FWIW, I think fantasy and beauty are generally great but almost always in a double-edged-sword kind of way. Only nutjobs wouldn't want to celebrate and enjoy what people and life more generally are capable of -- sports, singing, music, fab food, great workmanship, etc. Yet the experience is often accompanied by a little wistfulness: "Gosh, I'd love to be able to play tennis that well, or at least better, myself" -- that kind of thing. You're ravished by what you see yet a little more aware than usual that your own life doesn't include such a thing. Damn, I really wish I could sing, for instance.

I think if you're a semi-balanced person the above isn't a big deal, it's just a minor part of the sweet-bitter thing that is life.

Hey, a small theory here: to my mind, the heightening of that sweet-bitter experience is a big part of what art is about, and a big part of why we have art at all. It dramatizes (heightens) something that's inescapable about life (it's great / it's awful), something that you might almost call life's basic flavor. For a few seconds, we really-really vividly experience that bittersweet flavor, unclouded by more mundane concerns. And, basically, a wellish-balanced person is grateful for that experience.

Some not-well-balanced people, though, can be really thrown off by it. They're overwhelmed by envy, or depressed by the comparison, or they suddently "don't feel good about themselves," or they've been living in denial about what life is like and are crushed to be reminded that it's bittersweet ... And then they get angry, accusing, political, prissy, vindictive. They often start wanting to pass laws. One more reason to be wary of the "let's pass some laws!" urge so many people feel. What's really motivating them? ...

What can be especially irksome to some about youthful beauty is that it seems so unfair. Pro sports figures or singers or woodworkers have amazing talent, it's true, but they've also worked hard to cultivate that talent and to create a life that enables them to put it to use. So we look at them and think "talent, which is unfairly apportioned, true, but at least they've worked hard."

Youthful beauty, though ... It's just a gift and nothing but a gift. It's all luck. (However hard the work that others -- photographers, editors, makeup artists, designers, etc -- put into dolling it up and showing it off, of course ...) It's just so damn unfair that some people have it in such abundance. And, cosmically speaking, it really is kinda unfair, not that that bothers me much personally. But encountering it can be like being a kid from a tough working class background and running into your first trust-fund baby. WTF? The world suddenly seems amazingly unfair. So I can certainly see why some people *are* bothered by it.

For myself, I take it all as part of life's big panorama. Ain't it a tragic-comic hoot that so much of what gives us the greatest pleasure can also stir up so many painful feelings?

It's like thumbing through a beautiful vacation-destinations magazine -- all turqouise seas and majestic peaks and dazzling meals and hotel rooms, and then looking up from the magazine to take in the grubby facts of your actual life: the gray day, the bawling kid and barking dog, the stack of chores that need to be done. Are you happier for having thumbed through the magazine? Unhappier? Both and more?

So, like I say, it all seems basic to life to me.

All that said ... I find a couple of things really weird about these new hyper-Photoshopped pin-up-type images.

1) How unsexy they seem to me. Maybe it's the flawlessness and the vinyl skin. In my experience, flaws, details, and the qualities of real flesh are fascinating. They don't equal "unsexy," which seems to be the assumption behind the Photoshopped extravaganzas. They equal "the possibility of a sexual connection," which is hot, or at least potentially hot.

I remember as a teen running into my first Euro fashion and skin magazines, for instance, and being overwhelmed by the discovery. The pix seemed so elegant and so vulgar all at once, mainly because they didn't try to disguise the little hairs on women's thighs, or the prickliness of the flesh on the model's ass, or even the teeny-tiny bumps on her forehead. American Playboy and Vogue were all about disguising these basic facts. But the Euromags highlighted what the American in me had been programmed to think of as flaws.

(Now, admittedly the girls and fashions and settings in the Euromags weren't just bumps and flaws. They were sensationally beautiful too. So it was something about the way the little personal details -- the reality of bodies and flesh and personalities -- contrasted with the perfection that really hit me ...)

