I recently watched a tv show with high-level female lawyers, the kind of women who, in real life, would have spent years studying, training, paying tuition fees, passing exams, building contacts, struggling through criticism, and working twice as hard to be taken half as seriously. But on screen, looking as if they had arrived at court straight from a nightclub. Sharp contoured make up. Tight clothes. Extra high heels.
I have nothing against beauty or glamour. What I am forever confused is why after such big progress in understanding our psychology we still ok associating sexual contexts and even infantility with female success? A man can be shown as powerful with grey hair, a tired face, a badly fitting suit and still treated as per his title, while professional women with same signs would be seen as failing. The image of a successful woman, more often than not, comes with added, skills-irrelevant, looks-demanding expectations.
The successful female lawyer has to be sexy.
The successful female doctor has to be sexy.
The successful female real estate agent has to be sexy.
The successful female professor has to be sexy.
The successful female businesswoman has to be sexy, also cold, and preferably lonely.
Why are professional women still packaged as sexually available, infantile, and endlessly watchable? And why do so many of us women accept being presented this way?
The Eyelashes Extension Dilema
Let’s now think about these long eyelash extensions. On stage, they make sense. Under bright lights, viewed from a distance, they frame the eyes. On camera, they look beautiful. Now at the supermarket checkout at 10 in the morning, they look slightly confusing. Overall very useful make up accessory becomes a hint of something misplaced and sometimes even sad. Same thing applies to how women are styled in television, film, social media, and advertising. The image that sells a fantasy. Catches attention, feels empowering even. Until, as everything else, this fantasy leaks into everyday life and this same image is expected from the real people we meet eye to eye.
A film maker Laura Mulvey wrote about the “male gaze” in cinema in 1975. Her idea was simple and obvious once named: film has often been built around a way of looking where men act and women are looked at. The male character moves the story, while the female presence decorates it. But there’s more: the camera does not just record a woman, it teaches the audience how to see her. A slow shot from legs to face. A blouse opened slightly more than the job requires.
Heels made for standing, not walking. And the way she gets her way – by being beautiful, sexy, infantile and smart in a sleazy way.
We look at it and roll our eyes, because it is absurd! We all know it. And then (hear me out) we copy parts of it because we saw it so many times! Hollywood, advertising, music videos, reality television, and now social media have repeated the same lesson for decades: a woman may be competent, but she must remain visually available. Women’s presence was always a part of your social currency, but now, in the age of so many editing tools, this currency feels same fake as crypto. Women’s skills alone are rarely considered entertaining enough. The professional title has to flirt!
Our girls learn this before they can understand it. We praise little girls for being pretty, sweet, tidy, cute, nice. They learn it from cartoons, advertising, music videos, dolls, clothes, social media, and the way adult women (no men) in our real life acts. Girls grow up inside this soup of visual expectations and then we see a teacher with an extra long lashes serving this soup in contexts that doesn’t match the common sense.
I’m Just a Girl Trend Among Young Professional Women – The Infantile Part
While the sexualisation is obvious, the infantilisation is tricky. When I say infantility I refer to the little-girl voice used by a woman who is negotiating money. The wide-eyed expression on a woman who has three degrees and asks for promotion. The tiny gestures, the helpless smile, the “I’m just a girl” vibe from someone who is fully capable of running a company, raising children, surviving divorce, and reading a legal contract same or better than the man across the table. Overall the styling of grown women as unfinished adults.
And it’s not only the behaviour, it’s in our make up trends too. Products to look younger, smoother, softer. Techniques to make your eyes bigger, nose – smaller, skin – hairless like a baby. Or in trends of “encouraging” names: “Girlboss” ;“Hot babe”; “My girl.” So many random “girls like things” for grown women with children, degrees, mortgages and tax responsibilities.
Infantility is when a grown woman is socially encouraged to be smaller, decorative if you like. The tricky part is that it is often sold back to us as something we choose ourselves. The professional woman feels powerful, then in pictures edited to look younger, smoother, cuter. The woman is styled to be desirable, yet also childlike enough not to intimidate. That mixture is everywhere. The sexy schoolgirl fantasy is still normal. Have you ever met a women who would be dreaming about a schoolboy in the same infantile way? We are all against Epstein, while culturally we sexualise women as adults and soften them into girls at the same time.
