A happy fact for me on the cusp of turning 64. While I can appreciate beauty in the young––there's something primordial about that––as I've aged it's older women who I find most beautiful and most attracted to and no one more so than my wife who is about my same age.
Yeah, it's easy to be physically hot in your 20s, so, unsurprisingly, there is a concentration of physically hot people that age. But physical attraction has to be balanced against the "everything else", and the older, less hormonal, and more experienced with people you get, the more the "everything else" matters.
People like to console themselves with the idea that physical beauty has an inverse, rather than moderately positive, relationship with "everything else".
I bet Jameela’s career as a runway model and actress is where this perspective comes. I get the vibe in Hollywood and Paris/Milan is still contains heroin chic standards.
Also, the Sabrina discourse is so, so painfully Twitter-coded. A very hyper-specific group of guys whose voices are amplified are the ones proclaiming this nonsense.
Dudes would be floating in the air with their eyes morphing into hearts, popping out of their heads like that one horny cartoon wolf, if she walked into a party or bar/club dressed provocatively.
If you brought her around the bros the amount of barely concealed high fives would chafe & injure palms lolol
I say this, not in a rude way, but she presents herself as far less conventionally attractive than she is when you see the way she writes about herself. Yes she may not be a size 0 blonde but she is obviously extremely attractive!! Like, not even in a quirky or unusual way.
Sorry to not leave her alone, but I find it very interesting that men don't find Sabrina attractive. It speaks to the fact that men go off of vibes more than looks. Her hyper-campy makeup and look is unattractive to them. And her body or face cannot make up for it. That is why they keep asking "why don't I find her hot?" because they know they should. But they are unable to given what she is "giving". I remember this interesting tweet where someone posted Sabrina with and without makeup and all the men were slobbering over her non-makeup face and wishing that she didn't do this exxagerated makeup look so they could be horny for her. But she has a clear strategy of being "for the girls" and she is laser-focused on that.
Men are not as shallow as many would have us believe. Hallelujah.
It’s a “relative to who” question. Men who say she isn’t hot are comparing her to other unattainable women, not to the women they actually encounter on a daily basis. On an absolute scale, she’s clearly attractive (as CHH says, of course you would…)
Round it off to “among women famously considered sexy and beautiful, I don’t find her particularly appealing” and it’s about right.
There’s also the fact that the “Sabrina Carpenter is intentionally baiting pedos” discourse makes it socially dangerous too openly enthusiastic about her looks.
I think this is absolutely correct. She's conventionally attractive especially compared to your average person. But still falls short against the famously sexy and beautiful.
Sure, the "2/10 uggo would not bang" crowd are full of shit, but "attractive" can also mean "attractive to me/my type [out of all of the impossibly beautiful celebrities]."
I think if men say she's unattractive that's pretty wild.
But I think it's pretty easy to imagine men do not feel attracted to her ... mostly because I don't - until I google "sabrina carpenter no makeup" for the sake of perspective while writing this comment, lol. I wouldn't say it's the opposite of "shallow," but I think a good number of men tend to be unaware of the degree to which vibe factors into their attraction.
ofc if we were talking about real life interactions and not comparing photos of celebrities that'd be a different situation.
“She is attractive but I’m not attracted to her” is a much more objectively difficult conclusion to come to. Most people just have a “eww I don’t like Ryan gosling, his face is so yuck” reaction. Vibe reactions are much more intensely feeling based than anything objective and rational. Though they can be explained rationally (like I did above) it’s easier not to explain.
Maybe they mean they don't find her makeup attractive. I'd like to give people the benefit of the doubt because no one believes me when I say I find Ryan Gosling ugly.
I mean performatively calling women ugly on the Internet has always been a thing. I think it's interesting that Sabrina Carpenter seems to attract more of this than other 20-something female celebrities.
I just think his face is shaped like a shoe 😔 I’m sorry to Ryan gosling enthusiasts. I also don’t like his smug ironic expression. He looks so punchable 😭 same goes for the other Ryan. I hate Ryan Reynolds.
I find young Hugh Grant handsome. Young Chris hemsworth. James Stewart. Cary Grant. Tom hanks. Really really love young James mcavoy. I think Jacob elordi is cute. Henry Cavill is exceptional. I like men who look smiley, happy, open.
Ok I guess I like boyish charm rather than this sort of “ugh eye roll” smugness.
For any male Hollywood sex symbol, it's always easy to find straight/bi women who just aren't into him. It's not easy to predict women's tastes in looks.
I think women and men go off of vibe more than literal body parts more often than not. And my dislike of Ryan gosling and men disliking Sabrina is a vibe thing. Otherwise we are saying men are simplistic beings who just like people for being thin and pretty.
I don’t like him now. I like him the way he looked when he was first launched and in the first Thor movie where he had a more sweet himbo vibe. Then everyone started making a mockery of him which made me annoyed. I’m 39 if that matters.
I think she’s cultivating a similar fan base to the one that many other pop stars have sought out. While plenty of straight men would not have turned down a chance to go to bed with Madonna in her prime, her ride or die fans have always consisted of women and gay men. incidentally, that’s a group of people who tend to buy more pop albums. Taylor Swift is conventionally attractive and always looks good, but has never made being sexy to men a prime component of her brand. Taylor Swift on the cover of Maxim would alienate the devoted female fans who keep her on the top of the charts. And if Sabrina wears too much makeup, what do we make of Lady Gaga? These are all attractive women, and if regular guys saw them in a bar, they’d find them hot enough. But they’re going for long pop music careers, and the “girl every guy wants to nail,” does not enjoy the same pop longevity as the “Icon that every girl and her drag queen best friend want to dress up as for Halloween.”
That point about Taylor Swift is interesting, and I agree. However, I also think it's interesting that The Life of a Showgirl defines her (and Sabrina Carpenter) as part of a class of women who make money by being "pretty and witty". I'd assume the prettiness is not just for women and gay men?
Of course not! Plenty of straight men both listen to their music, and find them attractive. But that’s not their main brand identity, the way it would have been for, say, Marilyn Monroe. I think the primary thing that both of them are selling (in slightly different shades) is a fantasy that women can project themselves onto. “A pretty, smart girl next door who (despite being a bit of a tryhard dork at times) can attract a sting of sexy boyfriends and live out a veritable soap opera of heartbreak and triumph.” “A cute, funny, girlboss who can throw on a wig like Hannah Montana and moonlight as a sex kitten who sells out stadiums.” Being attractive to enough men to have an exciting love life is necessary to sell that image, but being a Playboy Centerfold is antithetical to that image.
I agree. But I think Taylor is now getting popular in the mainstream in an ABBA kind of way and boys sing her songs at karaoke and that’s very cute. It helps that she’s dating the boyest of boys.
That's true. Regardless, her primary image is never going to be "Smoking hot girl that every red blooded straight guy wants to bang." Plenty of straight guys may find her attractive, and plenty of straight guys may even like her music, but she's never cultivated a Syndey Sweeney/Megan Fox type of brand, and that is by design.
