The Point of Diminishing Hotness
If you work on your appearance, will men find you hotter? It depends on one factor.
One of the first cartoons I ever did—which I stupidly didn’t watermark—wound up going viral. And not only viral, but so viral that other people got more attention for posting it than I did, and ultimately I was accused of having stolen it when I re-posted it myself.
This was the cartoon, which you might have seen before—possibly posted by someone else! I STOLE THAT SHIT!!!
When I first posted this cartoon, it did well because it got at something very accurate—a lot of men who say they like “no makeup” are actually referring to light makeup, and are then horrified when they see photos of celebrities actually not wearing makeup (see: Margot Robbie or Sabrina Carpenter, who, at least in my woman-eyes, look exactly how I’d expect them to look without makeup (and still very hot!) but who men called “mid.”)
I also got some negative feedback on the cartoon. One person told me it was offensive to “center pasty white women’s complexions.” When I told her it didn’t feel appropriate for me, as a white, to make a cartoon mocking women of color for being ugly without makeup, I made sure to check her profile and she was, of course, white. lmao.
But anyway, I was so confident in this belief that men are delusional about what goes into women’s appearances, that I did other cartoons about it too!
But here’s the thing—it’s not the full story. Yes, the following things are true:
Men, especially single men and especially men who don’t have much experience with women at all, confuse “no makeup” with “natural-looking makeup.”
These men, especially if most of their interaction with women is over porn or social media, are oblivious to things like Botox or fillers, and will claim they don’t like these things but suspiciously consider any woman without them mid.
Just look at the following tweet, which went a bit viral this week. No shade to this woman below—she looks lovely—but let’s be real, she has visible filler, self-tan, hair bleach, and makeup. Maybe this particular dude would proudly admit he likes those things, but probably not. My point stands: if a woman is not wearing dark makeup or going full Love Island with the filler, many men will simply not notice:
Okay, so we’ve established that many men, especially single ones (although that guy apparently has a girlfriend who had to witness him going Looney Tunes slackjaw over this girl) might be a bit clueless as to which women are employing heavy “appearance-improvement” strategies, under the assumption that they are all natural. Yes, this is absolutely a thing.
However, something else is also true, which may at first seem like a contradiction: there are a lot of things, including very expensive or cumbersome things, that women do to improve their appearance, which men either find unappealing or don’t care about either way.
This is what I call “the point of diminishing hotness.”
So no, men aren’t lying when they say “I don’t actually like heavy makeup and plastic surgery,” nor are they necessarily misguided about what those things are. I’m going to get into why that is, and how all of these statements can simultaneously be true.
If you’re the kind of person who finds any frank discussion of physical attraction to be vapid and offensive, or if you think it’s a sexist myth that looking attractive to men is a priority for any woman, this article probably isn’t for you, but if you like to geek out over this stuff, despite how admittedly frivolous it is, read on.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Cartoons Hate Her to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.