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So Look as Ugly as You Can
Some online video shorts ooze bitterness over the alleged large-scale mistreatment of females in this country by, say, medical professionals (one of these series was called “an apple a day keeps misogyny away”). But the video I’m describing in this post wasn’t one of those; the hostess was engaging and seemed sweet in relating her story.
It went something like this: she had a friend who’d learned how to enhance what was hitherto an unsuspected natural beauty lying latent beneath a mousy, big-glasses type who worked at a lab. After this blossoming into her inheritance of good looks, everyone with whom she interacted began treating her differently. For example, if she boarded a bus and realized she didn’t have the fare, the driver would waive the payment with an “It’s all right, go ahead and take a seat.” Before her transformation, she would never have encountered such generosity.
I was with the vlogger up to a point: it’s true that beautiful people are treated differently, and it’s not fair or right. Average folks contribute much to society, and can be overlooked for special attention, for jobs, for free treats in coffee shops just for showing up* in favor of pretty faces. I’ve witnessed this preference for beauty in public places–perhaps you have, too. However, I couldn’t agree, at least not fully, with the hostess’s takeaway. The reason for this phenomenon, she posits, is that the patriarchal system wants to groom women to please the men, to keep women in their place. And the solution? You wanna resist those powerful old men? Look as ugly as you can.
Whooh, wow. Where do I start? First of all, I don’t believe most men are really thinking that hard about being drawn to beautiful women. It’s not a plot, not even a subtle one, to “train” women to do anything. And yet–and yet, there are often seeds of truth in destructive perspectives that make them harder to refute. Sure, men who want to use women, to debase them and to keep them in their place do exist. There are cultures, including sub-cultures in the US, that do want women to be eager to please and stay on men’s good side without regard for women’s own humanity and flourishing. Furthermore, lavishing attention and kindness on other human beings merely because of their outward appearance–while ignoring those to whom nature hasn’t gifted quite so much–betrays a lack of character.
However, painting the culture at large as having nefarious intentions when lovely women get attention is a mistake. Men get twitterpated around beauty, always have and always will. No evil patriarchy needed to carry out these deeds. Some of these men are noble, and some are not. And guess what? Women are fascinated by other women’s looks, too. Although beauty is like a genetic coincidence, we can’t ignore it. Our obsession seems deeply rooted in human nature.
Also, women are gaga over good-looking men. Recent example: I was sitting at a restaurant bar with a family member–I won’t say who. (Okay, it was my little brother.) And the servers were acting somewhat . . . well, a younger one was showing off for him. Even one older lady was extra nice, offering bonus coffee to carry out as we left. I told him what I’d seen later, and he hadn’t noticed. “Well, good to know,” he said.
Also, I was at a Walmart recently and noticed the tall, fit self-checkout supervisor with neatly trimmed dark beard and judged that an unusual proportion of women would suddenly be finding themselves in a quandary with their groceries and selecting the “help” button that would summon assistance from whoever was on duty. (I actually called for help, but it wasn’t because of that. The machine wouldn’t read the barcode on my bag of sweet onions, no matter what I tried. He quickly set it right and he was very courteous.)
Based on this video, though, I should tell my brother to grow his hair out all shaggy, wear baggy sweats, stop going to the gym, and quit his good job to take up his college vocation of delivering pizzas again. After all, the matriarchal system is out to make him a charming doormat to serve their own dark purposes, and he must start resisting their nefarious schemes before it’s too late.
*a situation I witnessed
Published in Culture
There is a standard of personal attractiveness, and good-looking people have it easier in all societies. Those are just plain facts (I helped the psychology researchers who did the seminal research on attractiveness when I was in grad school).
However, I give you Harvey Weinstein and Larry Ellison as examples of very homely men who attract women like flies. Powerful women also attract men, even if they are not gorgeous.
Correct. They’re not thinking at all. Which is why they often do stupid things around beautiful women.
Great post.
Oh, We’re thinking, alright… just with the wrong head.
How many “beautiful” women include in their beauty portfolio just smiling easily? Maybe that’s why some beautiful women are readily comp’d their bus fares when they smile at the driver? Attractive people can be pretty nasty and ugly and not smiling, but if you grow up with people happy to see you I’ll bet you’re more likely to smile back as a first instance.
This is so true. There was a beautiful girl in my high school. Everybody loved her. I remember seeing a picture of her and noticing that she wasn’t naturally beautiful, but her smile and her personality made her gorgeous.
When I go to the gym, I go out of my way to smile at people, and I love when they beam back. It’s like I’ve added a little moment of beauty to their day, and they reciprocate. It’s a lovely exchange.
That advice — to look as ugly as you can — strikes me as very similar to the Left’s strategy for dealing with economic inequality: make everyone equally impoverished.
Some people are always going to be more fortunate than others, whether by virtue of their physical attributes, their natural gifts, or their upbringing. “Life isn’t fair” used to be something we all got told when we were in kindergarten. The solution is not to “level the playing field” by trying to drag everyone down to the same level. Who’s going to decide how much good fortune is too much?
The solution is to stop worrying about what other people have, and figure out how to succeed with what you have.
Haven’t I heard for years that in working on their beauty often women are at least as interested in impressing other women to establish a place in the social pecking order as they are in impressing the men? (I’m a guy. What do I know except general chatter I have read over the years. )
What an interesting study! Maybe you could tell us more about it sometime. (And if you already have, you could share a link.)
As for intangibles that attract the opposite sex, I think women are attracted to confidence, strength, motivation (edit to add: work ethic), and intelligence. These qualities might be applied for good or ill in the man (for example, when women are drawn to confident “bad boys”) but quite often, women love strength as evident in kindness, intelligence shown in self-awareness and great conversation, etc.
