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As always, everything comes from the fact that women are born, but men are made.
Men only have value when they prove themselves. A woman, on the other hand, is of value the moment she finishes puberty. It is said that young women become social millioniares, which is true, but only half the story. The other half is that they are defenseless millionaires. To be a young woman is like being given a million dollars, but being forced to carry it everywhere in a clear backpack, in the roughest neighborhood in town.
The hero leaves society as a boy, struggles against adversity, grows as a result, and returns to society a man.
A heroine cannot go on this journey. A young woman is of great value as it is, and to leave society would mean instant predation and likely death.
The heroine's story is the mirror image, because the conflict is fundamentally social. In the heroine's journey, the young woman is already flawless, but she is not recognized by society (or at least the social class she aspires to). Instead of struggling against adversity to improve herself, she struggles against society, changes society, and is recognized and accepted.
A woman will write a story about a woman who struggles to be accepted and recognized in spite of her inherent goodness. Men read that same story and see a faultless female protagonst who undergoes no challenge and no growth.
A man will write a story about a woman with flaws, and how she struggles against them and is changed by the struggle. Women (especially 21st century ones) will read that same story and see a story about how women aren't allowed to be competent and flawless, and think the man is implying that women don't deserve acceptance.
If you've had the (mis)fortune of reading kid's books about scientists, the pattern becomes obvious. Books for boys about male scientists are about the challenges the scientist faces, the spark of inspiration, and the joy of seeing hard work rewarded. Girl's books about scientists don't have any science in them at all. The woman scientist's social challenges are detailed (nobody believes in her because she belongs to some specific groups), but she believes in herself, and because her self-belief is so strong, one day she is accepted and celebrated. The social struggle is foreground, the science is merely background.
We cannot escape our ancestral scripts. Man struggles against the world, and strengthened by it. Woman struggles against society, and is accepted by it.
I understand the opinion that women are born, but men are made, at least if we're talking about the real world. But this is fiction, storytelling. What stops men from writing stories where they're already wonderful and people just don't realize it?
People talk about good stories, flaws, struggles, and character growth. I think most of that is bullshit. Stories are essentially about people, not about the world. People come up with all sorts of reasons so they can be proud of the stories they like, so they can claim to have good taste, to be sophisticated.
But their tastes are ephemeral. Men and women clearly have different wants in fiction. So taste is biological. And if it's biological, then the very standard by which we judge a good story can shift with the generations.
Suppose I like stories about a Gary Stu who's perfect and loved by everyone. What if I become a tyrant, crack open people's skulls to check whether they share my taste, and execute anyone who doesn't? Only people with good taste get to breed. After a few generations, the world will be filled with people who love Gary Stu, and he'll become the new literary standard. Such is the great providence of nature.
Is the problem men? Is the problem women? I think it's consciousness.
Consciousness gives birth to the ego and to stories. The ego seeks to unify the me of the past with the me of the future. Unification across time. Stories and language seek to unify different people through shared myths and a shared destiny. We are all humans. Unification across space. It's a similar process, and both seek to avert contradictions.
People dislike contradictions. But do contradictions cause any physical harm? No, only mental discomfort. Animals don't agonize over them the way humans do. People suffer when their wishes contradict one another, when the me of tomorrow regrets the actions of my past self, even though I acted according to my wishes at the time. Likewise, people feel discomfort when they realize that others are genuinely different, that their wishes can contradict and conflict with their own.
Consciousness is ultimately about the self. The greatest pain and the greatest fear of humanity is the loss of self. At its core, it's losing your body. Losing your limbs, being unable to walk, unable to see. But it's also growing old, losing bodily functions, becoming unable to eat or speak.
And the body isn't just physical. There's also the mental body, your ego. The fear of losing your convictions, your dignity, your morals. And the mental body isn't just your individual mind, but also the enormous mental structures that extend beyond it. Your family, your company, your country, humanity.
Your body is what allows you to interact with the world. You can pick up an apple with your hand. But to do something bigger, to build a skyscraper, a spaceship, you need a larger body. You don't move your hand, you move your company, your nation. Just as your brain moves your limbs, your consciousness moves these larger bodies.
