"Women don't want you to solve their problems, they just want you to listen"

This post is based on a common gender-based conventional wisdom, but I've been thinking about it and I think it applies to everyone of all genders.

 

Conventional wisdom is that women don't want men to solve their problem, we just want them to listen.

 

Although this conventional wisdom leads to the desired behaviour, I think it's imprecise.

 

I think the actual reality of the situation is people don't want to have to do all the emotional labour of being patient and polite (and sometimes even performing gratitude) with someone who thinks they're solving our problem when they're actually restating the obvious as though we never thought of it while contributing nothing new to the conversation.

 

This is especially true since a subset of the people who go around restating the obvious don't seem to believe you that the single most obvious potential solution didn't work.

 

Examples:

 

Me: All the youtube videos said it should just pop back in, but it doesn't.

Him: Did you try?

Me: Yes, and it didn't work. That's why it's a problem.

 

Me: They won't honour my warranty

Him: Did you tell them you have a warranty?  

Me: Yes, and they wouldn't honour it

Him: Did you show them the warranty confirmation you got when you bought it?

Me: Yes, and they said they couldn't honour it. 

Him: They should be honouring it! It's a warranty!

Me: Yes, that's why this is a problem.

 

 

An actual, real-life solution to the problem that will actually work in real life is always welcome! 

 

However, putting extensive time, energy and emotional labour into not solving the problem and not getting any further (and, possibly, not being believed) is not welcome, and makes for frustrating, unwanted conversation.

 

One aspect of this that might in fact be gendered is that people sometimes react differently to men and women doing the same thing, as demonstrated by that twitter thread where a man and a woman switched email signatures. 

So your male interlocutor doesn't see the potential negative outcomes of his suggestions because he's never experienced someone reacting negatively, whereas you have a lifetime of experience with how people might react negatively or see you as a difficult person.

Which actually might have a multiplier effect - your male interlocutor unconsciously sees you as less credible as part of this established societal gendered pattern, and the fact that you don't see why his idea would be as flawless as he thinks it is reinforces this perceived lower credibility, which makes him even likely to believe you about the push-back that you'd receive but he won't. Which leads to him complaining to his buddies that women don't want you to solve their problems, which reinforces them seeing women as less credible. Which means that next time a woman has a problem where their proposed solution won't work, they won't believe her. And the vicious cycle begins again.

 

 

When, in reality, all anyone wants is to not have to deal with the frustration of someone who thinks they're solving your problem while contributing nothing new. And this frustration, ironically, would be reduced if they'd actually listen.

Discoverability is not morally neutral

I tend to learn about books/TV series/other creative works because I've seen it around, people are talking about it, it seems vaguely interesting, I think I'll check it out.

 

Occasionally, when I do check it out, I fall in love with it. Most creative works I don't fall in love with, but occasionally I do. I tend to have one primary fandom that I'm absolutely in love with going at any given time. I have no control over when this happens, and I have no control over when and how it switches to another primary fandom. 

And every once in a while - although certainly more often than I'd prefer! - I learn, long after falling in love with a creative work, that the creator is a gross person, which makes me no longer want to be a fan of the work. 

 

People in this situation often get rid of their books via used bookstores or libraries or little free libraries.

 

But the problem with that is it increases discoverability by people who might be like "Yeah, I've heard of that, it seems vaguely interesting, I think I'll check it out!" but aren't into it enough to know why the creator of the work is gross.

 

Which could then lead them into this very unwanted situation of falling in love with the work, and being in love with a work by a gross creator.

 

This is a problem. Discoverability is not morally neutral - especially when the creator is still alive and using their money to do harm or protect themselves from the consequences of harm they've done.

 

As a reader/viewer, I don't want to be emotionally attached to works by a gross creator. It has happened entirely too often! I would very much like product labelling and curation norms to protect me from this by making me aware of the issues before make the decision to read/watch.

 

***

 

What do I mean by "protect me"?

 

An example of this is the societal norms surrounding labelling/classifying/marketing/curating sexual content.

 

I have certainly in my life encountered sexual content that I'd rather not have seen, but in every instance, I felt like "Well, what did I expect?"

 

When I was 11 I had the chance to stealthily watch an R-rated movie, and quickly became uncomfortable as it referenced aspects of sex that were far too advanced for me to even think about. Well, what did I expect? It's 18+!

 

Sometimes I've clicked on questionable links and seen thoroughly unappealing porn. Well, what did I expect? I clicked on a questionable link!

