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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24362 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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This week I encountered an artifact at the intersection of my interests. I watched a good movie with Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling, The Nice Guys. The damsel in distress is played by Margaret Qualley, and additional reading about her pointed me towards this. Watch it, it's short.

It's a ten-year-old ad for a (terrible) fragrance, in which Margaret, wearing an evening dress, dances to a banging dancehall tune. It's very obviously inspired by the award-winning music video for Weapon of Choice by Fatboy Slim (and its director and the guy who wrote the music for the Kenzo ad are brothers), but that's not the point. The point is a goofy Christopher Walken doesn't have the same effect on me as a goofy Margaret Qualley. And she certainly does. She was "eh" in the movie, she is "hnng" in the ad.

Why does making faces and doing silly walks make a conventionally attractive woman even more attractive? The effect goes beyond the well-established TikTok practice of dancing and lip-synching. Why don't women use this superweapon? I can only think of (sorry!) Aella that does.

Some hypotheses:

  1. An active face in your twenties gives you more wrinkles in your forties. I don't think it works like that, but maybe women believe it does.
  2. It's another disarmament thing. You have women that can pull it off with ease (because they are attractive and outgoing), and you have the rest, who either have to struggle or can't do silly mode at all. A culture of limited expressivity has evolved to avoid an arms race.
  3. It's a limited masculinization budget thing. Similar to #2, but limited to a single person. Qualley does her routine in heels and an evening dress, the lines of her body unmistakably feminine even when she's walking with a pronounced hunch. Dress her in baggy sweats and sneakers, and the same routine won't have the desired effect. Why invest in a weapon that limits your other options?

I give my vote for cringey tryhard dance. Yes she's also showing some athleticism, but the overall impression is not a good one.

You are attracted to this? It had the opposite effect for me NGL. She can't pull off that mad Walken dance, poor performance or poor direction, who knows. And she was less attractive flailing about than simply standing there like a mannequin.

Yeah, this is a pretty recognizable pattern of behavior. From experience, I'm pretty sure that a lot of girls think of it as fun, but they perceive - perhaps correctly, given the response you're getting, although I don't think that response is fully trustworthy, some real protesting-too-much going on - that it's unattractive, so you mostly only see it in homosocial contexts, girls hanging out with other girls, goofing around, and not directly thinking about attracting men. I saw a lot of this kind of thing growing up, attending dance and drama programs that were ~95% female. Maybe that's part of why it can be attractive, because it's classic countersignaling - it's how girls actually act when they're excited and in a good mood and whether anyone is into them is just not on their mind.

Maybe this is a better video. Sophie Cunningham who does a few silly faces. Except instead of manic she also vibes for can help with chores on the homestead.

https://x.com/BenStanton77/status/2087593023584489814/video/1?s=46

I would consider rating her sexiest women alive. And the ones who make this lists are woke so she won’t. She’s obviously not unless you include intangibles like the benefits of giving you athletic kids and she can fight a little bit. So that bumps a high 8 in my book up a lot.

Having watched it again, no, she's not attractive (to me). I think the difference is that Walken is dancing in his video, while she's grimacing and convulsing. And to me at least, her mouth is too big and her eyes are wrong (they look like they're upside-down, there's something off about the lower lids and the shape there).

But I'm not a straight guy, so what's hot about her to you is not going to be the same to me. She is able to control her body and do the jumps, I'm not denying that, but she's not what I'd call hot. At the very start of the ad, I think the two older women seated at the table with her are more attractive. She looks - unfinished? doughy? too young? Something, anyway. Like there's not much there yet, and a few more years will fill up this shell with a person, not the larval stage she is at there.

Whenever I see Margaret Qualley I think of her mother, and my fixation on her roughly beginning with Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Showing my age no doubt.

Mom is (or was) prettier, at least by my judgement.

Andie MacDowell? Whoa. Groundhog Day was where she turned my young head, but regardless, welcome to the showing-our-age club! Let's just remember to try not to be too creepy about it.

I remember an ad with her dressed as a fencer skewering... wrinkles?

edit: yep, wrinkles

Who else but fencers?

I stuck with the dance until they started shooting phasors from her arms.

I didn't care for it. Mark me down as another vote that Walken had a little more something for me.