I'm not just a part of my family, my country, humanity. I am my family, my country, humanity itself. Arrogance? The brain is just one part of my body, yet it declares itself to be the entire me. So why should I be any different?
Consciousness is what makes this possible. And it absolutely demands unity.
To me, what people call Trump Derangement Syndrome is not a syndrome of the physical body, but of the mental body. It's the absolute horror of feeling your own body fail, no longer functioning according to your will.
I see the conflict between men and women in much the same way. When their wishes genuinely contradict each other, the unity of the self begins to unravel. What you thought was your own body suddenly seems alien to you.
Perhaps the culture war is simply a form of body dysmorphia. Consciousness and modern technology have allowed us to see the entire world as our own body.
And the body refuses to obey.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is really less about losing the body, and more about the wrong person being allowed to rule, and thus the body-politic if you like. The thought is that the ego of these people cannot accept that other people who win elections have the right to implement their agenda. They can’t accept Cthulhu swimming straight instead of hard left. And seeing that they aren’t getting their way causes distress, especially for those who have made politics their religion. It would be for them like what would happen to a Southern Baptist who wakes up one morning to find that America is now ruled by Sharia law. If you see that not only your religion under the thumb of those who disagree and who are suddenly allowed to rule over the country and them.
Well, my theory is less about explaining people's motives than their reactions. Democracy already assumes that people we dislike will sometimes govern us, and history has no shortage of intense reactions to lost elections. But just as there are different genres of horror, I think there are also different genres of political distress.
So what is the particular horror of modern politics, of Trump and wokeness? What is so peculiar about it that people reach for the word "syndrome"?
I think it's the horror of the impossible becoming real. It's not merely horrific news, but news you never believed possible in the first place. For many people, Trump couldn't possibly become president. It was just common sense. Only the despicable could have voted for him. Wokeness is somewhat similar. These people are crazy, surely nobody takes them seriously. Yet half the country voted for Trump, and wokeness is the state religion.
This isn't the horror of encountering a monster. It's the horror of discovering that your mother has already been devoured and replaced by one. Your sanctuary has been overturned. What you depended on has turned against you. Where can you even escape? Politics consumes everything. There is no safe place.
That's why I connect it to body dysmorphia. Your body is your first sanctuary, the most sacred place, the thing you trust without even thinking about it. Its usurpation is the highest despair, the plot twist modern cinema is so obsessed with. The overturn of everything. It also explains the feeling of revulsion, which is commonly associated with disease. It's not just that people you dislike have won. They're spreading, and they can contaminate others, turning everything you thought was safe into something alien.
And finally, there's the feeling of impotence.
As I explained in my original comment, when you want to pick up an apple, you move your arm. When you want to build a rocket, you move other people. Society is very much like your body in the sense that you act through it to accomplish things. When animals encounter a problem, they move their bodies to solve it. But humans can do more. They can mobilize the entire society.
The consequences are terrifying. Mountains can be torn apart, rivers diverted, islands created or destroyed, all through the collective will of human beings. Politics is the body of modern humanity, an instrument of power that feels almost omnipotent. It's intoxicating. And awakening from that feeling is almost as brutal.
If your mother turns into a monster, you can still run. Your sanctuary is ruined, but your body remains reliable. You can punch, you can flee. But when the entire society seems to turn against you, what can you even do?
The institutions have been taken over. The common, decent people you thought were just like you, your family, your reliable limbs, turn out to be monsters in disguise. Your body has been infected. It no longer moves according to your will, and the infection is coming for you.
That's why I use the metaphor of body dysmorphia. It captures three distinct terrors: impotence, despair, and revulsion.
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I've said before that I think the internet and culture are dealing with a lot of people who really only became aware of politics near the end of GWB (who they thought was clearly evil) followed by 8 glorious years of Obama and Hope and Change, and thought that would be the future forever (but that next election it would instead be a woman's turn, but still on the Left).
