Lol yep. It doesn't help that new babies in TV are usually portrayed by 3-month-olds unless they're going for extreme accuracy like in a medical drama. Most tweens are probably kind of spooked by how tiny new babies are. Also the middle of trick or treating is obviously not most people's idea of the right time to negotiate a new babysitting contract.
I wonder have our social skills atrophied *that* much, so that someone might actually think that a couple of tweens who are there to show off their costumes and get candy, are also going to sit down and talk about when they can babysit? (And three *days* old? Does that baby even have an immune system yet?)
Exactly. 3 days old is basically an inert blob that eats, shits, and screams. There’s no real *interacting* with a stranger’s baby (or even a family baby!) until they are old enough to respond to you.
It seems like people that are seriously into polyamory either have some sort of mental issues or they have been unable to find a way to orgasm reliably and compensate for it by turning sex into an elaborate Sid Meier game.
It's unwaveringly nerd shit. Dungeons and dragons was not complex enough so they had to bring rules and regulations indecipherable to the normies to their sex life.
*Don't come at me, DND nerds! I'm married (monogamously) to a warhammer nerd.
I can’t get over how time-consuming polyamory seems like it would be. I feel like you’d have to have an awful lot of free time, which most of us don’t have. Plenty of people already struggle to find enough time for one relationship, let alone multiple.
I have always felt exactly this way about affairs, especially since we had kids. Who has the time? When I hear about affairs I'm way more mystified than any other emotion.
That hasn't been the case for the poly people I know.
What I don't understand is why ever generation we have to do the same, "these people are having a non-traditional relationship, they must be mentally ill" discourse.
I’m sure there are some otherwise fairly normal people in poly relationships #notallpolys but I would be genuinely surprised if that was the majority of people in these sort of arrangements.
The rule about frequently closeted social relationships is that the examples you see aren't representative.
But it's this sort of thinking, "I don't know many (any?) poly people, but I know I wouldn't like it, therefore they must be crazy. Look there's a crazy one online, see!?"
The thing about bigotry in defense of tradition is that it always feels like rationally pointing out "weird" people.
Maybe I should have started with this but I’ve known several poly people (many of them part of the burning man crowd).
They all have mental health issues they talk about openly with friends and online.
Weird people are weird for a reason, that’s what it’s like being out of the mainstream. I don’t wish poly people ill, I hope they are happy. I also think it’s lame to demand people “normalize” things that are so obviously niche or kink, just embrace being a radical, that’s what makes it cool.
I definitely believe that. But that's my whole point.
You know many poly and poly adjacent people that don't tell you. Not even because you consider it a kink. Just because there's a great deal of social pressure.
I'd wager you know more "normal" poly people than burning man ones, it's just that *of course* the burning man ones will advertise it to you, for the same reason they advertise their mental illness.
That doesn't mean that one has anything to do with the other especially in general.
It could be experience bias for sure but poly people always give me big Theatre Kid energy. It’s hard to believe that most of them wouldn’t talk about it, though I suppose in certain very conservative areas it might be more likely they would feel the need to conceal it even above any desire to gab.
> You know many poly and poly adjacent people that don't tell you.
Are you talking about Bo specifically here, or is this a "royal you"? Because no, most people don't know "many poly and poly adjacent people that don't tell you". Most people only know boring squares. That's the whole point here. Relatively few people live in San Francisco, man!
I really doubt I know many poly or poly adjacent people who don't tell people.
like yes by definition I can only know the ones who have told me are poly and so there might be this huge invisible population, but like, having hung out in spaces where this stuff is pretty normalized, "hiding being poly" is not really a thing I hear about. I know people often know more trans people than they think because making sure people don't think they're trans is a huge topic of conversation among trans people!
Unless you regularly go around saying positive things about non-monogamous people they probably aren't going to inform you. We're that the case for me, I'd know four non-monogamous people (two would be public about it), and I'd assume (incorrectly) the other eight were monogamous.
Yeah, look, I only know like six people, and I promise you that none none of them are hiding non-monogamous lifestyles. This really isn't as common as you seem to think. I think you're in a bubble.
