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Lykurg  We're all living in Amerika  1yr ago (putanumonit.com)   4153 thread views

Why Are Women Hot? – Put A Number On It!

putanumonit.com

Primarily relevant to here through the discussion of what people claim to find attractive vs. choose, but also considers various other measures of attractiveness. I dont agree with all these analyses but think its worth posting simply for considering the topic in a lot more detail then Ive previously seen.

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I'm terribly sorry, gentlemen, this is probably unfair but all this discussion is making me laugh.

Men are so simple when it comes to this matter of attraction and pursuit. "Me like booba! Big booba!" It's almost endearing.

That's almost literally my entire approach. My taste stupifies me in its shallowness. Whilst I can wax lyrical on other aesthetic themes, discerning various movements and approaches, describe my personality and character ideals, how they developed, who I know that embody such aspects etc. when it comes to physical beauty:

booba

is all too accurate. It feels like there should be so much more... Alas.

It feels like there should be so much more...

badonkadonk?

Does nothin'

This was an interesting article. I found myself thinking of my wife's cousin. She's:

  • Hot - I'd say 8+

  • Probably a decent lay. I know she at least does anal and has some serious practice.

  • Intelligent and funny. Definitely something that would be an acquired taste but I could enjoy it and think most men with a sense of humor would. (At the risk of too explaining too much, what I mean is she has a very specific and dry way of being these things - of course they're intrinsically valuable to anyone)

  • Financially successful

Now of course the bad - she's "crazy" in the sense that I've seen some texts pop off she's sent to men that would kill any relationship in its infancy. She's sent a snapchat saying "I'm going to fuck this guy" at 10pm and by 9am reported that she felt sexually assaulted.

This article presupposes that women who are unsuccessful romantically would benefit from some guidance. A self-help book that understands real physical attractiveness and FDS without the hardcore misandry in associated subreddits.

No fucking way. You could have the perfect self-help book on attracting a great male mate and it wouldn't affect someone's ability in the dating game at all. I have never met a woman who's open to hearing about real strategy. There are simply other concerns that take precedence - the pleasure of lashing out at someone and saying their dick's small, the enjoyment of having multiple male partners, the sublime freedom of movement that being unattached conveys, avoiding the inconvenience and discomfort of raising kids.

I have never met a woman who's open to hearing about real strategy. There are simply other concerns that take precedence - the pleasure of lashing out at someone and saying their dick's small, the enjoyment of having multiple male partners, the sublime freedom of movement that being unattached conveys, avoiding the inconvenience and discomfort of raising kids.

Would you say the same about your own wife?

Absolutely. She never needed to learn anything about dating strategy - she landed an incredible husband after all.

The women who need to change tack in the sexual market don't want to hear it. Don't get me wrong - a huge percentage of men also prefer to wallow in ignorance and blame their dating problems on someone else instead of owning their responsibility for their situation. Just not at the same level as women.

Related: David Burns has a motivational theory of human communication, including romantic relationships. The idea is that the most common cause of problems is motivation, not skill. This is contrary to the standard model, which is that communication is primarily about having the right skills, so you can read body language, tones of voice, choose your words correctly, push people's buttons in the right way etc.

A problem with the standard model is that even many mentally retarded people are able to have fulfilling and happy relationships, despite crappy communication skills and a cognitive inability to master them. One of my high school friends is retarded, but he has a stable and happy relationship with an autistic woman who shares his interests and challenges. They work together very effectively as a team, and they manage to hold down (basic) full-time jobs despite their cognitive impediments. Why? They are highly motivated and willing to do the (VERY) hard work of being together.

I suspect that most relationship advice is useless for most people who read it, because they have some mix of (a) process resistance and (b) outcome resistance.

Process resistance: "I shouldn't have to work so hard to find and keep a partner!" "It's too scary to face rejection." "Why should I be the one to make all the effort?"

Outcome resistance: "I don't want to risk being cucked. It's safer to be single." "I want a relationship, but I don't want to lose my independence." "I'm not looking for the One, but the one before the One."

With these cognitions, people can have all the communication skills, attractiveness, and so on in the world, but still be unable to develop satisfying relationships. Even if they do happen to find an interested and desirable partner, it won't work out, because they lack the appropriate motivation.

"How many single people does it take to screw a lightbulb?"

"Just one, but the person and the lightbulb must be motivated to screw."

A problem with the standard model is that even many mentally retarded people are able to have fulfilling and happy relationships, despite crappy communication skills and a cognitive inability to master them.

Ironically, my adopted + retarded brother has had pretty bad relationships. The women he's able to date are pretty emotionally abusive (and I don't throw that term around lightly). He's a super nice guy and frankly is a catch given his cognitive abilities, but I'm sure he could be more traditionally attentive as well.

I can give him relationship advice but it's always colored by his position in the sexual market. He wasn't able to find a girlfriend till he'd graduated high school by the skin of his teeth so I don't want to have him drop a relationship if he's still at least kind of enjoying it/getting laid. At least you can effectively prevent the marriage by requiring the couple to do all the work themselves to get registered and everything.

Do you have more material on this theory of relationships? A quick Google didn't come up with much.

This matches my experiences/intuitions, and my favorite relationship advice: Sex and the City's "He's just not that into you"; and the more TRP/trashy Most Favored Nation theory of past experiences. I'd love to read a good serious treatment of it.

TRP/trashy Most Favored Nation

I put that into a couple of search engines with all the variations/related terms I could think of and it turned up nothing. In fact, search engines in general seem to downrank TRP content rather heavily.

I'm not sure that's a TRP or PUA approved term, just my own; but it's a trashy reflex that fits in with that kind of thing. "He's just not that into you" or the TikTok "If he wanted to he would" stands for the idea that if a man really likes you he's going to go for you. He's not going to tell you "work is hectic" or that "the timing is bad" or that he's "coming off a breakup and doesn't want to get into anything serious right now." He's going to love you and make love to you asap, anything else means he's keeping you on the hook but not going to stick around unless he's desperate.

