who's afraid of beautiful women?

everyone it seems

warning: this essay explores themes of erotic capital, beauty culture, and attraction from a sociological and intellectual perspective. readers may encounter sensitive discussions on these topics and are advised to proceed with discretion.

“beauty was your armor. fragile stuff, all show. but what’s inside you? that’s steel. it’s brave and unbreakable. and it doesn’t need fixing.”

do you remember the dark times? that three year period¹ of isolation, collective fear, and complete collapse of what we believed was normal? it was in that time, a little over a week following the end of the world², that i stumbled upon a book so healing in its affirmation of what i knew to be true about myself and so eye-opening in its examination of what i had always believed to be a patriarchal farce that i finished it in one weekend.

the book, written by a pioneering british sociologist, brought to the fore the sociological concept of erotic capital.

in the book, dr. catherine hakim articulated erotic capital in six aspects, with the sixth recently being amended from the list: (1) beauty, (2) sexual attractiveness, inclusive of sex appeal, (3) social graces, inclusive of charm and social skills, (4) liveliness, (5) social presentation, and (6) sexuality, inclusive of sexual competency.

in an interview catherine and i did for my podcast, she stated that the removal of the sixth element of erotic capital was due to the simple fact that sexuality, inclusive of sexual competency, “…can’t be measured, and it’s totally private; and specific to two particular partners and what they particularly like or don’t like, appreciate or don’t appreciate. and there’s so much diversity in sexuality, that you can’t say that one person is measurably better or worse than anyone else. so, if you exclude that, all of the other features, elements, of erotic capital are things that are publicly visible and measurable.”³

with this amended list, erotic capital can be viewed as how one takes care of themself, carries themself, presents themself, and engages with those around them. erotic capital, at it’s core, is the physical manifestation of our essence. an echoing of our soul. that’s my view, at least.

and it’s through this view that i believe erotic capital is foundational to mythmaking.

faithful readers of this publication will know that mythmaking is the art of creating one’s own legend, both real and perceived. it’s the perception we project onto the world as we stake our claim as biological women determined to get what we want.

due to the empowering nature of mythmaking, i view it much more favorable than beauty alone. beauty is helpful. but what takes us across the finish line is not how beautiful people find us to be, but how well we utilize what we naturally have. in this way, beauty is only relevant if we deem it so. and i’m here to argue dear reader, that’s it’s rarely ever relevant.

i understand your skepticism. but consider the fact that beauty is simply one-fifth of what constitutes our erotic capital. at least, according to the expert who pioneered its sociological understanding.

and should anyone of us need the reminder: beauty is extremely subjective. i consistently receive messages of “beauty standards” but those too are fungible.

in fact, it was only until a couple of years ago that a subset of the extremely-online female demographic were determined to mimic angela r. white’s famously infamous figure. even if they didn’t know it.

to those unaware, angela renée white, also known as blac chyna, was the canvas upon which a famous set of sisters pygmalioned their physical aesthetic.⁴ america may cite the kardashians as making “big butts, wide hips, slim waists, and big breasts” mainstream thereby setting an absolutely unrealistic beauty standard that necessities plastic surgery, but those of us committed to knowing the source material, know that there would be no kim k (in her bbl phase)⁵ if there were no blac chyna.

same goes for the heir apparent: there would be no kylie jenner (in her king kylie era) if there were no heather sanders.

now. i don’t mean to suggest, or even hint at the idea, that black women are the originators of all trends. but the evidence, especially in this case, speaks for itself.

thus we find ourselves tasked with existing in a society where the beauty pendulum swings and swings and swings. much like fashion, what was considered peak beauty in one decade, surely finds itself regulated to the bin of nostalgia in another. so to make a sincere attempt to keep up with beauty, especially for the sake of being seen as “in” or even more elusively, “it”, is a fool’s errand.

but you already knew that.

you know it’s fleeting. perhaps that’s why you chase it.

i won’t fault you for that. we all have our kinks.

speaking of which, the idea of a fetish is interesting. especially if we put it in an art historical context. the art historians will tell us that objets that were considered “fetishes” were those thought to be imbued with special, magical powers. at least that’s how art dealer paul guilluame felt when art nègre “revealed” itself to him.

this is how i want you to view erotic capital. specifically as it relates to creating your own myth. it’s a fetish you create that bestows on you powers: the power of sight, strength, and, if necessary, seduction.