 

Some (but not all) of the sexual content aspects of Monty Python made me uncomfortable watching as a teenager (and others made me uncomfortable watching with my parents in the room). Well, what did I expect? It was introduced to me as irreverent, boundary-pushing humour written by a male comedy troupe!

 

This sense of "well, what did I expect?" is useful! I want that every time I come across something I didn't actually want to see!

 

However, this sense of "what did I expect?" doesn't seem to work for other types of content that I might want to be warned about. For example, I didn't anticipate the racism in Monty Python. I'm not able to explain why I was able to anticipate the sexual content but not the racism, but something about it didn't end up working out for me the way I wanted to.

 

This needs to be fixed somehow. We need a way for audience members - especially ignorant audience members - to be effectively forewarned, like we are with sexual content. 

 

The big problem for me with racism and Monty Python is that I wasn't worldly enough to perceive it. But if I had gone in forewarned, and if I had decided to watch it anyway (Teenage Me might have watched it anyway to see what the big deal is), I would have kept an eye out, asked questions (I would have been comfortable asking my parents and they would have answered), and come away more informed.  

But instead, I stumbled upon something I didn't even know was racist and went around gleefully talking it up to everyone who would listen for decades.  Much like how, multiple times, I've stumbled upon - and become emotionally attached to - works that I would never have given the time of day if I had known in advance that the creator was a bad person I don't want to support, and gleefully promoted those works to other people.

 

***

 

I don't know what the answer is for the problem of unwanted discoverability of gross creators. I don't want to burn books or ban books. I just don't want to fall in love with any more works by gross creators without being aware of the problems.

 

Maybe a useful approach would be to treat works by gross creators the way you would obscure reference books. They aren't the shelves, but you can pull them from the stacks or order them on request - not because they're banned, but rather because there's higher priority for shelf space. That way, people won't accidentally stumble on them and innocently fall in love with them - you have to know about them to ask for them, and, if we normalize this approach, the fact that they're not on the shelf might lead people to think "Oh, what if this is problematic?"

 

I'm sure other people who are smarter than me can also think of other useful approaches. And hopefully some of these people are in charge of curation and discoverability.

We need a way to respond to intimate partner violence that doesn't create a burden for victims

A recent Ask A Manager letter:

A couple of days ago, I was walking my normally well-behaved large dogs when another dog charged them, unprovoked, and they tripped me, and I ended up hitting the sidewalk hard. Thankfully the other owner ran to get my partner (I was a block away from home) and my partner took me to the ER. I have a concussion, a small fracture in my rib, and various other bruises and bumps. But what is most noticeable is my black eye. I hit my head just above my eyebrow and my eye looks like someone drew on me with a purple sharpie, and since I’m very pale, it’s not going away soon.

I took a few days off from work and screens but since I primarily work from home and have a bunch of Zoom meetings backed up, I’m back at it on a limited basis. My team was shocked when they saw my face, but they have all been supportive and said it’s fine and they’ll get used to it. My problem is outsiders! Most of my meetings are on camera, and I feel weird saying I want to be off camera because of a face injury (sounds worse than it is) but then if I’m on camera it is very distracting and I can feel people staring.

An added complication is that some of the organizations I meet with support people who have experienced domestic violence, and I look like a poster child for getting punched in the face. (In my case the assailant was the sidewalk, but from the way I look you wouldn’t know that.) So my look is very triggering. In a couple of days, I could probably use some makeup on it, but it’s too tender for that right now. I just need an easy way to explain away this massive black eye that doesn’t sound dismissive.

 

This is a problem many women I know have encountered, myself included - you have bruises or injuries, and then have the additional burden of people thinking you're a victim of intimate partner violence.

 

Let's stop and think about that for a second: it's a burden if people think you're a victim of intimate partner violence.

 

The fact that it is a burden is unhelpful. This makes things worse for everyone.

 

And it absolutely is a burden! People don't believe you when you say you are in fact safe, so you have the burden of trying to convince them. (See the time I walked into a door and was trying to think of a plausible cover story because no one would believe me.) Sometimes, even if they let it drop, they think you're lying to them. This can be a problem in medical contexts, where a doctor sees you as less than credible (and perhaps even puts it in your file) because you told them your bruises from moving equipment were from moving equipment.

On top of that, sometimes, in some contexts, by some people, you're seen as unstable if they think your relationship is unstable. Sometimes people (especially employers) think an unstable relationship means you have poor judgment. Sometimes they think it means you're unreliable. This can be detrimental in many areas of life (as it's also detrimental for actual victims of abuse!)