The Most Favored Nation idea is the sexual, hetero-male equivalent: if she's attracted to you she will want to fuck you, she will want to fuck you fast and she will want to fuck you wild, and that basically scales in terms of the wildness of the sex versus the level of attraction. So if you know, or especially if she lets it be known, or double especially if she specifically tells you, that she's been wilder with other partners, that means she was more attracted to them than she is to you and you should move on.* It's basically a rejection of women following The Rules or the FDS approach to dating; if she really liked you she'll throw out the handbook and be with you immediately. Giant red flag if she tells you about all the gross things she used to do with other guys, but doesn't do with you because you're nice to her; either she was more into them, or she is telling you how she likes to be treated while giving herself plausible deniability. You should demand in partners the best, wildest sex they've ever had with another partner, anything else means she is Just Not That Into You.

The basic concept is the same: if someone really likes you, the logical rules are suspended, and you shouldn't accept anything less than someone who really likes you. Which relates back to @Harlequin5942 's point: romance is a matter of motivation, not capability or situational context. You want someone who is motivated to be with you, not someone who is Just Not That Into You.

*The common female objection to this is that women shouldn't be obligated to perform sex acts with future partners which they did with past partners, they might not have enjoyed them after they tried them, they might be ashamed of having done them, they might be in a different place in their lives, etc. Which is why I'd offer the addendum that you shouldn't pry into a partner's sexual past, if she is really ashamed of or didn't enjoy X she'd keep X a secret. If she's flaunting her history of X all over, bragging about it to friends, she probably at least kinda liked it. Either way, it might not be perfect but it seems to be a useful heuristic every time I've seen it, with a few minor exceptions that serve to demonstrate the purpose of the rule.

Do you have more material on this theory of relationships? A quick Google didn't come up with much.

I came across it in David Burns's book Intimate Connections. I think he's done some econometric testing on it (he does that whenever he can get some data) but I don't know if the tests have been published in the psychotherapy literature, since I'm not a psychotherapist.

I'll check my library for it. Thanks!

Imagine - a woman over thirty who is not a raddled hag? What miracle of nature is this?

I'll say one thing: this entire thread is very educational about what do men want, and women really should read it 😁

Yeah.... after re-reading this post it doesn't come off entirely the way I want it to or get across what I'm trying to. Though bullet 2 is definitely tongue-in cheek.

Out of curiosity, what is the appeal of heterosexual sodomy? Why is it a selling point for this women to "do anal"? If it's two men in situational homosexuality (e.g. in prison, on a sailing ship, so on) who are desperate for a hole to stick it in, fine - but cis women have vaginas which are handily designed by nature to accommodate the penis.

I do think this is one of those porn things that has slipped into (relatively) mainstream expectations, the way fellatio was something a whore or your slave would do for you, but is now commonplace as part of what is expected in a sexual relationship, so that it's even considered vanilla.

From the women's side, I can get "you have to do it because men expect it" (allegedly some women enjoy it, though I wonder how much of that is enjoying the idea of being sexually liberated and experienced to be able to do this act), but why do men expect it? That it's uncommon so the woman must be really into you/you are a real stud if you can get her to do this? But it seems to be becoming more common. "I saw it in porn and I think everybody is supposed to be doing it, so I tried it too"? What? Just the whole idea of novelty, that now sex is easy to get without the expectations of marriage and what were formerly obscure or considered depraved acts are common, so the ante has to be upped more and more to be spicy and exciting and not the same old thing? After this, what next? Stick it in her ear (that's about the only orifice left)?

I believe there's two appeal groups:

  • Direct - Novelty, sensation/"tightness", visual appeal, no risk of pregnancy, the ass is actually a nerve center

  • Indirect - An element of submission/degradation, someone being willing to "let you in" anywhere despite the impracticality and additional overhead of prep and cleanup. This could be its own top level post.

I do see anal as something that's slipped into mainstream expectations but a lot of people forget the prep required for it. There are other sexual overton window shifts - analingus is one of life's sublime pleasures, and so having it discussed in virtually every rap song/tinder pickup line now is simultaneously satisfying and frustrating. It piggybacks off of mainstream activities like taking a shower together really easily, but I remember being made fun of for it when I was single (despite all my partners enjoying it).

While I understand lamenting the shift in expectations, I don't see either of these as game-breaking things that shouldn't be part of a valuable sexual relationship. "Good, Giving, Game" sex (defined way back in the early 00's) was how I always approached these things. So when a potentially enjoyable act requires purchasing a $4 bottle of astroglide or just timing it after a shower I have a hard time seeing why some line's been crossed.

analingus is one of life's sublime pleasures

I suppose I'm Just Too Old, but while I realise that there are a lot of nerve endings around the anus, I don't care how recently you showered: you want to put your tongue/want someone else to put their tongue in and around the place where excrement comes out. That seems a bad idea. Especially since I read a couple of years back an article by a gay guy lamenting that he (1) loved rimming with strangers (2) had, on three separate occasions, contracted some gastrointestinal disease I can't remember the name of (I think it was this one but can't be sure) from doing it. Naturally this was the fault of the government for not warning him and other gay men about it. Me, I think if you get the same disease three times from doing the same thing, that you know has a high risk of giving you this disease, you shouldn't need the government to tell you not to do it. Oh, and his boyfriend/domestic partner also contracted it later the same way. Bad government, not telling them they shouldn't do the thing that they knew would make them sick!

And if you don't see how a line has been crossed in "we're mainstreaming sticking your tongue up someone's ass/having heterosexual sodomy from being something only seen in porn to something ordinary people do", I don't know when you'll see a line about "so what is the big deal about zoophilia/necrophilia/cloning yourself and having sex with your hot 17 year old virgin self?"

After all, that was one of the complaints in Byron's divorce case; his wife claimed he forced her to engage in anal sex with him:

He asked Mrs Leigh to write to her; in addition, he refused to dissolve their marriage. A short while later, when Lady Byron made clear her suspicions that his relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh was incestuous, that he had had homosexual relationships, and had sodomised her – Lady Byron – acts which were illegal, he changed his mind. He agreed to grant her request if she proved that the request for legal separation was truly hers and not that of her parents. In response, she personally communicated her feelings to Augusta. Byron kept his word, and their separation was made legal in March 1816, in a private settlement

I read a couple of years back an article by a gay guy lamenting that he (1) loved rimming with strangers (2) had, on three separate occasions, contracted some gastrointestinal disease I can't remember the name of

Well N=1 but I ain't contracted shit in terms of diseases. I do recall the only time I publicly disputed the party line being pushed by my bird class (human sexuality) professor was related to the topic. I don't do spontaneous ass-eating sessions though. I could be wrong, but carpe diem.

