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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Notes -
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 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:
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.
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!)
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