She literally defined her brand in one of her earliest hits: "She wears short shorts, I wear sneakers, etc." She's the awkward girl-next-door type who doesn't realize she's special until someone takes notice. That felt less plausible, obviously, as she became a global superstar, but that's what she started with and has evolved from.
Hetero man here: Sabrina Carpenter is super hot. But I think she is not every guy's cup of tea. Some guys are maybe put off by her seeming to them to come on too strong, or perhaps they find her arrogant.
While I actually find her over-the-top "Betty Boop-style" sexiness to be charming/funny/sexy.
I liked the video of her and Jenna Ortrega running around in lingerie murdering each other over a guy, but in the end they decide to just kill him and be friends. It was like a fun little girl-power sentiment, but with dark humor - and very sexy.
As a guy who isn't on Twitter, if I didn't subscribe to CHH, I wouldn't even know if there was discourse about this. This is all the very online trying to farm engagement.
I don't think there's a lot of men who would tell you Carpenter is unattractive. I think the discourse is more based on the idea that she is not discussed in the way Britney was. Men weren't fans but they definitely had outspoken interest. Today's entry for that slot is Sweeny.
I think what’s expected of women with women fans has changed from Britney to now. There’s more of a “camp femininity specifically to mock men” element now then before. I mean she literally has a song called man child. There’s a big heteropessimism element to it all.
As someone whose wife was once into this world (yes, while we were dating), I clocked it immediately: Sabrina Carpenter is doing burlesque. She doesn't whip her boobies out and twirl her pasties around like a lot of classic burlesque dancers, but her style is clearly in that vein. It IS supposed to be sexy, but in a very over-the-top, often funny way. You're supposed to wink along with her because you know what she's doing. I suspect more than a few modern guys just don't "get" the intended irony of it.
Could also be that part of it is her having a hit song about how useless the men in her life are and that souring the vibe for the more normie straight dudes out there. Katy Perry did a similar thing when she first hit it big, though her version had a more aggressive persona as opposed to coquettish.
I think men just don't always realize that women who wear a certain style of makeup or clothing could change those things, and would look different if they did.
While Sabrina is clearly wearing makeup in some of these "no makeup photos," she looks pretty darn uncontroversially attractive when she's styled more naturally. Like, maybe the 'Margot Robbie is mid' crowd would quibble, but who listens to them?
Upon deeper reflection, the archetype that Sabrina is tapping into is the same one embodied by Carrie Bradshaw. She's having a wild time in bed with plenty of attractive guys, she is not too bothered by most of the suitors who come and go, she's cute and stylish but not a bombshell, and half the fun of her exploits is retelling them with great spirit and wit, for the benefit and amusement of all the other girls.
Carrie's more idiosyncratic looks tended to involve fashion rather than makeup. she wasn't a stage performer, after all, let alone one who plays in large arenas where bold makeup is often necessary. On the other hand, Carrie did wear a literal tutu.
I think the statement "men don't find Sabrina Carpenter attractive" is just false, as a rule. She's not a lot of people's type, but that's true of everyone. More polarizing than average for a woman that attractive? Definitely. Unattractive to most men? Absolutely not.
Even without makeup, she is very "cute" coded which mainstream dudebro America just doesn't go for. Cute aesthetic is only popular in online egirl environment and/or cute Asian girl.
Sabrina embodies "cute" aesthetics by being small, playful, girly, etc. I can't really think of a "cute" girl who dominates the zeitgeist unless its more online subcultures like gaming, streaming, anime. Because they don't dominate the zeitgeist, even if they find them attractive, most normie dudebros won't say they're hot because it will decrease their status among their male peer group. Zendaya is another one since she is obviously hot but dudes performatively say she's ugly to signal to male peers.
I find this all very weird. If Sabrina or Zendaya weren't famous people but were women hanging out alone at a random party (frat or otherwise), they would absolutely receive a ton of normie male attention.
I love the attempts to prove Zendaya is "not hot" where they pick a very nice photo of some other celebrity and compare it to the most unflattering photo of Zendaya. Okay bud.
Men do like cute girls but I was speaking more from the cultural zeitgeist perspective. I don’t think there has ever been a cute girl who dominates it.
This reminds me of when Australia banned porn with AA cup women on it, and I remember thinking this seems pretty offensive to those women, practically implying that only pedophiles would be attracted to them.
I think it’s likely they banned that porn because porn with small breasted women tends to be marketed as pedo-adjacent content and they do other things to make the women seem childlike. They use “small tits” as a way to signal “underaged” without explicitly stating it.
Strong agree with this essay. One of many topics you covered was that most men find 18-25 year olds more attractive than 15 year olds. I was just having this conversation with my wife yesterday, regarding “Epstein / global cabal pedophile conspiracy theories”. I just don’t believe that the “median middle-aged male billionaire looking for consequence-free sex” would choose a child over a 20-year old woman. That’s ridiculous!
One thing that gets lost in all this shuffle is that Epstein was also trafficking adult women, but it’s a lot harder to prove that an adult woman was trafficked because when the accusation comes from a teenager, her age is really all you need to get the conviction. A lot of men communicating with Epstein were trying to get fixed up with women in their 20s or late teens within the age of consent. I’m not saying that was OK because these women were likely coerced anyway but the idea that anyone who spoke to Epstein is attracted to five-year-olds isn’t accurate, and I see it used in Qanon ways all the time.
Yeah, I think adult men sometimes find teenagers, attractive, but it’s usually when those teenagers look in distinguishable from a college girl. I think only a relatively small subset of perverts are attracted to things like braces.
Having been a teen girl and a young woman, I would say this is true.
I was a petite, young-looking teen, so when I was 18-22 people often thought I was about 14 or 15. In fact, I was asked to a ninth-grade dance by a 15-year-old when I was 22 (he was SHOCKED to find out I was old enough to be his...older sister). So, when I was in college I tended to get a lot of attention from high-school boys (ewww); and comparatively little from adult men or even boys my own age. In fact, my husband initially was not interested in me because he thought I was a high-school kid who had somehow snuck into a college party. He was quite surprised to find out that I was in fact a little older than him.
It wasn't until I was in my 20s and learned how to dress like a grownup that I started getting hit on by men who were older than me - and even then, it was only when I was wearing makeup and a business suit, because when I had my hair in a ponytail and no makeup on I could still pass for high school even in my late 20s.
Now, my daughter had a friend in high school who was one of those 15-year-old girls who looked like she was 25. Unsurprisingly, she got a lot of attention from guys in their mid-20s, and since she was a bit of a wild child, she was pretty happy to date them. Predictably, this didn't go well, and the fact that she later was diagnosed with bipolar probably didn't help.
In past times when the idea of "teenager" in the modern sense of "full-grown, sexually-mature person who is still nonetheless a child" didn't really exist and you just went straight from being a child to being an adult, clothing served as a marker. At 15, you wore children's style dresses with shorter skirts and pinafores, and had your hair in braids; at 16 you started wearing long skirts and putting your hair up which signified you were now a Young Lady, not a child.