For example. I always wonder if I lived before Stonewall would I believe homosexuality was mental illness? A bunch of scientists were saying so. I'd probably have spent a lot more time at church, which would tell me it was a sin.
I'd like to believe that I'd realize folk are just folk, and that "crazy" isn't the same as wanting something different than me.
But I'll never know, never really for sure. What I can do is treat poly people like it's possible to want the things they want without being weird or bad or broken.
Well I’m sure it’s obvious that many people at that time thought all gay people were mentally ill but, I think being gay is also way more common than being poly.
Part of this is just numbers and what arrangements work for people who live fairly normal lives.
That being said I don’t think being poly should be illegal or punished, I just think it’s a big ask to say it should be normalized or that we should treat it as legitimate as marriage or even serious dating.
I guess if we put it in the casual dating category then that’s more realistic but even then the weird rule schema that people have for these things strikes people as a little crazy.
I think it depends what you mean by poly. Like I believe more people than we know are "monogamish" as Dan Savage might say and have had a threesome or done swinging etc.
The people who base their whole lifestyle around it along with separate terminology and more rules than d&d are something else
Like everyone else, you almost certainly would have shared most perceptions / beliefs with your contemporary peers. There’s no reason for any of us to think anything else.
Therapy involves thinking rationally about your feelings to try and live your best life. Similarly, polyamory involves thinking rationally about your relationships to try and live your best life. Of course, you can overthink things and overcomplicate a situation, or you use it to rationalize your own shitty behavior. And that's all very fashionable these days. But in moderation a little thinking and reflection can definitely make your life better.
I think the current problem with most liberal attached thinking is over analysis. A successful relationship is about understanding problems and thinking rationally but it also means not thinking too hard about a lot of stuff.
I don’t think the argument from reason really substantiates polyamory over monogamy as it depends on what your goals are and what the cultural milieu is at that time in history.
My issue with polyamorous people is that you never know whether or not they’re going to adhere to the basic social rule of not sexually propositioning people in relationships. And then if they *do* try to have sex with someone who’s in a relationship, no one’s “allowed” to be offended because oh, they’re polyamorous, not a sleaze trying to sleep with someone’s else’s partner in a BAD way! 🙄
That chart is the type of thing where if the person who made it actually knows people in each category, you just know that people outside of that group interacting with anyone within it would just be an incredibly tedious experience. There's a difference between being an open and progressive person and being the type of person who can only interact with like 1,500 super-specific people from the same super-specific subcultures in San Francisco in 2025 that probably won't even exist anymore in 2030.
I don't know anyone into polyamory, but the appeal seems like it would be a lot more basic and just boils down to "I want to be able to have sex with more than just one person".
Passing out candy three days after birth is pretty damn stoic so I'll give that mom a lot of credit, although the random teens are probably still wondering what that was all about. Also, three day old babies vary a lot in looks, so I often use my husbands go-to when complimenting them. "The baby was very alert!"
We've all been confronted by something so strangely unexpected that we didn't know how to react - like the time a cop stopped me for speeding and then forgot to ticket me because he got distracted describing the four raccoons in traps in his back seat. I mean I was glad to escape a ticket but I still think of that interaction with a little wonder.
I saw the tweets about car seats being child abuse on my timeline and genuinely thought the person was just trolling, when I looked at some of her other tweets I was sure it was a whole troll account. I still can’t believe she’s serious-lol
I hate to admit it, but she kinda had a point about the whole car vs house fire/stranger molestation thing. You're only more likely to die in a house fire because you spend significantly more time at home than in a car.
Oh for sure. Cars *are* super dangerous. But also, that's life, you still gotta take babies places.
I thought it was wild (and still think it's wild) that it's totally normal and everyone knows that 1. You have to drive a car to take newborns to the pediatrician constantly and 2. You can't sleep enough when you have a newborn.
I don't think any of the stuff the doc was checking for in that first month was nearly as dangerous as the person driving half an hour to their office on less than three hours of sleep.
Yeah I thought she was serious until I read the "birth control is child abuse" tweet. Like there's no way that's real. There's no way she's serious about that lol. (I mean... I hope not...)
