That's the thing about being considered an attractive female: people tend to assume that you must not be smart or competent -- another kind of bind that worms its way into women's heads. "No one will take you seriously as long as you look like that," said the critic in the mind of an ambitious twenty-something who had been told years before by her sixth-grade teacher that she ought to dress conservatively to compensate for her big breasts. "Don't shine too much," said the critic to a smart, attractive woman who holds a director-level position at a national environmental organization.
So women learn that they're in trouble if they either look too good or too plain according to prevailing standards, and that's just one of several unmanageable measures that almost invariably end up embedded in their inner monologues. Here's another: women tend to be put down and dismissed for being either assertive or candid (even as men are regularly rewarded for both of those qualities). On the other hand, according to the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, women who exhibit stereotypically "feminine" attributes like friendliness and compassion aren't viewed as leaders and have trouble getting promoted.
Internalizing this no-win situation, women expend an ungodly amount of energy trying to formulate just the right personality. A survey conducted by MSNBC and Elle magazine found that women worry about coming off as "too confident and aggressive for fear of being labeled bitchy. But they also don't want to be wishy-washy or risk being called indecisive or emotional." That bind often manifests itself as an inner critic that finds them inadequate in every way. "You will never truly fit in," said a voice inside the head of a Latina communications professional.
In the event that women do break through that specter of self-doubt and vocalize their opinions, they tend to get smacked down for it -- by voices without and within. During a Republican primary debate in which all the candidates continuously interrupted and talked over one another, Donald Trump singled out Carly Fiorina, the lone female on stage, asking the audience, "Why does she keep interrupting everybody?" Naturally, he didn't fault his male competitors for doing the same thing, just the woman among them. Ten and a half months later, after he'd advanced to the general election, facing Hillary Clinton in their first debate, he thought nothing of interrupting her on 51 separate occasions, including 25 times in the first 26 minutes, an astonishing oratorical feat.
This may make Trump sound like a uniquely egregious blowhard, but his behavior turns out to be quite illustrative, even if in an exaggerated way and on a really big stage, of a common double standard. Social science research has, for example, found that teachers tend to permit boys to answer questions out of turn. But the same behavior from girls is often met with a scolding.
Girls observe and absorb such double standards, as well as the criticism they receive for speaking up. Then they police themselves. As adults in professional settings, women talk a lot less than men when they're outnumbered by the opposite sex -- 75% less, according to a team of researchers from Princeton and Brigham Young universities. And if they do dare say something, they tend to hear an inner voice telling them that they sound dumb.
"God, I just said such a stupid thing," a campaign director at a national advocacy organization thought to herself. "You don't want to come off as an angry black woman, do you?" said the inner critic to an executive recruiter. To a nationally recognized artist: "You sound like a dumb girl." To a Ph.D. with a successful career in higher education, "I shouldn't have talked so much." And to a thirty-something paralegal: "Your boss thinks you're an idiot, and it's because you are one." You can imagine how much she speaks up.
In an attempt to outrun such criticism and those voices echoing in their heads, many women wear themselves out striving for perfection. As one researcher summarized the situation, ambitious women "exist by putting out maximum energy at all times, trying to do everything and do it well. It is not enough that they attempt to be outstanding in their work; their perfection complex also causes them to strive for a Jane Fonda body, a house that could be on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens, and perfect children." They think they're only okay if they're flawless -- and in the end often come to believe that they're unlovable. (Depression, as it happens, is more common among women.)
"If other people really knew you, they wouldn't love you," said the inner critic to a newly married woman. "You should just accept that you're going to be alone for the rest of your life," it said to an Asian-American woman in her thirties. To a writer and teacher who volunteers her time helping the mentally distressed, the critic, speaking of her friends, said, "Why would they love you?"
Calling Out the Inner Critic
If all of this sounds like a major downer, there's some upbeat news buried in it. After I spent months informally surveying women about that voice in our heads, a surprising thing happened. While it was painful to hear the ruthless things we regularly think about ourselves, I found an overwhelming commonality among us as well. At first I had just wanted to understand the critic in my own head. What I discovered was a practically identical voice ricocheting around in nearly all the women I knew. And that taught me that there isn't something wrong with any one of us, a realization that gave me a powerful feeling of solidarity with all those other women in (and not in) my life.
I also started confronting my own inner critic. Surprisingly enough, my efforts were remarkably successful. A simple approach -- countering its negative declarations with positive ones of my own -- proved to be a potent antidote. I'm not talking about anything fancy. "I'm doing a pretty damn good job," I started saying to myself as a rejoinder to that critic. After a while, that positive declaration became a knee-jerk response and provided an exhilarating upgrade on the old negative tune.
All of this has implications for our present poisonous political climate. It's easy enough to feel hopeless, given our no-longer-so-new president and his unnerving administration, yet these findings about the inner critic suggest that some powerful forms of resistance to the world Donald Trump represents are accessible close to home. In her book Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit writes that part of activism -- maybe a big part of it -- involves embodying the values you're trying to promote. "If your activism is already democratic, peaceful, creative," she writes, "then in one small corner of the world these things have triumphed."
In the case of the inner critic, the corner of the world in question is the interior terrain of your own mind. There, it's entirely possible to call out the critic's refrain as grade-A bullshit -- and then proceed accordingly.
Mattea Kramer, a TomDispatch regular, is a writer of cultural commentary. She'd like to know what your inner critic says to you, so drop her a line (or a tweet).
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