Re: anal being an uncrossable line... I don't connect fucking a horse to a human partner risking minor discomfort for potential pleasure. Or raping your wife. Admittedly, that may be just me! But if it's unpleasant for someone, it is what it is; I don't think buttsex should be considered standard equipment.

Cloning myself with an extra X chromosome at 17 is quite an interesting thought experiment. We'd probably have a great time if I didn't have a sister to bias myself against the experience.

Just the whole idea of novelty, that now sex is easy to get without the expectations of marriage and what were formerly obscure or considered depraved acts are common, so the ante has to be upped more and more to be spicy and exciting and not the same old thing?

Mostly, yes. Casual sex is more or less normalized now, but casual anal sex isn't. Getting something not everyone gets means the woman trusts you, lets you do something she doesn't usually do.

After this, what next? Stick it in her ear (that's about the only orifice left)?

Rimjobs, a2m and golden showers, I presume.

I thought golden showers were rather old hat at this stage? But now we're wandering far afield. It really does seem to be the pursuit of increasing novelty. We'll end up with Tiberius' minnows at this rate!

1 He acquired a reputation for still grosser depravities that one can hardly bear to tell or be told, let alone believe. For example, he trained little boys (whom he termed tiddlers) to crawl between his thighs when he went swimming and tease him with their licks and nibbles; and unweaned babies he would put to his organ as though to the breast, being by both nature and age rather fond of this form of satisfaction. 2 Left a painting of Parrhasius's depicting Atalanta pleasuring Meleager with her lips on condition that if the theme displeased him he was to have a million sesterces instead, he chose to keep it and actually hung it in his bedroom. The story is also told that once at a sacrifice, attracted by the acolyte's beauty, he lost control of himself and, hardly waiting for the ceremony to end, rushed him off and debauched him and his brother, the flute-player, too; and subsequently, when they complained of the assault, he had their legs broken.

I am sure that out hunter-gatherer ancestors have tried every single sexual act we can think of and many more that we can't fathom. When your evening entertainment is limited to song, dance and sex for a ten thousand years you're going to try everything, even ear sex.

Excellent article, thank you for sharing. Thoughts:

-- With human desire and sexuality in a socially constrained world, always consider that reaction-formation is as strong/important as "natural" desire. The socially dominant man who likes to be humbled in bed; the polite weakling filled with vicious rape fantasies. In this case, consider that the Madonna-Whore complex is seemingly impossible to evict from most people's minds. Some men might be attracted to women in bed not in spite of their lack of upper-class signifiers, but precisely because of that lack of upper class signifiers. They might view those women as less constrained by politeness, or they might feel themselves less constrained by politeness because those women are "different" socially, or both. A man might assume that a "trashy" woman has no superego constraining her in bed, or he might be able to turn his own superego off because she cannot judge him, he can leave the panopticon and explore his desires. Or he may enjoy the appreciation a woman who is "beneath him" offers when she is under him, in a way less constrained than that of a social equal. Which are kind of separate concepts from "hotness;" and complicate revealed preferences.

-- I've nominally been a big advocate of the binary rating system (1= I'd hit that, 0= I wouldn't) and "it's all the same in the dark" when offering advice to friends on romance. All that matters is that you find her attractive enough to make love to, anything else beyond getting hard is irrelevant ego. But if I'm honest, when I look at my own life, I married the (objectively) hottest woman I ever dated, we have a near perfect relationship. And the absolute best hottest sex I've had, the best lovers I've had, have pretty strongly correlated with the societally hottest women I've been with. Maybe this indicates that sex, for me, is at some level about status, that my superego is hiding in the corner even when the lights are off. Maybe it indicates that those women had the kind of confidence that leads to really good sex. At the same time I suspect that a big reason I've been successful with objectively hot partners is because at a conscious level I'm less interested than others, precisely because of the conscious advocacy of the binary rating system.

-- Status competition among men as the primary driver of male sexuality is an important consideration when discussing eg the male in-celibacy problem. At what point is being with a real flesh and blood woman actively status reducing? Is there a point at which friends/society will roast a guy worse for having a fat girlfriend than no girlfriend at all? It's sort of similar to the argument that it isn't that the perennially un(der)employed are lazy, it's that they are dreamers; and they prefer the status of telling people they're working on their book/music/hustle/spirituality/whatever over admitting they work a dead end job. And that might be a rational choice if people put more esteem on unemployed and unrealistic dreamers than they put on McDonald's clerks. In the same way, if the woman you can actually attract is such a low-status symbol that even perpetual virginity is higher status, some men will choose porn and online incel whining over a real flesh and blood lover.

-- Body Positivity has to be the movement I'm most upset has been thoroughly hijacked by morons. There's real social value in telling women that they don't have to meet some absurd standard to be hot, and in telling men that they don't have to only date rail thin models. I've enjoyed a variety of body types in my life, each special in their own way, and I do think some people are held back by an inability to see that, there are some market failures that could make everyone happier if they were corrected. Don't try to be something you can't be, be the best "you" you can be. But there's a big difference between "A variety of body types can be attractive to different people, lean into what you're good at" and "Everyone's body is (equally) attractive" or "morbid obesity is attractive and if you don't agree you might as well have set the dogs on the Civil Rights marchers at Selma!" It's such a shame, because the meme has thoroughly lost the plot that anyone who brings it up is instantly suspected of hamplanet-apologia.

Is there a point at which friends/society will roast a guy worse for having a fat girlfriend than no girlfriend at all?

Yeah, probably - if she is 600 pounds and you are washing her fat folds every day and wiping her butt you're probably past that point.

And the absolute best hottest sex I've had, the best lovers I've had, have pretty strongly correlated with the societally hottest women I've been with.

"Fit, confident people I'm attracted to really turn me on and make the sex good" is not really an insight, unless you've been spending far too much time on the internet.

I guess? Maybe it's a sample size issue, but if I sit down and list them out, there's almost no correlation in the first 5, barely any in the first 10, and it's pretty weak still. It's only if you look at the podium winners that a correlation is strong. So, no, I wouldn't say that this is experientially intuitive to me at all, as I experienced it in real life. Some of the most talented lovers I had were...not to everyone's taste. Some of the women who were really hot were bad in bed. And take out any one podium winner, if I slept in that day or left early or whatever, and the correlation gets much weaker.

A man might assume that a "trashy" woman has no superego constraining her in bed, or he might be able to turn his own superego off because she cannot judge him, he can leave the panopticon and explore his desires. Or he may enjoy the appreciation a woman who is "beneath him" offers when she is under him, in a way less constrained than that of a social equal.