Women in my area are big smilers out in public. And when I encounter them, the first thing I notice is a big, sweet smile and usually can’t help but be touched and respond.
An experience from almost twenty years ago, so the specifics may not apply anymore as dressing standards have deteriorated, but a colleague and I (both of us are men) were traveling together on a business trip and decided to run an unscientific experiment. I always wore a dress shirt, tie, and jacket, and he wore a polo shirt and no jacket. Hotel clerks and restaurant hosts always addressed me first, even though my colleague was more fit and probably considered better looking than I was.
And as I’ve written elsewhere, just as is true with other talents, most women are given something to work with in the looks department. Even the ugly duckling in the OP had to learn to enhance what was there naturally. It’s kind of a skill for the typical woman to look the best she can, sometimes passed on to her by her mother and definitely by other young women. And it’s not totally out of a drive to attract men that she wants to do this (although few people actually want to look ugly to men). It’s because women love and appreciate beauty and order, in herself and in others. She typically wants to take the raw materials that she’s been given and create a work of art.
In my mind, it’s not natural for women to purposely present themselves as dowdily as possible. Extreme circumstances might drive them to it. For example, I could see fear and trauma surrounding going out in public after being attacked. I also think there’s a cadre of young women today who rebel against beauty standards because they fear they can’t reach them. Instead of suffering rejection, they meet it head on–by trying to look ugly and, in some cases, by behaving unpleasantly and being brash and bold. This makes them more unappealing as prospective spouses and domestically-minded wives and moms, which pushes them further into the “I don’t care what you think” mentality.
It’s true that social and print media are increasing the pressure on women to look unrealistically perfect and on men to hold out for girlfriends who look like models, driving more hurting souls to act out.
I was recently at a five-star hotel with a beautiful woman who always knows how to dress and quite modestly accentuate a great figure. Boy, did she get the five-star treatment. It was like she was a celebrity. They wanted to do everything for her.
And maybe herein lies the dysfunction. Instead of enjoying looking her best partly for its own sake, some young women’s self-perception thrives or fails to the extent to which she is considered “hot” by men in public and by the standards of print and online media. Yes, it’s hurtful to be passed over in public and feels harsh and vulnerable to be under the magnifying glass that prevails in today’s culture. However, we forget that what matters is that those that love us value our traits, the whole package, and see past the imperfections to the innate cuteness, sweetness, and attractiveness that make up the individual.
As evidence of this, I present every Cosmopolitan magazine cover I’ve ever seen in the grocery store checkout line. I think I’ve seen exactly one such cover that didn’t include a plunging neckline and/or push-up bra.
The attraction for women is more complicated because they want guys that can take care of themselves and others. Making money mostly, but also self-assurance. I don’t like saying this, but you have to make more money than your wife.
Narcissistic personality disorder. Trust me, I know.
Also figure out how to stay ahead of bad Fed policy, that most people don’t think is as bad as it is.
I read a study too many years ago to give a citation that reported that for women, the most attractive attribute a guy could have was his sense of humor.
That made so much sense to me. Men like to make jokes, and women like to laugh. :) :)
I understand women really like it when men tell them they should smile more.
The comedian Jon Lovitz says this is BS. He says he has always been funny but women were never attracted to him until he became famous.
But what about The Male Gaze? I can’t speak from experience but my suspicions is that the better-looking the woman the less likely this is a big item in her ideological repertoire.
I am working on a piece of fiction in which the protagonist discovers the social power of being the second prettiest woman in the room.
Yep. They evaluate how much money you make and self-confidence. The root of it is starting a family and keeping them safe and fed, but the brutal reality is you have to make more money than the woman.
I don’t know what his experiences were, but the men and women I know have really needed good jokes more than money or fame or anything else. :)
I feel sorry for him. Perhaps he simply didn’t notice the women who laughed at his jokes.
On a more serious note, being super beautiful can be a challenge for women, especially very young women. My mom was an incredibly beautiful teenager and young woman, and frankly, I think it was the biggest problem she had. It can be very confusing emotionally.
She suffered from extreme mental illness later in life, and I always wondered what part her beauty, in and of itself, played in her life.
Beautiful young women get a lot of attention they really don’t want or can’t handle.
Every non-good looking guy knows this is a lie women tell themselves and others.
Dave Barry (for my money one of the funniest men alive) has also commented on the falseness of this trope.
My wife worked in Human Resources for a major airline. A joke often told by the (mostly female, but rather conservative) HR staff was, “What’s the difference between innocent flirting and sexual harassment? How attractive the woman finds the man.”
Think what you want, but I stand by my own observations and assertions and the findings of the study. And my first response still holds here: perhaps Dave Barry didn’t notice who was laughing at his jokes. :)
I had an interesting experience in the grocery store years ago. I was in line at the checkout. An older couple in their late eighties was at the register, and a young man in high school was running their groceries through. The husband was bagging the groceries, and the wife was standing in front of the register working through the payment process.
Suddenly the young man with a perfectly straight face said to the wife, “What time should I pick you tonight?”
“What?” she said.
“For the dance,” he replied affectionately.
“Oh my.” Her eyes twinkled and she smiled and laughed, as did her husband. The two of them turned and left the store, smiling and with a little jaunt in their step.
It remains my favorite high school kid story. I had two daughters and one son. I enjoyed all three of them and loved them immeasurably. But getting to know my son and his friends was so much fun. They constantly and always made great jokes and made everyone laugh.
I cannot imagine how dreary and sad life would be without young men and their great jokes. :)
I think some audience-oriented people–both men and women–are often shy in real life and they miss the ordinary positive social cues.
And that would explain Dave Barry’s and Jon Lovitz’s thinking that making good jokes didn’t matter in the dating game. :) :)