A lot of ideologies seem to forget that people sometimes like doing nice things for other people. Not every relationship between two people (or even groups) is some zero-sum power struggle. And you'll definitely have issues in a relationship if you are constantly worried about maintaining dominance.
Yeah, I feel like too many online ppl tend to view everything in zero sum power struggle esp if I could include Trump. My conspiracy theory is one of the reasons so many online leftists hates Econ while online far right act like they never heard of that field is one of the core teaching is world is not always zero sum game
Yep - this is sort of the weird place we've ended up in 2025. I wonder if the move toward "all businesses aim to cater as closely as possible to people's individual whims" has had some norm-leaking effects in our culture.
This is kind of now. :-(. Did you listen to the NY times podcast about the woman who trained ChatGPT to be a virtual text-based lover and became emotionally dependent on it?
I see part of what I need to do to work on my marriage as to manage my own disappointment - not because I should _settle_ - but because my wife is _human_ and expecting to be disappointed 0% of the time is unrealistic.
With AI companions, one never needs to tolerate disappointment.
I'm with you on not getting why "dressing for the male gaze" is bad (though I'm admittedly a man). Relationships are a big part of life. It's also an area where there is a meaningful competition, so why not make an effort. No one would advise you to not "dress for the employer's gaze" and start wearing a t-shirt and ripped jeans to job interviews.
I also assume that most people find it nice when people find them attractive - on the rare occasions I've gotten a compliment on my attractiveness, it's been a plus.
Separately, you note that men are more obsessed with appealing to women than vice versa. I think this may be true, or at the very least, feminism misses the extent to which men try to appeal to the female gaze, even if the men often miss the mark. Women may not be attracted to a man for driving a fancy car (or maybe they are), but I suspect that men who buy fancy cars often do so to attract women (not my thing, I drive a Subaru Forrester, so I'm only attracting lesbians). But, particularly before I was married, I spent plenty of time trying to figure out how to dress or act or otherwise present myself to increase my chances of attracting women.
The problem for men, and perhaps why you see them obsess over it more than women, is it's less straightforward. There are some tried-and-true ways for women to appeal to the male gaze. They are also generally descrete acts - put on the right outfit and makeup, try to be thin and you're good, you can then go about your day basically acting however you want. For men, there's less of a clear path. It's the rare outfit that a man can wear that is going to turn heads, and while you probably don't want to look like Jabba the Hutt, being in shape only gets you so far. Instead, the way for men to attract women is mostly just being some ineffable form of "cool," which isn't something you can just go buy at a men's version of Saphora or Forever 21 and which you don't just put on before you go out.
I constantly hear feminist critiques about how hard the dating world is for women, only to think "men deal with that exact problem, or at least something entirely comparable." The truth is that dating is hard for both sexes. You just only see if from your side.
I do think that men used to far less obsessed with appealing to women. Women used to have fewer options, and if they couldn't support themselves independently, had to rely on a man, as I've written about before. If a woman can choose, then she'll choose the guy she WANTS, not the guy she needs. Ergo, men are getting in shape and working on becoming more interesting, but I think that's a good thing. People should be attracted to their partners.
The difference in dressing/appearance effort seems to circle back to the fact that men are more attracted by visual cues, right? Women can attract men pretty easily by just turning up the sexiness dial with their clothing choices (plus some minor variations to convey tastefulness, class, interests like outdoorsiness or organic/natural stuff); while for men's clothing to attract women I think the pure sexiness (like form fitting or revealingness) is a much lower priority vs conveying information about other traits women find sexy... Assertiveness, ruggedness, hygiene, good taste, caring some but not too much about looks, not being a MAGAhead, etc. All of that seems much harder, IMHO, for an average Joe to figure out, than it is for an average Jane to notice that bodycon dresses or leggings plus crop tops will reliably turn heads. Moreover, women already have fashion magazines, makeup tiktokers, etc. to consult for fashion tips. As far as I know, men have only CHH and the Menswear Guy (plus pickup artists circa 2009 telling us to peacock with giant stupid hats and magic tricks). So that's my theory for why men are so overrepresented among people asking CHH for fashion advice.
It's fair to say that men care less, but also men don't care nothing at all. The trope of "man hits the gym after a divorce to become date-able again" is fairly accurate.
There's an argument that says if you'd hit the gym before you got divorced you might not BE divorced. Doesn't apply every time, but I've watched several marriages dissolve as the players just sort of lost interest in appealing to their spouses. You can't just stop trying.
I think it’s good to a point, though it becomes toxic when it goes from just self improvement to trying to change who you are at a deeper level. Maybe I spend too much time in dating advice spaces online (ok I definitely do lol), but I have seen men get told that to attract women they need to do things like abandon their nerdy hobbies and interests, or live a partier lifestyle even if they hate it. Some people develop very rigid ideas of what is attractive and basically encourage perfectionism and self loathing as a result.
It can be hard to sort out just what you're looking for. After a bad breakup due to my burgeoning interest in adventure sports I decided I needed to find a woman that was hard into climbing, cycling, paddling, etc. And I did - only to realize that she was a great adventure companion and a good friend, but not a girlfriend. The woman I eventually married had....SOMETHING, even though she did no adventure sports and already had a daughter from her first marriage. It was just so easy, so comfortable, to be with her. Ironically, she took to adventuring as if she'd been waiting her entire life to be asked. We've been climbing, backpacking, cycling companions - and friends and lovers - for 4 decades.
I think there is also the idea that dressing attractively can also be fun and empowering in its own way. My wife, similar to CHH, used to dress a bit on the sexy side (at least in a relative sense for the late 90's/early 00's) - partially to please me, but also she once told me because she seemed to genuinely like it. After we had a few kids she seemed to lose interest - and now we are "jeans people." But in that era my guess is that she was making up for lost time in her youth - as before dating me she had been kind of a wallflower.
For me I've personally experienced a sort of renassiance in fashion for the last year or so. I lost about 50 pounds last year after a pandemic era stint of fattening and found myself suddenly wanting to dress better. I'm not looking as I'm happily married, but the idea of just wanting to be a reasonably good-looking guy with a decent figure appeals to me.
Sometimes looking good (or at least better) is its own reward.
I think the trend of men trying to appeal to women goes back at least to my own youth, and I'm 70 now. Even in an era where women had less freedom of maneuver some women were more desirable than others.
Technically what she said was "men who follow me seem far more obsessed with attracting women than the reverse." She was correctly limiting her statement to her readership, with which she is intimately familiar, rather than making a larger statement that might be incorrect.
And indeed I think men do worry about attracting women quite a bit. I just think a lot of it gets sublimated into other things like status, power, and muscularity that are usually good in themselves but can be deleterious if pursued to excess--steroids are bad for you, and most people don't get elected President.
The mention of the cars guys buy to attract women reminds me of this classic Regular Car Reviews "review" of the 1995 Mazda MX-5 Miata, in which Mr. Regular (the reviewer) calls the Miata "the only sports car that works on girls":
"You see, us guys think that this..." (clip of a car with a noisy muffler) "...this..." (clip of a car doing donuts) "...and this..." (clip of a motorcycle rider popping up his rear tire) "...creates girl boners, and it does, but only for chicks who hate their dads."
He goes on to discuss how the Miata's cute, "non-threatening" nature is better for attracting normal women.
(Mr. Regular did later come out as gay, but his observations stand.)
I’m sure this will be an unpopular opinion, because I’m commenting in a community that really enjoys your work (rightfully so! You’ve written a lot of great stuff) but I think it’s actually constructive so I’m going to say it anyway:
I think pieces like yesterday’s suffer from the daily upload schedule. It feels half-baked in some ways and that’s what annoys me about it most. I’m consider myself a radical feminist but I read a lot of social commentary and humorous observations from people who are not—I’m not upset every time I see someone have different opinions or beliefs. But it frustrates me when people dismiss ideas without putting any thought into why they feel or think that way. And I felt like yesterday’s article did that. It kind of boiled down to the same level of analysis as “I wear makeup for me, not to look good to men!” Or “choking or hitting women who say they’re ok with it is still abuse—unless it’s your kink, then it’s fine.” That is to say, the article didn’t really engage with any of the arguments around what it means to “center men,” why that’s bad (or actually fine) and how that relates to straight relationships and/or sex.
Similarly, the leg hair argument only considers the issues from an individual perspective. I agree that if you want to date most men, you will have an easier time if you shave your leg hair, because they find it gross. And it’s totally fine to decide that you are willing to do that! But if we treat all these choice like it’s only a matter of what makes rational sense for an individual, we are ignoring how we ended up with this specific set of choices in the first place. Most men used to be fine with leg hair on women. It’s not crazy unrealistic to think we might get to that point again someday. As much as “normalize x” has become a meme, I think sometimes it’s a valid goal to normalize things. Because then in the future women get to have both relationships with men and leg hair, if they want to, without worrying about it. And I think that would be nice.
We’ve seen this kind of slow changing of norms in women’s married surnames. It’s very slowly becoming more common to keep our hyphenate your name instead of changing it. Maybe in a few more generations, men will even feel comfortable enough to give their wife’s surname to the kids or take it themselves sometimes. I think that would be cool to see. I do genealogy is a hobby and I’ve seen firsthand how the erasing of women’s birth names makes it orders of magnitude harder for people today to learn about their lives, their families or their heritage. This change is only possible because of annoying feminists who likely pissed a lot of dudes they were marrying or dating off by insisting they wanted to keep their surname even if it made them seem unattractive or bitchy or made it harder to find a man.