 

 

This is a problem! So what can we do about it?

 

I don't actually know, but here are a couple of starting points for brainstorming: 

1. What if we adjusted help/resources for victims of intimate partner violence so they could get exactly the same support and outcomes even if no one reached out to them? 

 

My first thought on writing this was "But abusers try to isolate their victims," but on further thought, maybe resources need to be just as available even if no one reaches out to you for that very reason? 

 

Currently, what does the person who reaches out bring into the situation? (I'm genuinely asking - I don't actually know what you're supposed to do next. Maybe this is something I should learn.) Could this contribution be added instead at a systemic/structural level, so victim can connect with help even if no individual takes the individual action of reaching out to them?

 

2. What if we normalize the idea of only offering to help if you genuinely have something specific to offer? 

 

There's a strong narrative - evident in some of the Ask A Manager comments - that you can't just say nothing if someone is being abused! 

 

But if you were to say something, what happens next? In other words, if you comment on your co-worker's black eye and ask if they're being abused, what's the plan if they say yes? What can you bring to the situation that they can't do themselves?

 

 

When I was a young adult and my social circle was making the transition from "pregnancy is obviously unwanted" to "pregnancy is frequently wanted", I was given a piece of advice to keep me from making an ass of myself: "If this pregnancy were unwanted, are you the person they'd be going to for help?" 

 

Thinking about it this way took some adjustment - for a brief period of time, I (in my capacity as someone who had left the church and moved to the city) was actually the person casual acquaintances might go to, even if just "I'm going to tell my parents you invited me to a girls' night out and a sleepover - play along!"

 

But when the pregnant acquaintance is someone who lives in the same city as me and has just as much agency as me, they don't need my help.

 

 

Grasping that nuance helps me respond more appropriately to unexpected pregnancy announcements. Maybe it would also help people respond more appropriately to suspected intimate partner violence?

 

I don't know the answer, but I do know that we need to adjust something, because it doesn't help anyone if people thinking you're a victim of intimate partner violence creates a burden on you - especially if you actually are a victim of intimate partner violence.

Wanted: a shared experience that makes it feel like life is getting better

When our library accounts finally came back online, I could feel a frisson pass through both Internet Toronto and Real-Life Toronto. The news ricocheted through the city, we all dropped everything and ran to be reunited with our holds lists...and promptly crashed the site!

Still, the spirits were high - "We hugged it to death!" squeed one redditor - and millions of Torontonians spread the news, rejoiced, and did a happy dance while they waited their turn for the 503 error to go away.

I hadn't felt that very specific emotion in quite some time, and, after some thought, I realized what it reminded me of: vaccine hunting.

When COVID vaccines first became available, everyone rushed to sign up and promptly crashed the site. But we spread the news enthusiastically, shared tips for finding an appointment, and squeed at each other as we got in.

It's a very specific emotion: a shared experience that makes you feel like life is getting better.

I haven't felt that in so long - not since I was queued up for a mass vaxx clinic at the community centre - and I didn't think I'd ever feel it again.

In the first year of the pandemic, I was confident I'd feel that feeling again. Everyone was working to make things better, we were all in this together, surely one day we'd delight in the shared experience of things being better again!

Except...they never got better again. Those in power just stopped addressing it, and in fact took away some of the tools we can use to address it individually.

So I wasn't expecting to experience this solidarity of life getting better ever again, which made it a particular delight to experience when the library came back online!

But...the only reason we got to experience this feeling of something getting better is because someone did harm by cyberattacking the library!

Is there any hope for things to get better for everyone without getting worse first??

***

Some people are able to experience this feeling of a shared experience of life getting better through activism, but that just doesn't work for me and hasn't for a long time. Activism seems more and more about desperately fighting to stop things from getting worse. It feels like victories aren't even improvements any more, just temporary respites.

When I try to think of examples of activism resulting in things actually getting better rather than just stopping them from getting worse, the most recent thing that comes to mind is the legalization of same-sex marriage, which was over 20 years ago.

Is stuff getting better for everyone without first getting worse even a possibility any more? Because I sure wouldn't mind experiencing that emotion again!

"And also" is the key to appreciating the little things in life

I blogged previously about the idea of "and also", which helps reconcile the fact that we live in a complex and imperfect world. 

 

I'm also finding lately that "and also" makes the idea of living in the moment/looking on the bright side/appreciating the little things in life more palatable.