Anyway, at first I was repulsed and upset. It was like being 12 and discovering that sex smells bad. Five minutes later, though, I was back for more, and have been ever since. It's like discovering that sex, yes, has a certain earthy aroma, but if you're in the right mood it's quite an aphrodisiac, as well as a central part of the giving-over-to-eroticism experience.

Earthiness and bliss ... Fantasy and reality ... Bitter and sweet ... All of it raised (via chic, technique, design, and talent) to a peak and presented for our degustation ... Phew.

The whole package was faaaaaaarrrrrrr sexier than anything I'd ever run into in American culture. And once I found that, er, groove, American "sexiness" began looking amazing over-homogenized and over-pasteurized to me. Oversmooth. Like zillions of people before me, I started to wonder, What is it exactly that Americans are afraid of?

So the over-Photoshopped thing is, for me at least, about as interesting as bland packaged committeed-to-death market-researched supermarket food. I don't go there. I don't even think about going there. I scratch my head over people who find it appealing.

2) Yet Photoshop cybersexiness really seems to hit young people hard. When I peep in on the conversations of young friends or visit a blog like Roissy's I'm often super-struck by the way the youngguys are attached to their porn-videogame fantasies and experiences. They're bitter that real girls aren't like the hot CGI creatures in "Final Fantasy." Not joking-bitter, but really bitter, as in they feel like they can't get over it and never will.

Er, back in the day, sure, a younguy setting out on a sex life was often a little taken aback by the reality of real girls and real girls' bodies. But the usual things was, they quickly not only got over the initial shock but also quickly got into the reality. The presence, the feel, the textures, the quirks. And not only got into all this but soon started looking down on the boys who hadn't yet made that leap. Kids who hadn't made the leap were still just little boys. A real man knew how to get into the reality of women.

These days, guys seem to remain little boys forever and the "real man" thing seems to have become a joke, as though it was never anything more than a put-on.

Which leaves me toying with a theory, namely: There's something about this new Photoshopped cyber-fantasy universe that hits young people (and maybe especially young guys) not just hard, but really-really triple-hard -- maybe so much harder than pop culture used to hit people that it deserves a name of its own. It seems to form brains and shape tastes in unprecedented ways, ways that genuinely can't be overcome or moved past.

I guess I do worry about that a bit. Not a lot -- it's more interesting to me than anything else. But when I let myself think about it ... How *are* these kids ever going to adapt to reality? Let alone learn to find something of worth in reality? Will real life always strike them (emotionally and imaginatively) as a pale imitation of what they might be looking at on a computer screen?

But as for fantasy and reality generally ... Personally I like works that make both sides kick in and echo off each other.

But what can I say, I *like* bittersweet.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on April 15, 2009 12:06 PM

I remember as a teen running into my first Euro fashion and skin magazines, for instance, and being overwhelmed by the discovery. The pix didn't try to disguise the little hairs on women's thighs

And speaking of hairs ...

Posted by: Peter on April 15, 2009 12:20 PM

Lol, indeed.

Actually, back in the day (as you know well!) female crotches in both American and Euro art-skin-porn-whatever publications were pretty freeform and often, er, abundant. What really hit me (in a shocked-repulsed-aroused way) was the frankness with which the Euro mags depicted the crotches. They weren't just snuggly warm heaps of adorably sweet fur, which was the general American Playboyish approach, or the crudely-surgical meat-market things you saw in American porn. The Euro-crotches were detailed and earthy, yet chic and gorgeous too.

An example: the Euromags would depict a crotch -- and in the photo you could actually see evidence that the fur had been trimmed and shaved back a bit. It wasn't disguised. Scratchy razor marks would be not just visible, but somehow highlighted and focused on.

I was completely flipped-out by this. As an American kid, I was under the impression that work of this kind was supposed to be disguised. I thought that breaking the illusion that the girl's crotch just happened to be perfectly groomed, and admitting to the fact that some work had been done on it ... Well, it almost seemed illegal or unfair. The world seemed topsy-turvy, the values all wrong.