OK, forgive my lesbian ignorance, but don't straight men see their wives/girlfriends with actually no makeup at home at least sometimes?
I did have one friend who talked about sleeping in her makeup so her boyfriend would never see her without it but I hoped she was an outlier. At a minimum that seems hard on the skin.
i think many of them simply don't pay attention to their wives' makeup routines in the way that most straight women don't pay attention to their husbands' COD kill counts. It's not that they're totally ignorant, it's that it isn't really relevant to their day-to-day.
Yes, if you live with them then all the time - but almost never photographed. However when dating it is hugely dependant on the woman and fairly common to not see them without.
And there are deffo women who put on a face within 10mins of waking up everyday even when married - like a lot of this generalising it really ignores individual differences.
Sure, but men are incredibly inattentive to that most of the time. Also depending on the woman, if she is the type of person who wears at least some makeup every day, she's probably usually putting it on when she gets up and only wiping it off to go to bed, so there's very little time to actually notice the "no makeup" face, and the time that does exist is in the dark.
Yep, like my wife doesn't think much about what I look like when I'm wearing my glasses instead of my contacts. I put my contacts in approximately first thing in the morning, and take them out approximately when I go to bed. It's not that she doesn't see me in these periods, it's just not that much time and not top of mind.
This is one of the best gags in Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
I agree though. The annoying (to women, who spend a lot of time on making themselves look good) reality is that we just don't notice a huge difference. That doesn't mean there isn't a huge difference! It means that we aren't good at noticing.
If she wanted people to fawn over her baby and offer to babysit, she's got the wrong demographic. She should go to a retirement community where no one has seen anyone under 40 for way too long. It's usually old women who fawn and coo over babies and CNAs/nursing students who are looking for a babysitting side hustle.
The day my first daughter was born, my wife asked me to go buy her a proper coffee. I drove downtown, then proceeded to tell every single person I saw about the incredible occasion, friend, stranger or foe. Eighteen years later, that feeling hasn't really diminished, but at least I've mastered it enough to have an adult conversation about a few other topics.
My only comment is that there are indeed a great many guys who say, "my wife looks better with no makeup" and actually mean that literally. Not minimal makeup, not a "natural look", actual zero makeup.
This is like and oddly specific pet peeve of mine, because ever since I was old enough to start dating as an adult, and I mention that I think my partner looks better with no makeup, some lady always jumps in to explain to me that, 'no actually, you think you like her with no makeup, but you like her with minimal makeup.'
And it's like no, I know what she looks like with zero makeup on, and I prefer that, and it's a little annoying but apparently everyone thinks guys can't tell the difference IN-PERSON.
I think there's a difference between saying *women* look better with no makeup (which from a guy almost always means minimal makeup) vs saying *his wife* looks better with no makeup (which means he loves his wife, who he has almost certainly seen with no makeup and with minimal makeup, and can tell the difference)
I'm gonna disagree with this. I think most guys that are married or in a relationship have probably been in *other* relationships before that one...so if they say they prefer women's looks with *no* makeup, we should take them at their word on that and not jump to the assumption about what they *really* mean.
Now, the exception I will make to that is guys who fawn over IG pictures of ladies as being makeup free, when clearly they are not. Those guys are clearly showing a preference for women who are wearing a minimal enough amount of makeup to look makeup free in a social media photo.
I get it though. When there'll enough dudes who do the thing like the guy here it's hard for women not to wonder. They shouldn't correct you on your own opinions though.
As a no makeup lady i often have people mention they/their spouse don't wear makeup when that is...untrue
This I agree with. Many men show their favorite photo of their lady and it’s often when she’s looking like a hobbit. Nothing wrong with that. When women disapprove of this they often mean it in an intrasexual competition way because very few women are secure enough to have an actual no-make up or less make up preference for themselves. But they should know that the wives of those husbands themselves hate their no make up selves so they have no need to fear anything.
I think this is pretty definite small minority POV though. Unless you're talking about awful Jersey mob-wife face masks, nearly all women look "better" with at least some makeup. It's like a woman saying she likes her husband more when he let himself get a beer gut and switched his tailored suits for NBA gear.