I'm not offended at all here (especially because you're clearly being respectful) so don't worry about that. However, this feels more like a request for a completely different article--one I didn't have interest in writing. The whole point of my article was how if an individual wants to pursue happiness (in this case, a straight woman wanting to find a happy romantic relationship) she lives in a society where certain things are considered attractive or appealing, whether that's biological or social or a mix, and I haven't yet seen any woman who has manifested a happy heterosexual relationship by painstakingly analyzing these things.
There certainly is an opening for a deeper analysis of *why* something could be considered attractive--the evolution of the last name change expectation is certainly one (I didn't change my last name, by the way, although that was mostly laziness on my part, but I'm glad feminism made it my choice to be lazy on that.) But I guess that just wasn't what i wanted to write- it's not that i wrote too quickly and failed to do the deeper analysis. it just...wasn't *about* the deeper analysis. I was writing about individual happiness on purpose!
of course, if you feel like writing something on that topic, I'd be happy to read it! Even if we disagree! But disregarding politics and analysis in favor of making yourself happy was quite literally my whole point. I don't like burdening women with stuff they have to analyze and think about (which aren't expected of men, who are allowed to just say "I want to get fit, look hot for women, and have sex with them" and everyone's kinda just okay with it)
Quite. I have to say I do find it crass for a man to be openly lascivious, even in all-male company. But I don’t really go round worried about whether what I'm doing or not doing constitutes manning wrong. Maybe I'm too self-confident (or oblivious) - but I suspect that if I was a woman I would be concerned at least sometimes about womanning wrong. And I'm glad that doesn't happen to me.
I think this makes a very similar point as one of my comments yesterday. The middle-of-the-road liberal basically prioritizes individual choices above all else and concludes that "if it makes you happy, and doesn't infringe on other people's choices, do what you want." The more radical perspective doesn't accept this and instead scrutinizes the context and specifics of one's individual choices and also emphasizes the ways in which those choices reinforce various norms and expectations.
I'm closer to being a middle of the road liberal all things considered, but I think the radical / progressive outlook has advantages in various cases. I don't have a super systematic way of dealing with these kinds of disputes
The radical perspective is academically interesting, but my problem with bringing that kind of thought outside the classroom is that even if the radicals are right, their framework is not at all useful in individuals’ romantic lives. If we have any ability to control or change these broader forces, which I’m not sure we do, they’re going to change on generational time scales. Meanwhile I still have my preferences which were forged in our present culture, and so too do all the women I want to date. If I want to be attractive and find a sexual, romantic, and life partner, then I need it be attuned to what our culture is right now, not ivory tower critiques of it.
I would not go as far as to say "not at all useful." Asking yourself why you like something, being a little thoughtful about your preferences and prejudices, isn't so difficult or so impractical. We could all benefit from some of that.
But, yes, at a certain point, being paralyzed by fears about whether or not it is OK to enjoy sexual practice X or physical trait Y because it might be rooted in something problematic can be its own form of unproductive self-absorption. It is worth cutting off this train of thought before one gets to that point
I think my counterargument about the leg hair aspect of your post is that most women do not want to invest time or effort in changing society's norms around women's leg hair. It is far easier for me to shave every couple of days since it is such a minor chore. I would rather focus on being married to my husband and rising our kids and doing my job and seeing friends etc. If other women want to spend time changing men's attitudes about shaving, then great! Go for it! But honestly it is just not a priority for most women when you think about everything else there is to do in life.
But you are correct in that societal expectations does have some influence over individual actions and that's where the tension comes in. I think choking during sex is horrifying and I would never do that myself nor would I want my daughters to do that when they are adults. And the practice is no doubt influenced by hard-core porn, etc. So is that worth fighting back against in partnership with other women (and men)? Maybe! I guess it's just a matter of priorities.
I kept my last name when I got married 15+ years ago and used to feel strongly about it but now when I am sometimes called by my husband's last name I couldn't care less. It just honestly does not have anything to do with my actual marriage. So priorities/opinions about these things can also change as you age.
(Sorry for the rambling response... I did like your post even though I disagree with some of it.)
That's a good point. And regarding hair, I guess, there is SOME cultural pressure on men relative to body hair. Men who are publicly shirtless a lot -- actors, strippers, pro wrestlers, some athletes -- clearly do a lot of chest and back waxing. And while I have a beard, if I didn't shave and trim it, I'd have thick hair going from my chest all the way up my neck and almost to my eyeballs. Not only would my wife (and most women) not find that attractive, my coworkers would also think it was gross.
Exactly, I felt a very similar way. While I broadly agree with this and the other article, it felt very surface level, and the analysis boiled down to “I do this, therefore all women do this” which is, exactly as you write, is short-sighted of the global “why” we do it. I wish a bit more research and engagement with an actual argument had been put into these articles.
“Maybe in a few more generations, men will even feel comfortable enough to give their wife’s surname to the kids or take it themselves sometimes. I think that would be cool to see.”
I’m gonna be controversial here. I don’t care what married people do with their surnames - neither my mother nor I changed ours, but most married women we know did - but I’m extremely turned off by the idea of children having solely their mother’s surname and not their father’s.
Hyphenated, fine, but historically, men giving their surnames to their children is part of how they signal that they’re taking responsibility for the child, especially if they’re not married to the child’s mother. A child having his or her father’s surname indicates that yes, the child’s father “claims” this one. It’s not just “my wife’s kid” or “my girlfriend’s kid.” Women don’t need to “claim” children as theirs, because they gave birth to them and are indisputably their mothers. To socially establish themselves as the father of a particular child, men need some kind of signal.
In the book “We Need To Talk About Kevin,” Kevin’s parents argue and eventually agree that he’ll have his mother’s surname, but his dad gets to pick his first name. Years later, as teenage Kevin is on his villainous path to becoming a mass murderer, the police come by his house for some reason or another. They assume that Kevin’s last name is his father’s last name, so Kevin’s dad has to correct them. “Actually, I’m Mr. Plaskett - but I am Kevin’s father.” And I thought, God, how embarrassing - having to clarify that you, Kevin’s biological father who’s married to Kevin’s mother, are indeed Kevin’s father. I think most men would rather not have to have conversations to make it clear that yes, they are indeed the fathers of their wives’ babies.
I have never had the same last name as my mother and we don't look much alike, it would not be out of the norm for some government employee to have to clarify her relationship to me. Should she have felt embarrassed when she had to give clarification?
Women don't have the same kind of "is this child even mine?" thoughts that men can have, but that doesn't do anything to prove that she is a child's mother to others if there are factors at play that put them outside of the expected norm (Adoption, donor-conceived, bearing little resemblance, different last names, etc).
To me, the difference is that no one ever wonders *why* a kid and their mother might not have the same last name. If the names are different, they just figure the kid has their father’s last name.
If a woman says, “I’m Stephanie Jones, and this is my daughter, Emma Smith,” most people will not find that odd. If a man says, “I’m Stephen Jones, and this is my daughter, Emma Smith,” people are left wondering - wait, is this his biological daughter or his stepdaughter? (Because there seem to be a fair amount of people these days who think “stepchild” is somehow a bad word, and are in the habit of talking about their “daughter” or “bonus daughter” when it’s their stepdaughter.) Going back to the example, if Emma Smith’s mom is Kimberley Smith and her father figure is Stephen Jones, the most likely explanation (in my experience, anyway) is that Kimberley gave birth to Emma as a single mother, with a different man, before she married Stephen.
That's just based on social norms and expectations which change over time, which is what CHH was saying that maybe things will be different in a few generations and that would be ok. Decades ago a mom having a different last name to her child would indicate that she probably had the child out of wedlock, something that was deeply stigmatized and shameful. Now, as you say, we don't have that assumption as automatic and people don't blink at the situation. The fact that it gives you the ick doesn't make it wrong.
FWIW I'm extremely turned off (and always have been intuitively) by the idea of children having their father's names. It is embarrassing to me to imagine a mother needing to do all of the pregnancy and childbirth and the child just gets the dad's name. So to each their own in terms of what turns them off, but it would indeed be better society if we could all choose for ourselves instead of having such strong norms.
I had a friend from El Salvador. Their naming convention for a married woman (from the Spanish I'm guessing) was [first name, her family name, his family name]. While this was a bit confusing when she moved to the US, where people assumed her family name was actually just a middle name, I think it would be a good system for us to adopt as well. A woman's family name ought to be acknowledged as well.
“People assumed her family name was actually just a middle name” - that’s so interesting to me, because my mother’s last name is my middle name, and people always assume it’s part of my last name!
It’s honestly not such a big deal. I don’t have the same last name as either of my parents (my mom changed her last name upon marriage but decided to give me a combo of their first names when I was born) and it really is something you get very used to explaining. My kids both have hyphenated combinations of my husband’s and my last names and honestly there’s zero embarrassment about it.
Glad it’s worked out for you. I think, though, that when a baby is given a last name that belongs to neither parent, it raises the question - what are last names *for*, exactly? Are they just so we can distinguish Mary Murphy from Mary Schwartz and Mary Andersen, or are they also to indicate that Mary Murphy is related to John Murphy and Anne Murphy?
I wouldn’t have figured that your kids having a hyphenated last name would be an issue or embarrassing. If Peter Williams and Sarah Johnson name their child Noah Williams-Johnson, it’s pretty clear (in the context of meeting the family) who his parents are.