Even once the teenage years started being seen as a period where you weren't really a child any more, but weren't quite an adult, the idea of teenagers dressing differently than adult women persisted. I have a vintage book on beauty and fashion for teenagers that was written in 1961; and one of the things it specifically mentions is that makeup appropriate for teenagers consists of foundation (if you don't have nice skin), a dusting of powder, and lipstick in a light shade of peach or pink, maybe some eyebrow pencil if your brows are very blonde. Red or darker colors of lipstick, mascara, eyeshadow and eyeliner were all considered too grown-up for teen girls.
Now, you could argue that the mid-1960s were a time when fashion was rather...pedophilic. The new minidresses were awfully similar to the shift dresses that little girls wore, especially when paired with tights and Mary Jane shoes. The hottest supermodel was 16-year-old, 91-pound Twiggy. The "London look" of elaborate eye makeup, with lots of dark liner and false lashes, paired with pale lips, was supposed to give a sort of large-eyed waifish look. So for the first time, you have adult women trying to dress like little girls...rather sexy little girls, when you come right down to it.
The irony, of course, was that this new, extremely youthful look was largely the invention of women. Twiggy had gotten her hair cut at a trendy salon that took headshots of their signature short haircuts on clients, and fashion writer Deirdre McSharry saw her photo hanging on the wall. McSharry dubbed her "The Face of 1966" and arranged for her first photoshoot which launched her modeling career.
Mary Quant had already found her niche market of young, fashionable women with money to spend on clothes in the 1950s. She herself was petite, so she always favored shorter skirts as they made her legs look longer. She said her seminal miniskirt design was in response to her customers - they kept asking for shorter and shorter skirts, so she gave them the shortest skirt of all.
Yeah, I think for a lot of creeps who prey on teenage girls, it's more a matter of taking advantage of the vulnerability of someone that young than it is an active preference for that age group.
I think I was on board with this article even 30 years ago. Alas it arrived 30 years too late.
My wife is a very petite and thin woman. And for her entire teen years and young adulthood she had to listen to other women berate her about how she is "anorexic", about how she needs to eat more and "get some meat on her", and about how her breasts are so small that no man would ever find her attractive (I suppose this was a hint to get a boob job).
It was awful and hurtful for her and a big part of my job as her boyfriend in the early years was constantly telling her how beautiful she was and how much I accepted and loved her body. While I do sympathize with the plight of chubbier women out there, the answer is not to demonize thinner women. It is just as hurtful to a thin women to be told that she is not enough as it is to a heavier woman.
And the "calling guys who like thin women pedophiles" thing is really beyond the pale. Are thin, petite women somehow unworthy of love? It's just sour grapes from heavier or taller women unhappy with their own bodies and projecting their self loathing.
On another note as a male this whole claim that "men must like curvy women or else they are gross pedos" was really pushed back in the 90's as well. Also, "men must like big boobs or they are gay" was another big one. As a young guy who liked thin women and didn't really think all that much about boobs, it caused me a lot of shame and doubt.
On day in my late 30's I was watching the Amazon show Fleabag and there was this funny scene where PWB's character is having sex with her friend w/benefits guy and he says "Oh my God, your breasts, they are so......small......" and then he cums. And that scene really impacted me, even though it was played for laughs, because I realized that I really AM very attracted to my wife's small breasts. And being able to admit that to myself and be okay with it really enhanced my intimacy with her.
TL;DR lessons here:
1. "Real men like curves": is fucking oppressive and awful.
And if anything, I feel like Kardashian and Jenner approach to be almost a mirror image of Clavicular- take individual element average men find hot and looksmaxx on every dimension of this. (And as a result, it looks, well a bit off lol
Kim K is very much the ur-influencer, and the fact that it was her look that hit as fashionable right at that cusp between traditional celebrity culture and the explosion of social media is responsible for a lot of what has become the ideal of “looksmaxxers”.
Now that my kids are teenagers, and I see hundreds of teenagers every day during school drop off and pickup, I can attest that most teenagers look like children, not like 20-somethings. There are some teenage boys who could pass for older because they are big hulking kids with facial hair (or, in some cases, they are part of that unfortunate group of boys who look middle-aged before they get their driver's license). Almost all of the girls look like kids, even the ones who may be trying kind of hard to look older. When I look back at my own school yearbooks (from the 1980s), we all looked like babies right through senior year. Girls I thought were hot when I was 16 look like little kids in those pictures to me now. I looked like a toddler, and I had to start shaving when I was 12. A kid I grew up with who I always thought looked like a grown man because he was 6'3" and weight 240 pounds in the 8th grade -- he literally looks like a giant baby in those old photos.
What's weird is that the kids in my parents' yearbooks from the 1960s all look 30.
I wonder if our perception of what teenagers are supposed to look like is confused by all the movies and TV shows that cast twenty-somethings as teenagers in order to avoid dealing with child labor laws. I remember when I was a kid asking my parents why all the high schoolers I knew looked different than the high schoolers on "Power Rangers."
Yeah also if shows like Euphoria actually used 15 year olds instead of 25 year olds pretending to be 15…people would be way more disturbed and uncomfortable with that show!
Not to pick on Euphoria-same can be said for most shows with teenagers. If you actually saw a 15-year-old-looking 15 year old having sex with adults, doing drugs, experiencing violence etc many viewers wouldn’t want to see it
I remember the movie "Kids" (1995) became infamous for having actual 16-17 year olds play the main characters, who get into the similar problems as the characters in "Euphoriam"
I remember the movie for freaking the hell out of my parents and having to explain to them that actually no neither I nor any of the teens I knew were doing ANY of those things, lmao.
I went back for my 20th reunion...a bunch of us all had pre-teen kids. Someone pointed out that the college under-grads helping out at the event were a lot closer to our kids age than our age, and we all had an "oh fuck we're old" moment.
But also...the _college kids_ looked so young...and they were all at least 18. High schoolers look like _kids_ to me.
Sabrina Carpenter is obviously not "ugly", but I don't think she's a big hit with straight men. Her hair, makeup, and fashion choices all subtly but clearly signal "I'm trying to appeal to other women", either as a queer sex symbol or as a Gen Z fashion icon. And that's great! Female celebrities have no obligation to please men. She's found her lane and it's working for her. But I've seen women express confusion about why straight men aren't all that into her, and to me, it's pretty obvious that she's chosen her audience and straight men aren't who she's trying to reach.
Fun fact: Gillette played a huge part in selling body hair shame to women in the early 1900s so they’d start buying razors. Beauty standards are more sponsored by profit making companies than paedos
I suppose that's true but I think people overthink this. The "exaggerating an already existing sex difference" is just such a simple, harmless explainion. A core part of boring, median heterosexuality is men want to look different than women, and women from men. Removing body hair is a relatively easy way to do this, and I have to imagine that would have been pretty difficult pre-1900 with a straight razor (and also pointless when exposing an ankle was considered risque).
An interesting perspective that removing body hair is nothing but the natural order of things. I wonder why the men didn't choose to remove their body hair if it was simply about creating a point of difference between the two sexes? They already had razors after all.