however, do not mistake seduction as a means to an end. in a diouana woman’s world, seduction is a lifestyle. lingering on us like a humid southern night: dizzying in its remembrance, and elusive in its origin.

do you see how far we’ve come from beauty? we’re now in the realm of the evocative. which lends itself to a kind of haunting. one that comes from a heightened presence. which is always reinforced by an unexpected absence. this tension allows for a yearning, which naturally creates a need that you feed as needed. it’s an ensnaring that becomes so subconscious that you don’t even notice the destruction you leave in your wake. that is seduction as a lifestyle. anything else is child’s play—obvious, and without consequence.

should you want to be a woman of consequence. one of substance, it requires you to allocate your erotic capital such that your beauty is but a footnote. you’re a beautiful woman, yes. but that’s not why people remembered you.

you were daring and audacious. you refused to kiss the ring, or bend the knee for that matter. you were direct in your communication, but evasive over seemingly banal topics. you were a budding expert. and all of this created a myth: one of power, presence, and warmth.

do you see how far we’ve come from beauty?

“she puts herself on a level of intransigence and perfection; she has a taste for the definitive and absolute: if she cannot control the future, she wants to attain the eternal.”

to me, there’s a sex appeal in work ethic. in the pleasure-pain of becoming.

part of my becoming, has been refining, designing, and endlessly perfecting how i take care of myself, carry myself, present myself, and engage with the world. this extreme attention to detail as i articulate the essence of my soul has been most empowering for me.

but one thing remains clear amidst the yearly art patronages, monthly full body waxes, daily pilates sessions, and the occasional well-timed outing: all of this requires funding.

i have the luxury of being expensive, but the reality of being the one responsible for my expenses. this cash flow requirement necessities a full-time, ideally high-paying, occupation. thus my professional career is simply not just a pursuit of intellectual stimulation, but the bedrock upon which my asset accumulation is built.

knowing this, and remaining ever aware of the shifting moods of the economy, maintaining a prosperous career is critical to my overall financial health. as such, the decade-end goal is for the corporate career to be become optional.

but like i said, “the pleasure-pain of becoming.”

and my story, this insistence on financial independence and intellectual rigor, is similar to yours. i’m of the belief that financial freedom is truly the last freedom we have in our techno-feudalist, increasingly oligarchical, world especially as biological women.

so the skill of building and navigating careers is critical. if not, a matter of life or death.

this brings us to the idea that understanding the sociological frameworks that can be seen and quantified throughout organizations, regardless of size, location, or tenure, is worth knowing as it allows us to make informed decisions of how we use, or disuse, our erotic capital.

it may seem paradoxical, if not inappropriate, to consider the entrance of erotic capital into the workplace. but like i wrote about earlier in this essay: seduction is not a means to an end, it is a lifestyle. it imbues your myth, thus rendering the conscious subconscious. half the time, you don’t even know what you’re doing. which, makes the knowledge of organizational sociological that much more poignant.

specifically, the femme fatale effect.

before we walk into that garden, i want us to take a detour and examine, if just for a moment, some data from the u.s. bureau of labor statistics.

i know, but i promise it’ll only be for a minute:

i told you that beauty should be a footnote in your story and only mentioned after the fact. that is my diouana woman take.

but let us consider, if not accept, the beauty culture in consumerist america.

let us also consider that in 2022-2023 alone, single american women between the ages of 25 to 34 spent $1.3 billion on personal care products and services, inclusive of makeup and skincare.

the second largest category of spenders for this line item were single american women between the ages of 35 to 44 who spent $857 million, followed by single american women under the age of 25 who spent $777 million.

collectively, the highest categories of unmarried female spenders contributed $2.9 billion worth of consumption on personal care products and services in 2022-2023.

now, compare these figures to single american men of the same age groups:

the highest category of spenders remained the same, single american men between the ages of 25 to 34 spent $532 million in 2022-2023 on personal care products and services, likely inclusive of makeup and skincare.

the second largest category of spenders for this line item were single american men between the ages of 45 to 54 who spent $373 million, followed by single american men between the ages of 35 to 44 who spent $335 million.

collectively, the highest categories of unmarried male spenders contributed $1.2 billion worth of consumption on personal care products and services in 2022-2023.

