lifetimes of struggle, can now be expected in the lives of my daughters.
Do we have far to go? Undoubtedly. As long as you can predict with a hundred percent accuracy whose status will go up and whose will go down when a man and woman in your office have sex, and as long as you can predict whose will go up and whose will go down when both speak out strongly in the meeting-room, and as long as Rachel Held Evans's husband can say "want to start a controversy in your church? Speak the truth and be a woman at the same time" and get an Amen, I'd say no matter how well we're doing compared to yesteryear, we're still only doing pretty well.
And then there's the other meaning of "pretty": you can be pretty smart or pretty good, but that's not the same as being smart or good. Can you be pretty excellent? Pretty superb? Pretty magnificent?
Isn't it interesting how pretty the quality works just like pretty the adverb, diminishing whatever it's attached to. As soon as it enters a phrase, it takes that phrase to the realm of — what? what's the word I'm looking for? — to the realm of the —
Distaff. That's it, isn't it. We're only now beginning to enter an era in which women can be actually smart and not just pretty smart, actually good and not just pretty good. They can even be superb and magnificent.
Have we come far? Undoubtedly. I'm thrilled that my daughters are born into a world in which it's not only allowed for them to read, write, own property, vote, sit on a jury, and choose their own husbands, but it's in fact uncontroversial. ("Allowed!" That's the way it was until only yesterday.) Every single one of those hard-won things, wrestled into women's hands with lifetimes of struggle, can now be expected in the lives of my daughters.
Do we have far to go? Undoubtedly. As long as you can predict with a hundred percent accuracy whose status will go up and whose will go down when a man and woman in your office have sex, and as long as you can predict whose will go up and whose will go down when both speak out strongly in the meeting-room, and as long as Rachel Held Evans's husband can say "want to start a controversy in your church? Speak the truth and be a woman at the same time" and get an Amen, I'd say no matter how well we're doing compared to yesteryear, we're still only doing pretty well.
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