And at first these images threw me completely off. Then ... Well, the whole approach started to hit me as a zillion times sexier and more transporting than any magazine image I'd ever seen before. Intimacy, style, frankness, design, earthiness, animality and sophistication ... So much more was being admitted-to and shared, and so many more processes and networks were firing off in me in response ...

My brain hasn't recovered since, clearly -- nor would I want it to!

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on April 15, 2009 12:30 PM

Pro sports figures or singers have amazing talent, it's true, but they've all worked hard to cultivate that talent and to create a life that enables them to put it to use. So we look at them and think "talent, which is unfairly apportioned, true, but at least they've worked hard."

I am not so sure about this particular point.

I have known a few people who either played sports professionally, or got very close. Most of them do not "work" that hard at it.

From an early age they were showing that they could run, jump, hit or shoot at a level better than most. But regardless of whether they had, say, fathers pushing them to play as much as possible, they were going to anyway. But very few of them actually "push" themselves in the weightroom trying to get just a little bit better.

Just look at Basketball, during the 90's and 2000's the average Free Throw percentage got worse. It is well known that most kids that are likely to go far in basketball are also unlikely to spend hour after hour practicing free throws. But, they sure do play a lot.

Same with the singers I knew. Most of them were going to sing regardless of their future prospects. And the ones that did join some kind of arts program in college, still spent most of their time singing their favorite show-tunes and not practicing their breathing exercises (or whatever).

The main reason why these women hate these fashion spreads is because of, seemingly, unfair competition. Padma is just, flat-out, hotter than the author.

The enormous Beth Ditto was naked on the cover of NME and so was some other very heavy girl on the cover of some luxury lifestyle magazine recently, and I did not hear a peep about pornography.

This is just plain old female political correctness playing itself out.

Posted by: Usually Lurking on April 15, 2009 12:42 PM

What is it exactly that Americans are afraid of?

Michael, that is a huge leap. Who said they were afraid of anything. Remember, during this time when you saw the flawless American model/mags and more real Euro model/mags (say, late 60s and 1970s) we were also getting Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Bonnie and Clyde, The Deer Hunter, The French Connection, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, The Ramones, etc.

And they were certainly not so pretty and refined.

What if those magazines were having certain decisions being made by certain people (and that these decisions were very different than the ones made by, say, Larry Flynt of Hustler)?

Posted by: Usually Lurking on April 15, 2009 12:49 PM

They weren't just snuggly warm heaps of adorably sweet fur, which was the general American Playboyish approach, or the crudely-surgical meat-market things you saw in American porn. The Euro-crotches were detailed and earthy, yet chic and gorgeous too.

While the Euro approach is not without its charms, I prefer the snuggly warm heap version ... comfort food, as it were, rather than gourmet cuisine (food, heh).

Today, sadly, the hideous pedophilic Bald Eagle is so ubiquitous that the sighting of any trace of hair is a thing of wonder and delight. Even something as unnatural and just plain ludicrous as the Landing Strip is a marvel by comparison. How our standards have fallen :(

Posted by: Peter on April 15, 2009 1:00 PM

They're bitter that real girls aren't like the hot CGI creatures in "Final Fantasy." Not joking-bitter, but really bitter, as in they feel like they can't get over it and never will.

I can not speak for the guys that comment at Roissy's, but...

are they bitter that the girls do not look like Final Fantasy or that over half the women in America are overweight and over half of them are obese. And, they are actually getting fatter.

This is a very new thing.

So the "market" value of non-overweight girls has skyrocketed. Especially if she does not constantly drape herself in sweatpants and t-shirts.

Posted by: Usually Lurking on April 15, 2009 1:04 PM

UL 1: I think we're defining "work" differently. As you note, sports people play sports all the time; singers are always out there performing. (Whether they do their assigned exercises or not ... ) But models? They're just born that way. About all they do to maintain it is smoke, drink Tab, and do drugs. Which isn't to minimize your female-political-correctness point, god knows.