I think what a last name is for is very culturally determined. One of the cultures my parents belong to doesn’t really have a system of last / family names at all (just an initial reflecting the given name of the male parent usually). Others do two last names reflecting both parents’ last names. There’s lots of ways to do this.
Considering how India has had a PM go by Shastri instead of the surname of his birth and that Indonesia has had multiple leaders who had one-word names, it is fascinating how the Western assumption of what last names must mean is a bit limited.
"Most men used to be fine with leg hair on women."
Men were fine with it because women didn't wear short skirts and dresses until the 20th century. They rarely even saw a woman's legs until they were in a dark bedroom.
I agree and it is part of why I have stopped reading CHH as much. The commentary is typically very surface level, and you kinda get the point after a few paragraphs. Maybe if CHH took more time per essay the quality would be higher -- or maybe she just doesn't often have much deeper analysis to offer. I don't know.
I kind of agree with you about yesterday's article but I think she did a good job explaining her mistake was basically generalizing something she personally felt.
I am married to a man and a lot of what she says doesn't apply to me not cause im a crazy feminist (CHH and I are extremely similar politically) but just cause I am more of a decisionmaker I guess.
Today's I thought was more on point
The other thing that made yesterday's article not resonate with me is that I see MANY times more "I'm a feminist but still am submissive/love heels/etc" than "all relationships must be exactly even or misogyny" so there was a touch of arguing vs a strawman.
The last name thing is barely changing, incidentally, and it was never than uncommon not to change. 14% of women kept their name in the 1960s and 22% do now, by the first stats I find.
I think this illustrates a real point, related to other responses: feminists fought for the rights to work, to abortion, to vote, to divorce, and so on because these are extremely important for establishing a reasonable baseline for women’s freedom. It has been widely observed for probably as long as women have been shaving their legs that this is an anti-feminist, unfair burden, but after a century it’s still vanishingly rare not to shave outside queer circles, because (I take it) it’s just not that huge a problem in the grand scheme of things to make it worth pushing against the water you swim in and your own internalized sense of attractiveness, for most women. Similarly for the last name discourse, except innovation here pushes against much deeper held cultural traditions in what feels to a substantial number of people, even women, like deracinated anomie. In short, I’m pretty much certain these things are not in the class that will be changed by activism and consciousness-raising, though they may well be changed eventually by random drift.
I agree. I wanted more from this article. I don’t mind looking pretty to get a man’s attention, but I wonder why specifically the things I do are considered pretty to a man. This article felt like a half baked take with the excuse of not being a radical feminist. I guess if nothing else, this article made me realize I am in fact a radical feminist who wants to love men.
"Men center women’s opinions and female attention constantly."
When a man centers a woman's opinions -- in all of the domains you have mentioned in this article -- he is pursuing sex. And us men have been very comfortable with our desire for sex for a very long time, and often apply a "problem solving" attitude towards it.
Men are asking you for insider information from your perspective as a woman -- in the pursuit of sex. I think men are not asking you for insider information from your perspective as a woman in other domains. Our centering of women's opinions as having primacy is quite tactical and pragmatic.
If my theory here is correct, you will get requests from men for articles asking how to keep sex alive in a marriage with kids, but will not get requests from men about how to "be a good dad"*.
(*) Mmmmmmaybe you'd get a request for an article about how to be an adequate enough dad that your wife isn't so irate with you over parenting that she won't have sex with you.
I disagree. The men who seem most thirsty for inside tips are usually the ones who want a more profound connection. My hypothesis is that's *why* they're thirsty - they want to *be seen* a certain way by women, more than just have sex with them.
If you just wanna have sex with women you really don't need CHH to critique your business casual look
Yep. Most men actually want relationships (something I used to not believe.) The amount of men whose ideal romantic scenario is casual sex was something like 2% in my survey.
I think you're both right that the deep "want" is wanting connection. 100% agree.
But...the guys aren't asking for a woman's guide to listening empathically, are they? :-)
Dr John Delony talked about this in a call-in segment once...a lot of the time we (men) come at this from a disconnected, relationally impoverished background and
1. Rely on our romantic connection for *all* of our connection. Not enough close friends! "My husband has no close friends" is totally a thing for couples with young children.
2. Rely on sexual intimacy for all intimacy in a romantic relationship. So physical touch, but only if it's sexual, sex as the only way to feel emotionally close, etc.
Men want relationships and profound connection! But sometimes we think that all we have is a hammer...
I think that there's something to this - I absolutely agree that this "impoverishment" is at play, and that sex plays a larger role because of it. And, I would argue that what I'm about to say doesn't really contradict you because often it is in search of sex lol. But... there's a ton of advice (much bad) out there along the lines of "listen empathically" on this stuff, I think. A lot of TRP was just about affect and conversational tactics, all the "be feminist bc women like it" stuff, the fear over unattractive hobbies arguably fits here too.
True - and what CHH gets asked for could just be market dynamics.
Like, in some ways CHH is that rare unicorn who can explain clothing attractiveness from the perspective of a woman but in a mode of exposition that makes sense to neurodivergent men.
Maybe we're asking her "give me some fashion advice using words I understand" because that's just not out there anywhere else. :-)
I...might regret asking this and be unable to un-read it, but I'll bite.
TRP isn't actually the ones saying "be feminist because women like it, right?" Or is the discourse even weirder than I thought.
I think this is a little reductive. Admittedly, it's been a while since I was single, but I recall being at least as interested in finding a girlfriend as getting laid. Part of wanting a girlfriend was to get laid, but that was only part of it.
It's totally reductive! And...it's kind of *accidentally* reductive. Like, my point is *not* "men only want to get laid." I think men want to get laid, and want romantic relationships and even deep connection.
But I do think "men's centering woman's opinions", which is where this started...is disproportionately focused on sex and _desire_.
I have to disagree. OK, sort of disagree. I will stipulate that men are rarely not pursuing sex, at least a little bit. But your comment reduces any guy with interest in what a woman might have to say to "he's looking to get laid." Can men and women be friends? Contra Billy Crystal, I think so.
As for articles, seems like either of your presented options could be equally likely. CHH would have personal knowledge of keeping sex alive - from the woman's side. Anything she has to say about what a man can do to keep sex alive would be observational - just like her observations of what makes a good dad.
My personal feeling on this matter is that inequalities are fine in a relationship, and basically inevitable. I mean, I am a woman in a lesbian relationship and there are even inequalities between us (she’s a lot stronger than me physically, but I make significantly more money. She cooks way more, but I clean way more. She doesn’t shave, and I shave my armpits and legs even though she doesn’t care about me being clean shaven at all. If we have kids I probably would do more childcare because I would like it more, while she would take care of other tasks instead).
The problem, to me, is if those inequalities start stacking up in one persons disfavor and give the other parter a serious upper hand against them. None of us will ever be fully “perfectly balanced”, even if you are in homosexual relationships, because we are all individual humans with our own personalities and priorities.
Ha! Interesting first example for me. I stopped shaving legs and armpits years ago (still a little bit of a struggle to feel comfortable in public in the summer but I’m working on it) and my husband, while I’m sure he doesn’t actively prefer it that way, says he’s fine with it. On the other hand I won’t let him grow a beard (I mean, it’s a free country, but I’ve made it clear it would turn me off immensely)… so our relationship is currently unequal in that he is required to shave and I’m not. Score!
It is true that if I were dating I would almost certainly start shaving again to, as you say, not limit the dating pool. Man, being married is awesome.
Part of the problem with shaving (in both sexes) is that fully grown out hair is soft, but stubble is hard and irritating. So if you stop shaving, you have to really commit to it, otherwise you'll back out half way through the transition period because it sucks. The reverse is not true - going from fully grown out to shaved is a pretty quick affair with the right tools.
Yes, this is usually at least part of beard preferences I've gotten in relationships (whether shaved always or grown out) -- my stubble is so bad. I've irritated a couple faces in my time...
Similarly, I feel incredibly lucky because my husband actually likes leg hair and pubic hair - I’m the one who shaves once in a while to fit into societal norms, but not because of him. Sometimes we joke that he’s the perfect partner for a straight woman - a male lesbian.
I think it's different if it's someone who already loves you! Although it is funny that the double standard goes the other way around. A beard might be more evident too, it's on the face lol
this is a great question. i would probably argue about it and try to convey how much i hate doing it. maybe insist i'm not doing it anyway. but if he were like "well i hate shaving my face and so i won't do that either" well that's perfectly logical and valid, so i would probably make that trade. or not make the trade at first and then eventually give in because i hate the beard so much.
How do you get deodorant onto your actual skin if you don’t shave your armpits? Do you just not grow a lot of hair?
My husband is a very hairy person and I tell him every month or two that he really ought to shave his armpits (which he then does). Otherwise the deodorant just ends up caked in the hair.
deodorant ends up caked in the hair. it would be smart to go with a gel or spray or whatever like men tend to do, but i have an affinity for a particular solid deodorant so i've stayed with it.
i also often forget to wear deodorant at all. many of my answers to questions like this are simply "i'm a gross person"
My anecdote on this is that in high school a girlfriend decided to stop shaving her legs and I was fine w/ it, she's the one who eventually got bothered, lol. I've also had multiple partners w/ different beard preferences.
I don't think is generalizable, but I find it interesting.