 

For most of my life, the conventional wisdom I've received has been "Yeah, the world is on fire. But look on the bright side - we have delicious peaches!"

Which makes no sense whatsoever! The fact that it's peach season cannot possibly mitigate the fact that the world is on fire!

But consider: "The world is on fire. And also, we have delicious peaches."

Clearly, the sensible thing to do is eat and savour the peaches!

It doesn't claim to fix, mitigate, or outweigh the problem. It is simply another thing, separate from the problem, that comes with a logical course of action.

 

Some days, that makes it easier to get through the day.

Romance novels vs. fanfiction

I recently saw someone on book twitter say that it's a convention of the genre that romance novels have to have a happy ending.

That surprised me, because when I do read romance, I'm usually metaphorically peeking between my fingers, feeling like this is all going to end in heartbreak.

Often it's not worry about whether the couple ends up together, but rather worrying that they're not right for each other. Especially in cishet romance, I'm fearing that the male lead is unsafe for the female lead. (After all, we all know that handsome and charming does not necessarily equal safe!)

Even in the In Death books, which I have been reading and enjoying for OMG 15 years now, I read the whole first book and didn't feel that Roarke was a safe partner for Eve. I only even started the second book because it had already arrived from the library and it eventually won me over. 

The problem with early In Death, which I think is also the problem with many romance novels, is the author is writing from the assumption that the couple belongs together. But as a reader, I just got here. I have no emotional attachment to the pairing, I have no reason to believe they belong together, and I'm not motivated to suspend disbelief. The author would have to win me over and actually demonstrate that they belong together, which authors don't always do.

Because of this, I don't read that much romance. 

However, I just realized this is why romantic fanfiction does work for me. In fanfiction, I already know the characters and I already agree that the couple belongs together - that's why I'm reading that pairing! So the author doesn't have to win me or the rest of the audience over. Everyone already agrees that the couple belongs together, and we can just enjoy the ride. For example, I recently read an AU where one main character (who was in a position of greater power) accidentally kidnapped the other (who was in a more vulnerable position). In original fiction, that would be appalling! But, because I already agree with the author that the couple belongs together, I'm like "Oh, that scamp, how's he going to get out of this mess?"

Writing this out, I realized that I more often start shipping characters from movies or TV shows rather than books. Something about seeing the relationship played out visually is more convincing to me. Other than In Death, I can't think of a pairing I've started shipping after reading them in a book. But nevertheless, once the shipping is established, text continued to be my preferred medium for fanfiction.

Defining the intersection of walkable and accessible

I keep running up against the problem of not being able to find a good word for the overlap between "walkable" and "accessible". So I'm writing it down in a whole lot of words here, so I can point to it next time I'm trying to articulate the concept.

 

Why won't the word "walkable" do?

 

Some people interpret "walkable" as "accessible only to people who can walk, and therefore inaccessible to people in wheelchairs etc." That is never what I mean, so I clearly need a better word.

Why won't the word "accessible" do?

Some people interpret "accessible" in a way that doesn't necessarily include walkable. For example, they might say the grocery store is accessible if you can drive up, park in the disabled parking spaces right in front of the door, and roll your wheelchair in the door unimpeded - even if the only way to get to the store is by driving on a highway that has no sidewalks.

What concepts does this word need to encompass?

 

- Proximity: Things need to be close enough that walking/wheeling/otherwise going without a vehicle is easy. Your destination is close enough to your point of origin that you don't need a vehicle. (Q: Close enough for whom? A: The end users, whoever they might be.)

- Safety: You aren't going to get hit by a car. You aren't going to slip and fall on the ice. You aren't going to get harassed by creeps on the street.

- Lack of obstacles: There are no cobblestones that would make it difficult to use a wheelchair. You don't have to go out of your way to find a crosswalk. There is a clear, suitable path to wherever you are going.

- The "no-brainer" factor: I walk to the grocery store because it's across the street - using any sort of vehicle (even a bike) would be ridiculous. If you're going to multiple stores in an indoor mall, you aren't going to go outside and get into your car and drive your car to the next store. If you're going to multiple destinations on the same city block, you aren't going to drive between them - even if you drove to the city block, you're going to park your car once and head to all your destinations on foot or in a wheelchair or otherwise without a vehicle.

Anyone know a word that does all this and is clear and common enough for me to use in translations?

Cause and effect

In 2009, City of Toronto workers, including garbage collectors, went on strike because the employer was trying to take away their sick days and leave them with a much worse arrangement.