From "The Screwtape Letters":

You will find, if you look carefully into any human's heart, that he is haunted by at least two imaginary women — a terrestrial and an infernal Venus, and that his desire differs qualitatively according to its object. There is one type for which his desire is such as to be naturally amenable to the Enemy — readily mixed with charity, readily obedient to marriage, coloured all through with that golden light of reverence and naturalness which we detest; there is another type which he desires brutally, and desires to desire brutally, a type best used to draw him away from marriage altogether but which, even within marriage, he would tend to treat as a slave, an idol, or an accomplice. His love for the first might involve what the Enemy calls evil, but only accidentally; the man would wish that she was not someone else's wife and be sorry that he could not love her lawfully. But in the second type, the felt evil is what he wants; it is that "tang" in the flavour which he is after. In the face, it is the visible animality, or sulkiness, or craft, or cruelty which he likes, and in the body, something quite different from what he ordinarily calls Beauty, something he may even, in a sane hour, describe as ugliness, but which, by our art, can be made to play on the raw nerve of his private obsession.

-- I've nominally been a big advocate of the binary rating system (1= I'd hit that, 0= I wouldn't) and "it's all the same in the dark" when offering advice to friends on romance. All that matters is that you find her attractive enough to make love to, anything else beyond getting hard is irrelevant ego. But if I'm honest, when I look at my own life, I married the (objectively) hottest woman I ever dated, we have a near perfect relationship. And the absolute best hottest sex I've had, the best lovers I've had, have pretty strongly correlated with the societally hottest women I've been with. Maybe this indicates that sex, for me, is at some level about status, that my superego is hiding in the corner even when the lights are off. Maybe it indicates that those women had the kind of confidence that leads to really good sex. At the same time I suspect that a big reason I've been successful with objectively hot partners is because at a conscious level I'm less interested than others, precisely because of the conscious advocacy of the binary rating system.

What lead you to this opinion in the first place? It seems there would be a fairly straightforward biological reason to expect sex with hotter people to be more desired. But Jacob also reached for a status explanation of hot people seeking hot partners, without even mentioning the obvious first idea.

You remind me a bit of this, but with efficiency instead of progressivism:

Like, and I'm definitely not being 100% charitable here, reading between the lines, you almost hear, "Men want to rub their bodies against women sometimes and then ejaculate when their genitals are in the rough vicinity of that woman's genitals or other parts and crevices various and sundry. Women also sometimes want forms of this, too. There are some variations about the identities of the bodies involved, but this covers the general case. We will call this interaction "sex", and claim to be the champion of it. Now, how can we eliminate everything else that has historically made this transaction problematic, from a disease perspective, from a fertility perspective, and especially from a social / emotional / power / interpersonal relationship perspective? Once we stop permitting all that other stuff, once we heavily stigmatize all that other stuff, we will be left with 'safe sex', and we will loudly encourage it. And this is what 'sex' will mean as we march into the future, and this will be progress."

Again, I'm being unfair. But if this is someone's model of human sexuality, it's a model that has almost no room for things like seduction, and is likely wary of most kinds of flirting. It's a model that is very uncomfortable with human brains being the most important sexual organ, and of the deep pleasures of sexual tension and the role of uncertainty and imagination and play and teasing in desire.

Side note, but I really would love to run a study where you just showed headshots (all taken in the same light/background) of a bunch of randomly selected people to another bunch of randomly selected people and had the second bunch rate the headshots on a 1-10 scale of attractiveness, then tried to see what latent variables about the people in the headshots (age, BMI, wealth, education) correlated most strongly with the 1-10 ratings.

My hypothesis is that for straight men looking at pictures of women, the 1-10 ratings would correspond really closely to age and BMI. I would be really interested in seeing what the results would be for straight women looking at pictures of men.

The only comment I will venture on this is about your Beff Jezos example:

Supplementing testosterone and ascending beyond competition do seem to drastically move one’s taste to Vizier’s ideal, N=1

Kindly note that lady on the left was his wife and post-divorce, which was all down to him getting the hots for woman on the right, he didn't marry Number Two (even after the affair broke up two marriages). She may have bigger va-va-vooms but she's his girlfriend/partner/whatever the current term is.

Some of that may be post-divorce caution - he doesn't want to have to split up his remaining fortune again if this relationship goes south - but some of it, I think, is 'there are women you marry and women you have fun with, and they're not the same'. The divorce happened in 2019, here it is 2023 and no sound of wedding bells yet.

Bill Clinton is the best example of that idiom. Hillary wasn’t unattractive when young, but she was very much conservative college girl. Jennifer Flowers was not that.

I don’t think SMV compliance enforcement is the parsimonious explanation . Simps will simp no matter how hot she thinks she is. If she thinks she’s a 3, they’ll say 7, if she says 10, they’ll say 11. Outside of simping, people just try to torpedo other’s status constantly, it’s the main social game, the way to gain status.

If a couple is beautiful, they’ll say they’re likely stupid and superficial. If a successful comedian makes some wanted sexual advances, they’ll say he’s a loser and a creep. The best way to get people to call you stupid is letting them know you tie your status to smartness. They will do so when it makes no sense at all (cf Elon Musk, the endless discussions on whether the people here are smart).

It’s the same if you claim to be beautiful or knowledgeable, the truth of the matter doesn’t enter into it. I don’t know aella from more than a few blog posts and tweets, but it seems obvious to me that by virtue of the scarcity of her attributes among women, she does indeed have very high SMV in her circle.

Otoh, you spend status by praising people, and we don’t see much of that.

It’s why even in a forum like this one, theoretically devoted to good faith cooperate-cooperate discourse, so easily devolves into snark. Because there is nothing that offers status benefits like telling your fellow man : I am above you. It’s always scorn and never hate, because as Eric Hoffer said, you cannot hate those you despise, it would convey the opposite status message.

I don't think this is quite right. Most of the torpedoing of people by strangers is done by people to ingratiate themselves with other people who already think of that person as low status. That is, if the general public thinks Famous Frank is an 8, but you're in a room full of people who think Famous Frank is a 6, or otherwise wish he was lowered to a 6, then disparaging him can gain status with the other people who will agree you and commend you for your insight. Or, if you're in a room full of people who are a mix of beliefs: half think he's a 10 and half think he's a 6, then by picking either side you gain status with half the room and lose status with the other half (which is likely worth it, because value isn't gained by your average status among all people, but by status weighted by the people you interact with, so you can choose to hang out with the faction you align with here).