I think we honestly have far far too many people who have made politics into both their identity and their religion. The public is far too “engaged” and it leads them the believe that politics is the only thing that matters. Add in an unhealthy amount of Last Psychiatrist style narcissistic tendencies and you end up with a toxic stew that can only lead to mental health disorders and the destruction of the country through polarization.
Watch some World Series baseball. Carve a pumpkin. Get a hobby.
It appears that Bush demoralized moderate rightists whereas Obama did the same to moderate leftists.
I don’t see it as demoralized to keep politics to one of several things you keep track of. That’s honestly a good thing, in my view. Because politics cannot fill the voids that it’s asked to do by the radical left and right. It cannot make up for a lack of personality, nor can it make up for a lack of hobbies or social interaction. It cannot work as a religion either. And when politics is turned into all of that it ends up being a cause for verbal if not physical “jihad” where the others who merely disagree with you are to be subjugated and punished for being politically incorrect from your perspective. At that point, you set the table for killing people. It’s a dangerous game and I’m not sure where the lines will be drawn.
What I was referring to is that moderate Red Tribers used to support a normie-friendly tendency of 'compassionate conservatism' coupled with a sort of watered-down neoconservatism that allows average Joes to strut around as militaristic tough guys and is based on the notion that Middle Eastern wars can actually be cakewalks. When this nonsense fell apart, moderate Blue Tribers seemingly got the idea to promote a sort of more or less fake civic nationalism intended to 'heal the scars of a racist past' and improve relations between white and black citizens etc. This also fell through so everyone was disappointed in the end, which is fertile ground for political polarization.
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Is John Snow a cinderella story? I don’t see GOT as him going off to train and grow. It seems like his successes were always because he was in fact elite blood with great traits. He’s more of a Christ figure I think but like Cinderella Christ was always good and just ruler but the world had not figured out that he was Christ. Christ I guess is a Cinderella character.
At least in the TV series, Jon Snow's "going off to train and grow" was his time north of the wall.
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We don't know? The story isn't done
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Isn’t this the underlying theme of most superhero fiction?
No. Most superhero fiction is about men who are ridiculously competent and powerful... but alas have enemies to match. And in the origin stories, they tend to have to become wonderful people. Peter Parker has to make a moral error which kills his Uncle Ben in order to learn. Superman has had more origin stories than I can count, but in many of them as a boy he uses his powers selfishly and has to be corrected. Batman's origin story is creating himself from nothing but money and his butler after the death of his parents.
This trope predates superhero fiction. Arguably it is the main story arc of The Epic of Gilmagesh, which would make it quite literally the oldest one in the book.
Man is born strong by divine gift, learns moral wisdom in order to direct his strength towards a happy ending, is the original plot; good man learns practical wisdom in order to become strong and achieve a happy ending is the modern variation.
Today's essay, class, is "Is Gilmagesh a Gary Stu?"
If he is, I'd ask a followup: What's the first major myth/story where the male lead isn't a Gary Stu?
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I’ll give you Batman, but it’s definitely there in both Superman and especially, Spider-Man. Also not a superhero movie but It’s a Wonderful Life.
I think that there is a subtle difference between It's a Wonderful Life and a female-focused story where society discovers how wonderful the woman is. (For example the Cinderella tale.)
In It's a Wonderful Life, the main character makes various sacrifices -- he partially loses his hearing saving his brother; he cancels his honeymoon to save his bank; he never makes it out of Bedford Falls despite his burning desire to travel. And so on.
So it's not just the world discovering how great he is. Rather, the main character is suffering and sacrificing to prove to the world how great he is.
By contrast, Cinderella is made to suffer (by doing household chores) but that's not to prove that she is great; it's not to earn her stripes; it's not to accomplish anything at all, other than to (narratively) show that society (as personified by her wicked stepmother) doesn't appreciate her value and therefore mistreats her.
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It's in It's a Wonderful Life (but note George is no neophyte; he actually has done things) and probably some but not all of the Superman origin stories, but Peter Parker refusing to stop a robber who later kills Uncle Ben is Spider Man's defining moment, and is definitely not about him being already wonderful.
