The Girls Who Aren’t Pretty

When men talk about “women,” they often only mean the beautiful ones.

Women are, for the most part, pickier than men. In case this wasn’t patently obvious from looking around or talking to women, the results of my dating app simulator confirm it. Men “swipe right” on women far more than the reverse, even among the most attractive cohort (the most attractive men in the survey received right swipes about 60% of the time, but for the most attractive women it was 80% of the time.) Some could argue that women are just better-looking than men, but I think for women, the missing context around a static photo of a man is to blame. This could explain why weird-looking male celebrities can become sex objects, mostly because they played a sexy character in a movie.

Many manosphere or red pill content creators will see this stuff and tell you, “women are born and men are made.” The idea is that men value women intrinsically, and all we need to do to earn a man’s love is show up, and presumably have at least one grabbable or penetrable body part. (Not to brag, but I have several.) Ergo, women existing is enough to get right swipes, or for that matter, lifelong devotion and love. For men, the cards are stacked against them because what makes a man attractive isn’t intrinsic but extrinsic. As they say, women value men for what they do, not who they are. The subtext, of course, is that women unreasonably demand men perform for them in some way while men, the true romantics, nobly adore women just for being themselves. They will cite that men don’t care if a woman loses her job as an example of why men love in an unconditional way, but suspiciously omit what a man might do if his wife gains fifty pounds. But alas.

Like many red pill talking points, there’s a nugget of truth there, although it glosses over the fact that men are far more interested in casual sex than women, so we’re potentially dealing with different stakes entirely. But anyway, while men have more levers with which to improve their non-physical appeal (everyone knows a chubby, bald or short guy who still does really well with women because he’s funny and popular) this statement assumes that all women, or even just most women, are valued without having to do anything, just because they look pretty. But it fails to account for a fairly huge group of people: what about the women who, through no fault of their own, just aren’t pretty?