I feel like a lot of people, and by extension you in having to respond to them, are mixing up equal and identical. If you do the childcare and he takes care of the lawn, as long as you both feel like the effort you expend in trying to run the household matches then I don't feel like that's unequal at all and I find it kind of baffling that you describe your relationship in such terms. Most people have preferences of things they don't mind doing as much compared to others, and I think that kind of complimentary coverage is one of the major upsides of being in a relationship.
I can see more of the discussion of inequality mattering where it comes to decision making, where you've voluntarily placed him at the head and as the final arbiter, but my understanding is a part of that is that it helps you both deal with your diagnosed neuroses and make life easier. I think having that as a default expectation and assumption would be bad, but as you've said the same could be said of a lot of different norms not just this one.
True, which is my biggest issue with this framing when it comes from trad influencers who believe that the division of labor in gender roles is natural and unchanging. It’s why I said as long as each other thinks the effort is matched then it’s equal in my book, if they don’t that’s where resentment and bitterness stem from and there should be a discussion and renegotiation. Based on her articles CHH and her husband seem happy with their balance, and that’s good enough for me unless something changes and it no longer feels equitable.
Yeah, I think "we each do different things because we like it that way" is substantively different from "I give more / get less and that's OK." The current discourse that ties itself in knots about the male gaze, what's empowering vs. degrading, etc. is sometimes genuinely grappling with the latter - especially when delving into the social contexts and unconscious conditioning that shape our individual preferences - but sometimes going overboard and attacking examples of the former.
So I actually generally think this is a really good article and overall agree with you, but:
"And I don’t see this as anti-feminist framing, because this logic puts men in a much easier spot than women! Men can do whatever they want to attract women, and never have to worry about whether they’re “centering the female gaze.” They can just do things."
OK, why do men do things? Why spend all those hours at the gym? Why do you think we pursue ruinously tiresome careers, spend huge amounts of our energy and endanger our health in tournament-like status competitions, and so on?
Because status attracts women!
'Whatever we want'? You mean, like video games, fixing cars, anime, and arguing with people smarter than you on Substack? No, we do things we think are high status, like work long hours to make money.
We're not allowed to admit we're 'centering the female gaze', because that would imply you had trouble attracting women and therefore were incompetent and thus low status....
...but, it most definitely drives a LOT of male behavior.
But there is a thought crime--look at the whole 'objectification' thing. You're not even supposed to want sex these days. Not to mention the submissive role feminists advocate for men having is diametrically opposed to what the majority of women actually want. Of course a lot of guys just rebel overall and go way in the opposite direction--the hardcore redpill and so on.
I should add that I basically agree with the overall thrust of her argument--the sexes don't want the same things on average, so true equality is unlikely. I should probably post a supportive comment in addition--it's a bit unfair to someone who's written something you 80% agree with to post about the 20% you don't.
But this is the opposite end of things. Everyone is ok with men trying to look good for women. You're talking about *wanting* women, which of course is more politicized.
Hmmmm..."You're not even supposed to want sex these days." FWIW my impression of where we are, at least in the US is:
- What it is to be masculine is contended.
- There's a LOT of backlash to anything even remotely feminist.
- There are lots of people saying it's actually fine for men to want sex in a number of different ways, some (but not all) of which can be kinda gross.
This might be unsettle-able in an "I lick my finger, hold it up to the wind and go 'no no I think the state of the zeitgeist is blowing this way'" kind of way.
Yeah, I agree, it's pretty place-dependent. For that matter the Mommy Wars on Team Woman are pretty place-dependent too--whether you get more flak for having kids or not having kids depends heavily on who your friends are.
Obviously I get why this is much more difficult for women -- having the role of "being attractive" be made "one's place" since forever makes it a lot more fraught to figure out what *you* want vs. what *society* wants.
For me, at least, the strong curiosity about takes on women's attraction is due to ... wanting to be attractive to women, or to see myself as someone who is, I suppose. That's something that is not intuitive, I think particularly for men who did not stand out socially in high school or college. That's partly because women's attraction is weirdly politicized and it's quite common to deny it exists altogether. and, Post-classical Hollywood there's been less of a male-targeted message about what it is to be attractive to a woman. At least for me growing up, what felt like the dominant trope was "adam sandler lookin ass dude is a schlub which pisses her off but they get together at the end anyway" - the tail end of an era that was about to inspire a firm (rhetorical, if not necessarily actual) demand for men cleaning up their act. And for the good! but we need a manual for this stuff lol
Growing up I was friends w/ or dating enough girls to know what *wasn't* true about them (they did not seem asexual or hypergamously pursuing only gigachad physiognomy), which I guess put me ahead of the curve. Still, I remember seeing Turning Red as a full adult and being kinda surprised by its frank depiction of girl *lust,* which is something I hadn't seen before in that genre (ofc I'm not watching a ton of kids movies these days.... so). Curious how insufferable I woulda been if I saw carter murphy-mayhew as a kid... or maybe I just woulda been more on my guard around those scene girls
I'd be interested in perspective from zoomers. My assumption is that given the rhetoric of the gender war, it's harder for young guys who are not given to confidence to tell why a girl would like them at all. Heart broke many times watching Adolescence, but the cute (murdering) lead calling himself ugly hit home
Not sure it helps resolve a cultural issue by opening up an economic front but there is a clear analogy to the trade relations.
CHH doesn't value shaving her legs directly, but Mr. CHH does, and it means more to Mr. CHH than it costs for CHH to do. But although that would be a nice thing for CHH to do to maximize their combined well-being, CHH also gets things from Mr. CHH (yard work, cleaning) that someone has to do and would cost CHH more than Mr. CHH.
Trade indicates difference, but not always hierarchy. The 1950s breadwinner and housewife dynamic is arguably an illustration of comparative advantage between a wealthy developed country and a poor underdeveloped country. The housewife can't earn from a job (or not nearly as much), so her most productive option is to do the things that a job precludes in exchange for being taken care of by her husband. But while the housewife's "choice" may make her life better (than say being destitute on her own, or insisting on working just as much as her husband but with them both poor and busier), there is nothing equal or fair about it. You'd clear rather be the man in that circumstance, and the woman's quality of life is more dependent on the man's generosity (which varies) than any universal moral sense of what she deserves (equality obviously).
So I can see why chore specialization leaves a bad taste in people's mouths, but it's the most natural thing for people to do in a relationship. The modern relationship has more people earning at parity, and many women our earning their partners, but some division of labor is in order.
There’s gotta be a word for guys who are neither “alpha” nor “beta” (insert vomit emoji after both of those terms). I don’t like telling other people what to do and hate being told what to do (outside, like, bedroom stuff). I’m pretty much a bro type personality wise but if I was with a partner where the decision-making wasn’t 50/50, I’d be really bored! It would be like going on a date where you did all the talking and the other person just smiled and nodded.
So Vox Day, the originator of ‘sigma’, has a six-category system involving alpha (super-alpha), beta, now rebranded Bravo (lesser alpha), delta (average joe), sigma (‘lone wolf’ alpha who still pulls hot girls), gamma (resentful liberal), and omega (total loser).
I guess you’d be a delta, but given that he invented the sigma category to cover himself I am somewhat suspicious of the whole enterprise.
I know I experience the phenomenon of getting in discourse about a specific thing in a relationship that I have baggage on, and then because I'm agitated getting partisan in a broader discussion. E.g. here you have taking the first move for men, and various beauty standards for women. If others have the same reaction, then the conversation can get polarized around "passive" and "active" regardless of whether that's a reflection of real preferences.
I was commenting yesterday about being, basically, a beta in this sense -- because I was thinking from a couple of specific angles. But of course every relationship I've had has basically just been equitable. Dates happened when we wanted to treat each other, give and take on grooming, etc.
I think most healthy modern relationships are like that! All the ones I've seen have seemed to be.
I think that part of this discourse is a backlash against the idea that women who don't do these things are gross or "lesser" and get discriminated against in more ways than dating.
Like body hair removal and makeup are fine expectations to have in a relationship but should not impact me getting a good job in a way that it wouldn't impact men.
I think part of the issue around this discourse is how much these things end up getting conflated.
You end up with a lot of "women should not have to.." "but I want to" "only because of social conditioning" stuff that imo plays very differently if you're discussing who will date you vs who will treat you fairly.
Agreed. It would be ideal if women's appearance didn't matter at all in society outside of sexual attraction (where it would be reasonably relevant, as well as men's appearance.) I think we've come a long way with things like women generally not expected to wear heels and skirts to work in most environments, but still have a long way to go.
So much of this is subconscious as well. Like people won't say "women should wear makeup" but will just feel the women who do are more professional... without knowing why.
I remember seeing a study somewhere that heavily bearded men get fewer job offers. I don't think it is quite as unequal as you think. And how would an interviewer even know if you don't shave your armpits ?
But it's not right that what women do to attract men is focused on their appearance while men get to focus on substantive qualities. (The tall/short thing sucks and is mean, but they don't spend any of their time trying to change it.) The time it takes every day to be an attractive woman is outrageous.
I don't have opinions on whether women should shave their legs. I do if someone will see them. My brother's fiancé doesn't shave any of her body hair. They're both astrophysicists. I'm really proud of my brother for who he has become. He's an attractive, smart person. He could have married someone whose best quality is that they are hot, but that's not what he's doing. Is GF is awesome.
