My Reddit Q&A on Monday generated a lot of good questions:
Ever notice on Facebook, when ever an average/fugly/fat chick post’s her picture you have like ten women (only women) chime in with their comments under the picture saying stuff like “HOT!” “you’re so pretty!” “damn you look good” when in fact she isn’t?!
Are women trying to make their not so attractive friend feel better about herself?! Or is there another scheme involved here of setting the bar low in order to boast their own attractive scale up.
I see, hear and read this constantly. What we’re observing however is a carefully constructed feminine social convention, and a feminine-combative one at that. By tacitly reinforcing the “good looks” of an obviously overweight woman with positive compliments, the latent message is that she doesn’t need to improve her looks to attract men. The truth of course is that she could be semi-fuckable after dropping another 15 pounds, but in telling her she’s hot ‘as-is’ the idea, in the form of an encouraging compliment, is to get her to relax and stay fat. Thus the complimenter(s) simultaneously feel relaxed in their fat.
It’s really a socialization attempt by less physically appealing women to regulate the sexual market in favor of themselves.
I can remember experiencing this firsthand long before the advent of social media. In the days I worked in the resort casino industry, I was in the lunchroom with the largely (heh) female advertising department and the conversation came up about how some woman in accounting was “too thin” or she need to gain some weight. I emphatically disagreed; I knew the woman they were going on about and she could’ve lost 10 pounds and still been overweight. The ladies lost their shit when I said she could stand to lose a few pounds and hit the gym more often. The hens practically pounded the table with their fists and the accusations of misogyny, and the old chestnuts about men’s “shallow” desires for the physical all flew wild and furious.
You see all the women at the table were as heavy if not heavier than the woman in question. I had insulted the herd by association.
The funny thing about body image is that most people tend to judge obesity based on their own physique. If you’re overweight and your regular peer group is fatter than you, you tend to think you’re “normal”. It’s similar to eating a donut from a box someone’s brought to work for all to enjoy. If one person is eating a donut it tacitly gives others “permission” to enjoy one too.
I was once at a distillery in Panama with a group of Dutch people I work with and a stunningly attractive Panamanian secretary asked me if I was Dutch. I told her, no, I was American and she said “oh, you don’t ‘look’ American. I laughed at this for a minute and asked her what an American ‘looks’ like and she said, “well, they’re all fat.” I took it as a compliment, but I had to agree with her.
Books and Covers
You can’t judge a book by it’s cover, but more often than not, it’s a good indicator of what the story’s about. An attractive cover should make the reader want to read it.
Women have far more rigid prerequisites for what makes an acceptable man for an LTR than men do for women. Women base their estimate of a man on his confidence, status, affluence, looks, humor, intellect, creativity, ambition, determination, decisiveness,..and the list goes on. Men’s requisites for intimacy? Looks and sexual availability, that’s it. Beyond that, you can make a case for any ephemeral quality that convinces you the girl’s worth your long term investment, but if she’s not hot enough to keep your physical interest, you’re going to look elsewhere to make up for it.
Yet what is the single most common shaming tactic women use for men? Painting them as ‘shallow‘ for requiring her to maintain a good shape and be sexually available. Men have far too much on the line in the long term NOT to be concerned with demanding the highest standard from a woman for an investment that goes beyond anything she could hope to genuinely appreciate or match by other means. For all of the personal investment a man must make in himself to meet women’s ‘attraction prerequisites’, it only makes pragmatic sense that his (physical) standards for women be strict and exact.
It’s really up to you to make the judgement call, but by no means should you allow accusations of superficiality influence your decision in that. As a Man, you are well within your rights to expect a maintained physique from a woman, considering the far greater sacrifices she expects from you. Would you leave her if she got fat? Damn right you would. Would she leave you if you went beta-listless-unemployed-alcoholic? Damn right she would.
All that said, what it really comes down to is the reason why this girl lost the weight. There are plenty of fresh divorcees frenetically working out at Planet Fitness in the hopes of reconditioning themselves enough to attract another husband – only to fatten up again once she finds the guy who “loves her for who she is”. Women who once were fat, who slim down are prone to this. That’s not to say there aren’t women who make a definitive lifestyle change and go from being a walrus to a Fitness America Pageant contestant and parley that into modeling or personal training career, but these are the most rare and notable exceptions.