This means you can gain status by praising people, you just have to praise people that the people around you already like. You spend status by going against the grain, attempting to raise or lower the status of someone that they disagree with you about.

Lowering status is easier than raising status, so it's often a more viable strategy and we see it more. (Note how most Democrats spend their time whining about how awful Trump is, and Republicans spend their time whining about how awful Biden is, and both spend less time actually praising their own figurehead.) But I think both are viable as means of gaining status in the right circumstance.

I find that really hard to believe, it’s very blue state red state, which may be an American thing. In any case a forceful personality isn’t really going to care about the group status, and might in fact gain status by going against convention.

It’s not my experience that agreeing with everything the “in group” says makes you popular, making your case on your side is expected. But I don’t live in the US.

I think it's simple, zero-sum and focused on the relationship between speaker and target. You bring down frank to steal his status points. Effusive praise is always going to hurt your status, assuming you had some to begin with.

The problem with your theory is that people would converge on a consensus of like-minded people and then… how do they determine status among them? They keep finding more consensus? To me the end state looks more like crabs in a bucket than harmonization. There’s straight up too much criticism that doesn’t make sense.

Even people, especially people who argue in hostile territory/against the grain affect a scornful attitude. Only in rare cases are they trolling and end up presenting their adventures to the like-minded. Their behaviour is baffling if status is a popularity contest by vote on one’s opinions.

The problem with your theory is that people would converge on a consensus of like-minded people

Okay, I should be clear that I don't think this is the only dynamic happening. We don't live in a world where status is the only thing people care about and nobody cares about truth whatsoever (and if we did, your theory would be worse off because people do sometimes praise people in real life, how could you explain that?). And further, I don't mean to imply that my theory is literally the only mechanism for gaining status.

First and foremost, status is supposed to reflect someone's actual objective value to society (or at least, to the people granting them status). That is the evolutionary mechanism for why it exists, and the selfishly rational reason for why people would give it. Society benefits if it has more valuable people in it, and giving status to high value activities is a way to both incentivize people who are already high status to want to stay in your group and interact with you more, and a way to incentivize everyone else to perform high value activities in order to gain status.

Now granted, this is an emergent phenomenon which happens imperfectly and only in aggregate, there are tons of local counterexamples and exploits, like people trying to unfairly lower someone else's status to raise their own without performing genuinely valuable activities. Just like how most businesses earn money by performing genuinely valuable services to the economy, but some businesses, and some individuals within them just rentseek value from others.

That is the first-order cause of status. Competence and value, and objective facts. It is not at all random that Elon Musk has more status than your local retail cashier. And it certainly isn't due to his high social skills. All of this social stuff in either of our theories is second-order. If you insult Elon Musk by suggesting he is less intelligent than the average retail clerk, you are very unlikely to gain status unless your audience is already biased to hate Elon Musk, because any random person can see that he's highly intelligent and competent at something, otherwise he wouldn't be so rich and famous. Or if you say "he is literal demon who eats babies." If you make blatantly false insults people will laugh at you (unless they are already biased to hate him). But if you make a more plausible claim like "He should get off social media because he's a socially inept autist and go back to playing with electric cars", you're more likely to get a favorable response because at the very least it doesn't sound like you're an ignorant ideologue spouting pointless propaganda.

So maybe a more adjusted version of my theory would be: how much do people agree with you after you have spoken, not how much they already agreed with you. That is, if you think the person is a 8 and the other person previously thought they were a 6, and you logically and charismatically present a good argument for the person's objective value that changes their opinion to a 7.5, you might gain status. Again, this is not the entirety of the dynamic, you can sometimes make people respect your well thought out argument even if they ultimately disagree with you. Status is not a zero-sum game and, even if it were you could have an inflation effect where you doing more status-deserving things dillutes everyone else in existence without stealing from one particular person. In any case, your theory definitely needs to contend with the fact that people do, in reality, sometimes praise other people. And they don't necessarily lose status by doing so, especially in a so-called "circlejerk". Fanboys and fangirls aren't all constantly sacrificing tons of status with each other for no reason by gushing about their shared favorite celebrity. Clearly something else is going on, even if my theory doesn't fully explain it.

I think you neglect the way in which power factors into status considerations. People would fawn over Elon Musk or an emperor not because they believe such people to be meritocratic but because they hope to receive rewards and avoid punishments. The people at the top of power hierarchies manipulate those below them through various means in order to encourage and shape desirable consensuses. People buy into these for selfish reasons having more to do with personal fitness than group fitness. That's why people who aren't in a position to benefit from or be punished by Elon Musk (random journalists on Twitter) pile on him so relentlessly. They do it because he does not matter to them, but the opinions of their peers and employers do, so they demonstrate commitment to the group consensus in the hopes of impressing other members of the hierarchy.

Also, people often base their status evaluations on personal egotism. People who fancy themselves to be technophilic, market-oriented individuals will argue that Elon Musk deserves utmost respect, while people who fancy themselves to be more artistic and empathic rather than logical will decry him, and this is simply based on how their own qualities are reflected in Elon Musk. They use their perceptions of other peoples' status to feel good about themselves.

We don't live in a world where status is the only thing people care about and nobody cares about truth whatsoever (and if we did, your theory would be worse off because people do sometimes praise people in real life, how could you explain that?)

Right, sure, people do care a little bit about the truth. But rarely the people who speak and take status shots at each other. Mostly the spectators, because their status is not in play at that moment.

"He should get off social media because he's a socially inept autist and go back to playing with electric cars",

That is still just a blatant attempt to pull him down, as per my theory. I'm no fanboy, in fact I'm short tesla, but objectively Elon Musk is way above average in social skills. Notice the common phrase "I'm no fanboy". "fanboy" is clearly low status, and I had to deny it so I could praise Musk without taking a status hit.

First and foremost, status is supposed to reflect someone's actual objective value to society (or at least, to the people granting them status). That is the evolutionary mechanism for why it exists, and the selfishly rational reason for why people would give it.