readers should note that when compared to their unmarried gen z counterparts, single american men under the age of 25 spent $262 million on personal care products and services that same year. this represents a a 66.2% gap in spending.

when i’ve done a more robust and rigorous analysis of these figures, and those of earlier years, i will present you a white paper detailing my findings on the microeconomics of female erotic capital expenditure (basically analyzing erotic capital as an economic force) as it relates to american beauty culture and the gendered wealth gap on asset terms (so not how much money women and men make in terms of salary, but how much they have invested, respectively). this research, and its iterations, will be aptly titled diouana womanomics.

but for now, glossing over these numbers, it’s undeniable that unmarried women, gen z at least, spend far more on beauty. approximately $515 million dollars more.

now, what does this beauty investment get us besides self-loathing (or lack thereof) and an ever-increasing wealth gap, on an asset basis?

one can argue that these investments pay dividends in the marriage market. but again, i argue that if one is following a seduction-as-a-lifestyle playbook as opposed to a seduction-as-a-means-to-an-end workbook, beauty remains a footnote and is therefore regulated to a smaller portion of the budget (if one is in the austerity phase of building their financial life⁶).

my argument, which is also catherine’s argument, is that these consumption figures, when placed alongside the sociological concept of the femme fatale effect, prove the feminist conclusion that society, by and large, does not take what is presumed to be women’s work or women’s craft seriously.

herein walks the femme fatale effect, in which researchers leah d. sheppard and stefanie k. johnson empirically found to be that:

“attractive women are perceived as less truthful than their less attractive counterparts, and this judgement appears to be linked to sexual insecurity⁷

…lower truthfulness perceptions translate into lower levels of interpersonal trust and heightened perceptions of deservingness of termination. although few people might be inclined to feel sympathy for attractive women, these findings reveal a consistent form of discrimination that could negatively impact their careers”⁸

in reflecting on the fact that women under the age of 25 spend approximately $515 million more on beauty than their male counterparts, only for the subset of them who are considered beautiful—enough to elicit jealousy in the form of sexual insecurity—to be discriminated against, or at the very least, perceived to not be truthful or trustworthy and deserving of termination as a result, my mind wonders to catherine’s research findings that men benefit more from their erotic capital than women do. isn’t that something else?

the group who spends the least amount of their disposable income on their erotic capital benefits the most from it. the group who is societally expected to be beautiful, to naturally have erotic capital, are discriminated against, in professional (and social) settings, because of it.

this isn’t even a question of late-stage, post-modern consumerist what have you. this is textbook misogyny. plain and simple.

people, men and women, hate attractive women.

they believe us to have privileges that we did not earn due to our beauty, so they seek to dim our light by purposefully mischaracterizing us and attempting to tarnish our trajectories.

so that $515 million dollar spending excess that young unmarried gen z women have over unmarried young gen z men means more to me than simply “girl math.” which is really just the bigotry of low expectations; this time in the form of female financial illiteracy packaged in baby pale pink.

to me, that $515 million represents the target placed on our back by a misogyntic culture that refuses to understand that beauty is a fucking skill.

it is not a birthright. it is not god’s will. it is time spent in the mirror learning the exact 90° angle needed to give my hair that bouncy, victoria’s secret mane; it is time spent twisting and tightening as my body trembles because a 30 minute pilates workout is actually a lot harder than it looks; it time spent death-gripping the side of the waxing table as my beautician removes every last hair off my body using a method that would probably be considered torture to some. beauty is a skill that is cultivated and refined to create the image that represents one’s most innate fantasy. it is not luck. it is not divination. it is painful and it requires funding if one wishes to execute it expertly.

so the idea that being beautiful would cause me economic insecurity, through the form of a higher perception of deservingness for termination, is a policy issue that should be taken seriously be the lawmakers of this country. i mean that literally.

discrimination is still discrimination, even if you believe that person deserves it.

and we’ll get into the interpersonal dynamics of being a beautiful woman in a professional setting at the upcoming diouana woman salon⁹, but the point i want to reinforce here, as an echo of the earlier points of this essay, is that few people take beautiful women’s beauty seriously. fewer take beautiful women seriosuly as people.

if you’re not promiscuous, you’re pompous. if you’re not pretentious, you’re pernicious.

and maybe you are all of those things. but that doesn’t mean they should get away with what they did to you.