I think women police each other too hard to be able to use anything that men find attractive too much. Humans have an incredibly adept ability to hunt out anyone trying undercut them and women collectively are vicious in their collective enforcement of their social norms. A high status woman like this can afford to counter signal and can push envelopes a little and rely on her well known status to prevent too much static, but others cannot.

I am amazed that no-one has given what seems to be the prima facie obvious answer: women’s silly faces are attractive to the extent and only to the extent that they resemble her orgasm-face (hence why the aheago is the most popular silly face).

(EDIT: I think the first place I saw this argument was in Christopher Hitchens essay “Why Women Aren’t Funny”, where he opines that men like making women laugh in part because laughing face resembles O-face)

As to why more women don’t do it, I think this has been well answered already: they don’t want to be seen as more attractive, they already have suitors enough. Unless they’re directly monetizing off quantity of suitors, which is why you see it on TikTok.

I don't think it's the "superweapon" that you seem to think it is due to a combination of "3." and @The_Nybbler's observation about dance training. Most people you meet on the street do not have the sort of precision control over their bodies that she is demonstrating in that video, and when you see it, it stands out. You see a similar phenomenon with competitive athletes.

She has the physical training and talent to not only do a standing front-flip but make it look effortless. Most women don't.

Why does making faces and doing silly walks make a conventionally attractive woman even more attractive? The effect goes beyond the well-established TikTok practice of dancing and lip-synching.

Actually it doesn't go beyond the well-established TikTok practice of dancing and lip-synching. The Instagram algorithm (I don't use TikTok) has essentially solved female attractiveness. Not that it was ever a secret what men find attractive. There's just not much alpha in taking the extra step up from low-cut shirts and flirtatious poses unless one wants to be an OnlyFans model influencer.

I was expecting to find this hot from your description but it ended up being unattractive for me. I can't even really access it in a 'sex with crazy people is so exciting' sense. It all just strikes me as too forced and stilted and weird and with no emotional valence.

I don't mean to sound like a queer or nuthin' but I thought Christopher Walken was sexier.

I watched it because of your comment and agree completely - it’s awful.

MQ is incredibly sexy just as is and in several films … that ad is just dumb money being spent by a company with too much of it.

FWIW (1) In general I find Margaret Qualley to be very attractive; and (2) to me, that dance routine was not attractive at all. If she were my girlfriend, I would try to avoid thinking about that dance number.

In any event, my wild-ass guess is that if a woman is willing to violate certain social norms, some men perceive it as a signal that she might be down for a quickie.

Why don't women use this superweapon?

Women have an even stronger super-weapon to generate attraction, which is to wear clothing which is significantly more revealing than the average women around them. A shorter skirt; a more low-cut top; a skimpier bikini; and so on. So why aren't there lots of women walking around naked? (Actually sometimes it seems we are headed in that direction). There are a few answers to that, but a big one is, again, social norms. Most women don't want to be perceived as trashy. Besides, as another poster pointed out, most women want better suitors, not more suitors.

In the same way, there's a social norm against doing the sort of goofy dance she is doing in that video. In fact that's kind of the point of the video -- she is doing something unconventional.

FWIW (1) In general I find Margaret Qualley to be very attractive; and (2) to me, that dance routine was not attractive at all.

Same. I first saw her in Nice Guys around when it came out and thought she was gorgeous in that so I have watched a lot of what she has been in, and I have to say she is one of those Nepo Babies with real talent. That dance is one of the least attractive things I have seen her in. She was prettier in Maid where she was dressed all the way down as a poor single mother.

I first saw her in Nice Guys around when it came out and thought she was gorgeous in that so I have watched a lot of what she has been in, and I have to say she is one of those Nepo Babies with real talent. That dance is one of the least attractive things I have seen her in. She was prettier in Maid where she was dressed all the way down as a poor single mother.

FWIW I really liked her flower-child/hippie look in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Hot take: Talented nepo babies in Hollywood are vindication of HBD.

Nah, it's dynastic advantage. College-educated parents have college-educated kids, doctor parents have doctor kids, actor parents have actor kids.

A random girl from Missouri might want to become an actress, but she has no idea how to become one. There's this meme that you first move to LA to wait tables and then wait tables until you lose all hope and go back home to Sedalia.