I should also point out that it’s a uniquely White Knight habit to publicly defend a woman’s body image insecurities in order to get the identification / affirmation strokes they believe endears them to women. I hear these guys parrot back the same lines women self-affirm when talking about their body shape or trying to disqualify a sexual competitor, in an effort to be more ‘like’ the women they hope to get with. The idea is that they believe they’ll be rewarded for taking the “fat acceptance, love-who-you-are” tact and be perceived as more modern or up with the right conventions, and that guy’s who actually have the temerity to say they prefer a tight body are the neanderthals – again, to disqualify their own sexual competitors.
The Mechanics of Sexual Selection
Whenever the ‘fat is OK’ debate pops up all it does is serve to further illustrate yet another feminine social convention. All of these conventions are sociological and psychological methodologies with the latent purpose of securing breeding opportunities for less than physically optimal women.
- Point 1: Women know on an instinctual, biological level that, overall, men generally base their breeding selection on the physical conditions of a female. Hips to waist ratio, breast size, facial symmetry, fullness of lips, youthful appearance, etc.
- Point 2: In order to compete with similar women in meeting the physical standards of a given demographic of men, women must create physical methods in order to compensate for this deficit. Thus they have make up, cosmetic surgery, high-heels, hair dye, etc.
- Point 3: Failing this, sociological and psychological constructs are necessary to ‘level the playing field’ in the sexual marketplace. Thus, fat, out of shape women attempt to convince men to feel ashamed for wanting a physically superior female by converting that desire into shame. It becomes superficiality. Likewise, older women who’s sexual marketability wanes with every passing year, must create social constructs that praises the sexual prowess of older women.
Women have been trying to convince themselves for centuries that there ought to be more to sexual attraction for men than physical appeal, and for centuries this method has been thwarted by simple male biology. Rather than play the game better, they attempt to change the rules of the game to better fit their own limitations in a variety of ways.
The problem with the idea that “it’s what’s inside that counts” is that it’s what’s outside that arouses. All the “feeling good about your body” that a fat woman can muster is NEVER going to be an aphrodisiac or a substitute for having a great body that men are aroused by.
January 30th, 2013 at 7:51 am
@you had it coming
“The funny thing about this point is that what “arouses” a person is in large part, completely culturally and socially constructed. A great body can be defined in a million ways by a million people from different places or a million people from the same place. How you define beauty is different from how I define it. I’m not making a huge paradoxical claim here, this is common knowledge.”
Oh boy… I’m too lazy to do it, but could somebody link this deluded hamster to all the books and studies that blew this 20 year-old feminism-inspired false ideology out of the water?
@kay
lol @ the fiancee story.
January 30th, 2013 at 8:11 am
I like my money, the courts gave my ex wife half my army salary for the reminder of her/ my life so it is a very enjoyable to have more then a few hundred dollars on hand.
The difference is, I do not think those who make less money are beneath me in any way. That applies across the spectrum of my accomplishments. You on the other hand think those without a PhD are beneath you. I think that’s a woman’s logic thing. I have to family members with math related PhD’ s and neither think people are beneath them
Or maybe it’s rural vs urban thinking
January 30th, 2013 at 9:15 am
Well, I’m glad for you, Ton. I lost $140 grand in my divorce, so I can sympathize.
You may not consider those with less money beneath you, but you consider people of a certain age and looks beneath you. Yes, I consider people with a high school education *a poor match* for me. There is not anything necessarily wrong with them as people. Almost all people have value of some kind; the topic here is who one is interested in as a romantic partner.
January 30th, 2013 at 10:47 am
Kate:
Not to belabor a point but i do want to point out i only have high school ed. I have zero post secondary in me. I also didn’t go into debt learning BS but that’s another topic.
Yet out of all my friends, a majority come to me to talk about philosophy, the meaning of life, introspection, geopolitics, the economy, political discourse, debates about terrorism vs. hegemony… etc..
I would hope simply talking with me over these here interwebs should give you cause to understand education isn’t an end all be all and you may be discarding many wonderful men aside in search of this arbitrary line in the sand about a degree.
I’ve met highly educated people in this world.
They had the personality of cardboard and life smarts to match. Yeah, they could give you all you’d hope for a doctorate or a degree in X, and you’d be bored to tears by their monotone way of speaking, their self absorbed attitude and elitism for holding their degree that would make Frasier Crane blush.
As i pointed out earlier, your insistence to stick with this benchmark would have made you avoid men like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Well, Bill can be a stick in the mud.. but Jobs? That guy was charisma and excitement galore. He single handedly convinced millions of simpletons to hand over hard earned cash for high tech children’s toys that play music.
College dropout.
Start expanding Kate. Don’t end up with cats because the man you want to admire has letters after his name. Admire him because he’s curious about all the world, not just one specialty.