So just to be clear here, your assertion is that a woman without makeup is the equivalent of a badly dressed guy with a gut? I think you are in the minority on this front.
No, but my analogy was meant to convey that there are certain things men and women do to make themselves more attractive, and it's not barbaric or retrograde to admit it.
So, just to do sort of a devil's advocate to this: Do you think *women* would think nearly all *men* would "look "better" with at least some makeup"? Because I honestly don't think so! So what's the difference? Makeup is fundamentally feminine? I dunno!
I read your "let's retire toxic masculinity" piece with some mixed opinions.
I totally agree with the proposal - I think 'toxic masculinity' as a phrase has become such a football to be kicked around in the gender discourse that it's not doing anything useful. It polarizes people into an argument about what is and is not masculinity, whether that's important, and who gets to decide, without actually serving as a useful agreed-upon place-holder for a very specific set of behaviors that warrant examination.
"And that kind of gave away the game, didn’t it? Toxic masculinity was masculinity."
I'm trying to figure out if this was always true based on the structure of what was being condemned, or the discourse just went this way and that's how we all ended up where we are today. Someone says "non-toxic masculinity is being strong enough to be caring" and then someone else says "that's just being feminine, why do you men need to put a "man" label on everything to be okay with it, you just hate women" and then the men go "stop trying to take being a man away from us" and then everyone is cranky AF.
Was there ever a world where someone said:
- Being brave and taking action even when you feel scared is masculine. (Surely claiming that courage is masculine isn't a redefine??)
- Denying your sadness so thoroughly that eventually it explodes out of you as uncontrollable blinding rage and you murder someone is toxic masculinity.
Could we ever have cut up "traditional masculinity" and said "there's some things we'd like to keep and some things we'd like to chuck"?
I wonder if where the discourse went sideways was an assumption that power dynamics were the defining problem. If we go back a decade ago, you get things like "non-whites can't be racist toward whites because whites have all the power", e.g. there's an oppressing group and an oppressed group, and the power differential is what defines it, and therefore all of the problem is with the higher power group, punching up is fine, bla bla bla.
In that world, the problem with men was never that their behavior was sometimes really really bad; it was that they had the power, and therefore the solution was not to have men "stop doing the bad stuff", it was to have them stop having the power.
Once you see it in that lens, the "non-toxic man has to be a passive agreeable people-pleaser with no spine" (massive exaggeration, but I think we went in that direction) 'antidote' is inescapable.
Right! Teenagers are scared of babies! For good reason! People who are recently married and in the late stages of planning to have babies soon are *curious*. Parents of other babies are way too exhausted by their own babies to be interested in other babies. Older people who never had kids generally don't get the appeal of babies at all. It's only parents of older children who are super into babies.
3 day old babies aren’t that cute. People start fawning over babies when they’re at least 3-4 months old and can laugh and smile
Edit: babies they’re not related to
Lol yep. It doesn't help that new babies in TV are usually portrayed by 3-month-olds unless they're going for extreme accuracy like in a medical drama. Most tweens are probably kind of spooked by how tiny new babies are. Also the middle of trick or treating is obviously not most people's idea of the right time to negotiate a new babysitting contract.
I wonder have our social skills atrophied *that* much, so that someone might actually think that a couple of tweens who are there to show off their costumes and get candy, are also going to sit down and talk about when they can babysit? (And three *days* old? Does that baby even have an immune system yet?)
Yeah, they start all smooshed
Yes, that or they have a bit of a naked mole rat vibe
Exactly. 3 days old is basically an inert blob that eats, shits, and screams. There’s no real *interacting* with a stranger’s baby (or even a family baby!) until they are old enough to respond to you.
They can be pretty cute if you had a C-section with a breech baby. Unsquished face and round head! 🙂
Everyone who has a newborn baby, both mothers and fathers, is the very first one to ever do it. My wife and I were no exceptions.
I know I certainly felt that way!
It seems like people that are seriously into polyamory either have some sort of mental issues or they have been unable to find a way to orgasm reliably and compensate for it by turning sex into an elaborate Sid Meier game.
