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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   3224 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 19, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Every time I see that blog post, I get irrationally angry.

The author has bad taste and a myopic, illiterate understanding of art and aesthetics, especially in relation to female beauty. There is a fundamental lack of knowledge about mythology, anthropology, psychology, symbolism, female archetypes.

The section on love/fertility goddesses should be a massive red flag. There is no engagement with the mythology surrounding the goddess figures he writes about. And any extrapolation of beauty standards from these mythological figures, without first a correct understanding of the mythos of said figures, is wholly meaningless, surface-level. And you cannot write about sexual archetypes and not mention Camille Paglia. The section on male gaze is laughable. No feminist theory was consulted in writing the piece. No Freud either, nothing. I am asking for the very basics here.

I hate the picture spam. It is dishonest

It is a really bad post. If I was going to try to annoy the majority of posters here, I would call it mansplaining, but that really is what it is. It starts from a strange premise that women don’t know what men find attractive, and are all out here starving themselves trying to be as skinny as coke era Kate Moss because they’re too stupid to understand that men like the slim thick build with big tits (something rather incongruent with the huge implant industry, almost entirely driven by female demand - ie not husbands demanding their wives get surgery). If anything, it’s men who seem more confused about what women like.

It's fine, you can always annoy us. The lesson of ‘mansplaining’ is that women find correct information threatening.

something rather incongruent with the huge implant industry

Not huge enough, evidently. He probably thinks it should be near-universal, personal interest well considered, given that it’s like 3 points of attractiveness for little effort.

He doesn’t really cover the issues with implants which is that rupturing is an issue, they have to be replaced every 10 years for life (expensive, time consuming, recovery process, inherent risk of anaesthesia), and the initial cost is quite high for many young women, plus you want to shop around to find someone good.

Most people also aren’t relentlessly focused on maximizing their hotness, which is why plenty of people don’t care about style, don’t go to the gym, are overweight etc.

The cost/benefit of those things is far higher, especially for women. Men don't care if women have no style, don't go to the gym, and are (slightly) overweight.

You’re typical minding when you say most people know this. People’s opinions bounce off random shit they hear (eg, lies by men reassuring their wives), they can’t cut through it with a sharp intellect like yours.

I'm just a single data point, but I definitely

  • ask my wife to change when she wears clashing/unseasonal patterns or colors
  • encourage my wife to go to the gym and take time of out of my work schedule so she can go
  • avoid buying too much junk food so we can both stay relatively thin

because I'm not attracted to fat, frumpy, flabby women, but maybe your point was about guys looking for a quick hookup?

We're talking about sexual attractiveness (or "maximizing hotness"), so yes, kind of. You want your wife to be healthy and active and balanced, which is understandable, but that has little relevance to attractiveness.

ask my wife to change when she wears clashing/unseasonal patterns or colors

This behaviour strikes me as rare, for combining two seemingly incompatible elements: the traditionally male role of leading/commanding, and the traditionally female role of giving attention and care to aesthetic things.

I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think the combination is as rare as you think. Middle and upper middle class "alphas" or "chads" tend to be masculine leaders while also dressing well and requiring their girlfriends/spouses to do the same. Think of the top salesmen in a sales department or C-suite executives. I suppose the key is that they are probably not interested in women's fashion for its own sake, but only insofar as their woman's raiment can be used to reflect her man's high status and good taste (if I'm honest, this is also partially why I do it, I guess).

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