My point is, women are damned if they do and damned if they don't when they spend time on their appearance. We would benefit from societal efforts to lower the amount of time when spend on their appearance. And I think it is possible. Style has changed enormously throughout history. I'm not attracted to men that wear tights or silver wigs. We can make it so being an attractive woman doesn't involve huge swaths of time and money. That's where our focus should be.
"The time it takes every day to be an attractive woman is outrageous."
i am lucky that my spouse is attracted to me even though i don't shave or wear heels or wear makeup or really do anything with my hair. i did those things before i met him and god i can't imagine going back to expending that kind of time and effort. if he was like "oh i'll do more chores so you can spend that time making yourself look prettier" ummm maybe it's not rational but i would hate that. personal preference there i guess but i think that many women would indeed like to not feel pressure to spend as much time and money on this stuff as they currently do!
Yeah i actually don’t think it’s that outrageous? A lot of the really time consuming stuff is more about looking formal than sexually attractive. I haven’t had a professional haircut or manicure in like 10 years. It takes 5 minutes to do my makeup.
That's a good distinction between sexy and formal. I think you're right that formal takes longer. Professional, in many cases, takes way longer than sexy. News anchors and politicians, for example.
To be tactless, it kind of depends on your "base" attractiveness. If you have great skin you don't need much or any foundation. If you aren't thin, you kind of need to make up for it with excellent hair/makeup to still pass as attractive. And women have a much smaller window of acceptable weight to qualify as attractive. Meanwhile, I am attracted to men within like a 70-80lb weight range.
The monetary cost is certainly more for women unless you just buy men's version of stuff--razors, shampoo/conditioner.... make-up is obscenely expensive now, even at the drug store. And bras are expensive, even if you get the more utilitarian ones. I'd get them in six packs if I could.
I've been thinking about this comment. My gut agrees, but which of these points are you making:
1. The time it takes to be attractive enough to attract men is very large, absolutely? ("Men are picky")
2. The time it takes to be attractive enough to attract men is very large due to intrasex competition? ("It's an arms race that's gotten out of hand?")
3. The time it takes to be attractive is a sunk cost because it _only_ solves the one problem of being attractive to men, where-as the time men spend on doing things to be appealing to women *also* benefit them in a vacuum? ("This is a time sink compared to the self improvement men get to do?")
There's clearly a value judgment you're making - personally I happen to agree with the intuition and if I were a woman I'd probably be frustrated by it.
I was just reading another commenter's blog - turns out he worked as a dating coach for men...he said something I hadn't read before that ties into this.
For men, attractive women are scarce - in that it's hard to get matches on dating apps.
For women, quality relationships are scarce - in that it's hard to get the guy to stick around/commit.
When it comes to "things to be attractive to start a relationship", I agree with (3) and feel your pain...most of what I had to do to be attractive in my twenties was stuff I would have done anyway: tried to get a good job, moved into my own housing (so much easier last century, I feel for the kids), exercise, have hobbies and a generally interesting life.
So my thought putting this together is that when it comes to the things women can do to improve their odds of getting a relationship (and not just a date/match sex) with a guy...I would not put "be more attractive" on that list. If the relationship started, she is attractive enough.
Where this breaks down is: I don't know what those things she can do would actually be.
I think it’s more that on the overall spectrum, men are physically ugly, women are hot. So it’d make sense for guys to focus more elsewhere to impress women. I’m not so sure what men do to impress women in free countries is comparatively very substantive though.
This is a funny example for me because as a male virginal teenager I was under the impression (from porn and the advice of two fellow virgin friends) that women wanted men to have their pubic hair shaved.
Thankfully after my first sexual encounter and discovering my partner’s pubic area was unshaved and I had no care about it, I realized there was no need to shave myself.
I don’t know if I ever really cared about women shaving their arm pits. I’m sure I would probably follow along if friends made remarks about women with armpits in middle/high school, but my wife rarely shaves her armpits (e.g we’re going to the beach) and I’ve never minded.
Pubic hair feels way more individual in preference. I've heard guys say they expect a woman to have it and find it a turnoff if we don't (I think millennial men are different lmao.) maybe this is another article topic.
If I'm going to nitpick I should also list the things I agree with here:
1. You begin by acknowledging the weakness of a prior example
2. You bring up an excellent example with the body hair that's facially neutral but points up the fact that the sexes are attracted to different things.
3. You acknowledge many of the complaints men have about women's preferences
4. You point out the silliness of much of the 'empowering' narrative
5. You argue heterosexuality is OK (and if it isn't, we've got a problem...)
6. You provide a realistic solution to the problem (inequality is OK if both parties like it)
7. You focus on making people happy
8. You're fair to both sides as far as I can tell.
This is very nicely done and very well argued. Thank you!
You’re on fire. One point I’ll add to: it’s female biology to “center men” when it comes to attraction. Women WANT male attention for being sexy. I submit exhibits A and B: TikTok and IG. No one forces women to wear skimpy outfits or take sexy photos or dance provocatively alone in their bedroom. So why do they do it? Because they want sexual attention from men. And that’s OK! It’s why I lift weights and stay in shape—because I want women to find me attractive! And there’s nothing wrong with either sex wanting to do this.
I feel like the link between "female biology" and "TikTok/IG" is tenuous.
TikTok and IG are computer programs that gamify a certain kind of online interaction.
So they reveal a preference, but this strikes me as a *social* phenomenon that may have biological roots, but this link is a hypothesis, not empirical. How would we tease apart the role of biology, culture, and technology?
I don't think you're totally wrong here, but I see a lot of "it's evolutionary biology, duh" in gender discourse these days, so I'm poking it with a stick.
Yeah that’s a good point no doubt. And to be fair some female friends have told me they feel pressure to post sexy photos or videos because other women are doing it so they sorta have to. I enjoy aspects of social media, but clearly it has adverse affects in lots of ways. Actually published a post today to that point. https://getbettersoon.substack.com/p/influencers-arent-normal-people-what
I agree with that post you wrote pretty much 100%...one of the things I try to take seriously as a father is trying to help my kids understand the heavily distorted lens that is "what they see online."
A lot of ideologies seem to forget that people sometimes like doing nice things for other people. Not every relationship between two people (or even groups) is some zero-sum power struggle. And you'll definitely have issues in a relationship if you are constantly worried about maintaining dominance.
Yeah, I feel like too many online ppl tend to view everything in zero sum power struggle esp if I could include Trump. My conspiracy theory is one of the reasons so many online leftists hates Econ while online far right act like they never heard of that field is one of the core teaching is world is not always zero sum game
Yep - this is sort of the weird place we've ended up in 2025. I wonder if the move toward "all businesses aim to cater as closely as possible to people's individual whims" has had some norm-leaking effects in our culture.
I think you're on to something. This idea of full customization doesn't really work for relationships. At least, not til those AI sexbots come out.
This is kind of now. :-(. Did you listen to the NY times podcast about the woman who trained ChatGPT to be a virtual text-based lover and became emotionally dependent on it?
I see part of what I need to do to work on my marriage as to manage my own disappointment - not because I should _settle_ - but because my wife is _human_ and expecting to be disappointed 0% of the time is unrealistic.
With AI companions, one never needs to tolerate disappointment.
I'm with you on not getting why "dressing for the male gaze" is bad (though I'm admittedly a man). Relationships are a big part of life. It's also an area where there is a meaningful competition, so why not make an effort. No one would advise you to not "dress for the employer's gaze" and start wearing a t-shirt and ripped jeans to job interviews.
I also assume that most people find it nice when people find them attractive - on the rare occasions I've gotten a compliment on my attractiveness, it's been a plus.
Separately, you note that men are more obsessed with appealing to women than vice versa. I think this may be true, or at the very least, feminism misses the extent to which men try to appeal to the female gaze, even if the men often miss the mark. Women may not be attracted to a man for driving a fancy car (or maybe they are), but I suspect that men who buy fancy cars often do so to attract women (not my thing, I drive a Subaru Forrester, so I'm only attracting lesbians). But, particularly before I was married, I spent plenty of time trying to figure out how to dress or act or otherwise present myself to increase my chances of attracting women.
The problem for men, and perhaps why you see them obsess over it more than women, is it's less straightforward. There are some tried-and-true ways for women to appeal to the male gaze. They are also generally descrete acts - put on the right outfit and makeup, try to be thin and you're good, you can then go about your day basically acting however you want. For men, there's less of a clear path. It's the rare outfit that a man can wear that is going to turn heads, and while you probably don't want to look like Jabba the Hutt, being in shape only gets you so far. Instead, the way for men to attract women is mostly just being some ineffable form of "cool," which isn't something you can just go buy at a men's version of Saphora or Forever 21 and which you don't just put on before you go out.
I constantly hear feminist critiques about how hard the dating world is for women, only to think "men deal with that exact problem, or at least something entirely comparable." The truth is that dating is hard for both sexes. You just only see if from your side.
I do think that men used to far less obsessed with appealing to women. Women used to have fewer options, and if they couldn't support themselves independently, had to rely on a man, as I've written about before. If a woman can choose, then she'll choose the guy she WANTS, not the guy she needs. Ergo, men are getting in shape and working on becoming more interesting, but I think that's a good thing. People should be attracted to their partners.