It's unwaveringly nerd shit. Dungeons and dragons was not complex enough so they had to bring rules and regulations indecipherable to the normies to their sex life.
*Don't come at me, DND nerds! I'm married (monogamously) to a warhammer nerd.
High cross over between polyamory and board game/d&d nerds.
I can’t get over how time-consuming polyamory seems like it would be. I feel like you’d have to have an awful lot of free time, which most of us don’t have. Plenty of people already struggle to find enough time for one relationship, let alone multiple.
I have always felt exactly this way about affairs, especially since we had kids. Who has the time? When I hear about affairs I'm way more mystified than any other emotion.
This is correct
That hasn't been the case for the poly people I know.
What I don't understand is why ever generation we have to do the same, "these people are having a non-traditional relationship, they must be mentally ill" discourse.
Has it ever been the right side of history?
I’m sure there are some otherwise fairly normal people in poly relationships #notallpolys but I would be genuinely surprised if that was the majority of people in these sort of arrangements.
The rule about frequently closeted social relationships is that the examples you see aren't representative.
But it's this sort of thinking, "I don't know many (any?) poly people, but I know I wouldn't like it, therefore they must be crazy. Look there's a crazy one online, see!?"
The thing about bigotry in defense of tradition is that it always feels like rationally pointing out "weird" people.
Maybe I should have started with this but I’ve known several poly people (many of them part of the burning man crowd).
They all have mental health issues they talk about openly with friends and online.
Weird people are weird for a reason, that’s what it’s like being out of the mainstream. I don’t wish poly people ill, I hope they are happy. I also think it’s lame to demand people “normalize” things that are so obviously niche or kink, just embrace being a radical, that’s what makes it cool.
I definitely believe that. But that's my whole point.
You know many poly and poly adjacent people that don't tell you. Not even because you consider it a kink. Just because there's a great deal of social pressure.
I'd wager you know more "normal" poly people than burning man ones, it's just that *of course* the burning man ones will advertise it to you, for the same reason they advertise their mental illness.
That doesn't mean that one has anything to do with the other especially in general.
It could be experience bias for sure but poly people always give me big Theatre Kid energy. It’s hard to believe that most of them wouldn’t talk about it, though I suppose in certain very conservative areas it might be more likely they would feel the need to conceal it even above any desire to gab.
That’s an interesting take. I had never considered that before. I like it when people are able to show things from a different perspective.
> You know many poly and poly adjacent people that don't tell you.
Are you talking about Bo specifically here, or is this a "royal you"? Because no, most people don't know "many poly and poly adjacent people that don't tell you". Most people only know boring squares. That's the whole point here. Relatively few people live in San Francisco, man!
I really doubt I know many poly or poly adjacent people who don't tell people.
like yes by definition I can only know the ones who have told me are poly and so there might be this huge invisible population, but like, having hung out in spaces where this stuff is pretty normalized, "hiding being poly" is not really a thing I hear about. I know people often know more trans people than they think because making sure people don't think they're trans is a huge topic of conversation among trans people!
Unless you regularly go around saying positive things about non-monogamous people they probably aren't going to inform you. We're that the case for me, I'd know four non-monogamous people (two would be public about it), and I'd assume (incorrectly) the other eight were monogamous.
Yeah, look, I only know like six people, and I promise you that none none of them are hiding non-monogamous lifestyles. This really isn't as common as you seem to think. I think you're in a bubble.
From my limited sample size ten of the twelve non-monagamous people I know are closeted and two of those I only know about by accident.
It stands to reason that I know some non-monagamous that don't tell me, so we're looking at something in excess of 80% of my sample.
I wonder; can you describe the region in which you live? I feel like that may have a lot to do with the difference. I’m in NYC.
For example. I always wonder if I lived before Stonewall would I believe homosexuality was mental illness? A bunch of scientists were saying so. I'd probably have spent a lot more time at church, which would tell me it was a sin.
I'd like to believe that I'd realize folk are just folk, and that "crazy" isn't the same as wanting something different than me.
But I'll never know, never really for sure. What I can do is treat poly people like it's possible to want the things they want without being weird or bad or broken.
