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Wellness Wednesday for September 21, 2022

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Imagine the tweets about a modern top-40 song with a guy saying he wanted a girl with a "skinny personality" as opposed to a "fat personality!"

At least that's a controllable trait. I can imagine what "fit girl energy" might mean when applied to a girl that's kinda chunky. Isn't the appropriate analog "big tit energy"?

There is no analogue, because generally men describe ugly women as having good friendly open personalities, and thin women as having relatively arrogant personalities. A guy might reasonably be said to want a thin girl with a fat girl's personality: a hot girl who eats whatever she wants and isn't stuck up or chilly. From La Boheme

a lively woman... a bit...

well, not a whale exactly

or a relief-map of the world

or a face like a full moon,

but not thin, really thin. No!

Thin women are worrisome

and often... a nuisance...

always full of complaints,

While it's nonsensical to say a girl wants a tall man with "Short man syndrome," or a guy with a big dick who is yet still "is compensating for something."

The conventions are just all out of balance. Much as I recall Elliot Engel pointing out in a lecture that the worst thing (outside slang) you can call a woman acting like a man is Masculine (which has no negative connotations) while the worst thing you can call a man (outside slang) that is acting like a woman is effeminate (which has no positive connotations).

There is no analogue, because generally men describe ugly women as having good friendly open personalities, and thin women as having relatively arrogant personalities.

What makes you say this? Sounds more like a media trope than anything else, especially when attractive women benefit from the halo effect.

Yes, I'm talking about media/linguistic tropes and connotations. Shallow Hal doesn't really get gender-flipped, the closest I can think of is probably that one episode of Sex and the City. Or think of a stand up comedian, like your generic mainstream dirty comic, a Dane Cook and an Ali Wong, saying the same thing but gender-flipped. It doesn't land.

It's relationship to reality is secondary, it's still relevant what the media is saying, in the same way it is relevant that the media will say "LOL straight white men are the worst!" even though various metrics will tell us straight white men don't face problems in real life.