The difference in dressing/appearance effort seems to circle back to the fact that men are more attracted by visual cues, right? Women can attract men pretty easily by just turning up the sexiness dial with their clothing choices (plus some minor variations to convey tastefulness, class, interests like outdoorsiness or organic/natural stuff); while for men's clothing to attract women I think the pure sexiness (like form fitting or revealingness) is a much lower priority vs conveying information about other traits women find sexy... Assertiveness, ruggedness, hygiene, good taste, caring some but not too much about looks, not being a MAGAhead, etc. All of that seems much harder, IMHO, for an average Joe to figure out, than it is for an average Jane to notice that bodycon dresses or leggings plus crop tops will reliably turn heads. Moreover, women already have fashion magazines, makeup tiktokers, etc. to consult for fashion tips. As far as I know, men have only CHH and the Menswear Guy (plus pickup artists circa 2009 telling us to peacock with giant stupid hats and magic tricks). So that's my theory for why men are so overrepresented among people asking CHH for fashion advice.
It's fair to say that men care less, but also men don't care nothing at all. The trope of "man hits the gym after a divorce to become date-able again" is fairly accurate.
There's an argument that says if you'd hit the gym before you got divorced you might not BE divorced. Doesn't apply every time, but I've watched several marriages dissolve as the players just sort of lost interest in appealing to their spouses. You can't just stop trying.
I think it’s good to a point, though it becomes toxic when it goes from just self improvement to trying to change who you are at a deeper level. Maybe I spend too much time in dating advice spaces online (ok I definitely do lol), but I have seen men get told that to attract women they need to do things like abandon their nerdy hobbies and interests, or live a partier lifestyle even if they hate it. Some people develop very rigid ideas of what is attractive and basically encourage perfectionism and self loathing as a result.
It can be hard to sort out just what you're looking for. After a bad breakup due to my burgeoning interest in adventure sports I decided I needed to find a woman that was hard into climbing, cycling, paddling, etc. And I did - only to realize that she was a great adventure companion and a good friend, but not a girlfriend. The woman I eventually married had....SOMETHING, even though she did no adventure sports and already had a daughter from her first marriage. It was just so easy, so comfortable, to be with her. Ironically, she took to adventuring as if she'd been waiting her entire life to be asked. We've been climbing, backpacking, cycling companions - and friends and lovers - for 4 decades.
Yes! I have a bunch of thoughts about this. Compare all the shows in the 90s about women desperate not to be single. Now today it's men.
Love triangles used to sometimes also involve two women fighting over one guy but now it is almost always the opposite
You could still be an independent single woman in the 90s though. There has to be more to it.
Share your bunch of thoughts, I say!
I think there is also the idea that dressing attractively can also be fun and empowering in its own way. My wife, similar to CHH, used to dress a bit on the sexy side (at least in a relative sense for the late 90's/early 00's) - partially to please me, but also she once told me because she seemed to genuinely like it. After we had a few kids she seemed to lose interest - and now we are "jeans people." But in that era my guess is that she was making up for lost time in her youth - as before dating me she had been kind of a wallflower.
For me I've personally experienced a sort of renassiance in fashion for the last year or so. I lost about 50 pounds last year after a pandemic era stint of fattening and found myself suddenly wanting to dress better. I'm not looking as I'm happily married, but the idea of just wanting to be a reasonably good-looking guy with a decent figure appeals to me.
Sometimes looking good (or at least better) is its own reward.
I think the trend of men trying to appeal to women goes back at least to my own youth, and I'm 70 now. Even in an era where women had less freedom of maneuver some women were more desirable than others.
Technically what she said was "men who follow me seem far more obsessed with attracting women than the reverse." She was correctly limiting her statement to her readership, with which she is intimately familiar, rather than making a larger statement that might be incorrect.
And indeed I think men do worry about attracting women quite a bit. I just think a lot of it gets sublimated into other things like status, power, and muscularity that are usually good in themselves but can be deleterious if pursued to excess--steroids are bad for you, and most people don't get elected President.
The mention of the cars guys buy to attract women reminds me of this classic Regular Car Reviews "review" of the 1995 Mazda MX-5 Miata, in which Mr. Regular (the reviewer) calls the Miata "the only sports car that works on girls":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp1kuo6xkbE
Relevant quote:
"You see, us guys think that this..." (clip of a car with a noisy muffler) "...this..." (clip of a car doing donuts) "...and this..." (clip of a motorcycle rider popping up his rear tire) "...creates girl boners, and it does, but only for chicks who hate their dads."
He goes on to discuss how the Miata's cute, "non-threatening" nature is better for attracting normal women.
(Mr. Regular did later come out as gay, but his observations stand.)
I’m sure this will be an unpopular opinion, because I’m commenting in a community that really enjoys your work (rightfully so! You’ve written a lot of great stuff) but I think it’s actually constructive so I’m going to say it anyway:
I think pieces like yesterday’s suffer from the daily upload schedule. It feels half-baked in some ways and that’s what annoys me about it most. I’m consider myself a radical feminist but I read a lot of social commentary and humorous observations from people who are not—I’m not upset every time I see someone have different opinions or beliefs. But it frustrates me when people dismiss ideas without putting any thought into why they feel or think that way. And I felt like yesterday’s article did that. It kind of boiled down to the same level of analysis as “I wear makeup for me, not to look good to men!” Or “choking or hitting women who say they’re ok with it is still abuse—unless it’s your kink, then it’s fine.” That is to say, the article didn’t really engage with any of the arguments around what it means to “center men,” why that’s bad (or actually fine) and how that relates to straight relationships and/or sex.
Similarly, the leg hair argument only considers the issues from an individual perspective. I agree that if you want to date most men, you will have an easier time if you shave your leg hair, because they find it gross. And it’s totally fine to decide that you are willing to do that! But if we treat all these choice like it’s only a matter of what makes rational sense for an individual, we are ignoring how we ended up with this specific set of choices in the first place. Most men used to be fine with leg hair on women. It’s not crazy unrealistic to think we might get to that point again someday. As much as “normalize x” has become a meme, I think sometimes it’s a valid goal to normalize things. Because then in the future women get to have both relationships with men and leg hair, if they want to, without worrying about it. And I think that would be nice.
We’ve seen this kind of slow changing of norms in women’s married surnames. It’s very slowly becoming more common to keep our hyphenate your name instead of changing it. Maybe in a few more generations, men will even feel comfortable enough to give their wife’s surname to the kids or take it themselves sometimes. I think that would be cool to see. I do genealogy is a hobby and I’ve seen firsthand how the erasing of women’s birth names makes it orders of magnitude harder for people today to learn about their lives, their families or their heritage. This change is only possible because of annoying feminists who likely pissed a lot of dudes they were marrying or dating off by insisting they wanted to keep their surname even if it made them seem unattractive or bitchy or made it harder to find a man.
I'm not offended at all here (especially because you're clearly being respectful) so don't worry about that. However, this feels more like a request for a completely different article--one I didn't have interest in writing. The whole point of my article was how if an individual wants to pursue happiness (in this case, a straight woman wanting to find a happy romantic relationship) she lives in a society where certain things are considered attractive or appealing, whether that's biological or social or a mix, and I haven't yet seen any woman who has manifested a happy heterosexual relationship by painstakingly analyzing these things.
There certainly is an opening for a deeper analysis of *why* something could be considered attractive--the evolution of the last name change expectation is certainly one (I didn't change my last name, by the way, although that was mostly laziness on my part, but I'm glad feminism made it my choice to be lazy on that.) But I guess that just wasn't what i wanted to write- it's not that i wrote too quickly and failed to do the deeper analysis. it just...wasn't *about* the deeper analysis. I was writing about individual happiness on purpose!
of course, if you feel like writing something on that topic, I'd be happy to read it! Even if we disagree! But disregarding politics and analysis in favor of making yourself happy was quite literally my whole point. I don't like burdening women with stuff they have to analyze and think about (which aren't expected of men, who are allowed to just say "I want to get fit, look hot for women, and have sex with them" and everyone's kinda just okay with it)
One could argue Mr. CHH has in fact taken your name.
Quite. I have to say I do find it crass for a man to be openly lascivious, even in all-male company. But I don’t really go round worried about whether what I'm doing or not doing constitutes manning wrong. Maybe I'm too self-confident (or oblivious) - but I suspect that if I was a woman I would be concerned at least sometimes about womanning wrong. And I'm glad that doesn't happen to me.
I think this makes a very similar point as one of my comments yesterday. The middle-of-the-road liberal basically prioritizes individual choices above all else and concludes that "if it makes you happy, and doesn't infringe on other people's choices, do what you want." The more radical perspective doesn't accept this and instead scrutinizes the context and specifics of one's individual choices and also emphasizes the ways in which those choices reinforce various norms and expectations.
I'm closer to being a middle of the road liberal all things considered, but I think the radical / progressive outlook has advantages in various cases. I don't have a super systematic way of dealing with these kinds of disputes
The radical perspective is academically interesting, but my problem with bringing that kind of thought outside the classroom is that even if the radicals are right, their framework is not at all useful in individuals’ romantic lives. If we have any ability to control or change these broader forces, which I’m not sure we do, they’re going to change on generational time scales. Meanwhile I still have my preferences which were forged in our present culture, and so too do all the women I want to date. If I want to be attractive and find a sexual, romantic, and life partner, then I need it be attuned to what our culture is right now, not ivory tower critiques of it.
I would not go as far as to say "not at all useful." Asking yourself why you like something, being a little thoughtful about your preferences and prejudices, isn't so difficult or so impractical. We could all benefit from some of that.