 

Media coverage at the time (including, bizarrely, the Toronto Star, whose stated principles explicitly include being pro-labour) villainized these workers, stoking public anger against them.

Rob Ford leveraged this anger to be elected as mayor.

Doug Ford leveraged Rob Ford's apparent popularity to be elected first as city councillor, then as MPP, and eventually as Premier of Ontario.

Where he took sick days away from workers in a pandemic, among many other disastrous policies.

Here in this third year of a pandemic that those in power have no desire to end, I wonder where we as a city and as a province would be if the City of Toronto hadn't tried to take away workers' sick days.

There wouldn't have been a strike. Rob Ford wouldn't have become mayor. Doug Ford would be running a label company (or would be city councillor at worst). Ontario would almost certainly have a government better suited to the task of getting us through a pandemic. (And also, Toronto municipal workers would have a better sick day regime and therefore be better able to avoid spreading COVID.) Toronto would likely have a different municipal government as well, since it was Rob Ford's mayorality that led to John Tory being considered even remotely palatable. (Remember in 2007 when Ontario rejected him for being too far right?)

***

On a personal note, there's one vital thing that would be different:

One change made under Rob Ford's mayorality was to contract out part of Toronto's garbage collection to Green For Life.

On February 17, 2018, at 2:30 in the morning, I was in bed fast asleep when I was frightened awake by a horrific noise.

I jumped out of bed, ran to the window to see what the noise was . . . and woke up on the floor with an enormous lump on the back of my head.

Every aspect of life has been more difficult since.

The source of the noise that frightened me awake? A Green For Life contractor seemed to think 2:30 in the morning is a good time to empty a dumpster into a dump truck.

Butterfly wings.

Thoughts (without advice) on Captain Awkward #1359

Captain Awkward #1359:

Dear Captain Awkward,

I (she/her) have a Dad (he/him) and Mom (she her) who value their traditional culture and religion even though they did not raise my sister (she/her) and I to be very religious, i.e. we were allowed to go away to college, I was encouraged not to observe religious dress and they didn’t expect us to participate in daily religious activities (they didn’t either). You could say we were culturally faithful but not pious. They took a lot of crap from relatives who insisted they were making a huge mistake and would end up with kids who have no values or faith.

My sister married a guy who was of our background but even less connected to the culture and religion. My parents welcomed him though I suspect privately they were a bit uncomfortable because he drinks alcohol and has tattoos which are prohibited in the religion. Then my sister put up a Christmas tree (not Christians but her in-laws do Christmas). I happened to be there when they found out and it was like watching my parents take a fist to their face. My sister was their closest child, she could do no wrong in their eyes and they’ve always bent over backwards for her. After being so sure that they could raise us liberally while still upholding the culture and religion, they were devastated. No amount of me reminding them that she doesn’t consider it a religious act or framing it as a decoration has helped. They’ve decided they won’t go to her house until the tree is gone. My mom does daycare for my niece so BIL (he/him) drops the baby off at her house now.

I’ve tried to point out that they may regret this and harm their relationship with their only grandchild once she is old enough to figure out that her paternal grandparents happily celebrate Christmas and drink alcohol with her parents while her maternal grandparents make a stand every December, but they won’t budge. My sister is surprised they are upset and says a tree is no big deal which strains credulity in my opinion. I’m visiting and keep walking in on my mom just sitting silently with tears running down her face and my dad quietly counting the days until he can see niece again on daycare days (he is the only name/word she can say so far, total bff’s). I resent my sister for taking so much over the years (I was not similarly favored) and then so casually throwing us into this chaos. I am annoyed with my parents for not seeing something like this coming considering her husband’s background. Do I keep defending her, comforting them or should I just stay apart like normal?

Never thought I’d miss the days when they were a unit of three + me.

I absolutely agree with Captain Awkward's advice that LW's role is to stay out of this. 

But what baffles me is that the parents seem to see this as LW's sister's tree and seem to be having a falling-out with LW's sister over it, rather than seeing it as BIL's tree, since his family of origin is the one that does xmas. Even if the sister literally put it up, they somehow got to "The person who brought this family tradition into the marriage is utterly blameless!" 

If I were advising BIL, I'd recommend that he "take responsibility" for the tree - not in the sense of sitting down and having a serious conversation, but more in the sense of blithely chattering in LW's parents' presence about how lovely it is to be sharing his family's traditions with the daughter.