Actor parents know how the industry works. If their child shows any promise, they have director friends, producer friends, they have agents working for them, they know what first roles are good for their kid's acting career and they get dibs on them. By the name Maddyson graduates from Smith-Cotton High School, her spot has already been taken by someone sufficiently good.

Far be it from me to put HBD evidence in the trash, but I take it more as evidence that acting is trivially easy and the only people who can’t do it are crack babies (a set with significant overlap on nepo babies, which is the real reason nepo babies usually can’t - they are unusually disadvantaged on account of their parent’s drug use)

Have you tried it?

I did drama in high school (mostly to avoid having to do painting). It was, indeed, ezpz.

Fair enough. I tried and was awful: wooden, unable to easily imitate tone or behaviour. You may be more talented than you think.

I used to think acting skill was about acting convincingly, but I think it's actually more like being someone people want to watch. I don't think it's trivially easy, or at least it's comparable to something like picking up women at a bar. It's easy if you've got it, really hard if you actually need to get good at it.

Yeah especially with unlimited retakes and the star power PR vehicle behind you.

Margaret Qualley is a classically trained ballet dancer and at least at 22 had the body to go with it. Which is to say doing attractive "silly walks" is not an 'easy' superweapon at all. I assure you that women with dance training DO do it though.

The faces don't do anything for me.

I assure you that women with dance training DO do it though.

Where?

I know more than a few women with professional and amateur dance background and I haven’t seen a single one ever done anything whatsoever like MQ does in thay video. Probably because they’re intelligent enough to realize it makes them look retarded instead of attractive.

I meant generally move their body in controlled but odd ways, not that specific (choreographed) dance.

I can't say I've noticed that either. If anything, I'd say people with such background move in less odd ways because they have a better sense of aesthetics and what looks good when it comes to posture and movement.

Perhaps it's different on that side of the atlantic.

I assure you that women with dance training DO do it though.

I'm not going to say the video was my favorite, but to describe it as "silly walks" probably undersells the grace in the motions. The movements are quick, fluid, and precise, and not something an untrained person flailing about could do. It looks qualitatively different from, say, the Raygun breakdancing performance (which itself was better than most could manage). I might have missed a double being composited in, but I think Qualley did at least the bulk of the shots.

Aesthetically, I'm on the fence, but at least on a technical level it's impressive.

Why does making faces and doing silly walks make a conventionally attractive woman even more attractive?

I reject the premise.

Maybe to some men, as it makes her feel more attainable.

To me just watching a few seconds of the video gave me the ick and I closed out. I felt a minor sense of revulsion, like seeing Charles Dance… dancing… in drag. Still wood nut in cider obviously.

Seems like most people don’t find this attractive. She seems manic. That doesn’t generate attraction. If it generates any sexual attention it’s because she looks psychotic and perhaps you could hit it and run easily. But definitely not in the category of take to dinner (she would embarrass you); but for a man with low morals perhaps feed her alcohol and smash for a night.

Agree. The silly faces do not seem attractive at all to me

You're selling it short. The Nice Guys is one of the best movies of the 2010s. It's peak buddy cop.

Why does making faces and doing silly walks make a conventionally attractive woman

Gap Moe

Why don't women use this superweapon?

Attractive women don't need more suitors. They want better suitors.

I can only think of (sorry!) Aella that does.

I won't comment on your tastes, but Aella is generally considered undesirable by normies. Her writing & behavior turbo-fries the mind of bay area rationalists. But that's an exception that proves the rule, if I've ever seen one.

You're selling it short. The Nice Guys is one of the best movies of the 2010s. It's peak buddy cop.

Cosign. It is a spiritual sequel to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang which is the best buddy cop movie of the aughts. I have a hard time deciding which is better.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang which is the best buddy cop movie of the aughts

You are so completely and utterly wrong, because it's obviously Hot Fuzz.

Showdown in Little Tokyo obviously being the best of the 90’s.

Why does making faces and doing silly walks make a conventionally attractive woman even more attractive?

Nah, that's a you thing bro. Good luck with your preferences, chacun à son goût and all that, but... that video is not "ooh how attractive she looks". Not even fun, I have to agree with other commenter - this is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl having her bipolar meltdown.