UL 2: Yeah, but 1) those movies you cite were a minority taste, 2) that era in American cultural history was a very distinctive and finite one. For about a decade or a decade and a half there was this urge to develop and cultivate a combo of grittiness and sophistication. To grow up, in a sense. (I was rooting for it myself.) But then it collapsed back into a parody of the usual American refusing-to-grow-up thing. The best, or at least longest-lasting, thing that came of it (it seems to me) is food culture. Some Americans really did wake up to the pleasures of fresh food, classically (or experimentally) prepared, and to the food life more generally, with food-pleasure being central and valued. And they've kept at it, and mainstream American stores now have a much greater range of products on offer. So that's been good. But our attitudes towards eroticism ... I dunno, they seem more infantile (and somehow more lewd) than ever, don't you find? That combo of square-plus-porno is a particularly confounding one for me. I mean, I can trace it intellectually but emotionally/instinctively I struggle with it all the time.

Peter -- "While the Euro approach is not without its charms, I prefer the snuggly warm heap version ... comfort food, as it were, rather than gourmet cuisine (food, heh)." Funny line.

UL 3: That's a great point. Does the more-girls-are-getting-fat thing have much of an impact on the lives of the young educated set? I'd assume that the answer would be no -- that the educated set probably looks fitter and sleeker than ever. But what would I know?

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on April 15, 2009 1:27 PM

I can not speak for the guys that comment at Roissy's, but...
are they bitter that the girls do not look like Final Fantasy or that over half the women in America are overweight and over half of them are obese. And, they are actually getting fatter.

While it may be true that half the women in America are overweight, among younger single women it's not nearly as much. That is, of course, the group that gets the attention. Few if any of the Roissy crew really care whether women in their 40's are getting fatter.

Another issue is that men are getting fatter too. The Roissy crew says that's less relevant because a man's looks don't matter in most situations, but I have my doubts.

Posted by: Peter on April 15, 2009 1:28 PM

...the hideous pedophilic Bald Eagle...

Jesus, Peter, there is nothing more "pedophilic" about the shaved crotch, than there is about the shaved leg or shaved underarm.

And you know that unshaved legs and unshaved underarms are much, much more natural than the unshaved versions. You prefer one over the other, fine, but get real about this "pedophilic" stuff.

Posted by: Usually Lurking on April 15, 2009 1:28 PM

Usually Lurking -

I stand by my pedophilia comments, for the reason that the Glorious Natural Pelt, given its location, is much more overtly sexual than armpit or leg hair. Moreover, it's not visible to other people in nonsexual (or otherwise non-nudity) contexts, therefore its removal cannot be justfied on fashion grounds. Women make sexual statements when they shave, as do the men who insist on shaved women.

Posted by: Peter on April 15, 2009 1:55 PM

I have already posted ten times, what is one more:

You know, all of this "guys just won't grow up" stuff is sorta bullshit.

I don't doubt for one second that the average young guy nowadays is basically not growing up, but lets look at what a young man might look forward to after he "becomes a man":
- gets married to an already overweight girl
- she can't cook
- she expects you to do "half" the housework (previously, you were doing 100% of the housework when you lived alone without a problem, and now, you are doing 50% and it seems like a LOT more)
- after watching endless amounts of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, American Idol, Sex and the City and countless other ridiculous programs, she has the personality, and world view, of a snarky 13 year old girl (granted, the guy in this scenario is probably not doing any better, so lets call that a push)
- you need to move to some suburb that you basically can't afford ("for the schools")
- you now have a crazy long, and frustrating, commute
- you have children (GOOD)
- you no longer have sex (BAD)
- your wife has gotten even fatter. But, you are not having sex, so what is the difference.
[FAST FORWARD TEN YEARS]
- Alimony
- Mommy Support (i.e. Child Support)
- Begging the Judge for the privilege of having your children "visit" on the weekends.
- hoping that your ex-wife, and her new boyfriend, don't move too far away with your kids.
- no more house
- no more car

Plus, while you were married, you were NOT the head of the household. You were NOT one of the town fathers. "Pushing" your sons into sports makes you Hitler. Going hunting with your sons makes you Stalin. (You found this out while meeting your sons teachers at the schools' Earth Day.) And you finally got to meet your daughter's wanna-be rockstar boyfriend right before she left for her womyn's studies class.

