I certainly wouldn't love her any less, but if she grew up to be short and round with gap teeth and spots and had her heart set on a tanned adonis football player, I'd have to tell her she's probably going to be disappointed. It *may* be he falls for her sense of humour or her intelligence or her general charm and poise. But saying she has an equal chance to the leggy blonde would be a cruel lie.
It's like I said about the American notion that all can succeed -- it sets you up for a fall and the ensuing disappointment is all the more unbearable.
But that's a terrible sentiment! I'm not espousing lying to kids, but it's not lying to tell your daughter she's beautiful and that other people will think that as well, no matter what she looks like. You don't know what this tanned football player fancies - if she's going to get her heart broken she might as well understand that it's because maybe she's not his particular brand of beautiful, not because she's just plain ugly and won't have a chance with anybody.
Well I certainly wouldn't say she doesn't stand a chance with anybody!
But it's about probabilities. Take just one simple component, like height. If you're a really tall woman or a really short man you're not going to have as big a pool of people who might find you beautiful. I doubt anything is going to change that.
You may not be able to widen the pool to include as many people as are going to buy into the lowest common denominator ideals of beauty, but there is a hell of a lot that can change the size of that pool by a huge amount. See my comment re: 'ugly' guys getting 'hot' chicks when it doesn't ever really work the other way round.
I am short and round with wonky teeth and I traditionally get exactly what I want - including conventionally gorgeous adonises (or rather aphrodites), should the mood take me.
Now, I know what you'll say - that's because I'm confident, charming, and let's not forget exceptionally talented.
And I used to agree, but then I realised that that was bullshit. There is singly no chance in hell that a gorgeous girl would turn around to me and tell me how sexy I was if I wasn't able to believe it of myself. No way in hell.
Furthermore, this whole concept is deeply sexist, and reeks of the P-word. Nobody has ever questioned whether 'ugly' dudes have just as good a chance of pulling gorgeous women as good looking ones - it's demonstrably the case that they can. Why should men shoot for the stars and women dial back their expectations?
What? Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me here? If you're disagreeing, you're wrong. Famously ugly men almost always marry famously beautiful women.
Yes but they're still ugly! And Dudley Moore may have been a hit with women but he had other things to make up for it that every short guy has going on as a sideline.
There's double standards. I may be guilty of them. I'm going to go away and think about it but I'm mostly going to go to bed because it's late.
And you wouldn't believe how many good-looking women I've not dared go anywhere near.
No, they're not! Not according to their wives/girlfriends! If they have women in love with them, those women find them beautiful. Sure, there may be the odd exception here and there who really are cows who're just with them for the money/status, but mostly if someone's prepared to sleep with you, they think you are beautiful. Generally speaking you do not fall for someone if you have no physical attraction to them. People who fall in love with 'uglies' are not an exception to this. Ergo these people are demonstrably not objectively ugly.
I haven't. On balance, I know way more men going out/hooking up with women conventionally 'out of their league' than women going out/hooking up with men out of theirs. I'm not saying that no 'ugly' guys have problems, I'm saying that a disparity exists.
Besides, sticking with known quantities, can you name me any famously ugly women dating famously beautiful men? The closest I can think of are older women with younger men, but every one of those women were once (or still are) very beautiful. I'm sure I don't have to tell you what different an absence of role models makes.
Now, I really don't want to get too deeply into this because I think the issue is tangential to the material point, but there are as I see it two reasons for this.
1. It doesn't hurt that male standards of beauty are far, far wider than women's. I'm not saying guys aren't still under pressure to look a certain way, and increasingly so as time goes on, but nobody can tell me that they get the same crap women do, not by a long shot.
2. No boy's dad would ever tell him he couldn't go for whatever girl he wanted, even if she was the personification of Helen of Troy and he was 'pug ugly'. Men are actively encouraged at every step the way to shoot as high as they can; they're taught that determination and self-confidence can get you anywhere and everywhere, they're largely proven right, and they have plenty of role models to support the concept.
Results:
"ugly men with beautiful women" - 2,750 "ugly men with pretty women" - 406 "ugly men with good looking women" - 490
"ugly women with beautiful men" - 3 "ugly women with handsome men" - 47 "ugly women with good looking men" - 8
See?