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To me, this is an interesting question. From the female side of things, the story that comes to mind is Cinderella. Note that to become a beautiful and desirable woman, Cinderella didn't need to train with a Jedi master or do battle with some Dark Lord. She just needed a deus ex machina to provide her some nice clothes and a sweet ride.
So is there a male Cinderella story out there? What comes to my mind is The Once and Future King by T.H. White. It tells the story of a young King Arthur who is consigned to a subordinate and secondary role in relation to his foster-brother Kay. Possibly it served as inspiration for Harry Potter and Dudley which is also a sort of male Cinderella story in some respects.
But what's very different is that these male Cinderellas (1) go off on adventures; and (2) receive education and training. Only then can they assume their destinies.
So why the difference? The only thing I can think of is that generally speaking male main characters are aimed at male audiences and boys (and men) aren't very interested in stories where the male hero is already wonderful and it's just a matter of people realizing it.
In other words, it seems that this idea that women are born while men are made is believed at a very deep level by most people; perhaps it's even informed by our genes.
Harry Potter assumes his destiny (as a wizard, and therefore as a higher being than Dudley) before he goes off on the adventures or receives his education and training. Until about two thirds of the way through the first novel, everything good that happens to Harry is an inheritance (his parents' wizarding DNA, wealth, and social network)
Cinderella marrying the prince is the resolution to the story. Harry learning he's a wizard is the setup to the story. After Cinderella marries the prince, they live happily ever after. After Harry goes to Hogwarts, his real story only starts. Although many things in his life are looking up, he encounters many new problems to deal with and things to learn. As magical as Hogwarts is, it's full of bullies, hard schoolwork, and dangerous dark wizards. Yes, as a wizard he's something more than a muggle, but he needs to learn how to wizard first. He can't just collect his destiny, his gift is just a talent he needs to cultivate.
And as his abilities grow, so do his challenges, because his new antagonists are also wizards.
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I disagree. Cinderella marrying her prince = Harry defeating Voldemort (and to some extent, marrying Ginny).
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I've heard this complaint for Naruto too. And the answer is the same: if you could succeed by only hard work, why didn't one of the hundreds or thousands of other people who worked hard succeed before you? The story only makes sense if the main character has some natural advantages, and the hard work gets him the rest of the way.
Naruto, especially before shippuden, is a "power of friendship" story much more than it is about hard work. The author almost spells it out at times, with Gaara mirroring what Naruto could have become had the village continued to shun him. It is a story about how the people around us shape who we become, and this theme is explored through the lenses of the various characters.
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Harry Potter absolutely has good things happen to him by his own efforts further down the line - it's just that the resolution of the opening "Cinderella" plot isn't one of them.
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We don't know what happens after Cinderella marries the Prince, but you actually could make a Karate Kid type story out of that, with her stepmother and stepsisters unwittingly playing the role of Mr. Miyagi in making her competent through adversity. But of course, that's not IN the story.
Sure, if she developed some skill from handling all those chores and then later used that skill to defeat some bad guy or whatever. And my guess is that if you tweaked the story in that way, it would seem more masculine to people; it would be more appealing to boys; it would be less appealing to girls. And if you pushed it far enough, you'd end up with Kill Bill.
Implicitly, Cinderella is a hard worker, kind, and agreeable. Arguably all traits she honed in the adverse environment and what ultimately makes her more attractive to the prince than her lazy and entitled family. From a certain angle she already went through her journey and trials, and the story is about her finally receiving her well-deserved reward.
Not in the version of Cinderella I read as a youth. In the version I read, what made her attractive was the fact that she was attractive. I wouldn't be surprised at all if more recent versions of the story reframed things in the direction you suggest, but to me that kind of proves the point. Probably if Disney made Cinderella today, she would have mad skills which she uses to save the Prince and his kingdom.