Fuck it. I'll just play Madden with my friends and fuck the girls I meet at the bar.

Posted by: Usually Lurking on April 15, 2009 1:55 PM

About all they do to maintain it is smoke, drink Tab, and do drugs.

I feel quite confident in saying that Padma, of Top Chef, does not drink Tab or do drugs. And, most of these "nude layouts are porn" writers don't hate the pretty girls (stick-figure ribs-showing adored-by-gay-men models, or Pamela Andersons), they hate the pretty girls who like to show a little leg...if not more. Again, unfair competition.

These girls could "work" at it all they want, but if they walked around dressed like some librarian, Jennifer Donahue would never care.

those movies you cite were a minority taste

Bonnie and Clyde? The French Connection? Really?

Does the more-girls-are-getting-fat thing have much of an impact on the lives of the young educated set?

You were talking about the crew over at Roissys. Now you are talking about the young and educated set? I am confused. We were talking about bitter young men, right? I am not being sarcastic, I really got lost here.

Posted by: Usually Lurking on April 15, 2009 2:10 PM

Haven't Americans long been uncomfortable with body hair and body odours? It seems to me that the roots of the modern American boy-love for photoshopped android-women is a little more deeply situated in American culture than video games. After all, the photoshopping surely was as much a response to a demand as it was a creator of it.

Same with fake boobs, shaved you-know-whats and (gross!) six-pack abs on women (gack!). For example, over at Crossfit.com, the cutting-edge place for hard-core functional fitness--very big and getting bigger in the special ops/first responder communities--you see pictures of, for example, a beautiful little thing named Nicole Carroll, very feminine although also too thin, smiling sweetly into the camera and flexing her six-pack abs. The effect is both startling and extremely detumescing.

Crossfit even goes so far as to push a gay-derived ideal of hairless bodies on men (you've never seen so many suspiciously hairless torsos until you've seen a video with a bunch of Crossfit guys working out without their wife-beaters on). I mean, what's with that? Six-packs on women? Hairless-torso guys who wouldn't be out of place in gay pr*n?

This whole hairless/odour-free thing, the whole twisted ideal of physical perfection that seems to have permeated (infected) American culture is deeper than just photoshopped starlet layouts in magazines. It's gone all the way into fitness, movies, tiddleywinks. It's everywhere!

Sometimes I feel like I'm on a planet of aliens. Why does everybody seem to think this stuff looks good?

Posted by: PatrickH on April 15, 2009 2:14 PM

UL 1: That's a vivid evocation! I'm actually sympathetic to the plight of the youngdudez, though like many of the old-timers here I also want to slap them around occasionally. Hard to see what the appeal of growing up and engaging with women would be these days.

UL 2: I was overgeneralizing about the down-and-dirty movies of the era. There were certainly some counterculture hits, and it was certainly a widely-noted moment in movie history. But if you look at box office lists from those years it's really striking how many of the top-grossing films even of that era were safe, unchallenging, bland-o mainstream corporate product -- "Earthquake," "Murder on the Orient Express," etc. (Which may have been fine movies in their own right, of course.) I think you're overdoing the distinction between the likes of Padma and the models -- women tend to have very intense feelings where the beauty of other women goes, whether it belongs to a model or a celeb or a neighbor. The woman who's able to look at a pretty, well-turned-out other woman and react, quite simply and without any accompanying feelings of competitiveness, insecurity, covetousness, self-consciousness or bitchiness, by thinking, "Wow, she's lookin' good today, good for her" is pretty rare.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on April 15, 2009 2:23 PM

PatrickH -- Funny comment. I like "de-tumescing" too -- I'm doing that a lot these days, often especially when I look at what's pushed as sexy.

