2013’s Women
In 2013, I couldn’t help but notice women everywhere. Malala Yousafzai at the UN, Jennifer Lawrence giving interviews, Michelle Obama at everything—they had something to say and actual platforms to say it from. For a moment it felt like something was shifting.
But open any website that year and the calculation was always the same: yes, these women have power, and here’s how attractive they are. Outlets covering Malala’s activism would run photo galleries rating her face. Jennifer Lawrence’s intelligence and her appearance were inseparable in how people talked about her. Michelle Obama was articulate and dignified and also half the internet spent 2013 analyzing her body with an intensity they never brought to actual policy.
I waited for the contradiction to become obvious enough that it would matter. That visibility might actually mean people saw another person instead of just running through a sexualization reflex. It didn’t.