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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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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.
"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.
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