Idk. I’m just going to cite an example of my own experience: in my early 20s I moved to China, meaning I missed out on 2 years of western beauty ‘culture’. When I got back (in 2015), everyone suddenly cared about their eyebrows, like a lot. They had to be laminated and shaped and coloured in. It looked totally ridiculous to me - because I wasn’t there for the gradual shifting of the eyebrow Overton window. Obvs people were plucking and threading their eyebrows before 2015 - a 10 min job either at home or cheaply done in a shopping centre kiosk - but suddenly massive eyebrows were everywhere. Big eyebrow had gained a foothold. This was not the natural order of things - but somehow an increasingly large number of young women were being subject to yet another expensive maintenance ritual. Where did this come from?! I still don’t know - I should probably look into it - but the leg shaving thing is the same! A mass perspective shift that serves no one but profit making companies.
The answer becomes fairly obvious if you frame it as maximum return for minimal effort.
Say you had 1000 women and 1000 men which group would you imagine has more body hair to begin with and in more difficult spots, ie on the shoulder blade and only a straight razor to work with. If the goal is to differentiate the two groups as much as possible it would be the less hairy group with less super inconveniently place body hair that would most benefit from shaving.
At some level though if the goal is to differentiate yourself from the opposite sex there has to be some concessions to practical utilitarian concerns.
It would much more cleanlily explain why various petite aesthetics have always been popular for women, but a mass monster look never has. Simply because women putting on huge amounts of muscle mass are always going to drift closer in look to men than away from them.
That’s true. I haven’t given this differentiation angle much thought before (with regard to grooming + beauty) so it’s giving me an interesting perspective to ponder on
There's definitely a level of arbitrariness to all this. I'm sure there are some cultures somewhere where men are expected to be less hairy than women.
But it's generally easier, both logistically and psychologically, to exaggerate a difference that already exists.
Maybe it's just my algorithm but now I feel like in addition to being a 45x22x45 I also have to be completely jacked to the point where women are also juicing to get big quads. Beauty standards are about exclusion so every time something becomes more attainable through surgery or medication the goal posts will just move again!
I think being a teenager for close to a decade does a number on you. And most M women with large asses and big boobs are simply carrying that teenage reaction to the world both hyper-sexualising you and calling you a slut while also saying you are not hot enough because the hottest girls in class were the size S girls who then told you that the boys only look at you cause they like boobs not because you are *really* hot because obviously how could you be hot when you are FAT. (The guys also act a bit embarassed for liking you. You think they are embarrassed because of the M sizing but they are embarassed because they know nothing makes you as obvious as a teenage boy into tatas. but I didn't know that!!)
"Boys like boobs, its a mom thing, not a you thing" was something actually told to me. Still recovering from it.
Then you spend your 20s trying really hard to become the size S girl because you still believe that to be M sized is to be fat. Maybe extreme starvation will even result in that, but you can't maintain it for long. So you go back to being resentful, hate boobs, hate your boobs, hate sabrina carpenter, wish you were rich, and cry yourself to sleep every night. Meanwhile maybe you dated/loved someone who told you "if only you were thinner/smaller you'd look so hot" and then when you break up with that asshole you internalize that the thinner girl is what you should be.
You never wear a tight fitted button down shirt ever. You try it out in stores, you never buy it. In all the decades of your life you never buy a button down shirt. You die having never worn a button down shirt.
I know you speak from the experience of being a skinny person CHH so I thought I should tell you how it is to grow up as the third image in your "odd goopy blue women" images.
“Men will fall in love with lots of women, many of whom look nothing like Kim Kardashian or any other sex icon.”
I was feeling my blood boil until you said this. Walk into a Walmart, look at the women who are partnered-up, and you’ll see very few Kardashian-like bodies. I agree that skinny with curves is a major preference of men, but it’s also rare in nature, and most of us realize we will have to compromise on either the skinny part or the curvy part, especially if we don’t like surgical enhancements.
One thing that you don’t discuss, and maybe should, is the preference of a very vocal contingent of men for “fit” and “toned” bodies (in other words “no fat chicks”, but where being skinny isn’t enough, you have to be *muscular* skinny).
I'd be interested in a take about how beauty standards are set and enforced.
A couple of years ago my wife was browsing instagram and said "Damn skinny is back in - I need to lose weight" (she didn't need to imo). This was news to me! If you had asked the regular man skinny would always be "in", even if we also find other shapes attractive too.
It seems to me that it's women who are doing the setting and, especially, enforcing of beauty standards.
To be clear she was talking about going from a size S to XS. As far as I was concerned she absolutely didn't need to and I let her know, and was already skinny in my book.
There might be something to this. I think lots of men find Kim attractive but her discourse power really does seem to stem from her ability to drive women insane (both positively and negatively and possibly some additional ways as well).
A happy fact for me on the cusp of turning 64. While I can appreciate beauty in the young––there's something primordial about that––as I've aged it's older women who I find most beautiful and most attracted to and no one more so than my wife who is about my same age.
Lucky is the man whose tastes evolve!
Yeah, it's easy to be physically hot in your 20s, so, unsurprisingly, there is a concentration of physically hot people that age. But physical attraction has to be balanced against the "everything else", and the older, less hormonal, and more experienced with people you get, the more the "everything else" matters.
People like to console themselves with the idea that physical beauty has an inverse, rather than moderately positive, relationship with "everything else".
So true, king. 👑
I bet Jameela’s career as a runway model and actress is where this perspective comes. I get the vibe in Hollywood and Paris/Milan is still contains heroin chic standards.
Also, the Sabrina discourse is so, so painfully Twitter-coded. A very hyper-specific group of guys whose voices are amplified are the ones proclaiming this nonsense.
Dudes would be floating in the air with their eyes morphing into hearts, popping out of their heads like that one horny cartoon wolf, if she walked into a party or bar/club dressed provocatively.
If you brought her around the bros the amount of barely concealed high fives would chafe & injure palms lolol
I say this, not in a rude way, but she presents herself as far less conventionally attractive than she is when you see the way she writes about herself. Yes she may not be a size 0 blonde but she is obviously extremely attractive!! Like, not even in a quirky or unusual way.
She came to many peoples' attention via a show where one of the running gags was people fawning over how hot she was!
Right, she was specifically cast because she's probably one of the .001% percent of women who can make Kristin Bell look ordinary in comparison.
She has a public history of an eating disorder and body dsymorphia. That doesn’t make for the most rational of body image takes.
Sorry to not leave her alone, but I find it very interesting that men don't find Sabrina attractive. It speaks to the fact that men go off of vibes more than looks. Her hyper-campy makeup and look is unattractive to them. And her body or face cannot make up for it. That is why they keep asking "why don't I find her hot?" because they know they should. But they are unable to given what she is "giving". I remember this interesting tweet where someone posted Sabrina with and without makeup and all the men were slobbering over her non-makeup face and wishing that she didn't do this exxagerated makeup look so they could be horny for her. But she has a clear strategy of being "for the girls" and she is laser-focused on that.