What's the name of this fallacy, assuming that a random sample is close to the mean?

In this context, I would call it the typical mind fallacy.

Popularized by Scott on LW in 2009.

When it comes to modeling other peoples' cognition based on your own, it's called "typical mind fallacy". For more general applications, it's "hasty generalization".

Why does making faces and doing silly walks make a conventionally attractive woman even more attractive?

Some hypotheses:

I'll reach for Occam's Razor, maybe seeing her having fun (or at least making a convincing impression of having fun) makes her seem like a fun person to be around?

*EDIT: I'll add another simple hypothesis. It's the novelty effect. Mass media over exposed us to conventionally attractive women to the point we're numb to it. Seeing images or videos conventionally attractive woman, in all sorts of states of dress or undress, in all sorts of scenarios that emphasise their attractiveness is so easy that there's nothing special to it anymore. Computers can now trivially generate an infinite amount of convincing images of those. However, seeing a conventionally attractive woman doing an unbridled dance routine that doesn't emphasise her conventional attractiveness (ie: neither graceful like ballet or ballroom dancing, nor erotic like cabaret/pole-dancing/striptease/lapdance) is not something you see as often, so you're not over exposed to that specific thing so it still affects you.

My best guess: it's the opposite of Resting Bitch Face.

RBF signals "I don't want randos pestering me". Despite the nasty name that certainly isn't a bad desire, but it is naturally off-putting if you're a randy rando and you realize your chances just went from "the worst she can do is say no" to "the best she can do is say no". Safest not to get attracted in the first place.

Silly behavior signals "I'll give anything a shot once". This doesn't actually mean more than a small fraction of randos' shots can land, but not-zero is still infinity percent more than zero, and hope springs eternal.

I'd also guess that many men have experienced and most men have witnessed some women "getting the ick" via social pressure and/or about some stereotypically-male behavior; a woman behaving in a way that's socially daring and stereotypically male looks like a woman who might be immune to those icks, someone around whom you can let your guard down now and again, which can feel more meaningfully attractive than nice hair or hips or whatever.

Why does making faces and doing silly walks make a conventionally attractive woman even more attractive?

My hypothesis, it doesn't, at least in this case. I've seen that ad before. It's a fantastic ad, but Margaret is making herself much less attractive with all the gestures and stuff. I think that's why it works as an ad. It's somewhat jarring to see a Hollywood starlet make herself look bad, there's probably some countersignalling thing about her being so beautiful that she can goof around like that (note that her hair, clothes and makeup are all perfect). There's probably also some interesting contrast with her hyper-feminine appearance and her (to my eyes) quite masculine gesticulating, which you noted in your third point.

It's very different from the playful, girlish kind of silliness that my wife (and many other women I've known) do. That's more attractive in my eyes and, I would bet, in the eyes of most men.

I think the ad is more effective than the music video in large part because of the context of the first minute or so (which your link skips past by default). We first see Qualley sitting in a group setting, politely smiling at some speaker slightly above and to the right of the camera. So then, when she moves into an empty room and starts looking directly into the camera and making silly faces, it feels more explicitly intimate; now that we're alone she's taking the mask off and showing us her real goofy self.

I think this general strategy of acting goofy as a way of showing that you're letting your guard down is something women do often do. But it doesn't usually involve this level of crazy Jim Carrey expressions and movements because, outside the context of a larger-than-life musical number, it'd feel unnatural and forced. (If your goofiness feels too much like a performance, that works against the idea that it's an expression of your genuine self.) But you also can find that kind of thing in anime characters, and the segment of e-girls/cosplayers/streamers that imitate anime characters, because anime also creates a context where the viewer is expecting crazy expressions.

It also helps that her silly dance involves thrusting her chest out and jiggling around a lot, things that are usually more attractive when women do them.

I think this is category error, you see Margaret Qualley as attractive, it is hardly something that Christopher Walken can replicate. My two cents is that while Walken is actually goofy but still somehow dignified, Qualley to me seems actually insane, as if she is in the middle of manic episode of her bipolar disorder. But for some reason many men find that highly attractive. I remember way back when Candance Owens had this popular clip of weird voice and crazy look - and many men watched it in a loop finding it fascinating and attractive.