The default assumption should be that it's a mechanism to sort out the sexual hierarchy as with primates or walruses, and has no moral effect. The high school hierarchy doesn't seem to be about contributing to society. To an atheist, the status in a religious community bears little relationship to the common good as he understands it. Likewise, Status points in our community are almost granted for the opposite of things that would gain points in a progressive community, so what objective value to society can we both be improving through our status hierarchies ? If both our communities contain workers and tax-payers, then we have contributed to the other's economic well-being through capitalism and the wealth hierarchy, but our respective status sorting has no such positive effect.

I've always disliked the common feminist answer of "I wear makeup for myself, not for men". I find that very reductive and very much a poisoned explanation based on the feminist brain worm that no woman anywhere should ever try to do anything for the sake of men/a man, try to make a man/men happy, or seek any form of approval from a man/men.

I put makeup into the same box as getting swole.

Wearing something unobtrusive like "no makeup" makeup is the same as being trim and fit. It definitely stems from wanting to attract mates via signaling heath. Putting makeup on "for myself" means the woman doesn't want to lose against other women who don't look like they've had only five hours of sleep.

But more elaborate makeup gets women more dates the way more plates get men more dates: vanishingly few members of the opposite sex will care about your perfect wingtips and your perfectly defined serratus anterior, but there are same-sex support groups that value makeup and musculature as a form of performance art.

It's at core just an exaggeration of individual agency typical of third wave choice feminism. To claim that one can transcend the male gaze in an essentially hetero-male gaze focused society is an absurdity.

When a woman claims she doesn't wear makeup for men, she is claiming that she didn't do it for any individual identifiable man or subset of men, which may be accurate. The stronger claim that there isn't a male gaze somewhere in the causal chain is absurdly wrong.

I think there's the issue of proximal and distal causes here, or just different levels of abstraction to explain the same phenomenon.

When I say "thank you" at a restaurant after the server gives me my food, I'm not really "doing it for the server" any more. I'm doing it because it's a deeply ingrained habit at this point, shaped by a lifetime of social conditioning. I'm sure at some point I heard the explanation that saying "thank you" was the polite thing to do, and I did it a few times and got positive reactions, and I slowly became conditioned to do it automatically as a result.

In the same way, I can actually believe that a lot of women wear make up "for themselves", in the sense that they have no conscious thoughts along the line of "Gee, I wonder if a cute boy will see this and swoon over my amazing make up." But it's not going to apply to all women, and I do suspect there's a bit of denial going on for some.

Women know men haven't a fucking clue about makeup, they'll think some girl has a 'natural' look when a woman can tell it took three hours to achieve that 'wind-tousled hair and barely-there makeup' look. Or do you really think men care about contouring videos or what shade of red goes with my skin's undertones?

Like Herrick's poem, which seems to think that "a sweet disorder in the dress" is not fine art. If she really threw her clothes on carelessly, Herrick would not be attracted, he would think she was a slattern:

Delight in Disorder

BY ROBERT HERRICK

A sweet disorder in the dress

Kindles in clothes a wantonness;

A lawn about the shoulders thrown

Into a fine distraction;

An erring lace, which here and there

Enthrals the crimson stomacher;

A cuff neglectful, and thereby

Ribands to flow confusedly;

A winning wave, deserving note,

In the tempestuous petticoat;

A careless shoe-string, in whose tie

I see a wild civility:

Do more bewitch me, than when art

Is too precise in every part.

That's why women say "I do it for me", because while men can't tell, other women can, and if you feel that you look good/are following the season's trends, you feel confident and that you are not left out of the loop.

I agree that some subset of "I do it for me" is trying to say a socially acceptable lie, but I have also heard complaints from women that there are social expectations that they must wear make up to look "professional."

I could easily see some women doing a minimalist 30 minute make up routine that looks reasonably good, and just doing it out of habit. It's the same way that I'm sure many women who shave their legs and arm pits aren't doing it "for" other people's delectation, but because it is arbitrarily considered "unhygenic" or "gross" by many people to not do this, and so they keep up with it mostly out of habit.

30 minutes per day on a decent fraction of days is, on a population basis, a lot of time. If the value is mostly just signaling, and make the terrible estimate of (mixing in 'some women don't do makeup much', 'children and old people don't do makeup', etc) (4% of total female population) * (30min/day) ... 1822 entire human lives, per year, spent on makeup. That's quite a bit! It's much less than something like 'commutes', and less than 'showering', sure, but those are (arguably) bad too - many remote workers correctly think back on the daily commute as awful.

And (controversially) I don't think there's any fundamental basis in which losing some amount of time, on a population basis, is that different from an individual never existing, or dying. One can spend one's commute thinking about things, sure, and maybe there's a skill aspect to makeup some find interesting. But is "you will die at 74 instead of 78 because of the carcinogen in your cereal" really that different from "1 extra hour of your day, every day, will be burned for no reason"? Commutes, of course, have reason - unless remote work is an option. Everything is commensurable in this sense, tbh. 'Base' / 'vulgar' things matter, and 'sacred' / 'deontological moral breaches' aren't of a different kind.

That's not to say we should jail executives who don't allow remote work - harsh incentives against things like murder exist because murder is so easy, physically - but the actual impact, and hence responsibility, of a particularly effective advertising exec isn't necessarily better than the impact / responsibility of an auto exec who cuts safety features, leading to a .000001% increase in accident risk, resulting in a hundred deaths over 100 years.

minimalist 30 minute

My condolences. Seriously though, how early do you have to get up for that?

because while men can't tell

Some men can't tell. Some men can't tell faces apart, or detect social cues.

Other men have good visual acuity and can tell contouring from actual shape, thus plenty of men can tell when a woman is "plastering on makeup like a trollop", to quote a revered American statesman.

The idea of makeup being to appeal to men hits up against the historical fact that some men did protest about women wearing makeup, and that use of cosmetics was associated with actresses and other loose women. There was supposedly a law passed about women deceiving men into marriage via the use of cosmetics, though that seems to be one of those "everyone knows" factoids that isn't actually true.

So while cosmetics have been used to promote sexual appeal, their use was not uncontroversial. Women who sold their sexuality used cosmetics, respectable women did not.

"The idea of bikinis appealing to men hits up against the historical fact that conservatives did protest women wearing immoral clothing". Men today overwhelmingly respond positively to both. (even though they're wrong to do so!)

up against the historical fact that some men did protest about

That was because these men understood why the women wanted to wear make up - to appeal to other men.

Or maybe they didn't understand, but were just parroting the understanding of the people who wrote the various holy books.