Men are not as shallow as many would have us believe. Hallelujah.
Actually, the men who say they don't find her attractive are just lying.
It’s a “relative to who” question. Men who say she isn’t hot are comparing her to other unattainable women, not to the women they actually encounter on a daily basis. On an absolute scale, she’s clearly attractive (as CHH says, of course you would…)
Round it off to “among women famously considered sexy and beautiful, I don’t find her particularly appealing” and it’s about right.
There’s also the fact that the “Sabrina Carpenter is intentionally baiting pedos” discourse makes it socially dangerous too openly enthusiastic about her looks.
I think this is absolutely correct. She's conventionally attractive especially compared to your average person. But still falls short against the famously sexy and beautiful.
The over the top makeup doesn't help.
Sure, the "2/10 uggo would not bang" crowd are full of shit, but "attractive" can also mean "attractive to me/my type [out of all of the impossibly beautiful celebrities]."
Hmm.
I think if men say she's unattractive that's pretty wild.
But I think it's pretty easy to imagine men do not feel attracted to her ... mostly because I don't - until I google "sabrina carpenter no makeup" for the sake of perspective while writing this comment, lol. I wouldn't say it's the opposite of "shallow," but I think a good number of men tend to be unaware of the degree to which vibe factors into their attraction.
ofc if we were talking about real life interactions and not comparing photos of celebrities that'd be a different situation.
“She is attractive but I’m not attracted to her” is a much more objectively difficult conclusion to come to. Most people just have a “eww I don’t like Ryan gosling, his face is so yuck” reaction. Vibe reactions are much more intensely feeling based than anything objective and rational. Though they can be explained rationally (like I did above) it’s easier not to explain.
Maybe they mean they don't find her makeup attractive. I'd like to give people the benefit of the doubt because no one believes me when I say I find Ryan Gosling ugly.
Maybe, but I think it's mostly that performatively insulting attractive women on the internet is now a thing.
I mean performatively calling women ugly on the Internet has always been a thing. I think it's interesting that Sabrina Carpenter seems to attract more of this than other 20-something female celebrities.
Ugly? Really? Who would be a good “not ugly” or “beautiful” male counter example for you?
I just think his face is shaped like a shoe 😔 I’m sorry to Ryan gosling enthusiasts. I also don’t like his smug ironic expression. He looks so punchable 😭 same goes for the other Ryan. I hate Ryan Reynolds.
I find young Hugh Grant handsome. Young Chris hemsworth. James Stewart. Cary Grant. Tom hanks. Really really love young James mcavoy. I think Jacob elordi is cute. Henry Cavill is exceptional. I like men who look smiley, happy, open.
Ok I guess I like boyish charm rather than this sort of “ugh eye roll” smugness.
For any male Hollywood sex symbol, it's always easy to find straight/bi women who just aren't into him. It's not easy to predict women's tastes in looks.
I think women and men go off of vibe more than literal body parts more often than not. And my dislike of Ryan gosling and men disliking Sabrina is a vibe thing. Otherwise we are saying men are simplistic beings who just like people for being thin and pretty.
“Young Chris Hemsworth”
Poor guy is only 42! Better be careful or Jameela will start calling you a pedo.
He was only 42 you sick fuck
I don’t like him now. I like him the way he looked when he was first launched and in the first Thor movie where he had a more sweet himbo vibe. Then everyone started making a mockery of him which made me annoyed. I’m 39 if that matters.
You just hate Canadians!!!
Hahaha! I wouldn’t know a Canadian from an American at all seeing as I’m Indian…
I think it's the tiny noses that you don't like lol. The Ryans both have little button noses.
Nooo it’s their loooong faces and the expressions and that sorta blasé asshole vibe I get from them. I hate the entirety of dead pool it disgusts me.
I think she’s cultivating a similar fan base to the one that many other pop stars have sought out. While plenty of straight men would not have turned down a chance to go to bed with Madonna in her prime, her ride or die fans have always consisted of women and gay men. incidentally, that’s a group of people who tend to buy more pop albums. Taylor Swift is conventionally attractive and always looks good, but has never made being sexy to men a prime component of her brand. Taylor Swift on the cover of Maxim would alienate the devoted female fans who keep her on the top of the charts. And if Sabrina wears too much makeup, what do we make of Lady Gaga? These are all attractive women, and if regular guys saw them in a bar, they’d find them hot enough. But they’re going for long pop music careers, and the “girl every guy wants to nail,” does not enjoy the same pop longevity as the “Icon that every girl and her drag queen best friend want to dress up as for Halloween.”
That point about Taylor Swift is interesting, and I agree. However, I also think it's interesting that The Life of a Showgirl defines her (and Sabrina Carpenter) as part of a class of women who make money by being "pretty and witty". I'd assume the prettiness is not just for women and gay men?
Of course not! Plenty of straight men both listen to their music, and find them attractive. But that’s not their main brand identity, the way it would have been for, say, Marilyn Monroe. I think the primary thing that both of them are selling (in slightly different shades) is a fantasy that women can project themselves onto. “A pretty, smart girl next door who (despite being a bit of a tryhard dork at times) can attract a sting of sexy boyfriends and live out a veritable soap opera of heartbreak and triumph.” “A cute, funny, girlboss who can throw on a wig like Hannah Montana and moonlight as a sex kitten who sells out stadiums.” Being attractive to enough men to have an exciting love life is necessary to sell that image, but being a Playboy Centerfold is antithetical to that image.
I agree. But I think Taylor is now getting popular in the mainstream in an ABBA kind of way and boys sing her songs at karaoke and that’s very cute. It helps that she’s dating the boyest of boys.
That's true. Regardless, her primary image is never going to be "Smoking hot girl that every red blooded straight guy wants to bang." Plenty of straight guys may find her attractive, and plenty of straight guys may even like her music, but she's never cultivated a Syndey Sweeney/Megan Fox type of brand, and that is by design.
She literally defined her brand in one of her earliest hits: "She wears short shorts, I wear sneakers, etc." She's the awkward girl-next-door type who doesn't realize she's special until someone takes notice. That felt less plausible, obviously, as she became a global superstar, but that's what she started with and has evolved from.
I agree! It may just not be her vibe and that’s okay too
I like Lady Gaga. I've bought her albums.
But she is NOT attractive in the slightest
Her "thing" is to be deliberately grotesque. Attraction doesn't even enter into it.
She is very attractive when she is doing a "normal" look, like in A Star Is Born
Hetero man here: Sabrina Carpenter is super hot. But I think she is not every guy's cup of tea. Some guys are maybe put off by her seeming to them to come on too strong, or perhaps they find her arrogant.
While I actually find her over-the-top "Betty Boop-style" sexiness to be charming/funny/sexy.
I liked the video of her and Jenna Ortrega running around in lingerie murdering each other over a guy, but in the end they decide to just kill him and be friends. It was like a fun little girl-power sentiment, but with dark humor - and very sexy.
Also she has some meat on the legs and a pretty nice butt; the only thing one could claim is "kid-like" about her is she's like 4'11.