I will also observe that most of the results scanning down the women's pages were quotes from lines like "Why do we always see ugly men with beautiful women but never ugly women with beautiful men?" so the majority of those few hits they do have may well be false positives.
Joachim would tell his hypothetically plain daughter that she should probably scale her expectations back a bit if she had her sights set on Beckham, and concentrate on the equally ugly men who'll apparently be more likely to love her for her sparkling personality instead of her looks. Maybe he'd say the same thing to his plain son who set his sights on Angelina. But I doubt it.
I'd argue that we have less billionaire women who can thus attract whatever man they like. And definitely less ugly billionaire women, because they'll be even less likely to be successful, due to the usual negative societal effects.
I've heard men told repeatedly that women are out of their league. Been told it myself on numerous occasions. Possibly it's not the kind of thing men tell each other in front of women so much?
I'll dgive you the one on wider standards of beauty for men though :->
I suppose I'm thinking of women who assume that because they were glasses, no-one will find them attrractive. Or who are pale or freckled or short or whatever. Nerd culture often prizes these qualities, which I suppose helps to an extent.
But I've known a few who are gobsmacked that those qualities might be desired. Makes you wonder where the pressures come from, exactly.
I get thrown when I'm talking to people about sexism and conformity, and they clumsily point at the mythical boardroom of men (with cigars, obviously) ticking lists of fashions, standards, hemlines and recommiting to ensuring how awful bras are.
Hell, here I am in a children's charity, where I'm one man for 5,000 women. It's been run by women for 80 years. They're in charge. Except that there's something they're buying into. All this power and responsibility, and we give out teddybears with pink t-shirts for prizes. It really gets to me.
I think the Patriarchy is to blame for setting the standards, across the board, no question whatsoever. But just because it's called the Patriarchy doesn't mean that all the movers and shakers are men.
My issue with the phrasing of "the patriarchy is to blame for setting the standards" makes it sound like there's an actual organisation deliberately setting standards, which is clearly nonsense.
Something like "the patriarchical slant of society causes the standards to be the way they are" would seem less conspiracy-minded to me.
But semantics are important. They affect people's understanding of what you're saying.
If you're saying "The Patriarchy set our societal standards!" then a reasonable sized chunk of the population are going to look at you as if you were saying "The Communists are in charge of the Media!" or "The Lizard People eat our children!".
If you say "The patriarchal slant of society affects our standards" then you've got a more nuanced statement which doesn't push people away so much.
But why is it a *patriarchy* if some of it is women setting standards for women?
Elsewhere, I'm having a conversation about how I'm likely to want to stay home and raise the hypothetical kids. Both women and men have told me that's weird. In one case, that I was probably a paedophile.
If I'm getting it from both ends, so to speak, why is it a patriarchy?
The mass media. If 50% of people like X then any TV show that wants to kep its ratings will appeal to X. Doesn't matter if thre are 10% liking each of Y, Z, A and B, the TV shows are terrified of being cancelled, and will thus take no chances in putting anything other than The Thing Most Likely To Succeed out there. They magnify our tastes, feed them back to us, and leave (young) people assuming that the centre of the mainstream is all that exists.
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andrewducker) wrote2010-06-22 12:01 pm
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It's like I said about the American notion that all can succeed -- it sets you up for a fall and the ensuing disappointment is all the more unbearable.
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But it's about probabilities. Take just one simple component, like height. If you're a really tall woman or a really short man you're not going to have as big a pool of people who might find you beautiful. I doubt anything is going to change that.
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Now, I know what you'll say - that's because I'm confident, charming, and let's not forget exceptionally talented.
And I used to agree, but then I realised that that was bullshit. There is singly no chance in hell that a gorgeous girl would turn around to me and tell me how sexy I was if I wasn't able to believe it of myself. No way in hell.
Furthermore, this whole concept is deeply sexist, and reeks of the P-word. Nobody has ever questioned whether 'ugly' dudes have just as good a chance of pulling gorgeous women as good looking ones - it's demonstrably the case that they can. Why should men shoot for the stars and women dial back their expectations?
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as good a chance of pulling gorgeous women as good looking ones
Of course they have. And short ones too.
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There's double standards. I may be guilty of them. I'm going to go away and think about it but I'm mostly going to go to bed because it's late.