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The Poor Miller's Boy and the Cat is pretty much exactly Cinderella but with a boy. Basically the king's daughter, in the form of a cat picks a poor and mistreated but hardworking boy to live with her in a golden palace. https://www.grimmstories.com/en/grimm_fairy-tales/the_poor_millers_boy_and_the_cat
I guess it's not as famous because it's a bit less plausible a fantasy for a boy to be picked out of obscurity by a princess than for a girl to be picked by a prince.
I read the story and found something which to me was very interesting. Basically, in order to get his reward, the boy must serve the princess for 7 years; he must chop wood; tend to the meadow; and build a house:
In other words, the boy had to prove that he was worthy.
While it's true that Cinderella had to do household chores, I would argue that the point of the chores was not to show how faithful she was, but rather to (narratively) show that society did not recognize her value.
So I would say that no, the two stories are not exactly the same. They are different in almost exactly the way described by posters who have argued that women automatically get value while men must earn their value.
To be sure, I don't dispute that if you looked hard enough you could find stories out there which go against this dichotomy. But it does seem like, at a minimum, the idea is very deeply ingrained in human thinking.
It's true, but what the boy has to do to prove to the cat he is worthy is pretty easy – just stick around and do the chores he is told to do. And it's worth noting that even in Cinderella, she is not literally taken from rags to riches with no agency. She has to 'do' a few things like blend in at a high society event, disguising her real identity; sprint out of the ball before midnight to avoid humiliation; and escape being locked in a room by her stepmother so that she can try on the slipper and prove she is the woman the prince danced with.
Narratively it's 7 years of labor. More importantly, it's very clearly framed as stuff the protagonist must do to in order to prove himself.
Those things aren't really framed as labors she must do to prove her worthiness.
So I'm still not seeing it.
No, she isn't proving her worthiness to the prince with these actions. She's proved her worthiness to us the audience through her previous years of suffering with dignity though. The prince etc is her reward for that from our point of view, even though he probably doesn't know anything about her other than her beauty. You'll see this sometimes the other way round where an action hero gets the girl at the end despite her having only a very vague idea of what he's just done. E.g. he runs out of a burning building and they kiss, all she knows is that he's survived. Narratively her love is the reward for what we the audience know makes him worthy. (In such stories there's usually also an A plot in which he saves the world or such.)
I could believe that in-story characters rewarding a protagonist just for being beautiful and themselves is more common with female characters. I think they still have to manifest their character in action for us the audience to see they deserve to be selected by the Prince though.
That's not how the story is framed. And in a fable for children, if such a connection were intended it would be pretty obvious.Just look at the Miller's Boy and Cat story. They don't exactly hide the fact that the protagonist is being rewarded for his 7 years of faithful service.
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Yes, but the things the boy has to do are what proves he is worthy--his actions are what earns him the reward. Cinderella's actions merely enable her to accept the reward and aren't used as evidence of her worthiness of it.
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Surprisingly common trope, actually. A lot of coming-of-age plots out there, where the main character has inherited some great power, and he has to accept himself in order to use it.
Depending on execution, the "prophecized hero king who will save the world" trope is this. The main character is born awesome and talented, and even in his darkest moments he cannot keep himself from being competent. His skills are neglected and dormant, not neglected and gone. Some authors make it into more than this, but some really do just revel in the fantasy of being talented and loved by the word.
I think that usually in these types of stories, the male hero has to have adventures, training, etc. in order to live up to his destiny. All Cinderella needed was a nice set of clothes and a ride to the ball.
Yes, it surely happens, but it doesn't seem all that noteworthy to me. Can you think of a male Cinderella story where the male protagonist kind of just has awesomeness and acclaim dropped into his lap? I'm not denying that they exist, but I suspect they are obscure.
Barsoom? John Carter just goes to Mars and is instantly crazy strong? Starts off awesome, and mostly just has to learn the new culture (and, I guess, be taught a gearing trick on the fliers)? Although he had the backstory to back it up as a soldier...
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In the original Puss in Boots tale, the youngest son does exactly fuck all and ends up married to the princess because his cat was magical.
I feel like a lot of European fairy tales do some variation on this. The protagonist is just some random dude, but he is kind enough to give money to a beggar who turns out to be a wizard, or he captures a magical animal which he releases in exchange for wishes. Using his newfound power he then goes on to improve his life.