Well I’m sure it’s obvious that many people at that time thought all gay people were mentally ill but, I think being gay is also way more common than being poly.
Part of this is just numbers and what arrangements work for people who live fairly normal lives.
That being said I don’t think being poly should be illegal or punished, I just think it’s a big ask to say it should be normalized or that we should treat it as legitimate as marriage or even serious dating.
I guess if we put it in the casual dating category then that’s more realistic but even then the weird rule schema that people have for these things strikes people as a little crazy.
I think it depends what you mean by poly. Like I believe more people than we know are "monogamish" as Dan Savage might say and have had a threesome or done swinging etc.
The people who base their whole lifestyle around it along with separate terminology and more rules than d&d are something else
Yeah, I think including people who have cheated or had affairs also expands the definition way beyond people who "are poly" as, like, an identity.
Like everyone else, you almost certainly would have shared most perceptions / beliefs with your contemporary peers. There’s no reason for any of us to think anything else.
I don’t know what this means?
I was trying to reply to Adam’s “ I always wonder” comment
Therapy involves thinking rationally about your feelings to try and live your best life. Similarly, polyamory involves thinking rationally about your relationships to try and live your best life. Of course, you can overthink things and overcomplicate a situation, or you use it to rationalize your own shitty behavior. And that's all very fashionable these days. But in moderation a little thinking and reflection can definitely make your life better.
I think the current problem with most liberal attached thinking is over analysis. A successful relationship is about understanding problems and thinking rationally but it also means not thinking too hard about a lot of stuff.
I don’t think the argument from reason really substantiates polyamory over monogamy as it depends on what your goals are and what the cultural milieu is at that time in history.
I don't think "thinking rationally about your relationships to try and live your best life" implies "polyamory" in any way at all?
My issue with polyamorous people is that you never know whether or not they’re going to adhere to the basic social rule of not sexually propositioning people in relationships. And then if they *do* try to have sex with someone who’s in a relationship, no one’s “allowed” to be offended because oh, they’re polyamorous, not a sleaze trying to sleep with someone’s else’s partner in a BAD way! 🙄
Most people use dating apps where everyone has already consented to being in a poly relationship
Tell that to my husband’s friend.
That chart is the type of thing where if the person who made it actually knows people in each category, you just know that people outside of that group interacting with anyone within it would just be an incredibly tedious experience. There's a difference between being an open and progressive person and being the type of person who can only interact with like 1,500 super-specific people from the same super-specific subcultures in San Francisco in 2025 that probably won't even exist anymore in 2030.
I don't know anyone into polyamory, but the appeal seems like it would be a lot more basic and just boils down to "I want to be able to have sex with more than just one person".
Its ugly people.
That's an ugly thing to say
Passing out candy three days after birth is pretty damn stoic so I'll give that mom a lot of credit, although the random teens are probably still wondering what that was all about. Also, three day old babies vary a lot in looks, so I often use my husbands go-to when complimenting them. "The baby was very alert!"
We've all been confronted by something so strangely unexpected that we didn't know how to react - like the time a cop stopped me for speeding and then forgot to ticket me because he got distracted describing the four raccoons in traps in his back seat. I mean I was glad to escape a ticket but I still think of that interaction with a little wonder.
He pulled you over to tell you about the raccoons
That made me laugh a little too hard, but there is a real possibility that it is true.
I saw the tweets about car seats being child abuse on my timeline and genuinely thought the person was just trolling, when I looked at some of her other tweets I was sure it was a whole troll account. I still can’t believe she’s serious-lol
I hate to admit it, but she kinda had a point about the whole car vs house fire/stranger molestation thing. You're only more likely to die in a house fire because you spend significantly more time at home than in a car.
Oh for sure. Cars *are* super dangerous. But also, that's life, you still gotta take babies places.
I thought it was wild (and still think it's wild) that it's totally normal and everyone knows that 1. You have to drive a car to take newborns to the pediatrician constantly and 2. You can't sleep enough when you have a newborn.
I don't think any of the stuff the doc was checking for in that first month was nearly as dangerous as the person driving half an hour to their office on less than three hours of sleep.