 

I'm also rather baffled that they're wondering about what to tell the child and thinking the different families' different behaviours will harm their relationship with their grandchild. All they'd have to tell the kid is different families do things differently - they could probably even point to benign examples, like how one set of grandparents uses the front door of their house and the other set uses the side door.

Hard work

Conventional wisdom is that hard work is a virtue.  If you work hard, you will achieve success.

I think we need to question the notion that work needs to be hard to be adequate.

Some people, when they read that, will have the visceral reaction of "Oh, you just don't want to work!"

But that's not the argument I'm making here today.

For the purposes of today's blog post, I'm not questioning the "work" part, I'm just questioning the "hard" part.

(I know there are other people questioning the "work" part and I'm not going to get in their way, that's just not my topic here today.)

When I think of everything I've ever done well, I've never worked hard at any of it. I simply...did it. I carried out the necessary actions, did the thing, and it was done and done well.

So, you might be thinking, what would happen if I did work hard at it?

And the answer is that it would be impossible to work hard at it, because I finished it before the work got hard.

Analogy: you can't sprint one step. You simply take the step, and you've completed it before you can even get up to a sprinting level of effort. (Unless, of course, you can't take any steps.  But then you can't sprint one step either.)

There are also quite a few things in life that I've worked hard at.  And, despite my hard work, I never reached the point of doing them well. I basically knocked myself out to achieve mediocrity.

Before we even look at it from our own perspective as workers, if we look at it just from the perspective of having a functional economy and society, people knocking themselves out to achieve mediocrity is the last thing we want!

If you're in the market for a product or service, you want that product to be made or that service to be provided by someone who knows what they're doing.  The more important it is and the harder it is to do, the more you want someone who's certain they can do it well.  

 

You want a beautician who makes people way uglier than you look way hotter than you've ever aspired to, no one who isn't sure if they can make eyebrows like yours look good but they'll try their best. You want a renovator who thinks the work you have in mind is so easy they don't see why you don't do it yourself, not one who's unsure whether it's possible but is willing to give it the good old college try. You want a surgeon who could do your surgery in their sleep, not one who for whom it's a reach goal.

 

Essentially, if someone is working hard, it's a sign that something is wrong - insufficient training, too-tight timelines, not the right person for the job, etc.

 

Maybe, instead of valuing hard work, we as a society should be working on eliminating it.

What if we measured beauty standards in labour required to be unremarkable or credible?

When we talk about beauty standards - and, especially, when we talk about beauty standards for women (so much of the beauty standard discourse to which I've been exposed is so binary that I can't entirely get away from that in this post) - the discourse tends to get hijacked by people's personal opinions about beauty.

"But I think curvy women are hot!" "But men have to work hard to have a six-pack too!" "But beauty is frivolous anyway and you should just have good self-esteem!"

I think it would be far more useful if, instead of talking about beauty in and of itself, we talked about it in terms of labour. How much time/money/effort do people of various demographics need to spend to meet standards?

I also think it would be useful if, instead of talking about beauty standards, we talked about, for lack of a better word, "non-ugly" standards. How much labour is required to not be perceived negatively, to pass unremarked?

 

Example: 

 

Suppose you're watching the men's soccer world cup on TV, and you can see a player's leg hair.

Now, suppose you're watching the women's soccer world cup on TV, and you can see a player's leg hair.

Your immediate internal response to the men's scenario is probably "And...?" or "Only one?" Whereas, in the women's scenario, people would notice. They may well be too polite to comment, but if, in a safe and non-judgemental space, you asked friend who'd been watching the same game "Did you notice that one player had visible leg hair?" they almost certainly would have. Some people would speak positively of it ("Good for her, flouting social norms!") but it would be noticed.

In this context, the men's soccer players have to do no work whatsoever for their leg hair situation to be unremarkable, whereas the women's soccer players would have to remove any leg hair visible to the camera for their leg hair situation to be unremarkable.

I think this is a much more useful approach to this discourse.

 

It would also be useful to look at how much labour is required to be perceived as credible.

How much labour do people of various demographics need to do for their job interviewer to think they look professional? How much labour do people need to do to be taken seriously by the doctor/mortgage officer/prospective landlord? How much labour is involved in politicians of various demographics being perceived as camera-ready for their interview?

 

Being perceived as beautiful may be frivolous, but most people need to get business done at some point in their lives, and need to come across as credible to do so. For some people, that requires labour, and any demographic patterns to the amount of labour involved raise a genuine equity issue.