But when you're married to a 5' woman, that doesn't seem too short.
As a guy who isn't on Twitter, if I didn't subscribe to CHH, I wouldn't even know if there was discourse about this. This is all the very online trying to farm engagement.
I wish Sabrina’s aesthetic was less Xmas-tree, but the fact that she’s so funny and likeable completely makes up for it.
Is this a real thing? She’s obviously a smoke show. Isn’t that a big part of why she’s a famous pop star? I feel this must be a weird internet thing.
Majority of her fans are women and she’s designed her appeal to be a woman’s fantasy best friend. Pretty and hot but never a threat.
Weren’t most of Brittney’s fans also women? She was still a sex symbol, and men who didn’t care for her music thought she was hot.
I don't think there's a lot of men who would tell you Carpenter is unattractive. I think the discourse is more based on the idea that she is not discussed in the way Britney was. Men weren't fans but they definitely had outspoken interest. Today's entry for that slot is Sweeny.
I agree Sweeny is hotter than Carpenter. But she’s hotter than almost everyone so that’s not exactly saying much.
I think what’s expected of women with women fans has changed from Britney to now. There’s more of a “camp femininity specifically to mock men” element now then before. I mean she literally has a song called man child. There’s a big heteropessimism element to it all.
As someone whose wife was once into this world (yes, while we were dating), I clocked it immediately: Sabrina Carpenter is doing burlesque. She doesn't whip her boobies out and twirl her pasties around like a lot of classic burlesque dancers, but her style is clearly in that vein. It IS supposed to be sexy, but in a very over-the-top, often funny way. You're supposed to wink along with her because you know what she's doing. I suspect more than a few modern guys just don't "get" the intended irony of it.
Could also be that part of it is her having a hit song about how useless the men in her life are and that souring the vibe for the more normie straight dudes out there. Katy Perry did a similar thing when she first hit it big, though her version had a more aggressive persona as opposed to coquettish.
I do think men are not fully aware of how vibe-based their preferences are. They seem to want to believe they're hopelessly shallow.
Based on the criticism men who don’t find her hot get, women seem to want men to be hopelessly shallow too, in a weird way.
It’s really sad…but I’m positive it’s changing.
I think men just don't always realize that women who wear a certain style of makeup or clothing could change those things, and would look different if they did.
While Sabrina is clearly wearing makeup in some of these "no makeup photos," she looks pretty darn uncontroversially attractive when she's styled more naturally. Like, maybe the 'Margot Robbie is mid' crowd would quibble, but who listens to them?
https://fabbon.com/articles/makeup/best-sabrina-carpenter-no-makeup-looks
Upon deeper reflection, the archetype that Sabrina is tapping into is the same one embodied by Carrie Bradshaw. She's having a wild time in bed with plenty of attractive guys, she is not too bothered by most of the suitors who come and go, she's cute and stylish but not a bombshell, and half the fun of her exploits is retelling them with great spirit and wit, for the benefit and amusement of all the other girls.
Perfect!! But even Carrie never wore wild make up like this. I feel it’s very man repellent
Carrie's more idiosyncratic looks tended to involve fashion rather than makeup. she wasn't a stage performer, after all, let alone one who plays in large arenas where bold makeup is often necessary. On the other hand, Carrie did wear a literal tutu.
That’s fair actually
I think the statement "men don't find Sabrina Carpenter attractive" is just false, as a rule. She's not a lot of people's type, but that's true of everyone. More polarizing than average for a woman that attractive? Definitely. Unattractive to most men? Absolutely not.
Yep. My read on her is that she is intentionally *not* trying to please straight men with her look.
Yes 🙌
Even without makeup, she is very "cute" coded which mainstream dudebro America just doesn't go for. Cute aesthetic is only popular in online egirl environment and/or cute Asian girl.
I’m assuming that by “cute” you mean something hyper-specific, and didn’t just say that regular guys dislike cute women.
Sabrina embodies "cute" aesthetics by being small, playful, girly, etc. I can't really think of a "cute" girl who dominates the zeitgeist unless its more online subcultures like gaming, streaming, anime. Because they don't dominate the zeitgeist, even if they find them attractive, most normie dudebros won't say they're hot because it will decrease their status among their male peer group. Zendaya is another one since she is obviously hot but dudes performatively say she's ugly to signal to male peers.
I find this all very weird. If Sabrina or Zendaya weren't famous people but were women hanging out alone at a random party (frat or otherwise), they would absolutely receive a ton of normie male attention.
I love the attempts to prove Zendaya is "not hot" where they pick a very nice photo of some other celebrity and compare it to the most unflattering photo of Zendaya. Okay bud.
Yeah, I think that relies on very narrow definitions of “cute” and “normie dudebros”.
well who would be the venerated western/american Cute girl?
Kristen Bell still wins this one, I think.
cute as in kawaii
'Cute' in the British sense, perhaps.
I disagree. Most men like cute girls
Men do like cute girls but I was speaking more from the cultural zeitgeist perspective. I don’t think there has ever been a cute girl who dominates it.
Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts — cute girls have always been beloved.
This reminds me of when Australia banned porn with AA cup women on it, and I remember thinking this seems pretty offensive to those women, practically implying that only pedophiles would be attracted to them.
Haha I felt the same way!
That’s a real thing that happened??
YES. It was insane.
I think it’s likely they banned that porn because porn with small breasted women tends to be marketed as pedo-adjacent content and they do other things to make the women seem childlike. They use “small tits” as a way to signal “underaged” without explicitly stating it.
Mr. CHH: why is my computer full of Ai porn?
CHH: research
Strong agree with this essay. One of many topics you covered was that most men find 18-25 year olds more attractive than 15 year olds. I was just having this conversation with my wife yesterday, regarding “Epstein / global cabal pedophile conspiracy theories”. I just don’t believe that the “median middle-aged male billionaire looking for consequence-free sex” would choose a child over a 20-year old woman. That’s ridiculous!
One thing that gets lost in all this shuffle is that Epstein was also trafficking adult women, but it’s a lot harder to prove that an adult woman was trafficked because when the accusation comes from a teenager, her age is really all you need to get the conviction. A lot of men communicating with Epstein were trying to get fixed up with women in their 20s or late teens within the age of consent. I’m not saying that was OK because these women were likely coerced anyway but the idea that anyone who spoke to Epstein is attracted to five-year-olds isn’t accurate, and I see it used in Qanon ways all the time.
Yeah, I think adult men sometimes find teenagers, attractive, but it’s usually when those teenagers look in distinguishable from a college girl. I think only a relatively small subset of perverts are attracted to things like braces.
Having been a teen girl and a young woman, I would say this is true.
I was a petite, young-looking teen, so when I was 18-22 people often thought I was about 14 or 15. In fact, I was asked to a ninth-grade dance by a 15-year-old when I was 22 (he was SHOCKED to find out I was old enough to be his...older sister). So, when I was in college I tended to get a lot of attention from high-school boys (ewww); and comparatively little from adult men or even boys my own age. In fact, my husband initially was not interested in me because he thought I was a high-school kid who had somehow snuck into a college party. He was quite surprised to find out that I was in fact a little older than him.