So maybe you are just into crazy women, you would not be the first one. It is well known I can fix her or Manic Pixie Dream Girl effect.

Christopher Walken had/has the weirdness points to spend on that video. I don't know this girly and frankly if she's an actress I'm not going to be rushing off to catch up with her oeuvre.

Crikey, it just struck me what her goofy face-pulling reminded me of - this quote from "The Pilgrim's Regress" by C.S. Lewis:

Glugly instantly rose. She was very tall and as lean as a post: and her mouth was not quite straight in her face. When she was in the middle of the room, and silence had been obtained, she began to make gestures. First of all she set her arms a-kimbo and cleverly turned her hands the wrong way so that it looked as if her wrists were sprained. Then she waddled to and fro with her toes pointing in. After that she twisted herself to make it look as if her hip bone was out of joint. Finally she made some grunts, and said:

‘Globol obol oogle ogle globol gloogle gloo,’ and ended by pursing up her lips and making a vulgar noise such as children make in their nurseries. Then she went back to her place and sat down.

‘Thank you very much,’ said John politely. But Glugly made no reply, for Glugly could not talk, owing to an accident in infancy.

‘I hoped you liked it,’ said young Halfways.

‘I didn’t understand her.’

‘Ah,’ said a woman in spectacles who seemed to be Glugly’s nurse or keeper, ‘that is because you are looking for beauty. You are still thinking of your Island. You have got to realize that satire is the moving force in modern music.’

‘It is the expression of a savage disillusionment,’ said someone else.

‘Reality has broken down,’ said a fat boy who had drunk a great deal of the medicine and was lying flat on his back, smiling happily.

‘Our art must be brutal,’ said Glugly’s nurse.

‘We lost our ideals when there was a war in this country,’ said a very young Clever, ‘they were ground out of us in the mud and the flood and the blood. That is why we have to be so stark and brutal.’

I remember way back when Candance Owens had this popular clip of weird voice and crazy look - and many men watched it in a loop finding it fascinating and attractive.

So maybe you are just into crazy women

I don't find this clip attractive at all, too creepy/yandere.

As any healthy man should, but it was a thing for a while. Just peruse the comment section, it became a meme with other reactions.

My two cents is that while Walken is actually goofy but still somehow dignified

Walken was a guy nearly in his 60s pulling off dance moves middle aged men are definitely not supposed to be able to, all the while being dressed as for an actually serious film. It’s impressive looking and the juxtaposition between ”serious older guy” and somewhat goofy but quite well done dance moves by a ”he’s not supposed to be able to do that” aged guy is what makes it all work.

In contrast Margaret Qualley looks like she’s literally having a seizure.

In contrast Margaret Qualley looks like she’s literally having a seizure.

That's one way to put it. Have Qualley get some weight, give her baseball hat and sweatpants and you get this. But I still thing that Qualley has some je ne sais quoi of craziness at least in my eyes, Raygun is actually funny although unintentionally.

However there is something else going on with Qualley. She is a professional dancer and ballerina, those moves are controlled and the more they look erratic, the more you are drawn into the manipulation, the more you experience the whiplash. It is nowhere near goofy, it is precise and intentional, it is meta level madness here - it looks like random seizure but it is precise and methodical. It is that exact whiplash that may be subconsciously attractive. Like Candance Owens, mother in her late 30ies looking like a girl with perfect skin and delivering slightly threatening rant. It is the juxtaposition that many men find attractive.

Have Qualley get some weight, give her baseball hat and sweatpants and you get this.

Nah. Raygun is more like an autist who can only grasp the surface meaning of the art.

However there is something else going on with Qualley. She is a professional dancer and ballerina, those moves are controlled

I agree. It's like Picasso, who knew what he was doing when he was drawing these simplified, grotesque images of humans. You can see Qualley flip the switch with ease when she appears on the scene in the ad.

It is well known I can fix her effect.

Ahem ... she needs no fixing.

But she is so vulnerable, for sure there are many predators who would use this vulnerability to abuse her. Look how innocent and playful and goofy she is, you need to be there for her and protect this rare pixie. Right?

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