BY ALEXA CHERRY
For the UAS Whalesong

I logged onto Facebook recently, and was surprised to see that I had been tagged in a post by someone I haven’t spoken to or even seen since my freshman year of college. Curious, and maybe just a little bit excited, I went to see what she had tagged me in. It turned out to be an article from Elite Daily titled “10 Things That Make A Girl Beautiful Instead Of Hot. (http://elitedaily.com/women/10-things-that-make-a-girl-beautiful-instead-of-hot/612403/)” Alright, I thought, and clicked through. Partly I was flattered – who doesn’t like being called beautiful, after all – but I was also curious. Weren’t “beautiful” and “hot” synonyms? What was going on here?

It turned out that quite a lot was going on. While I was very grateful to the person who tagged me for thinking of me – after all, the sentiment was lovely – I was only able to make it through about half the article before I closed the window, feeling mildly disgusted. Because, as it turns out, the issue with “10 Things That Make A Girl Beautiful Instead Of Hot” is that it caters to a concept called internalized sexism. Continue reading “Why “Beautiful vs. Hot” is Problematic”