"Ugly Feminists"

I saw a post on Tumblr with the following tweet and below the tweet, a compilation of photos of attractive celebrities (Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj, Beyonce, Rihanna, Emma Watson, Angelina Jolie, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and two girl groups that I don’t recognize).

 

 

Beneath the pictures were comments such as “Can I be this ugly then?”

The photos of the attractive celebrities, all of whom have identified as feminists, send the message that obviously the tweeter is wrong and feminists are attractive.

The problem with this is that it shouldn’t matter whether a feminist is attractive or not. Feminism is about  promoting the idea that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men. It's not a beauty contest. You don't need to be attractive or pretty or beautiful to want women to have equal rights.
This tends to pit women against each other actually.
There was also a thing in 2014 where the hashtag #feministsareugly was started. Many feminists assumed that it was created by a misogynistic troll and tweeted selfies, particularly selfies of them looking attractive.
This ended up being criticized, as shown in this link 
One response said, "Taking over #FeministsAreUgly is great, but I also think we're missing an opportunity to have a nuanced conversation about what "ugly" means."

This makes me think of the whole plus size argument in regards to plus size models, where people say the model doesn't look plus size, or looks too good to be called plus size. People get into an uproar when someone is called fat or plus size or ugly- but only when they disagree with the level of attractiveness of the person.

It's just interesting how attacking someone's appearance becomes the first line of offense when attacking someone's political or social viewpoints. It's also seen in random memes on Facebook about liberal democrat women vs. conservative Republican women (obviously Laura Bush is way prettier than  Michelle Obama, according to my crazy uncle.)