January 30th, 2013 at 11:49 am
Sorry if I’m threadjacking… I’ve thought about this female fat problem a lot. It’s actually a very simple problem with a very simple solution.
When women are near their peak of physical growth, their muscles are essentially at their peak, it’s all downhill from there. All women’s fitness is geared towards repetitive light-load cardiovascular excercise. Women seem absolutely anti-free-weights. Even the women who love to stay fit that I’ve known mostly refuse to pump weights of any kind. This is backwards and actually CAUSES women to get fat later in life. All of us eventually become more sedentary than we were as kids, and women especially have trouble maintaining muscle mass when this happens.
What women need to understand is that muscle burns calories much faster (like 50% faster) than fat. In order to lose fat you need to replace it with muscle. If you as a woman fear lifting weights because you fear looking like a woman bodybuilder, there is no hope for you. You have to lose that fear, because frankly, it’s irrational. Those women bodybuilders have to take 100 different pills/supplements a day to look like that, hence you will never look like that on a normal diet with lots of weightlifting.
Women, remember how you’re always envious of your male friends and how fast they seem to lose weight? You want to know why that is? I’ll tell you: The difference between men and women in muscle mass/density is the reason. Men NATURALLY have more muscle than you, our bodies demand it, our activity level demands it.
If you’re a woman and you’re confused as to why you’re fat and can’t lose the weight, look no further than the last time you asked a man to move something heavy for you. Your own self-enforced facade of physical weakness is causing the problem. Stop being physically weak, start lifting weights and you’ll see the pounds start to permanently melt away.
Again, sorry for the threadjack, I just felt I had to say this even if it had been pointed out before.
January 30th, 2013 at 3:46 pm
This is so hilarious! Seems like I’ve been mixed up in something! Thanks for the compliments @FuriousFerret, if they are ones! I’m with a lovely guy called Mat but am glad I’ve stumbled on this interesting post and always feel for my single friends.
January 30th, 2013 at 4:11 pm
Hi “other” Kate :) I recognize you. You’re the Autralian geisha!
January 30th, 2013 at 4:52 pm
Look you guys look the same alright.
Same facial structure, nose and forehead.
I searched Geisha Kate and your site was the third one down.
How many blonde chicks that write about geishas are there in this world?
January 30th, 2013 at 5:40 pm
kate, you used the word beneath, not the phrase romantically uninterested in
A world of difference between the two.
January 30th, 2013 at 5:53 pm
Well, we now know there are at least two of us. No biggie. Hey, everybody, I found FuriousFerret! :)
@Ton: Yes, I did use that word in quotes to indicate the levels that were the topic of conversation. Yes, there is a big difference.
January 31st, 2013 at 4:02 am
@Trini
Your poor brother. Is there something wrong with him that your wife would subject him to that? Or is she just that completely clueless about the dating market?
February 1st, 2013 at 8:54 pm
[…] did with men, you begin to remove the very rationale for X to either exist or partake. This dynamic can be seen in every conversation in the sphere where the women is strong/proud/independent and does…. Thus, his status in her life simply becomes that of a to-do list checkmark, a warm bodied dildo, a […]
February 8th, 2013 at 10:01 am
Haha I read the first part of it and laughed. I won’t comment on the rest if your theories or whatever but this stuff about Facebook is just not even true. I’m a girl and I just commented on my friends Facebook photo like yesterday. She’s not a ten or whatever but she’s my friend and she had taken a nice picture of herself and compared to how she normally looks it was a nice representation. So because she’s one of my best friends and because I love her and miss her and view her not just as a piece of ass on a scale of 1-10 but a person with many good qualities who had put a little more effort into her appearance one day I complimented her to make her feel good. also i did it because knowing all of her many positive traits makes her appear beautiful to me. I can assure you I wasn’t part of bizarre plot from all of womankind to make myself appear more attractive. That literally sounds like something a 12 year old or really anyone who just really doesn’t understand women would make up. Sorry if I don’t belong here, but idk I think that is ridiculous to the point of being laughable and curious for the response
February 8th, 2013 at 10:57 am
@Katie
It seems reasonable that this would sound strange and even humorous to anyone who hasn’t thought or considered things from the viewpoint offered here. That’s no surprise. The fact that humor is found in it does not impugn the perspective. Certainly equality/voting/education for black slaves seemed humorous to the slave owners in the south before emancipation and later equal rights.