Though Puss in Boots is kind of extreme even then, considering the cat does basically all the work.
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It depends a lot on the specifics. In some stories, the drama occurs in large part because the hero is unwilling to accept his fate, but once he does it is smooth sailing. Or he struggles until some incident happens that awakens his latent powers (Eragon is one such character, but it is not an uncommon trope). A lot of books from the late 90's and early 2000's open with the protagonist being stuck in some terrible situation and saved due to reasons entirely outside of his control (The most famous example being Harry Potter). You can still have an interesting story like this, but it is undeniable that the main characters did not have to put in effort in order to get saved. Even in stories that execute the trope well, the protagonist continues to receive opportunities due to his innate talent and birthright. In Harry Potter this is executed well and often in creative ways. Take The camber of Secrets, which has a lot of fun with how people idolize celebrities. But in more lazily written stories, such as The Sorcerer's Apprentice basically every important event of the movie happens due to his inborn talents, and it appears that when he overcomes ultimate evil in the final showdown (resulting in him getting the girl) it is completely down to fate rather than any kind of earned competence.
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Sword Art Online?
Lol, I was trying to avoid light novels and just focus on the west as a challenge. But if you include the wish fullfilment isekai which somehow sells like hotcakes, it becomes so obvious that this is a popular trope even among men.
I am sure there must have been a lot of low-brow power fantasy published in the west too. I at the very least remember a lot of suggestive cover art featuring some variation of a muscular barbarian standing on top of his slain enemies, carrying a scantily clad girl.
I, too, remember '80s movie posters.
I posit that a protagonist that is 'born awesome and talented, and even in his darkest moments he cannot keep himself from being competent' is by definition a man.
(By contrast, I posit that a protagonist that is 'born beautiful and virtuous, and even in her darkest moments she cannot keep herself from being valuable' is a woman.)
So, while we're on the topic of Eastern media, I submit Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid as being a male Cinderella story that features a man protagonist [complicated by the fact "he" is female; this is played completely straight with the Lucoa/Shouta relationship though].
(Elsewhere in this thread, I discuss Onimai, which is a female Cinderella story that features a female protagonist [complicated by the fact "she" is male]. It's very explicit about that last part.)
The 'muscular barbarian standing on top of his slain enemies carrying [her as a] scantily clad girl' image is the root of how Tohru sees Kobayashi (and how Lucoa sees Shouta, to the point of explicitly offering him this[1], and on the opposite side how Mihari views Mahiro [though in a more implicit way, which is how she can get off to [what sounds like] him getting off, while still being repelled by actually grabbing his male-ness]).
[1] Which is also why men [including Shouta himself, of course] tend to find that uncomfortable- because that creates, in large degree, a demand for future 'muscular barbarian does the thing' whose results aren't even directly measurable; and leads to instant existential anxiety about "seller decides it no longer wants that future" on the demand side that is fundamentally not resolvable. (Kobayashi's situation is a bit more stable, for she is already established and Tohru has already accepted that what Kobayashi does qualifies as 'muscular barbarian [carrying her]'.)
Actually, most mid to late '00s Western cartoons have this going on; usually Lauren Faust/Craig McCracken works feature characters that have similar inversions, but I remember it being more than just them.
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I think the answer is that, in our post-feminist egalitarian society, (the majority of) women believe people are born, and (the majority of) men believe people are made, and they don't really recognize each other's concept of value.
This was especially noticeable in the 2010s, when workplace DEI debates were largely focused on male-vs-female gender equality. Women would focus on the idea of the office as a social environment where the most important part of success was how many inherently-high-social-status people you had on your side. Men would counter by focusing on competence in on-the-job skills, and argue that fewer women had put in the work to become valuable in these areas. This usually devolved into namecalling where women would yell "myth of meritocracy! toxic rockstar!" and men would yell "diversity hire!" No one ever proposed a compromise where some people would be hired to complete tasks and other people would be hired to look pretty.