But, yes, at a certain point, being paralyzed by fears about whether or not it is OK to enjoy sexual practice X or physical trait Y because it might be rooted in something problematic can be its own form of unproductive self-absorption. It is worth cutting off this train of thought before one gets to that point
^
I think my counterargument about the leg hair aspect of your post is that most women do not want to invest time or effort in changing society's norms around women's leg hair. It is far easier for me to shave every couple of days since it is such a minor chore. I would rather focus on being married to my husband and rising our kids and doing my job and seeing friends etc. If other women want to spend time changing men's attitudes about shaving, then great! Go for it! But honestly it is just not a priority for most women when you think about everything else there is to do in life.
But you are correct in that societal expectations does have some influence over individual actions and that's where the tension comes in. I think choking during sex is horrifying and I would never do that myself nor would I want my daughters to do that when they are adults. And the practice is no doubt influenced by hard-core porn, etc. So is that worth fighting back against in partnership with other women (and men)? Maybe! I guess it's just a matter of priorities.
I kept my last name when I got married 15+ years ago and used to feel strongly about it but now when I am sometimes called by my husband's last name I couldn't care less. It just honestly does not have anything to do with my actual marriage. So priorities/opinions about these things can also change as you age.
(Sorry for the rambling response... I did like your post even though I disagree with some of it.)
That's a good point. And regarding hair, I guess, there is SOME cultural pressure on men relative to body hair. Men who are publicly shirtless a lot -- actors, strippers, pro wrestlers, some athletes -- clearly do a lot of chest and back waxing. And while I have a beard, if I didn't shave and trim it, I'd have thick hair going from my chest all the way up my neck and almost to my eyeballs. Not only would my wife (and most women) not find that attractive, my coworkers would also think it was gross.
Exactly, I felt a very similar way. While I broadly agree with this and the other article, it felt very surface level, and the analysis boiled down to “I do this, therefore all women do this” which is, exactly as you write, is short-sighted of the global “why” we do it. I wish a bit more research and engagement with an actual argument had been put into these articles.
“Maybe in a few more generations, men will even feel comfortable enough to give their wife’s surname to the kids or take it themselves sometimes. I think that would be cool to see.”
I’m gonna be controversial here. I don’t care what married people do with their surnames - neither my mother nor I changed ours, but most married women we know did - but I’m extremely turned off by the idea of children having solely their mother’s surname and not their father’s.
Hyphenated, fine, but historically, men giving their surnames to their children is part of how they signal that they’re taking responsibility for the child, especially if they’re not married to the child’s mother. A child having his or her father’s surname indicates that yes, the child’s father “claims” this one. It’s not just “my wife’s kid” or “my girlfriend’s kid.” Women don’t need to “claim” children as theirs, because they gave birth to them and are indisputably their mothers. To socially establish themselves as the father of a particular child, men need some kind of signal.
In the book “We Need To Talk About Kevin,” Kevin’s parents argue and eventually agree that he’ll have his mother’s surname, but his dad gets to pick his first name. Years later, as teenage Kevin is on his villainous path to becoming a mass murderer, the police come by his house for some reason or another. They assume that Kevin’s last name is his father’s last name, so Kevin’s dad has to correct them. “Actually, I’m Mr. Plaskett - but I am Kevin’s father.” And I thought, God, how embarrassing - having to clarify that you, Kevin’s biological father who’s married to Kevin’s mother, are indeed Kevin’s father. I think most men would rather not have to have conversations to make it clear that yes, they are indeed the fathers of their wives’ babies.
I have never had the same last name as my mother and we don't look much alike, it would not be out of the norm for some government employee to have to clarify her relationship to me. Should she have felt embarrassed when she had to give clarification?
Women don't have the same kind of "is this child even mine?" thoughts that men can have, but that doesn't do anything to prove that she is a child's mother to others if there are factors at play that put them outside of the expected norm (Adoption, donor-conceived, bearing little resemblance, different last names, etc).
To me, the difference is that no one ever wonders *why* a kid and their mother might not have the same last name. If the names are different, they just figure the kid has their father’s last name.
If a woman says, “I’m Stephanie Jones, and this is my daughter, Emma Smith,” most people will not find that odd. If a man says, “I’m Stephen Jones, and this is my daughter, Emma Smith,” people are left wondering - wait, is this his biological daughter or his stepdaughter? (Because there seem to be a fair amount of people these days who think “stepchild” is somehow a bad word, and are in the habit of talking about their “daughter” or “bonus daughter” when it’s their stepdaughter.) Going back to the example, if Emma Smith’s mom is Kimberley Smith and her father figure is Stephen Jones, the most likely explanation (in my experience, anyway) is that Kimberley gave birth to Emma as a single mother, with a different man, before she married Stephen.
That's just based on social norms and expectations which change over time, which is what CHH was saying that maybe things will be different in a few generations and that would be ok. Decades ago a mom having a different last name to her child would indicate that she probably had the child out of wedlock, something that was deeply stigmatized and shameful. Now, as you say, we don't have that assumption as automatic and people don't blink at the situation. The fact that it gives you the ick doesn't make it wrong.
I said I was extremely turned off by the idea, not that it was wrong. 🤷♀️
FWIW I'm extremely turned off (and always have been intuitively) by the idea of children having their father's names. It is embarrassing to me to imagine a mother needing to do all of the pregnancy and childbirth and the child just gets the dad's name. So to each their own in terms of what turns them off, but it would indeed be better society if we could all choose for ourselves instead of having such strong norms.
I had a friend from El Salvador. Their naming convention for a married woman (from the Spanish I'm guessing) was [first name, her family name, his family name]. While this was a bit confusing when she moved to the US, where people assumed her family name was actually just a middle name, I think it would be a good system for us to adopt as well. A woman's family name ought to be acknowledged as well.
“People assumed her family name was actually just a middle name” - that’s so interesting to me, because my mother’s last name is my middle name, and people always assume it’s part of my last name!
It’s honestly not such a big deal. I don’t have the same last name as either of my parents (my mom changed her last name upon marriage but decided to give me a combo of their first names when I was born) and it really is something you get very used to explaining. My kids both have hyphenated combinations of my husband’s and my last names and honestly there’s zero embarrassment about it.
Glad it’s worked out for you. I think, though, that when a baby is given a last name that belongs to neither parent, it raises the question - what are last names *for*, exactly? Are they just so we can distinguish Mary Murphy from Mary Schwartz and Mary Andersen, or are they also to indicate that Mary Murphy is related to John Murphy and Anne Murphy?
I wouldn’t have figured that your kids having a hyphenated last name would be an issue or embarrassing. If Peter Williams and Sarah Johnson name their child Noah Williams-Johnson, it’s pretty clear (in the context of meeting the family) who his parents are.
I think what a last name is for is very culturally determined. One of the cultures my parents belong to doesn’t really have a system of last / family names at all (just an initial reflecting the given name of the male parent usually). Others do two last names reflecting both parents’ last names. There’s lots of ways to do this.
Considering how India has had a PM go by Shastri instead of the surname of his birth and that Indonesia has had multiple leaders who had one-word names, it is fascinating how the Western assumption of what last names must mean is a bit limited.
"Most men used to be fine with leg hair on women."
Men were fine with it because women didn't wear short skirts and dresses until the 20th century. They rarely even saw a woman's legs until they were in a dark bedroom.
come on, people had sex in the daytime too back then
Depending on how dark it was, they probably didn't see them then, either.
I agree and it is part of why I have stopped reading CHH as much. The commentary is typically very surface level, and you kinda get the point after a few paragraphs. Maybe if CHH took more time per essay the quality would be higher -- or maybe she just doesn't often have much deeper analysis to offer. I don't know.
I kind of agree with you about yesterday's article but I think she did a good job explaining her mistake was basically generalizing something she personally felt.
I am married to a man and a lot of what she says doesn't apply to me not cause im a crazy feminist (CHH and I are extremely similar politically) but just cause I am more of a decisionmaker I guess.
Today's I thought was more on point
The other thing that made yesterday's article not resonate with me is that I see MANY times more "I'm a feminist but still am submissive/love heels/etc" than "all relationships must be exactly even or misogyny" so there was a touch of arguing vs a strawman.
The last name thing is barely changing, incidentally, and it was never than uncommon not to change. 14% of women kept their name in the 1960s and 22% do now, by the first stats I find.
I think this illustrates a real point, related to other responses: feminists fought for the rights to work, to abortion, to vote, to divorce, and so on because these are extremely important for establishing a reasonable baseline for women’s freedom. It has been widely observed for probably as long as women have been shaving their legs that this is an anti-feminist, unfair burden, but after a century it’s still vanishingly rare not to shave outside queer circles, because (I take it) it’s just not that huge a problem in the grand scheme of things to make it worth pushing against the water you swim in and your own internalized sense of attractiveness, for most women. Similarly for the last name discourse, except innovation here pushes against much deeper held cultural traditions in what feels to a substantial number of people, even women, like deracinated anomie. In short, I’m pretty much certain these things are not in the class that will be changed by activism and consciousness-raising, though they may well be changed eventually by random drift.
I agree. I wanted more from this article. I don’t mind looking pretty to get a man’s attention, but I wonder why specifically the things I do are considered pretty to a man. This article felt like a half baked take with the excuse of not being a radical feminist. I guess if nothing else, this article made me realize I am in fact a radical feminist who wants to love men.
"Men center women’s opinions and female attention constantly."