We promote the obsession with tiny bodies or anti-aging products. The filtered faces with no evidence of lived experience. We attach the “girl” language to grown women. We minimise the full adult woman, with opinions, experiences, rights and replace them with a more acceptable version: pretty, pleasing, manageable, and easier to sell.
In 1996 two psychologists Peter Glick and Susan Fiske’s introduced two forms of sexism: Hostile sexism – the obvious form of sexism. It sees women as trying to control or challenge men, especially through feminism, sexuality, or demands for equality. And benevolent sexism – the kind of sexism that sounds flattering, idealises women as pure, delicate, nurturing, or needing male protection. The key idea is that hostile and benevolent sexisms work together creating an ambivalent attitude toward women: women are admired and protected in some roles, but disliked or punished when they seek independence or power.
This is why some women might hear praises for being charming, good with people, positive and enthusiastic when they ask for a promotion, that will not be offered to them. All lovely, positive yet thin words when a woman is asking to be recognised for judgement, authority, skill, courage, analysis, or leadership.
Swimsuit Or a Sweater?
Sex sells, we know. Sexualisation gets clicks. A sexy thing attracts attention faster than knowledge would, because a person, unlike object takes very long to explain. Objectification theory, proposed by Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts, says that girls and women historically learn to see themselves from the outside, as if watched. Their famous 1998 study asked women to try on either a swimsuit or a sweater, then complete a maths test. The women in swimsuits performed worse. The researchers suggested that this happened because of self-objectification taking up mental energy while wearing bikini. In other words women were thinking how their body looks like when completing that test in bikini, and that took attention from the main task.
Don’t get me wrong. Women’s body, beauty, clothes or makeup is not the problem. The problem I’m seeing is the constant requirement to turn female presence into a sales technique. To perform sexuality for other’s observation rather that feel it from within. Real sexuality belongs to the woman from the inside. It is connected to the body, senses, emotion, imagination, consent, intimacy, play, privacy, confidence, and choice. While performed sexuality belongs to the viewer and pairs with objectification. Together they ask, “How do I look to them? Do they want me? Am I still desirable? Am I enough?”
Many women are trained in performed sexuality and left almost illiterate in their real one. They are confident in sexy poses for a photo and incomparably less comfortable about what feels good in their own body. They know how to dress to attract. But then they know little to nothing about how to receive, choose, say yes, say no, feel pleasure, feel real confidence in their unedited skin.
Social media channels, all men-owned and men-led including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, Snapchat, Reddit, and YouTube give women sexual display and calls it freedom. At the same time dimming our real bodies, needs, ageing, actual softness and actual pleasures if that’s not so sexy to men. This does not mean women must become grey, shapeless, joyless, or afraid of beauty. I would never advise that. A woman can be elegant, feminine, sensual, colourful, expressive, and professional. The question I suggest to raise is simple: is this my decision, or someone else, is this something that I actually experience in my body, or it’s an illusion for the men’s gaze?
Now when it comes back to the real life, not a virtual remember that woman does not have to decorate the room/picture/someone’s presence. In our professional environment we should care of bringing value, preparation, respect, and competence. Choose clothes that allow you to move, sit, think, speak, work, and be heard. Avoid using your body as the main argument unless your work is performance, fashion, beauty, fitness, or erotic entertainment.
Notice when your “feminine” has become someone’s “available”, “youthful” has become “infantilism”, “confident” has become “uneccesery exposed.”
What We Can Teach Our Daughters And Sons
As a woman, mother, a master’s student in psychology, and a mentor for women going through life changes or raising children, I think about this a lot, not only how a young girls read these messages, but also how does it look to the young boys too. What do boys learn when female authority is often served with visual pleasure? What do young women learn when success looks like a degree in one hand and a beauty filter in the other? What do older women like me learn when the only acceptable ageing is expensive denial?
I do not want women to cover themselves in shame. I want women to stop paying a beauty tax on every achievement. Some women genuinely love glamour. Good. Let them. Some women love simplicity. Good. Let them. Some women are sensual, bold, quiet, elegant, modest, dramatic, practical, playful, serious, earthy, stylish, plain, glowing, ageing, changing. Good!
The confusion begins when all these possibilities are squeezed into one instruction: be successful, but make it sexy. Guys, it belongs to the Marilyn Monroe era: smile, seduce, lure, soften, shine, be wanted, sell the dream. Women have changed. Work has changed. Money has changed. Family has changed. Power has changed. Our rights have changed.
So why do we keep same techniques?