Women trying to get with other men is what creates a lot of chaos in a society, which is why practically every known society harshly punishes adultery. Because if in your society men don't trust each other due to women, they're far less likely to cooperate in mutual interest.

For what it's worth, I'm in my 40s and I'm just now becoming aware, sometimes, that the reason I think a woman is really pretty is because she's done a really good job with her makeup. Lot of obvious makeup is unattractive to me, but probably because I associate it with lower-class women. But no makeup is definitely less attractive than well-done subtle makeup. I think the same thing happens in reverse with more educated, higher-class women finding jacked guys in muscle shirts less attractive than a man who manages to signal strength/fitness and masculinity more subtly, but also don't find completely unfit, weak men attractive at all.

For what it's worth, I'm almost 40 and I remember marvelling at the fakery girls were pulling with makeup since about age 16 when they started slathering it on. I had a hard time getting it as a kid. What's the point? Your bone structure will be equally shit after you've painted makeup all over your face, everyone will see it. I guess I was typical-minding as apparently people don't see it and say weird shit along the lines of 'make up changing the entire face'. I remember seeing women like that but to me that wasn't attractive, just .. jarring.

Sure, it can pay off at times with hiding blemishes and improving contrasts, etc but as a fan of athletic women and/or big boobs I've always felt most of them would've been far better served by spending time in a gym or getting a nice set of silicone implants.

After all, these don't wash off in water and especially for the implants, the time investment is probably far lower.

While I agree makeup is just a distraction, and the important thinks appearance signals (which are actually improved by eg time in the gym) are just covered up by makeup - there's a wide variety in makeup skill, and it'll vary with social class.

There's a big difference between this and natural looking makeup.

True.

are just covered up by makeup -

You can't cover body shape by makeup or clothing, unless you go for the full beekeeper burqa outfit. And even in that case, e.g. the width of the body and other such will still be discernible, and probably any guy would be able to distinguish a mildly overweight from a slender woman wearing a burqa looking at a high-def video.

face shape but yeah

The silicone implants bit does demonstrate that big boobs and thin waist are not really naturally attainable unless you're very genetically blessed; if you have naturally big boobs, you'll be big all round and if you have a tiny waist, same. So there are unrealistic standards.

When men say they like a thin waist, they mean relative to the hips and bust. Women trying to fit into a size 0 dress is something that they do for other women. Not for men. (This is not meant to imply that no men prefer women with a tiny build).

Makeup does change the entire face, even if you don't try to change your bone structure.

Reddit has enough examples, e.g. https://old.reddit.com/r/MakeupAddiction/comments/87tns7/no_makeup_vs_no_makeup_makeup/

Individual differences, I guess.

To you, it may look quite different. To me, same nose, same eyes, same hairline, same lips, same overall shape, the face on the right looks maybe 5% more attractive on account of the paint and the main difference I'm seeing is that she tilted her face to the side in the right picture.

An honest question: are you neuroatypical in any way?

More comments

As is all too common, I think there's an element of miscommunication between the modal reactions of men and women.

Men hear "I do it for me," notice that the thing being done is overtly public and communicative, conclude that the woman is not accurately describing her true motivations, and typical-mind into the conclusion that "obviously, attracting positive attention from the opposite sex is the real goal."

Women note that the conclusion is (often) wrong, and dismiss the rest of the argument. This is also wrong, because while "feeling confident" is internal, knowing that other women will notice and recognize that you are not out of the loop is quintessentially social and externally motivated. There is a contradiction between "I do it (just) for me" and "I do it for social reasons," and men are correct to notice, even if the modal conclusion drawn is in error.

I don't think that's a feminist explanation, I think it's more profound than that. Admitting she wears makeup for men can make a woman look promiscuous or vain, which women shy away from.

I suppose a traditional religious woman might admit to wearing makeup for her husband (being married avoids the promiscuity suggestion) but she's not going to say that it's to impress random men that she encounters because she enjoys the attention, even if it's true.

I prefer the third alternative: the prior reason that women do most things in relation to their appearance is for the approval of other women.

Triessentialism posits that there are four foundational categories of value: utility, agency, experiences, and esteem. In this view, women tend to do the above because esteem is the value category they intuitively weight highest. (It tends to be low but nonzero for people with autism.)

Interesting. Is there an intro that you recommend?

It’s a work in progress, even after twenty-two years, but you can read early blogposts on it from 2006 in my early twenties, with the current best of the posts being http://triessentialism.blogspot.com/2006/11/unbearable-separateness-of-being-and.html - it was more of a scratchpad than a blog, really. EDIT: here’s a post more in line with the OP

I also have attached a handy Venn diagram, the theoretical details of which have not changed since it was created.

https://www.themotte.org/images/16757467502810833.webp

Thanks!

You may want to read TLP's dissertation on the subject, whether you agree with it or not. Beware, following this guy down the rabbit hole may be infohazardous.

When they say, "it's a woman's choice" what they mean is "it's not a man's choice, it is thoroughly stupid to wear make up just for men, the only acceptable reason is if you do it for yourself, if it makes you feel better about yourself."

Let me offer a contrary position, unpalatable but worth considering: the only appropriate time to wear make up is to look attractive to men. Or women, depending on which genitals you want to lick, hopefully it's both. "Ugh, women are not objects." Then why are you painting them? I'm not saying you have to look good for men, I'm saying that if wearing makeup not for men makes you feel better about yourself, you don't have a strong self, and no, yelling won't change this. Everyone knows you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, now you're saying the cover of the book influences how the book feels about itself?

I am not doubting that in fact you do feel better about yourself, I am saying that that fact is both pathological and totally on purpose. Since this cognitive trick does help you feel better about yourself, by all means go ahead, but at what point will you stop pressuring other women to go along with it? When will you stop "requiring" it, like when you say, "oh, she's so pretty even without makeup" as if the default was makeup?

That's a guy who is not a female employee working a front-facing job:

Unequal Burden

Employers can legally require women to wear makeup as part of an established dress code; they can impose such restrictions on female employees while not burdening male employees at a similar level. While some plaintiffs have tried to show that requiring women to wear makeup takes more time and costs more money, thus being a greater burden on women than men, these arguments have not proven successful as of the date of publication.

Or even suggestion that it harms your career if you don't wear it:

A study carried out by Boston University and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 2011 found that women who wore a “professional” amount of makeup at work were regarded as “capable, reliable, and amiable,” and ultimately, “more competent” than those women who did not wear any. Another study published in Scientific American Mind in 2016 found that women wearing makeup were seen by men (but not women) as more prestigious and seen by women (but not men) as more dominant than those who do not wear makeup.