It wasn't until I was in my 20s and learned how to dress like a grownup that I started getting hit on by men who were older than me - and even then, it was only when I was wearing makeup and a business suit, because when I had my hair in a ponytail and no makeup on I could still pass for high school even in my late 20s.
Now, my daughter had a friend in high school who was one of those 15-year-old girls who looked like she was 25. Unsurprisingly, she got a lot of attention from guys in their mid-20s, and since she was a bit of a wild child, she was pretty happy to date them. Predictably, this didn't go well, and the fact that she later was diagnosed with bipolar probably didn't help.
In past times when the idea of "teenager" in the modern sense of "full-grown, sexually-mature person who is still nonetheless a child" didn't really exist and you just went straight from being a child to being an adult, clothing served as a marker. At 15, you wore children's style dresses with shorter skirts and pinafores, and had your hair in braids; at 16 you started wearing long skirts and putting your hair up which signified you were now a Young Lady, not a child.
Even once the teenage years started being seen as a period where you weren't really a child any more, but weren't quite an adult, the idea of teenagers dressing differently than adult women persisted. I have a vintage book on beauty and fashion for teenagers that was written in 1961; and one of the things it specifically mentions is that makeup appropriate for teenagers consists of foundation (if you don't have nice skin), a dusting of powder, and lipstick in a light shade of peach or pink, maybe some eyebrow pencil if your brows are very blonde. Red or darker colors of lipstick, mascara, eyeshadow and eyeliner were all considered too grown-up for teen girls.
Now, you could argue that the mid-1960s were a time when fashion was rather...pedophilic. The new minidresses were awfully similar to the shift dresses that little girls wore, especially when paired with tights and Mary Jane shoes. The hottest supermodel was 16-year-old, 91-pound Twiggy. The "London look" of elaborate eye makeup, with lots of dark liner and false lashes, paired with pale lips, was supposed to give a sort of large-eyed waifish look. So for the first time, you have adult women trying to dress like little girls...rather sexy little girls, when you come right down to it.
The irony, of course, was that this new, extremely youthful look was largely the invention of women. Twiggy had gotten her hair cut at a trendy salon that took headshots of their signature short haircuts on clients, and fashion writer Deirdre McSharry saw her photo hanging on the wall. McSharry dubbed her "The Face of 1966" and arranged for her first photoshoot which launched her modeling career.
Mary Quant had already found her niche market of young, fashionable women with money to spend on clothes in the 1950s. She herself was petite, so she always favored shorter skirts as they made her legs look longer. She said her seminal miniskirt design was in response to her customers - they kept asking for shorter and shorter skirts, so she gave them the shortest skirt of all.
Yeah, I think for a lot of creeps who prey on teenage girls, it's more a matter of taking advantage of the vulnerability of someone that young than it is an active preference for that age group.
Oh absolutely. The vulnerability is part of the attraction more so than any physical differences between a teenage girl and a 20 year-old.
I think I was on board with this article even 30 years ago. Alas it arrived 30 years too late.
My wife is a very petite and thin woman. And for her entire teen years and young adulthood she had to listen to other women berate her about how she is "anorexic", about how she needs to eat more and "get some meat on her", and about how her breasts are so small that no man would ever find her attractive (I suppose this was a hint to get a boob job).
It was awful and hurtful for her and a big part of my job as her boyfriend in the early years was constantly telling her how beautiful she was and how much I accepted and loved her body. While I do sympathize with the plight of chubbier women out there, the answer is not to demonize thinner women. It is just as hurtful to a thin women to be told that she is not enough as it is to a heavier woman.
And the "calling guys who like thin women pedophiles" thing is really beyond the pale. Are thin, petite women somehow unworthy of love? It's just sour grapes from heavier or taller women unhappy with their own bodies and projecting their self loathing.
On another note as a male this whole claim that "men must like curvy women or else they are gross pedos" was really pushed back in the 90's as well. Also, "men must like big boobs or they are gay" was another big one. As a young guy who liked thin women and didn't really think all that much about boobs, it caused me a lot of shame and doubt.
On day in my late 30's I was watching the Amazon show Fleabag and there was this funny scene where PWB's character is having sex with her friend w/benefits guy and he says "Oh my God, your breasts, they are so......small......" and then he cums. And that scene really impacted me, even though it was played for laughs, because I realized that I really AM very attracted to my wife's small breasts. And being able to admit that to myself and be okay with it really enhanced my intimacy with her.
TL;DR lessons here:
1. "Real men like curves": is fucking oppressive and awful.
2. Small breasts are beautiful too.
Great article!!
And if anything, I feel like Kardashian and Jenner approach to be almost a mirror image of Clavicular- take individual element average men find hot and looksmaxx on every dimension of this. (And as a result, it looks, well a bit off lol
Can't believe Clavicular didn't even come up in this article! He got totally mogged by Kim Kardashian here.
Kim K is very much the ur-influencer, and the fact that it was her look that hit as fashionable right at that cusp between traditional celebrity culture and the explosion of social media is responsible for a lot of what has become the ideal of “looksmaxxers”.
Now that my kids are teenagers, and I see hundreds of teenagers every day during school drop off and pickup, I can attest that most teenagers look like children, not like 20-somethings. There are some teenage boys who could pass for older because they are big hulking kids with facial hair (or, in some cases, they are part of that unfortunate group of boys who look middle-aged before they get their driver's license). Almost all of the girls look like kids, even the ones who may be trying kind of hard to look older. When I look back at my own school yearbooks (from the 1980s), we all looked like babies right through senior year. Girls I thought were hot when I was 16 look like little kids in those pictures to me now. I looked like a toddler, and I had to start shaving when I was 12. A kid I grew up with who I always thought looked like a grown man because he was 6'3" and weight 240 pounds in the 8th grade -- he literally looks like a giant baby in those old photos.
What's weird is that the kids in my parents' yearbooks from the 1960s all look 30.
I wonder if our perception of what teenagers are supposed to look like is confused by all the movies and TV shows that cast twenty-somethings as teenagers in order to avoid dealing with child labor laws. I remember when I was a kid asking my parents why all the high schoolers I knew looked different than the high schoolers on "Power Rangers."
This is definitely a thing.
Yeah also if shows like Euphoria actually used 15 year olds instead of 25 year olds pretending to be 15…people would be way more disturbed and uncomfortable with that show!
Not to pick on Euphoria-same can be said for most shows with teenagers. If you actually saw a 15-year-old-looking 15 year old having sex with adults, doing drugs, experiencing violence etc many viewers wouldn’t want to see it
I remember the movie "Kids" (1995) became infamous for having actual 16-17 year olds play the main characters, who get into the similar problems as the characters in "Euphoriam"
I remember the movie for freaking the hell out of my parents and having to explain to them that actually no neither I nor any of the teens I knew were doing ANY of those things, lmao.
I went back for my 20th reunion...a bunch of us all had pre-teen kids. Someone pointed out that the college under-grads helping out at the event were a lot closer to our kids age than our age, and we all had an "oh fuck we're old" moment.
