Sarah says she has 'ugly privilege'.

Imagine a world in which you could walk through life with reckless abandon, pursuing the activities you wanted without the soul-sucking annoyance of having to deal with unwanted advances from men.

This, says TikTok user Sarah, is precisely how life has unfolded for her, due to experiencing a phenomenon she calls 'ugly privilege' — or being unattractive and therefore 'invisible' to men. 

"It's not that I necessarily think I'm an ugly individual," she said. "But when I say I have ugly privilege, what I mean by that is men, in general, don't find me attractive. For the most part, men think I'm ugly, and they leave me alone. And to me, that's a privilege."

Watch: Tried and Tested — The 10-pump foundation hack. Post continues below. 

Sarah's video shows the flipside of what we know as "pretty privilege" — the idea that physically attractive people are offered more opportunities in society, and receive more favourable treatment than those who are less conventionally attractive. 

"Men in real life mostly leave me alone," she said. "It's very rare that I get male attention in real life, which is why it makes me so freaking uncomfortable when it happens."

Her now-viral video, which has attracted over 1.4 million views and has attracted nearly 4000 comments, resonated with several commenters, many of whom chimed in to agree that they, too, experience "ugly privilege".

@sarahs.tok

just a little explanation of what i mean when i say i have "ugly privilege". #uglyprivilege #letmeexplain #doesthismakesense

♬ original sound - Sarah

"100 per cent, we are just invisible," agreed one commenter, "men take no notice and, while it does hurt the ego a bit, it leaves us feeling comfortable and relatively safe in most situations!"

"This! This is my life!" gushed another. "This is largely why I'm comfortable travelling alone. I'm invisible."

And while, look, the idea of being immune to harassment or scrutiny from men sounds lovely in principle, there's a very dangerous idea unfurling here.

According to the Centre Against Violence, one of the biggest myths people mistakenly believe about rape is that it only happens to 'stereotypically' attractive people. 

"In reality, sexual assault prevalence rates are higher for younger women, women in financial hardship, women living with disability, and women experiencing lower levels of life satisfaction," explains its fact sheet on the issue, citing 2021 figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. In addition, women and men who experienced sexual abuse before the age of 15 are more likely to experience sexual assault as adults.

To her credit, TikTok creator Sarah does acknowledge this reality in a follow-up video, explaining: "There are men out there who will do those things to just about anyone. I just wanna make sure people are aware of that so that we don't get too comfortable feeling like we're invisible."

And it also must be stated that Sarah's aim here is to discuss how nice it is not to be hit on, rather than the physical or emotional danger women experience due to unwanted male attention.

For many viewers though, it appears the nuance of her argument might have been missed. As evidenced by several comments left below her video, a lot of people have equated not being attractive to men with being safe from violence or assault. That is categorically not the case.

However well-meaning proponents of 'ugly privilege' might be, there is an unmistakeable line between arguments like this, and other more damaging myths about rape (the idea that a woman's safety might be determined by what she is wearing, for example).

Rape and harassment are tools of control and aggression — not acts of desire brought about by how conventionally attractive a woman is. The crisis of men's violence against women in this country and around the world is not influenced by how many pretty women we have wandering around — in fact, it isn't influenced by women at all.

Instead, it's the result of something deeply wrong with masculinity, and with the patriarchal systems under which we live. To suggest that how we look can influence this behaviour at all is a dangerous, damaging message — and one that needs to be opposed. 

Feature Image: Tiktok/@sarahs.tok.