Yeah, you're certainly right that the American obsession/preoccupation with hairless, odorless perfection goes deep. Androids as sexy -- whatssat about?

My own pet theory is that it has to do with Americans as refugees from Europe. Europe as corrupt, decadent, oppressive -- Europe as adulthood. Our immigrant/settler ancestors ran away from that to a world of limitless possibilities, ie., to a world where you never had to knuckle under to adulthood. And so we have a tendency to find adulthood depressing in our genes. I think where this theory goes I'm stealing from Leslie Fiedler. But that general picture was around a lot decades ago. I wonder why people don't talk about it much these days. Maybe they're happy being eternal kids and take that as normal.

Hey, remember the days of vaginal-deodorant spray? Are those products still around? Life Must Be Deodorized! It simply must!

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on April 15, 2009 2:28 PM

PatrickH -

Shaving body hair makes a man's muscles look more prominent. Bodybuilders have been doing it for decades. For that reason it's not surprising that the men in the Crossfit ads have hairless torsos. So do the men in TV ads for Bowflex, which is aimed at a much less hardcore market. While it may not be as noticeable on TV, I'll bet that the men in the Crossfit ads also have deep tans and oil-covered bodies, those being two more bodybuilder tricks for highlighting muscles. It's all marketing.

Posted by: Peter on April 15, 2009 2:38 PM

But if you look at box office lists from those years it's really striking how many of the top-grossing films even of that era were safe, unchallenging, bland-o mainstream corporate product -- "Earthquake," "Murder on the Orient Express," etc.

Right, but you can say the same thing about music as well. Hell, The Monkees, were a huge success. IIRC, Hello Dolly was the biggest selling album right before the Beatles hit the charts. America and Britain listened to a lot of great music. But there was also a ton of Hermans Hermits and the Osmonds. Same thing with Food. Lets not forget that Liver and Onions and Tripe and Trotters were once absolutely classic dishes that everyone was familiar with.

The people didn't really change so much, what was being offered did. Hey, we once all drank Raw Milk...then it was made, basically, illegal. Now we all drink Pasteurized Milk. Does that mean we changed, or what was being offered changed?

And lets not forget, so many of those market-researched, pasteurized movies that are popular in America are also the most popular throughout Europe. Which is why so many foreign nations complain about our influence. All they need to do is to stop watching our movies, but they don't. So, they complain.

women tend to have very intense feelings where the beauty of other women goes, whether it belongs to a model or a celeb or a neighbor

Only when they see it. If your neighbors wife is just drop-dead gorgeous, but, she always dresses very modestly, very few are going to care. Actually, I bet more than a few of the Yentas would love her for it. She rarely tries to look "fabulous", just proper and classy. So, yeah, you can tell that she has a pretty face, but it is a little hard to make out that she has a rockin' little body. And her style does not "signal" much. That is, her style of hair and makeup tend to say that she is very much a lady. The average woman in the neighborhood would not mind her too much.

Posted by: Usually Lurking on April 15, 2009 3:15 PM

Michael, I didn't mean to imply that women don't get catty when some other woman is prettier than she. Just that, there is a big difference between that, and when some feminazi calls a magazine porn because it has a partly nude, hot, woman on the cover.

Posted by: Usually Lurking on April 15, 2009 3:19 PM

@JP and PatrickH
"hideous strident beast Jennifer Donahue"....."look at her scowling mannish visage."
"warpig Jennifat"

Is it possible for you to consider a woman's ideas without reflexively attacking her appearance?
Did you even read her opinion?
Do you do the same with male authored opinions?
Do you apply the same metric to women's opinions in politics, education, or other domains?
Do you ever actively punish a woman (financially, physically, or in employment)if you do not sanction her appearance?
How do you regard a woman's opinion if you can not know her appearance?