For sure - I can only read her assertion that “arguments based on data are inherently invalid” as trolling
Yeah I thought she was serious until I read the "birth control is child abuse" tweet. Like there's no way that's real. There's no way she's serious about that lol. (I mean... I hope not...)
OK, forgive my lesbian ignorance, but don't straight men see their wives/girlfriends with actually no makeup at home at least sometimes?
I did have one friend who talked about sleeping in her makeup so her boyfriend would never see her without it but I hoped she was an outlier. At a minimum that seems hard on the skin.
Ignorant dudes (like myself in the past) perceive it as random fluctuation, like a good hair day, without any earthly causation
i think many of them simply don't pay attention to their wives' makeup routines in the way that most straight women don't pay attention to their husbands' COD kill counts. It's not that they're totally ignorant, it's that it isn't really relevant to their day-to-day.
Yes, if you live with them then all the time - but almost never photographed. However when dating it is hugely dependant on the woman and fairly common to not see them without.
And there are deffo women who put on a face within 10mins of waking up everyday even when married - like a lot of this generalising it really ignores individual differences.
Sure, but men are incredibly inattentive to that most of the time. Also depending on the woman, if she is the type of person who wears at least some makeup every day, she's probably usually putting it on when she gets up and only wiping it off to go to bed, so there's very little time to actually notice the "no makeup" face, and the time that does exist is in the dark.
Yep, like my wife doesn't think much about what I look like when I'm wearing my glasses instead of my contacts. I put my contacts in approximately first thing in the morning, and take them out approximately when I go to bed. It's not that she doesn't see me in these periods, it's just not that much time and not top of mind.
This is one of the best gags in Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
I agree though. The annoying (to women, who spend a lot of time on making themselves look good) reality is that we just don't notice a huge difference. That doesn't mean there isn't a huge difference! It means that we aren't good at noticing.
If she wanted people to fawn over her baby and offer to babysit, she's got the wrong demographic. She should go to a retirement community where no one has seen anyone under 40 for way too long. It's usually old women who fawn and coo over babies and CNAs/nursing students who are looking for a babysitting side hustle.
haha yeah, teenagers (especially the girls!) are often freaked out by babies. It's too real.
Thanks for the shoutout! Also, I am now obsessed with Keturah Abigail and hope we haven't heard the last from her.
I think she's a good writer, and she's definitely lived a different life from most of us.
The day my first daughter was born, my wife asked me to go buy her a proper coffee. I drove downtown, then proceeded to tell every single person I saw about the incredible occasion, friend, stranger or foe. Eighteen years later, that feeling hasn't really diminished, but at least I've mastered it enough to have an adult conversation about a few other topics.
haha I so relate to this. I still think my kids are the best thing, and I find it confusing that anyone could possibly feel differently.
My only comment is that there are indeed a great many guys who say, "my wife looks better with no makeup" and actually mean that literally. Not minimal makeup, not a "natural look", actual zero makeup.
This is like and oddly specific pet peeve of mine, because ever since I was old enough to start dating as an adult, and I mention that I think my partner looks better with no makeup, some lady always jumps in to explain to me that, 'no actually, you think you like her with no makeup, but you like her with minimal makeup.'
And it's like no, I know what she looks like with zero makeup on, and I prefer that, and it's a little annoying but apparently everyone thinks guys can't tell the difference IN-PERSON.
I think there's a difference between saying *women* look better with no makeup (which from a guy almost always means minimal makeup) vs saying *his wife* looks better with no makeup (which means he loves his wife, who he has almost certainly seen with no makeup and with minimal makeup, and can tell the difference)
I'm gonna disagree with this. I think most guys that are married or in a relationship have probably been in *other* relationships before that one...so if they say they prefer women's looks with *no* makeup, we should take them at their word on that and not jump to the assumption about what they *really* mean.
Now, the exception I will make to that is guys who fawn over IG pictures of ladies as being makeup free, when clearly they are not. Those guys are clearly showing a preference for women who are wearing a minimal enough amount of makeup to look makeup free in a social media photo.