So to (most) men, a story about society recognizing your inherent social value is just a story about being a diversity hire. It isn't a compelling narrative unless the diversity hire is a villain who gets defeated by someone with skills.
There's also a popular version of the narrative where you just imply that the hero did a lot of training and skill development off-screen, and then those skills are tested in a high-stakes situation. This can superficially resemble the "society needs to recognize my inherent value" narrative, but the central conflict is still whether or not the hero has trained enough to overcome the obstacles.
The counter-example which comes to my mind is the movie Groundhog Day. In terms of the relationship between the male lead and female lead, it followed the pattern that the man had to work on himself; and learn; and develop; and overcome his flaws; and finally make himself worthy for the woman. The woman didn't change at all during the movie, she was more or less perfect from the beginning to the end. In other words, it seems that the movie was a very close fit to the narrative that women are born while men are made.
Nevertheless, my impression is that Groundhog Day was very popular among women. And as far as I can tell, they don't seem troubled at all by the fact that Bill Murray's character was 100% made not born. In fact, they seem to like the whole character arc where he grows and makes himself worthy of Andy McDowell's character.
Here's a thought experiment which takes place in real life: Suppose a woman is looking for a husband and she would prefer a man who is financially well off. Would it make a difference to her if the man is wealthy due to an inheritance or due to having put together a successful startup which sold to Google, Microsoft, etc.? (All things being equal, of course.) I think that the woman (and in fact society in general) would have a great deal more regard for a man who built something valuable from scratch. There just seems to be a deep-rooted societal idea that a man needs to go out and slay the dragon (and become more formidable during the process.)
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Have you seen Trump’s new press secretary? Lol. The dude who wrote her script clearly had a job to do. She was clearly hired to look pretty, because she couldn’t even read off the basic script that had been written for her. Not to mention her horrible wardrobe selection, coming to a press conference looking like a flight attendant.
I think that's an example of what I was talking about, actually. The modern White House press secretary's job really is just to look pretty on TikTok while delivering statements written by other people. But enough people are uncomfortable with the White House hiring someone just to look pretty that they had to settle for someone who looked pretty and also falsely claimed to have spent time and effort becoming a lawyer.
Also, what I'm calling "pretty" isn't quite the same thing as conventional physical attractiveness -- 2010s feminists didn't want tech companies to staff their teams with skinny blondes either.
Oddly enough, skinny blondes were fairly common among the female tech employees in the office I was in. Mostly data scientists from Eastern Europe.
Thin Eastern European blondes, how awful.
What company and office location was this specifically, though? Just so I can avoid lateraling into such a misogynistic, male gaze-centric workplace.
Google NYC, but they took some pains to keep them segregated from the (symbolically) unwashed mostly-male SWEs.
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This is called "OP MC aurafarming slop". It's very popular in niche online publishing.
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Elizabeth Bennett was famously perfect when she first met Mr Darcy and did not grow at all through the book.
Glibness aside, I think you are right about the heroines journey being social and about acceptance. But good heroine literature is about how young women learn to evolve socially and then how society accepts them.
I think you picked a poor example for your joke. Elizabeth was perfectly worthy and good when she first met Darcy and it was due to his flaws that they were not amicable.
He's rude to her and she believes he is a bad person because of it. Her growth in the book was learning that her first impressions of the men around here didn't see their full story. But there was never doubt about that she was worthy of their pursuit.
Here's that initial meeting from the book:
She was deficient in probably the key thing she needed: evaluating the character of men.
It wasn’t just Mr Darcy that she was wrong about it.
She has excellent awareness of Mr Collins' character. And arguably good judgement of Mr Bingly. And same for other men in the book. So rather it's two men in particular she was wrong about?
Both of them are deliberately deceiving her. One a conman who fooled everyone in her social circle (i think?). The other is too conscious of her low social rank to correct her (she even asks him to justify and he declines).
She is fooled yes, but this cannot be a character flaw. Everyone was fooled. Who judged better than her?
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How a verdict of “MID” was delivered in the early 19th century.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of mid.