Posted by: jz on April 15, 2009 4:25 PM

Knut Hamsun, one of the genuine greats, in his writing showed that a man, an ordinary man, goes through a whirlwind of ups and downs, of envy and depression and occasionally elation in the course of one ordinary eminently forgettable day.

Which is to say that it is okay, nay it is unavoidable to be unbalanced, to be thrown by things, the most evanescent things, a look, the appearance of a physically beautiful person, misplacing your glasses, you name it. To repeat: it's okay to be up and down and all over town over nothing (or is it nothing?).

All of the above because MB's phrase - wellish-balanced person - bugged me.

Posted by: ricpic on April 15, 2009 8:55 PM

Only nutjobs wouldn't want to celebrate and enjoy what people and life more generally are capable of -- sports, singing, music, fab food, great workmanship, etc.

I totally agree, and sadly intstitutionalised envy of other peoples successes is a powerful motive force in our society. The bitching about "unrealistic" female images may have more to do with problems with the individual bitching rather than society's conception of beauty. A lot of women can't get over the fact that they are not the prettiest woman in the room and resent other women for being so. Women are just as competitive as men except in different areas of life. What we are seeing here is the wish for the same levelling down process as we have in other areas of life. It's the Left wing politics of beauty. Back in 1961, L.P Hartley wrote a book called "Facial Justice", I've never read it(tried to get a copy but failed)but here is a brief plot summary courtesy of this LINK, quite freaky in how it echos Roissy:

In his book on Envy, Helmut Schoeck analyzed a chilling dystopian novel by the British writer, L.P. Hartley. In his work, Facial Justice, published in 1960, Hartley, extrapolating from the attitudes he saw in British life after World War II, opens by noting that after the Third World War, "Justice had made great strides." Economic Justice, Social Justice and other forms of justice had been achieved, but there were still areas of life to conquer. In particular, Facial Justice had not yet been attained, since pretty girls had an unfair advantage over ugly ones. Hence, under the direction of the Ministry of Face Equality, all Alpha (pretty) girls and all Gamma (ugly) girls were forced to undergo operations at the "Equalization (Faces) Centre" so as all to attain Beta (pleasantly average) faces.

The "pressure to conform to images" is merely the recognition of the observer as to where they stand in the attractiveness hierarchy, and it ain't the top, where they want to be. It the damn concept of natural entitlement in all spheres of life which seems to be behind this. Everyone feels they have a right to be the belle of the ball, and if they can't, well hell no one else should be allowed to then either.

With regard to concepts of feminine beauty I also echo your sentiments; the current standard is out of touch reality. The media(frequently women fashion editors themselves) have abstracted the ideals of femininity to a point where it is no longer real. Humans are an animal species, we smell, have hair, blemishes etc. That does not mean that we have to be hairy, smelly and blemished but portrayals of people as devoid of these things entirely is a bit anti-human. It appears that in order to be human you almost have to have a bit of a "fault" of some kind. Though, I imagine the "fault" one finds in others in a reflection of their tastes, people who nit pick, are intolerant and are only satisfied with perfection are going to see flaws in everything. I imagine many of the men who have drenched their adolescence in porn are going to have porn stars as their ideals of naked beauty. It's no wonder that when confronted by a woman in real life she frequently falls short of the ideal. Perhaps the danger of porn is the false ideals it imprints on adolescents and young men. If you look at the comments section in the link that "P" provided you'll see that many men are repelled by attractive women when naked. WTF?

I think we are going to find out (in the long run) that all those all those "progressive ideas" with regard to human relationships are going to have serious consequences with regard to relationship formation in the future. It takes a few generations before cultural ideals have fully permeated into society. Maybe the deleterious effects of porn culture are no immediate, maybe they take several generations to show their full effect.

Posted by: slumlord on April 15, 2009 9:38 PM

jz, not one of your questions is worth answering. None of them exhibit intellectual honesty, none of them indicate any curiosity or interest in either the points I made or jp made, none of them appear to have been asked in anything like good faith.

