Ne-Yo’s “Ms. Independent” or Destiny’s Child’s “Independent Woman” provided an image for me of the woman I want to be: powerful, independent and sexy. Armed with stilettos and an executive office, I’d be earning the big bucks while building my own empire. I wanted to be smart and sexy, and the media tells me it is possible.

I was on a good track with the “smart” part. My Stanford acceptance proves my “super smartness” in most circles. Since I got that base covered, I moved on to assert that I was not just your typical nerd, a Plain Jane outfitted with glasses and a library card, but both a genius and a beauty. I soon got the “sexy” down. It was easy–smokey eyes, pouty lips, slightly visible cleavage, round bottoms in mini skirts and the modern-day-foot-binding: four-inch stilettos. Then it came down to the strut and the dance moves, and, having been mistaken as a professional stripper in Berlin, I thought I was golden.

People got the “sexy” message. Actually not only did they get it, that was all they got. At frat parties, people could not look past my miniskirt-encompassed behind nor my on-beat body-rolls. I would talk to some guy and nothing coming out of my mouth would be of interest except if it flattered his own ego-powered manhood. Ok, maybe one could blame it on the deafening music, but the girls in their own stilettos would glare at me, obviously calling me some names. So I would wonder why when I go to a gay party in a sexy getup, people go, “Girl, you are fierce!” Yet when I go to a frat party, my miniskirt and stilettos are screaming something else entirely. To some, the way I chose to dress has nothing to do with my wanting to look and feel good about myself, but everything to do with the male spectators–I became the object for their personal pleasure.

In fact, the entitlement to objectify me prompted random men to come up to me from behind, press their pelvis against me and try to maneuver my butt in such a way that served them pleasure. When they were faced with a deathly-inquisitive “wtf” glare, they asked, “Oh, you wanna dance?” Thinking to myself I already was, I would ask “Well, can you dance?” They would move awkwardly and I would realize, of course, grinding is their only idea of dancing–and I was none other than a servant.

Men (and women) cannot get past the “sexy” to see the “smart” (even the human). The “sexy” facade kept people only at the surface. I blamed people for their feeling that they were entitled to objectify me. Yet why do I interpret “sexy” as the four-inch stilettos and miniskirt-getup? Have I been seduced by the media to self-objectify and look like a magazine spread? Have I bought into the standard–the definition of beauty given to me by them? While I believed that I can do anything as a woman, I got the subliminal message, as Susan Douglas puts in Enlightened Sexism, that the most “important [underlying] task is to be slim, hot and non-threatening to men.” I thought I was empowered, being both smart and sexy, but I did not realize the extent to which I was subjugating myself to objectification.

There appears to be a problem comprehending the coexistence of smart and sexy. When we see pretty blond girls, the initial reaction is that she must be dumb. In fact, it actually takes a bit of mental gymnastics to comprehend that a sexy female could also be a brainiac and a self-made millionaire in real life. I, too, questioned the existence of such persons once upon a time. I have also involuntarily asked if a good-looking woman in a position of power has slept her way to the top. Therefore, to escape such a fate of objectification, and actually have the chance of being perceived as “smart,” one has to dress “modestly.” In fact, “to dress for success” is to show fewer curves and to renounce one’s own femininity. Vice versa, to be “hot,” one has to renounce her intelligence because it might be “threatening,” a la Cady Heron in Mean Girls.

Thus I have arrived at a paradox. The commercialized fantasy told me that I can have it all: “the brain” and “the beauty.” I tried to have both to empower myself like the successful women portrayed in media. Then I realized that people cannot look past the disguise of “sexy” and thus I am objectified, losing my agency. I blame society, on the one hand, for not being able to look beyond “skin-deep”; yet at the same time, I have been lured into self-objectification by the media in the first place. Therefore, I am left to question, what is self-empowerment for women now? Can we be “sexy” without being objectified? Is the “smart and sexy” fantasy really the way to go about it? If so, how do we reclaim agency?

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