So, you just indicated your friend normally doesn’t look as good as she did in that picture AND you complimented her on the picture to make her feel good. From this I take it to mean that your friend ordinarily looks fatter/uglier than the picture you’re speaking of and that you would likely not consider complimenting her on one of those “normal” days where she looks fatter/uglier just to make her feel good. From this I take it your concern for your friend isn’t wholly about all those other qualities you like in your friend (otherwise you might compliment her on something else), but also in how she looks. This would seem to contradict the implication of altruism that you present.
Women rate themselves in physical appearance to their friends, they do. This is just a fact of life. This is little different from male society organizing itself in a heirarchical structure, as male friends compare themselves via achievements and resources. It’s quite easy to say, “well I did this to make my friend feel good,” and mean it. The reality is you were subconsciously thinking, “She looks a lot better than normal, I’m glad I look better than that with less effort.”
You certainly do appreciate all those other good qualities of your friend, otherwise you wouldn’t be her friend. I’m not trashing your ability to be a friend, far from it, it’s nice to compliment those we care about semi-regularly. Your post, however, seems to imply that friendship among women is more important than attempting to find romance/intimacy among men. You seem to feel that the male opinion on overweight women is meaningless because those women have all the platonic love they want from other women on their appearance. This is both illogical and destructive as it raises the platonic above the erotic with no rationalization. Those fat women might want intimacy with men more than female friends, and excusing the excess weight and unhealthy behavior doesn’t help them any more than pointing and laughing at them would.
February 11th, 2013 at 10:46 pm
[…] something more at work? I suspect it does. Notice the phenomenon Rollo brilliantly describes wherein women encourage each other to feel great about bodies that shouldn’t necessarily […]
March 8th, 2013 at 9:04 am
I constantly emailed this blog post page to all my friends, since
if like to read it then my links will too.
May 30th, 2013 at 9:36 pm
A young, attractive female friend of mine was yammering on about fat acceptance and “lookism” (*facepalm* to the latter) a few days ago. I told her that the fat acceptance meme was just a weak attempt to guilt-trip guys that she doesn’t want to fuck into fucking her fat friends. When she tried to protest this, I told her that she needed to make a list of all the fat guys she’d fucked before she could say anything else about it. She, predictably, changed the subject.
January 24th, 2014 at 6:14 pm
TIMING. Suzanne Venker just asked about this.
January 24th, 2014 at 6:41 pm
Weird, I was just linking this to Vox’s latest too.
March 9th, 2014 at 11:20 am
One theme of this comment thread seems to be “men tend to inspire each other to improve themselves, while women tend to tell each other it’s ok not to improve themselves.”
My ev. psych speculation is that the hunt, being a non zero-sum game, was a place where shared in your fellow man’s success. While the campsite, where the women and children were, was a mostly zero-sum game, focused on dividing what the men brought back from the hunt.
May 27th, 2014 at 11:50 pm
Hello there! Would you mind if I share your blog with my
twitter group? There’s a lot of people that I think would really enjoy your content.
Please let me know. Cheers
June 11th, 2014 at 1:20 am
@Erudite Knight writes
Being skinny takes EFFORT
So true. I lost 86 lbs in less than six months some years back. This was not by some kind of luck. And whenever anyone mentions genetics, I have to point out that I’m the only person in my family that accomplished having the low body fat I enjoyed until the tragedy that occurred this year. When I lost that body fat, it took living completely new habits, then sticking with them every day. It’s a lifestyle that most people, sadly, will not choose to live. Data shows that most people, at least in the ‘United States’ … are obese. Obesity is a choice. The education on what foods cause obesity is not so difficult to find anymore. Listen to my friend Scott Brick (most heard audiobook narrator in the world) speak about his drastic life changes after a cancer diagnosis… his eating and exercise changes have become his lifestyle. My eating regimen is detailed and is discussed elsewhere, but here’s a little bit of what I still do to keep the body fat away: http://bit.ly/1nwuipq Now many more steps have been added each day as I recover in a 24/7 in-patient situation after one second, sitting in my car at a stop, changed my life.
I know that you know we are not promised countless tomorrows. In this world there are simple truths. This one is difficult to share, but I will: Whether you’re working for a corporation or you’re an entrepreneur, artist… even if you’re not on camera, more opportunities flow to the most functionally fit persons. Sure it is sad, but I cannot change the choices of all humans that are in power overnight. Instead, I focus on being in the best health I can be in. Lower body fat (around 7% for a man) is generally much ‘healthier’ according to mountains of research from institutions that most people say they respect.
November 27th, 2014 at 11:02 am
Thank god some male is pointing out the stupidity of the Fat Acceptance Movement. As a woman discrediting the movement, you get pushed out of the herd.