I have no idea how TLP carries out his career, if he has a job where he has to interact with others, but imagine if he consistently turned up unshaven, hair not combed or washed, dirty clothes with holes in and worn-out shoes. How long before a tactful suggestion he needed to smarten himself up? No, whether your shoes are polished or not has no bearing on how good you are at your job, but all the same you should polish them.

"And no, yelling won't change this".

He, uh, cited the study you're talking about? Through HuffPo, but - if you're not going to read the link, then sure:

The evolution from "enhances sexual attractiveness" to "doing it for yourself" is definitely a regressive step, and by regressive I here mean "regressing to age two", but it's the next step which reveals the presence of a neurosis: recruiting science as a justification for behavior: "Study finds makeup makes you appear more competent." Can't wait to read about that study in a Jonah Lehrer book. Ugh. So here's the evolution of feminist theory, take notes: "I want to look better" to "I want to feel better about myself" to "I want people to think I am better." Madness.

The further clue that the problem is not gender but... you... is that you find this pseudoscience while you are browsing the internet, i.e. it is your entertainment, your free time; your leisure time is spent justifying a behavior you can't not do. "But I wasn't looking for those articles, I just stumbled on them." Exactly.

Alone is not a pleasant person to read most of the time. His brain works in mysterious ways, and his material is intentionally acerbic because it's meant to make you question yourself. The point about makeup is completely orthagonal to the point about how power works in society, narcissism, and pornography (the general theme of pretty much all his writing).

but imagine if he consistently turned up unshaven, hair not combed or washed, dirty clothes with holes in and worn-out shoes.

He's a psychiatrist in Baltimore, dealing with general population. No one would really give a damn. Maybe it'd be helpful, given the demographics, probably would make his job slightly easier.

Also, he doesn't shave iirc.

I think often women do wear make up just for themselves. Or because looking prettier has a wide array of social benefits because people treat good looking people better, looking good isn't just useful for finding a partner. But I do think that line is over used, a sizeable amount of looking good is to attract the opposite sex and it's dumb to pretend otherwise.

Makeup strikes me as one of many appearance-based ways to trade effort for status, which may be slanted towards provoking sexual attraction in men--heavily overemphasized eyes and lips, for example--but isn't necessarily. Neatly arranged hair and flatteringly tailored clothing can also be bids for status...but there are also yoga pants with "JUICY" printed across the ass.

In general, working on your appearance sends the message "I have the time and resources to present myself like this, and chose to spend both doing so." Results vary a lot, and I think the motives do as well. It can be a confidence-booster to know you are putting your best foot forward, which probably shouldn't be reduced to "doing it for men," but if you're going full Kardashian, I am with you in not buying the "it's for me, not men" line.

There's a general effect where the people who consume or practice an art want more experimental or self referential art then people who casually consume it. Men seem to prefer more naturalistic makeup looks on women where the goal is a flawless slightly exaggerated version of natural beauty that doesn't call attention to its artificiality. But people who are really good at makeup probably get bored with more minimalistic looks and can do more complex expressive artificial techniques that exist less to emulate flawless natural beauty and more to impress other makeup users with your skill. Then you get to some of the high end drag stuff where the makeup demonstrates flawless technical ability but is trying to produce a pointedly artificial version, or in some cases almost cubist parody, of female beauty.

My guess is a lot of beauty stuff goes like that. Women might be cultured to gain skill at various forms of self presentation to appeal to the male gaze but once you develop knowledge and skill and are good at something it becomes pleasurable to do that thing (dancing, fashion) in forms that are exhibitions of skill and not purely catering to the male gaze.

I think part of the problem is it's a little too reductive to say it's only for men. Why do I as a man go to the gym? One component is certainly to improve my appearance, but that's the least socially acceptable of many other good reasons including to genuinely make myself feel physically better. I do think women wear make up for men, as well as for themselves and for other women. There is practically no situation in the modern world where looking more attractive is anything but a point in your favor. Halo effect, actually attracting partners, and just general confidence.

I've discussed in a past comment that "high status" women not being the most biologically attractive is just status competition rearing its head once again.

Also I think there is a disconnect between biological attractiveness and "beauty standards". A mate that looks a certain way is an indicator of status, that certain way might not be the most biologically attractive.

Additionally, human sexuality is dual-track, and the physical avatars of "madonna" and "whore" differ. The same phenomenon is seen in men, with women splitting top marks between hypersexualized "bad boys" and "dad bods". r/k selection, whatever you want to call it. There are at least two (and probably more) "ideal" body types, looks, whatever you want.

with women splitting top marks between hypersexualized "bad boys" and "dad bods"

No one actually likes dad bods. When you ask women what a "dad bod" is, they explain it's "strong, but strong from picking their child up all day and not from going the gym" or some similar crap, which actually means "strong from going to the gym, but not shredded" in reality. They aren't talking about being attracted to beer bellies.

Well, "Dad bod" doesn't mean beer belly or even out of shape.

Dad bod means the kind of in-shape that normal, attractive people used to look like, as opposed to the HGH monsters even comedians who get Marvel gigs have to become. Harrison Ford in the 80's is kind of the ideal of this, and obviously, not many guys can look like Harrison Ford in 1985, but it's lot easier to be 70% of Harrison Ford in 1986, than 70% of Chris Helmsworth in 2019, and the upside is a lot of women actually prefer 70% of Ford, as opposed to 70% of Hemsworth (or for a more hyperbolic example, The Rock).

They aren't talking about being attracted to beer bellies.

That's a thing too. It's rare though.

Great, perhaps with your reading comprehension, you could go back to my short post and find the term "beer belly".

Or, you could look up the standard definition of dad bod.

Both "bad boy" and "dad bod" types women are attracted to are more or less the same body type. There's no two (or more) "ideal" body types beyond normal variations. I also don't think your snideness was warranted.

That whole nexus of ideas strikes me as .. not firmly founded.

A lot of famously quoted research on it just failed to replicate, for example the one about female preferences differing by ovulation status.

The whole 'dad bod'.. they settle for it. It's a preference only for a minority

If they were shown someone who looks like a bad boy, but dressed profesionally and taken, they'd go for that guy way, way more than for any 'bad boy'.

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