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So the Bezos-Sanchez wedding took place, and by all accounts it was exactly as overblown, tacky, and vulgar as anyone's little heart could desire. I haven't watched any of it myself, so why am I mentioning it in the Culture War thread?
Well, because Tina Brown commented on it, and it's at least tangential because we've often discussed on here "what do women want/dating apps/men get the rough end of the stick in divorce/other such delightful War of the Sexes fodder".
I get the impression that Tina wasn't on the guest list so there may be an element of sour grapes here, but in general I think I agree. Jeff Bezos, fourth richest man in the world (depending on the day and the ranking) could have pretty much any woman in the world he wanted. So, who did he blow up his marriage for and before we get into the complaining about his wife taking him to the cleaners, it was he who caused the divorce (actually, divorces because his inamorata was also married at the time)?
The woman next door, a triumph of grinding determination to keep her figure through diet, exercise, and plastic surgery. She managed to find a classy wedding dress so kudos for that, as well as showing off the results of all that effort.
Back to Tina's commentary:
Ouch. But also, yes. What am I trying to say here? Mostly that the next time there's yet another post about reversing the fertility decline by putting obstacles in the way of women going to higher education, steering them to marrying early, and good old traditional 'the man is the head of the house and women should work to please their husband and that includes sex whenever and however he wants it', remember this. Male sexuality is a lot simpler than female sexuality. Jeff could have destroyed his marriage for a nubile twenty-something with naturally big assets, but he went for tawdry 'sexy' with the trout pout and plastic boobs (though once again, I have to salute her commitment to starving and exercising in order to keep a taut muscle tone). It's not much good to criticise women for being shallow in the dating market when the fruits of success are to dress like this and hook your own billionaire.
Is this not evidence for the opposite of what you're positing?
Bezos could've gotten a brain-meltingly hot twenty-something model/influencer/plausibly deniable escort. But he chose a high achieving, age appropriate woman (Who, yes, looks pretty bimbo-ish).
I do 100% believe he's on TRT, and that this affected his preferences.
It seems like he got the worst of both worlds. To everyone with any taste or class he looks like a low-class idiot with a bimbo whore wife, but compared to basically any non-obese 18 year old she looks awful. He should've either gone the Jerry Seinfeld/Leo Dicaprio route, laughed at the haters and had his fun or sucked it up and married someone tasteful. He's dealing with all of the cost and none of the benefit.
She's not bad for her age, but it's clear there's been a lot of work done and a lot of effort into looking like that, rather than going with her age and whatever natural assets she had. I'm not saying MacKenzie Bezos is a stunning beauty, but by comparison Sanchez really does look like "mid-life crisis girlfriend" (red carpet glamour shot MacKenzie here, Lauren here - that's the most restrained version I could find, there are more hotcha ones here and here at the White House).
That's the point of Tina Brown's barb: is Lauren Sanchez Bezos smart, funny, talented and great company? Well we don't know, but we do know she decided the road to a man's heart is load up on the lip filler, silicone, and a stint or two under the knife to freshen up the face, and that this works. Who needs brains when you have zeppelin boobs?
This may be very unfair to Sanchez herself, but she has also made the decision to go this road (very likely because she started out in the entertainment industry and that doesn't care if you're smart, it cares if you look pretty and don't show your age), so commentary based purely on her looks is the natural result of that.
And yes: men don't care if you're smart and fun (though that's nice), they care if you have the requisite sexy figure. Sorry guys if that treats you all as very shallow, but I do think male sexual and female sexual attraction work somewhat differently.
Pushing back on this slightly. Yes you're probably very correct if we're just talking about sex and sexual attraction. A pretty face also helps. Smart doesn't come into it too terribly much except perhaps at that level of kink. But past just sex and at the relationship level, smart and fun are absolute requirements, at least for most every man I know who would stick around. (And of those two, "fun" is considerably harder to gauge and maintain).
A woman whose sole offering is a sexy figure will find herself ignored, or at least not really attended to, post-coitally. But sure, she'll get laid as much as she cares to, no doubt about it.
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