I get it though. When there'll enough dudes who do the thing like the guy here it's hard for women not to wonder. They shouldn't correct you on your own opinions though.
As a no makeup lady i often have people mention they/their spouse don't wear makeup when that is...untrue
This I agree with. Many men show their favorite photo of their lady and it’s often when she’s looking like a hobbit. Nothing wrong with that. When women disapprove of this they often mean it in an intrasexual competition way because very few women are secure enough to have an actual no-make up or less make up preference for themselves. But they should know that the wives of those husbands themselves hate their no make up selves so they have no need to fear anything.
I think this is pretty definite small minority POV though. Unless you're talking about awful Jersey mob-wife face masks, nearly all women look "better" with at least some makeup. It's like a woman saying she likes her husband more when he let himself get a beer gut and switched his tailored suits for NBA gear.
So just to be clear here, your assertion is that a woman without makeup is the equivalent of a badly dressed guy with a gut? I think you are in the minority on this front.
No, but my analogy was meant to convey that there are certain things men and women do to make themselves more attractive, and it's not barbaric or retrograde to admit it.
So, just to do sort of a devil's advocate to this: Do you think *women* would think nearly all *men* would "look "better" with at least some makeup"? Because I honestly don't think so! So what's the difference? Makeup is fundamentally feminine? I dunno!
When I say no makeup I mean glowing from morning sex.
I read your "let's retire toxic masculinity" piece with some mixed opinions.
I totally agree with the proposal - I think 'toxic masculinity' as a phrase has become such a football to be kicked around in the gender discourse that it's not doing anything useful. It polarizes people into an argument about what is and is not masculinity, whether that's important, and who gets to decide, without actually serving as a useful agreed-upon place-holder for a very specific set of behaviors that warrant examination.
"And that kind of gave away the game, didn’t it? Toxic masculinity was masculinity."
I'm trying to figure out if this was always true based on the structure of what was being condemned, or the discourse just went this way and that's how we all ended up where we are today. Someone says "non-toxic masculinity is being strong enough to be caring" and then someone else says "that's just being feminine, why do you men need to put a "man" label on everything to be okay with it, you just hate women" and then the men go "stop trying to take being a man away from us" and then everyone is cranky AF.
Was there ever a world where someone said:
- Being brave and taking action even when you feel scared is masculine. (Surely claiming that courage is masculine isn't a redefine??)
- Denying your sadness so thoroughly that eventually it explodes out of you as uncontrollable blinding rage and you murder someone is toxic masculinity.
Could we ever have cut up "traditional masculinity" and said "there's some things we'd like to keep and some things we'd like to chuck"?
I wonder if where the discourse went sideways was an assumption that power dynamics were the defining problem. If we go back a decade ago, you get things like "non-whites can't be racist toward whites because whites have all the power", e.g. there's an oppressing group and an oppressed group, and the power differential is what defines it, and therefore all of the problem is with the higher power group, punching up is fine, bla bla bla.
In that world, the problem with men was never that their behavior was sometimes really really bad; it was that they had the power, and therefore the solution was not to have men "stop doing the bad stuff", it was to have them stop having the power.
Once you see it in that lens, the "non-toxic man has to be a passive agreeable people-pleaser with no spine" (massive exaggeration, but I think we went in that direction) 'antidote' is inescapable.
As subscribers to both, Lana Li’s article was reaaaalllllly good!
Your GQ piece is very good. Congratulations on the publication!
I laughed out loud multiple times reading this.
You should make the CHH sub-headline: "Making people feel sane in an insane world."
The people who fawn over newborn babies the most are parents whose kids are long out of diapers, not teenage girls.
Also, I've seen a lot of Ben's bad takes, but wow. That one is something else.
I think he's joking. I'm like 94% sure Ben Dreyfus is gay.
It's so funny because he must be, but also he definitely isn't.
Right! Teenagers are scared of babies! For good reason! People who are recently married and in the late stages of planning to have babies soon are *curious*. Parents of other babies are way too exhausted by their own babies to be interested in other babies. Older people who never had kids generally don't get the appeal of babies at all. It's only parents of older children who are super into babies.