But I'll answer them anyway, in the spirit in which they were asked, of course.

I'll begin with the most contemptible question of a contemptible contagion of them: "Do you ever actively punish a woman (financially, physically, or in employment) if you do not sanction her appearance?"
Of course I do! Right around the time I stopped beating my wife!

"Is it possible for you to consider a woman's ideas without reflexively attacking her appearance?"
Yes. When considering a woman's ideas, I sometimes attack her appearance non-reflexively.

"Did you even read her opinion?"
Yes, you stupid stupid woman. Obviously I did. Jesus.

"Do you do the same with male authored opinions?"
I don't care about the appearance of men. That's because I'm a heterosexual man. If a man says something I disagree with I usually comment on his incredibly small genitalia, not his appearance.

"Do you apply the same metric to women's opinions in politics, education, or other domains?"
Metrics! Domains! Brrrr....I'm dealing with a thinker here. Be careful, boy!
Problem: Your question makes no sense. You've already "questioned" me about whether I consider a woman's "ideas" without "attacking her appearance". Sounds like "ideas" covers her "opinions in[sic] politics, education...", doesn't it? And what on earth you think you're accomplishing by using the phrase "applying the same metric" to mean what exactly? Attacking her appearance? Jesus, jz, you must have a degree in education to write like that.

"How do you regard a woman's opinion if you can not know her appearance?"
I don't know your appearance. I judge your opinions harshly because of the repeatedly revealed ugliness of your soul.

Enough! Your questions are as vacuous, circular, empty and dishonest as Chris White's bizarre endlessly repeated pseudo-queries about right-wing America's historical sins.

So I have a question for you, "jz": Are you Chris White?

Posted by: PatrickH on April 16, 2009 2:55 AM

@PatrickH,
thanks for responding to my questions. I got the info that I was curious about, and more.
NO, I'm not Chris White. I skew right, like you.

Posted by: jz on April 16, 2009 11:32 AM

slumlord, that's an interesting link about that book. It does somewhat echo Roissy, but I think the other side of the coin is the Game dudes wanting a leveling of the playing field so that they can have access to the hottest women, even if they don't rate so high on the attractiveness scale themselves. That's the sense of entitlement I get from Roissy and his posse.

Posted by: JV on April 16, 2009 1:00 PM

JV-I think the other side of the coin is the Game dudes wanting a leveling of the playing field so that they can have access to the hottest women

I agree that some of the misogyny at His site is probably based upon the same psychology. Game however seeks to make a man more attractive to the opposite sex, while the psychology of Jennifer Donahue wants to make the female sex less attractive to men.

Posted by: slumlord on April 16, 2009 6:54 PM

I got the info that I was curious about, and more.

Including the fact that I obviously really hate that Jackie O. I mean, c'mon, she. talks. like. a. retard.

P.S. And I obviously hate retards too. I mean, c'mon, they. talk. like. Jackie. O.

Posted by: PatrickH on April 17, 2009 11:36 AM

1. Those were stunningly, profoundly, classically beautiful women. I do acknowledge the nice lighting and airbrushing made their skin look flawless though.

2. The media didn't make me think that way. I don't generally read women's magazines.

3. Lynn Collins made some comment (I actually read the text!) that being photographed nude was empowering somehow. Reminded me of the Onion article, Everything Woman Does is Empowering. I wish she had said, "I'm young and beautiful and I want to show my body off. Nothing gives me more pleasure than contemplating my own gorgeousness. My body is awesome and I want people to behold it. No vista is more inspiring than a naked woman."

4. Being a hot chic like that must be like having a super power. You can arouse anyone, have sex with anyone you want. People'd be nice to you for no apparent reason.

5. I can see why people would be jealous. There's no need to imagine a conspiracy though. Why not just admit to envy? It's a perfectly human weakness.

6. "Hideous, strident, beast Jennifer Donahue" literally laughed out loud at that JP, thanks. Nicely put.

Posted by: Easy E on April 18, 2009 4:21 PM






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