Oomph

Taking off on some of the comments in the previous ageism post. It seems like people are saying that attraction, even physical attraction, doesn’t always correspond to who is technically better looking. By “better looking,” I mean from a mainstream perspective and also from the perspective of the person making the decision.

I would suggest (please correct me if you disagree) that this is most prevalent from a woman’s perspective in a hetero relationship.

Why? Because women are schooled to view other characteristics to supplement our view of what’s attractive. And given the ingrained myth of the man being the more active in the world, while the woman supports or receives, characteristics going along with this action are imbued with perception of attractiveness.

Sometimes this is about how good someone looks when he’s standing on his wallet, but we all know that many May-Sept relationships involve a “May” who’s not wealthy or powerful. (My dad’s in one). And wealthy/powerful women do not appear to be imbued by hawtness by mainstream opinion.

One of my partners told me a joke that ostensibly came from “a friend – this isn’t MY joke,” he claimed – it went like this: “OK so you’ve got one presidential candidate who’s a lawyer and married to a bitchy lawyer. You’ve got another one who’s a bitchy lawyer and married to a lawyer. Then you’ve got one who’s married to a blonde whos dad owns a beer distributorship and she’s got boobs out to here. Who’s got the best judgment?”

Now, luckily this particular partner (or his “friend” if you buy that) isn’t representative of all guys. But many guys would laugh at the joke, and might think --- hmmmm--- before they realized: 1) why are only the female lawyers “bitchy” and 2) marrying busty blondes is a pretty stupid criterion for presidential judgment, otherwise we’d wind up with Hefner.

So in his offensive way I think he’s got something. We are judged by the people we are with. And we judge ourself that way. They reflect upon us. As a man, a doer, a woman who represents fun and decoration – nice backdrop scenery -- is perceived as complementary. As a woman, traditionally viewed as more passive/decorative, an actor to bring the scenery to life is most attractive.

The more evolved we are, the less this fits. But I think we’re all poisoned by it to a degree. Looking around, most of our examples in real life, in movies and books, car dealerships, boardrooms, medicine, law, union halls, store management. Who’s pulling the reins? Who is responding, signing on the second line?

As Renee says here: “I think part of the reason it takes so long for women to trust themselves is because we are raised to be submissive and believe in the fantasy of the white dress and the blood diamond rock.”

We all know, in many stories with a female protagonist, the conclusion is a proposal or wedding (name a “chick flick”). That’s the end goal. Stories with male protagonists often have to do with career tumult (Bright Lights Big City) or intrigue (Godfather) or action (Mad Max, Indiana Jones).

I come back to this from the previous post:

“I think if the roles of man = provider/actor and woman = decorative, passive receiver were more averaged out, we'd see more [situations in which women’s age and maturity are part of, or at the very least do not diminish from, her attractiveness].”

Many will toss out things like “biology” and “wiring” and back that up by talking about things like spreading of seed. To which I toss out things like “birth control” and “who has more orgasms per unit time?” and “child support” and “three months [last trimester, the only time most women experience significant impact from pregnancy]” and “breast pump.” I do not know many guys who have a desire to have large numbers of expensive dependents with multiple women. Nor do I know many women who were bedridden and/or unproductive during a large part of their pregnancies. I do know many men who experienced the same post-partum bond as their spouses. I am no biologist and I’m not claiming it plays no role, but I think the degree to which it does is greatly exaggerated.


Renee continued further to say “Life has a way of making you disillusioned while at the same time forcing you to confront yourself. As I age I am more willing to take risks because I know who I am. I defined myself and am secure in my identity.”

This is the kind of thing that is culturally, mainstream attractive – sexy even – in a man. But not as much in a woman. There are certainly some evolved guys out there who are actively looking for someone with these characteristics. But of that group, a much smaller subset are actually sexually attracted to them.

This gets back to the rescue concept. Hetero women, generally, are not attracted to the idea of a blank page, work in progress, rescuee. Obviously, given our Cinderella culture, hetero men, even liberal ones, feel mostly differently.

What if we got to a place where women were as likely to be provider/actor as men? I don’t know that this gap could sustain. There might still be a gap. I bet it would be much smaller.