And you wouldn't believe how many good-looking women I've not dared go anywhere near.
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No, they're not! Not according to their wives/girlfriends! If they have women in love with them, those women find them beautiful. Sure, there may be the odd exception here and there who really are cows who're just with them for the money/status, but mostly if someone's prepared to sleep with you, they think you are beautiful. Generally speaking you do not fall for someone if you have no physical attraction to them. People who fall in love with 'uglies' are not an exception to this. Ergo these people are demonstrably not objectively ugly.
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I've seen men-of-non-mainstream-looks have just as many problems in dating as women-of-non-mainstream-looks.
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Besides, sticking with known quantities, can you name me any famously ugly women dating famously beautiful men? The closest I can think of are older women with younger men, but every one of those women were once (or still are) very beautiful. I'm sure I don't have to tell you what different an absence of role models makes.
Now, I really don't want to get too deeply into this because I think the issue is tangential to the material point, but there are as I see it two reasons for this.
1. It doesn't hurt that male standards of beauty are far, far wider than women's. I'm not saying guys aren't still under pressure to look a certain way, and increasingly so as time goes on, but nobody can tell me that they get the same crap women do, not by a long shot.
2. No boy's dad would ever tell him he couldn't go for whatever girl he wanted, even if she was the personification of Helen of Troy and he was 'pug ugly'. Men are actively encouraged at every step the way to shoot as high as they can; they're taught that determination and self-confidence can get you anywhere and everywhere, they're largely proven right, and they have plenty of role models to support the concept.
See?
I will also observe that most of the results scanning down the women's pages were quotes from lines like "Why do we always see ugly men with beautiful women but never ugly women with beautiful men?" so the majority of those few hits they do have may well be false positives.
Joachim would tell his hypothetically plain daughter that she should probably scale her expectations back a bit if she had her sights set on Beckham, and concentrate on the equally ugly men who'll apparently be more likely to love her for her sparkling personality instead of her looks. Maybe he'd say the same thing to his plain son who set his sights on Angelina. But I doubt it.
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I've heard men told repeatedly that women are out of their league. Been told it myself on numerous occasions. Possibly it's not the kind of thing men tell each other in front of women so much?
I'll dgive you the one on wider standards of beauty for men though :->
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Just in your experience. Dunno if there's a paper on this.
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I've certainly know enough men who would have relationships with women (and love them) they didn't consider beautiful.
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I suppose I'm thinking of women who assume that because they were glasses, no-one will find them attrractive. Or who are pale or freckled or short or whatever. Nerd culture often prizes these qualities, which I suppose helps to an extent.
But I've known a few who are gobsmacked that those qualities might be desired. Makes you wonder where the pressures come from, exactly.
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That's a rhetorical question, right? The answer is obviously The Evil Media And Those Who Buy Into The Standards It Sets.
The answer to who's to blame for nearly everything is The Evil Media.
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Well, yes.
Well, sort of.
I get thrown when I'm talking to people about sexism and conformity, and they clumsily point at the mythical boardroom of men (with cigars, obviously) ticking lists of fashions, standards, hemlines and recommiting to ensuring how awful bras are.
Hell, here I am in a children's charity, where I'm one man for 5,000 women. It's been run by women for 80 years. They're in charge. Except that there's something they're buying into. All this power and responsibility, and we give out teddybears with pink t-shirts for prizes. It really gets to me.
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Something like "the patriarchical slant of society causes the standards to be the way they are" would seem less conspiracy-minded to me.
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Nevermind. This is so not an interesting road to go down.
*wanders off muttering to self* Avoid semantics, avoid semantics, avoid semantics.
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If you're saying "The Patriarchy set our societal standards!" then a reasonable sized chunk of the population are going to look at you as if you were saying "The Communists are in charge of the Media!" or "The Lizard People eat our children!".
If you say "The patriarchal slant of society affects our standards" then you've got a more nuanced statement which doesn't push people away so much.
IMHO, of course.
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Elsewhere, I'm having a conversation about how I'm likely to want to stay home and raise the hypothetical kids. Both women and men have told me that's weird. In one case, that I was probably a paedophile.
If I'm getting it from both ends, so to speak, why is it a patriarchy?
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