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I think most of your post is spot on and I agree heavily with it, although I'd quibble with this. "Changes the opinions and views of those in her immediate social circle", maybe, but isn't "changing society" in a broad political or ethical sense also a quintessentially masculine sort of project?
This dichotomy of "it's myself that needs to change" vs "it's society that needs to change", I wouldn't even say that it's particularly gendered. You can find plenty of men on both sides of the dichotomy. People are probably drawn to one side or the other based on more fundamental underlying factors (although it's also dependent on the context of the specific situation of course). This particular dichotomy (you see the problem as self-change vs you see the problem as other-change) is a recurring theme in Jungian typology, where various traits are ultimately explained in terms of underlying perceptual dynamics.
Well, it all comes down to how the author handles it. You can write a psychologically realistic and aesthetically deep story about a woman who's basically already inherently perfect and just has to get others to realize it. That's fine. There are a lot of different ways that story could pan out and they'd all be fine. But the generic girlboss who's CEO of the firm and runs for president and has a perfect family life and has no other real flaws to speak of isn't one of them; that's just a childish power fantasy.
I wanted to check this out, and I googled "top 10 heroines" from a work computer with a dynamic IP and no logged-in Google account. I didn't get a list I could check the thesis against, because every result on the first page was a list of actresses with the heroines they played being decidedly secondary.
OTOH, "top 10 heroes" gets you mostly rankings of MCU characters, one ranking of superheroes across franchises (with Superman top, naturally), two lists of leading male actors, and one list of "everyday heroes" which was a list of links to good news stories in local papers.
I suspect this just means hero has a secondary meaning that heroine doesn't (the cartoon character lists were co-ed), but that with that exception, the masses care more about celebrity (in both sexes) than story to the point where the concept of "hero" or "heroine" is not relevant to popular culture.
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"changes society" is a recent tack-on to the heroines journey; they all have to be activists.
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Yes, exactly, with the important caveat that a woman's virtue is not limited to merely being attractive and fertile, but includes a hosts of other characteristics.
As @2rafa has often pointed out, high status men generally opt for women who are their social and intellectual peers. Social skills, intelligence, and mental stability are at least as important as physical attractiveness.
The unfortunate difference is that a woman's maximum social value is largely set in stone by age 16, whereas men continue to progress into much later in life.
I'd add the other rather important caveat that this applies when they're looking for wives. Not girlfriends, fuck buddies or mistresses, but wives.
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I get the sentiment, but I think a more accurate picture is that attractive women have value via puberty, and unattractive women dont and are ignored/invisible.
All prime-age women who are neither obese nor deformed are attractive enough for this to apply to them.
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Even unattractive women have uteruses and are thus not expendable by society.
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I tend to disagree with this. Here's a thought experiment: Suppose there were (1) an unattractive woman in mild distress in a public place; or (2) an unattractive man in mild distress in a public place. For example, it appears that the person has just been kicked out of his/her apartment and is facing homelessness. Who is more likely to receive offers of help from strangers? Who is more likely to receive better and more prompt help from society? I think it's pretty obvious that it's the woman.
If you want to argue that attractive women are valued more than unattractive women, I won't dispute you. But to claim that unattractive women are ignored/invisible? Not at all, at least in comparison to low status men.
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Attractive and extroverted women. Introverts get the short end of the stick all the time, regardless of physical appearance.
Neither introverts nor extroverts are “one” thing. I’ve dealt with extroverts who were extremely annoying and dumb as shit and also introverts who didn’t possess the mark of the ‘tism either, and were people you could engage with.
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I would have to disagree with this, at least if we are comparing introverted women to introverted men.
Only true when compared to introverted men.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. @satirizedoor was comparing men to women. Generally speaking, women automatically get valued by society while men do not. To be sure, some women are valued more than others, but in this context it's misleading to say that women are invisible/ignored if they are unattractive or introverted or both. Because it's an overstatement compared to the way society treats men.
Is there overlap? Would an extroverted, attractive but completely unaccomplished man be valued more than an introverted unattractive woman? Possibly yes, but I think that this doesn't take away from the general observation made by @satirizedoor.
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