The Wall

Not to belabor the fresh input contributed by new Rational Reader ‘S’, but her recent comment regarding The Wall has made me aware that I haven’t yet gone into too much detail regarding the Wall and its socio-psychological effects upon women:

Yeah, it’s a term I have seen before arriving at this blog but have never heard in reality. I always attributed it to a woman losing her looks but to place it at exactly 30 seems to me to be too precise a calculation…as there are many variable to be taken into consideration I would imagine. For example, a party girl, serial tanner and smoker could probably lose her looks long before she reaches 30, whereas a clean living late bloomer might not even realize her potential until her mid to late twenties. I’ve seen women from my school..the most popular girls (with guys) changed the most in a negative manner and the nerds or just the most unexpected girls have become more attractive over the years. It’s freaking odd.

The infamous Wall a woman reaches (or slams into as the case may be) is somewhat of an ambiguous term that was actually coined by catty women long before the manosphere came into existence. It used to be a relatively less combative term that women used for one another in an effort to disqualify a sexual competitor. A woman implying another woman had “hit the wall” was marginally more polite than calling her a slut, but the latent purpose is still the same – disqualifying a sexual competitor from men’s mating considerations.

The Fear of Decay

Underneath the obvious utility of the Wall as an epithet is a more painful truth; the inevitable decay of women’s sexual appeal – their first, and for most, only, real agency of power they’ve ever actualized over men to ensure their long term security needs. In the heyday of 2nd wave feminism, the sisterhood’s message was all about collective empowerment and solidarity, but beneath that was the intrinsic hypergamic need to compete for the best mate their looks and sexual availability could attract. As I’ve written before, women prefer their combat in the psychological and there are few fears women harbor as deep and as long as losing their sexual agency with men. They know the Wall will eventually come, and they don’t like to be reminded of it.

Women’s intrasexual combative use of the knowledge and fear of the Wall did not go unnoticed by men. Therefore the feminine imperative found it necessary to make the truth about the Wall as socially and individually subjective as possible. As with most uncomfortable truths unique to women’s weaknesses, the feminine creates social conventions and ambiguities to misdirect men from becoming aware of women’s eventual powerlessness over them (i.e. the progressive loss of her sexual agency). The Threat of having men become aware of women’s Achilles’ heel before they could consolidate long-term commitment with their best hypergamic option was too great a risk not to form social conventions about the Wall.

Implications of the Wall

Thus, in an intergender social context, the Wall became individualized and subjective for women, and it’s within this framework that women like S are most comfortable in addressing the reality of the Wall. “Not all women are like that” (NAWALT), the go-to mantra of feminized subjectivity, is a direct result of subjectivizing the inevitability of the Wall. In fact, virtually every operative social convention women rely upon for empowerment and self-esteem finds its root purpose in avoiding the fear of the Wall. The Myth of Sexual Peak, the Myth of the Biological Clock, the social convention that Women are just as Sexual as Men, are all very complex social rationales with the latent purpose of convincing the majority of men and women alike that post-Wall women can still be equally effective sexual competitors with pre-Wall women.

It’s important to bear in mind that all of these complex social conventions are rooted in a fear of the Wall. I’m repeating this point to emphasize the importance this has in a feminized society that’s subjected to feminine hypergamy as its most operative doctrine. When enough women, through cultural forces or personal circumstance, can’t capitalize upon what they think is their due, optimal hypergamic male option, then society must be acculturated to believe that women past their Wall expiration date can and should be just as desirable as those in their prime. Think of it as a retroactive social moving of the feminized goalposts. This is the gravity and extent that the fear of the Wall plays for women – feminized society is literally structured around avoiding it.

Defining the Wall

When I wrote Navigating the SMP, the reason I used 30 as the general age women typically hit the ‘Wall’ is really a combination of factors. Most importantly it represents the threshold at which most women realize their lessened capacity to sexually compete with the next generation of women in their ‘actualized’ sexual peak (22-24). However, there is a male part of the Wall equation that needs to be understood. 30 is also the general age at which men (should) become aware of their own, longer-lasting sexual market value and potential. This affects women’s interpretations of the Wall. Once a Man is aware that he has the capacity to attract the sexual attentions of the younger women he’d previously had limited access and understanding of, his actions and imperatives define the Wall for women who are approaching that threshold. And unsurprisingly this is the point at which Wall-fearing women begin their accusations of men’s infantile ego issues, shaming, etc. for preferring younger women than themselves.

When we (and as women in particular would have us) view the Wall in terms of physical attractiveness we don’t see the full picture and relevancy the Wall has for women. It’s very easy (and often fun) to compare pictures of girls we knew in high school with their current FaceBook profile shots at 40+ years old and get a laugh at how bad she hit the Wall. It’s also easy for women to point out the notable exceptions to the rule and find a hot 38 year old woman with 3 kids competing in the Ms. Fitness USA pageant. It gives them a sense of hope about their own decay.

However the Wall is much more than just the physical; it’s the conditional that accelerates or decelerates a woman’s date with the Wall.

Single mother? Acceleration.

Consistent, bad personal habits? Acceleration.

Careerist obsessive? Acceleration.

Obesity? Acceleration.

Do notable exceptions to these exist? Of course, but they prove the rule. And that rule comes in the form of such an overwhelming fear that contemporary society needed to be restructured to help avoid it. The 38 year old, careerist, single mother of 3 competing in fitness pageants is only a hero because of the fear of the Wall.