“do you have [the] capacity to determine your master?”

in the wake of beauty-based discrimination in the workplace and a significant lack of accumulated assets over the long-term, what are we left with?

we’re left to take matters into our own hands, handle the situation like women, and actually devise strategies that get us what we want.

i’ve written about how the women who win in the game of life are those who refuse to be afraid of their own shadow.

i’ve also written about how power is not a young woman’s game. that’s best left to older women who have become institutionally relevant.

so, what are young women to do? those of us who are still becoming; those of us who know that our trajectories have a slope greater than 1; and those of us who understand that patience has all the time it needs.

for us few, but proud, diouana women, the answer lies in a two-pronged strategy: (1) developing humility as a political strategy and (2) crafting an exit plan from a place of abundance, not scarcity.

in song of solomon, toni morrison said that, “if you can’t take advantage, take disadvantage.”

for those of us who are disadvantaged on account of our sex, gender, race or for merely having the audacity to exist as a beautiful women in this life, humility as a political strategy is our defense mechanism in professional (and social) settings and executing our exit plan is our offense strategy. in the context of corporate careers, this strategy allows you to leverage your resources, inclusive of beauty, while not putting a target on your back.

to understand my perspective, consider my treatise on corporate culture:

“there’s a real indignity to corporate life. a hollowing of the spirit so to speak. but in that hollowness, there are opportunities to gain resilience. and that’s what keeps me going. the idea that this, too, shall past. and i’ll have been made better as a result. not by the bullshit i endured. but the woman i became in being able to navigate egos, eccentricities, and the ego-death that comes with playing humble while you silently consolidate power.”

as i said at the beginning of the second section of this essay, financial freedom is the last true remaining freedom. especially for biological women. and certainly in this techno-feudalist, increasingly oligarchical, world we find ourselves in.

our ability to control our cashflow, expertly manage our money, and accumulate assets, which in an asset-based economy such as that of the united states, is the only way we will obtain the freedom to exit. not just corporate, but any situation that is not to our liking, detrimental to our physical or mental health, and simply not up to our standards.

in this way, i reflect on the eternal words of toni morrison, “freedom is only sweet when it is won. when it is forced, it is called responsibility.”

if you want options in this life, you have to begin to take yourself seriously. you have to desire to be free from imposing, oppressive, and repressive systems.

there is no girl math, there is no hyperfixation on societal beauty trends that do not concern us, and there is certainly no self loathing.

there’s simply the quiet execution of our exit plan. the simple, spiritual, knowing that everything will work out in our favor and even better than we expect. and the careful refinement and articulation of our erotic capital.

the misogynists may try to diminish our light. the economists may tell us the economy’s gone to shit, as have our chances of asset ownership. but a diouana woman knows that her spirit must be stronger than her circumstances.

a diouana woman lives by those faithful words, “be strong and take heart and wait for the lord.”

help is surely on the way.

sweet dreams,
a diouana woman

p.s. truth or dare

you know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.

truth: reading academic journals because research trumps vibes. insisting on institutional relevance. breaking free of the noise.

dare: succumbing.

disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current. this content is for educational and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered financial advice.

1. the covid-19 national emergency was declared on march 13, 2020, and was officially in place for about 3 years and 2 months, until it was terminated on april 10, 2023, when president biden signed legislation passed by congress to end the emergency declaration, effective may 11, 2023.

2. march 21, 2020 to be exact.

3. beginning at 01:44 in the interview. listen to it here.

4. there’s an interesting essay to be written about the historical fact that the kardashians and jenners basically ‘single white female’ the black women around them. curious that.

5. is this or is this not a 40 in buss down!? “and you know that bitch BLACK!”

6. we all can’t live like lauren sánchez…yet!

7. basically, the idea that an attractive women will threaten the equilibrium of the environment by either monopolizing the male attention for herself or “use” (read: abuse) her “feminine wiles” to manipulate her way to success (where the stereotype of “sleeping her way to the top” comes from, among other origins).

8. sheppard, leah d. and stefanie k johnson. “the femme fatale effect: attractiveness is a liability for businesswomen’s perceived truthfulness, trust, and deservingness of termination.” sex roles (2019): 1-18.

9. it’s scheduled for saturday march 1, 2025 at 12p eastern. meeting invite here. and submit your questions here.