But also...the _college kids_ looked so young...and they were all at least 18. High schoolers look like _kids_ to me.
> I don’t really want to get into Titties & Ass Phrenology today
"She has the aerolae indicative of a Mediterranean criminal."
Sabrina Carpenter is obviously not "ugly", but I don't think she's a big hit with straight men. Her hair, makeup, and fashion choices all subtly but clearly signal "I'm trying to appeal to other women", either as a queer sex symbol or as a Gen Z fashion icon. And that's great! Female celebrities have no obligation to please men. She's found her lane and it's working for her. But I've seen women express confusion about why straight men aren't all that into her, and to me, it's pretty obvious that she's chosen her audience and straight men aren't who she's trying to reach.
Yeah, that’s definitely true. Although I think if they saw her outside of costume, they would feel differently.
I think she knows that. Her costume is, I suspect, intentionally designed to deflect the straight male gaze.
TIL I have a gay male gaze for Sabrina Carpenter.
Fun fact: Gillette played a huge part in selling body hair shame to women in the early 1900s so they’d start buying razors. Beauty standards are more sponsored by profit making companies than paedos
The reason for why anyone does anything can almost always be boiled down to money
I suppose that's true but I think people overthink this. The "exaggerating an already existing sex difference" is just such a simple, harmless explainion. A core part of boring, median heterosexuality is men want to look different than women, and women from men. Removing body hair is a relatively easy way to do this, and I have to imagine that would have been pretty difficult pre-1900 with a straight razor (and also pointless when exposing an ankle was considered risque).
An interesting perspective that removing body hair is nothing but the natural order of things. I wonder why the men didn't choose to remove their body hair if it was simply about creating a point of difference between the two sexes? They already had razors after all.
Consider the "existing sex difference" as a starting point.
Idk. I’m just going to cite an example of my own experience: in my early 20s I moved to China, meaning I missed out on 2 years of western beauty ‘culture’. When I got back (in 2015), everyone suddenly cared about their eyebrows, like a lot. They had to be laminated and shaped and coloured in. It looked totally ridiculous to me - because I wasn’t there for the gradual shifting of the eyebrow Overton window. Obvs people were plucking and threading their eyebrows before 2015 - a 10 min job either at home or cheaply done in a shopping centre kiosk - but suddenly massive eyebrows were everywhere. Big eyebrow had gained a foothold. This was not the natural order of things - but somehow an increasingly large number of young women were being subject to yet another expensive maintenance ritual. Where did this come from?! I still don’t know - I should probably look into it - but the leg shaving thing is the same! A mass perspective shift that serves no one but profit making companies.
The answer becomes fairly obvious if you frame it as maximum return for minimal effort.
Say you had 1000 women and 1000 men which group would you imagine has more body hair to begin with and in more difficult spots, ie on the shoulder blade and only a straight razor to work with. If the goal is to differentiate the two groups as much as possible it would be the less hairy group with less super inconveniently place body hair that would most benefit from shaving.
I just don’t buy that any female beauty standards were born from a utilitarian perspective
At some level though if the goal is to differentiate yourself from the opposite sex there has to be some concessions to practical utilitarian concerns.
It would much more cleanlily explain why various petite aesthetics have always been popular for women, but a mass monster look never has. Simply because women putting on huge amounts of muscle mass are always going to drift closer in look to men than away from them.
That’s true. I haven’t given this differentiation angle much thought before (with regard to grooming + beauty) so it’s giving me an interesting perspective to ponder on
There's definitely a level of arbitrariness to all this. I'm sure there are some cultures somewhere where men are expected to be less hairy than women.
But it's generally easier, both logistically and psychologically, to exaggerate a difference that already exists.
Maybe it's just my algorithm but now I feel like in addition to being a 45x22x45 I also have to be completely jacked to the point where women are also juicing to get big quads. Beauty standards are about exclusion so every time something becomes more attainable through surgery or medication the goal posts will just move again!
Yes lol! I never thought I’d be worrying about not having enough muscle and yet here I am!
As a person on the hyper-mobile spectrum I feel personally attacked.
I think being a teenager for close to a decade does a number on you. And most M women with large asses and big boobs are simply carrying that teenage reaction to the world both hyper-sexualising you and calling you a slut while also saying you are not hot enough because the hottest girls in class were the size S girls who then told you that the boys only look at you cause they like boobs not because you are *really* hot because obviously how could you be hot when you are FAT. (The guys also act a bit embarassed for liking you. You think they are embarrassed because of the M sizing but they are embarassed because they know nothing makes you as obvious as a teenage boy into tatas. but I didn't know that!!)
"Boys like boobs, its a mom thing, not a you thing" was something actually told to me. Still recovering from it.
Then you spend your 20s trying really hard to become the size S girl because you still believe that to be M sized is to be fat. Maybe extreme starvation will even result in that, but you can't maintain it for long. So you go back to being resentful, hate boobs, hate your boobs, hate sabrina carpenter, wish you were rich, and cry yourself to sleep every night. Meanwhile maybe you dated/loved someone who told you "if only you were thinner/smaller you'd look so hot" and then when you break up with that asshole you internalize that the thinner girl is what you should be.
You never wear a tight fitted button down shirt ever. You try it out in stores, you never buy it. In all the decades of your life you never buy a button down shirt. You die having never worn a button down shirt.
I know you speak from the experience of being a skinny person CHH so I thought I should tell you how it is to grow up as the third image in your "odd goopy blue women" images.
if only women had more male self-confidence instead of "my elbows are too knobby, I'm ugly ggwp"
“Men will fall in love with lots of women, many of whom look nothing like Kim Kardashian or any other sex icon.”
I was feeling my blood boil until you said this. Walk into a Walmart, look at the women who are partnered-up, and you’ll see very few Kardashian-like bodies. I agree that skinny with curves is a major preference of men, but it’s also rare in nature, and most of us realize we will have to compromise on either the skinny part or the curvy part, especially if we don’t like surgical enhancements.
One thing that you don’t discuss, and maybe should, is the preference of a very vocal contingent of men for “fit” and “toned” bodies (in other words “no fat chicks”, but where being skinny isn’t enough, you have to be *muscular* skinny).
Kim Kardashian does seem like an icon for women rather than men (at least in the West).
Hard agree.
I'd be interested in a take about how beauty standards are set and enforced.
A couple of years ago my wife was browsing instagram and said "Damn skinny is back in - I need to lose weight" (she didn't need to imo). This was news to me! If you had asked the regular man skinny would always be "in", even if we also find other shapes attractive too.
It seems to me that it's women who are doing the setting and, especially, enforcing of beauty standards.
I hope for your sake you kept that comment to yourself, brother!
To be clear she was talking about going from a size S to XS. As far as I was concerned she absolutely didn't need to and I let her know, and was already skinny in my book.
There might be something to this. I think lots of men find Kim attractive but her discourse power really does seem to stem from her ability to drive women insane (both positively and negatively and possibly some additional ways as well).