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28 June 2014

Laurie Penny on attraction and sexism: Why can’t we fancy Jeremy Meeks, the “fine felon”?

The idea that women might not just be supporting characters in men’s stories, but rather individuals who are free to fancy bad boys, or weird guys, or women, is still unaccountably threatening.

By Laurie Penny

Jeremy Meeks is a very bad man. The entire news media is keen to remind us of this, after a photo of the convicted felon’s mugshot failed to have the desired effect when authorities in Stockton, California, shared it on social media and women noticed that, criminal or no, Meeks is really quite attractive. Apparently that observation makes women idiots, or evil, or both.

I’m familiar with Meeks’s face – that carved jaw, those steely blue eyes, the single tattooed teardrop making him appear at once very dangerous and just a little bit vulnerable – because my Facebook feed has been full of nothing else for the past week and a half. Yes, he may have done a great many terrible things, but, much to the distress of that part of straight dudekind that lives online, women fancy him anyway. Because he is pretty. I’m not typically even into studly guys, but objectively speaking, this is a very pretty man. It seems that saying so makes me not only a fool but everything that’s wrong with “girls” today.

Alexia Lafata of Elite Daily bewails in rather Biblical terms the fact that Meeks’s mugshot caused woman everywhere to “writhe in infatuation and lust. Lafata proposes that we turn our attentions instead to young marine Kyle Carpenter, who was awarded the Medal of Honour at the same time Meeks was being arrested for armed robbery. A photo is helpfully provided.

The message Lafata and a great many others are sending is: rather than this black man arrested for “gang-related offences”, you should fancy this morally upright, slightly homely white guy. Or Benedict Cumberbatch. Or really anyone else at all.

Men have largely grown up being told that if they do all the things men are meant to do and don’t get in too much trouble, they will be rewarded with a hot woman. If they are good guys, nice guys who mean well – and who isn’t a nice guy who means well? – they will eventually find the girl or girls of their dreams who will bear and raise their children and subtly overhaul their personal grooming routine, not in a gay way, just so they look a bit more grown-up and sexy. 

The idea that women might not just be supporting characters in men’s stories of personal development, that they might be their own people with their own desires – free to fancy bad boys, or weird guys, or women – is still unaccountably threatening. It rips right through to the plaintive core of the manosphere, the distress that women’s sexual attention isn’t being distributed justly, that women are evil and stupid for making the “wrong” decisions. At best, it’s the Nice Guys of OKCupid. At worst, it’s Elliot Rodger. 

Has there ever been a world where women expected sexual attention from men – wanted or unwanted – on the basis of their accomplishments and moral character? I don’t think so. Character of any sort is considered, at best, a fetching accessory, and at worst an active impediment to attraction. There is yet to be an accepted social narrative whereby homely but morally accomplished or heroic women get rewarded with the hot dude of their choice. Personally, no charmer has ever yelled at me in the street, “Hey, girl! I hear you’re a really nice person!”

New technology, same old rules: men are meant to be judged on their moral and personal worth while women are bodies and nothing more, and our sexual preferences, our personal desires, are condemned if they don’t serve the tired old narrative of boy-gets-girl, with boys do the getting and girls getting got. 

Comparing Meeks to Kyle Carpenter as a better model of internet crush, Ms Lafata suggests that “once we see someone’s appearance as more valuable or important than their character, it’s time to re-evaluate”. That’s what women have been saying over centuries of being judged on looks alone, and it’s what we’re still saying today. Could it be that payback, as they say, is a bitch?

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Laurie Penny will be in conversation with classicist and author Mary Beard on 30 July at Conway Hall, London. More details and tickets here.

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