When a man centers a woman's opinions -- in all of the domains you have mentioned in this article -- he is pursuing sex. And us men have been very comfortable with our desire for sex for a very long time, and often apply a "problem solving" attitude towards it.
Men are asking you for insider information from your perspective as a woman -- in the pursuit of sex. I think men are not asking you for insider information from your perspective as a woman in other domains. Our centering of women's opinions as having primacy is quite tactical and pragmatic.
If my theory here is correct, you will get requests from men for articles asking how to keep sex alive in a marriage with kids, but will not get requests from men about how to "be a good dad"*.
(*) Mmmmmmaybe you'd get a request for an article about how to be an adequate enough dad that your wife isn't so irate with you over parenting that she won't have sex with you.
I disagree. The men who seem most thirsty for inside tips are usually the ones who want a more profound connection. My hypothesis is that's *why* they're thirsty - they want to *be seen* a certain way by women, more than just have sex with them.
If you just wanna have sex with women you really don't need CHH to critique your business casual look
Yep. Most men actually want relationships (something I used to not believe.) The amount of men whose ideal romantic scenario is casual sex was something like 2% in my survey.
I think you're both right that the deep "want" is wanting connection. 100% agree.
But...the guys aren't asking for a woman's guide to listening empathically, are they? :-)
Dr John Delony talked about this in a call-in segment once...a lot of the time we (men) come at this from a disconnected, relationally impoverished background and
1. Rely on our romantic connection for *all* of our connection. Not enough close friends! "My husband has no close friends" is totally a thing for couples with young children.
2. Rely on sexual intimacy for all intimacy in a romantic relationship. So physical touch, but only if it's sexual, sex as the only way to feel emotionally close, etc.
Men want relationships and profound connection! But sometimes we think that all we have is a hammer...
I think that there's something to this - I absolutely agree that this "impoverishment" is at play, and that sex plays a larger role because of it. And, I would argue that what I'm about to say doesn't really contradict you because often it is in search of sex lol. But... there's a ton of advice (much bad) out there along the lines of "listen empathically" on this stuff, I think. A lot of TRP was just about affect and conversational tactics, all the "be feminist bc women like it" stuff, the fear over unattractive hobbies arguably fits here too.
True - and what CHH gets asked for could just be market dynamics.
Like, in some ways CHH is that rare unicorn who can explain clothing attractiveness from the perspective of a woman but in a mode of exposition that makes sense to neurodivergent men.
Maybe we're asking her "give me some fashion advice using words I understand" because that's just not out there anywhere else. :-)
I...might regret asking this and be unable to un-read it, but I'll bite.
TRP isn't actually the ones saying "be feminist because women like it, right?" Or is the discourse even weirder than I thought.
Oh no w TRP I was thinking stuff like negging, etc. ranging from the decent in retrospect to the horrifying lol
I was just trying and failing on the spot to come up w a good counter example. Buzzfeed?
I think this is a little reductive. Admittedly, it's been a while since I was single, but I recall being at least as interested in finding a girlfriend as getting laid. Part of wanting a girlfriend was to get laid, but that was only part of it.
It's totally reductive! And...it's kind of *accidentally* reductive. Like, my point is *not* "men only want to get laid." I think men want to get laid, and want romantic relationships and even deep connection.
But I do think "men's centering woman's opinions", which is where this started...is disproportionately focused on sex and _desire_.
I have to disagree. OK, sort of disagree. I will stipulate that men are rarely not pursuing sex, at least a little bit. But your comment reduces any guy with interest in what a woman might have to say to "he's looking to get laid." Can men and women be friends? Contra Billy Crystal, I think so.
As for articles, seems like either of your presented options could be equally likely. CHH would have personal knowledge of keeping sex alive - from the woman's side. Anything she has to say about what a man can do to keep sex alive would be observational - just like her observations of what makes a good dad.
My personal feeling on this matter is that inequalities are fine in a relationship, and basically inevitable. I mean, I am a woman in a lesbian relationship and there are even inequalities between us (she’s a lot stronger than me physically, but I make significantly more money. She cooks way more, but I clean way more. She doesn’t shave, and I shave my armpits and legs even though she doesn’t care about me being clean shaven at all. If we have kids I probably would do more childcare because I would like it more, while she would take care of other tasks instead).
The problem, to me, is if those inequalities start stacking up in one persons disfavor and give the other parter a serious upper hand against them. None of us will ever be fully “perfectly balanced”, even if you are in homosexual relationships, because we are all individual humans with our own personalities and priorities.
100% agree!
Ha! Interesting first example for me. I stopped shaving legs and armpits years ago (still a little bit of a struggle to feel comfortable in public in the summer but I’m working on it) and my husband, while I’m sure he doesn’t actively prefer it that way, says he’s fine with it. On the other hand I won’t let him grow a beard (I mean, it’s a free country, but I’ve made it clear it would turn me off immensely)… so our relationship is currently unequal in that he is required to shave and I’m not. Score!
It is true that if I were dating I would almost certainly start shaving again to, as you say, not limit the dating pool. Man, being married is awesome.
Part of the problem with shaving (in both sexes) is that fully grown out hair is soft, but stubble is hard and irritating. So if you stop shaving, you have to really commit to it, otherwise you'll back out half way through the transition period because it sucks. The reverse is not true - going from fully grown out to shaved is a pretty quick affair with the right tools.
Yes, this is usually at least part of beard preferences I've gotten in relationships (whether shaved always or grown out) -- my stubble is so bad. I've irritated a couple faces in my time...
Similarly, I feel incredibly lucky because my husband actually likes leg hair and pubic hair - I’m the one who shaves once in a while to fit into societal norms, but not because of him. Sometimes we joke that he’s the perfect partner for a straight woman - a male lesbian.
I think it's different if it's someone who already loves you! Although it is funny that the double standard goes the other way around. A beard might be more evident too, it's on the face lol
How would have reacted if your husband had instead said he’d really prefer you continue to shave your legs?
I promise I don’t mean this as a gotcha, I’m just genuinely curious.
this is a great question. i would probably argue about it and try to convey how much i hate doing it. maybe insist i'm not doing it anyway. but if he were like "well i hate shaving my face and so i won't do that either" well that's perfectly logical and valid, so i would probably make that trade. or not make the trade at first and then eventually give in because i hate the beard so much.
How do you get deodorant onto your actual skin if you don’t shave your armpits? Do you just not grow a lot of hair?
My husband is a very hairy person and I tell him every month or two that he really ought to shave his armpits (which he then does). Otherwise the deodorant just ends up caked in the hair.
deodorant ends up caked in the hair. it would be smart to go with a gel or spray or whatever like men tend to do, but i have an affinity for a particular solid deodorant so i've stayed with it.
i also often forget to wear deodorant at all. many of my answers to questions like this are simply "i'm a gross person"
😂😂😂
Trim the hair as short as possible with scissors 👍🏾
My anecdote on this is that in high school a girlfriend decided to stop shaving her legs and I was fine w/ it, she's the one who eventually got bothered, lol. I've also had multiple partners w/ different beard preferences.
I don't think is generalizable, but I find it interesting.
I feel like a lot of people, and by extension you in having to respond to them, are mixing up equal and identical. If you do the childcare and he takes care of the lawn, as long as you both feel like the effort you expend in trying to run the household matches then I don't feel like that's unequal at all and I find it kind of baffling that you describe your relationship in such terms. Most people have preferences of things they don't mind doing as much compared to others, and I think that kind of complimentary coverage is one of the major upsides of being in a relationship.
I can see more of the discussion of inequality mattering where it comes to decision making, where you've voluntarily placed him at the head and as the final arbiter, but my understanding is a part of that is that it helps you both deal with your diagnosed neuroses and make life easier. I think having that as a default expectation and assumption would be bad, but as you've said the same could be said of a lot of different norms not just this one.
It's just that taking care of the lawn is almost invariably.... way less work and thought and planning and consideration and demanding than childcare.
Scrolling through the comments and my eye caught "taking care of the lawn" so I thought this was a comment on grooming.
True, which is my biggest issue with this framing when it comes from trad influencers who believe that the division of labor in gender roles is natural and unchanging. It’s why I said as long as each other thinks the effort is matched then it’s equal in my book, if they don’t that’s where resentment and bitterness stem from and there should be a discussion and renegotiation. Based on her articles CHH and her husband seem happy with their balance, and that’s good enough for me unless something changes and it no longer feels equitable.
Yeah, I think "we each do different things because we like it that way" is substantively different from "I give more / get less and that's OK." The current discourse that ties itself in knots about the male gaze, what's empowering vs. degrading, etc. is sometimes genuinely grappling with the latter - especially when delving into the social contexts and unconscious conditioning that shape our individual preferences - but sometimes going overboard and attacking examples of the former.
So I actually generally think this is a really good article and overall agree with you, but:
"And I don’t see this as anti-feminist framing, because this logic puts men in a much easier spot than women! Men can do whatever they want to attract women, and never have to worry about whether they’re “centering the female gaze.” They can just do things."
OK, why do men do things? Why spend all those hours at the gym? Why do you think we pursue ruinously tiresome careers, spend huge amounts of our energy and endanger our health in tournament-like status competitions, and so on?
Because status attracts women!
'Whatever we want'? You mean, like video games, fixing cars, anime, and arguing with people smarter than you on Substack? No, we do things we think are high status, like work long hours to make money.
We're not allowed to admit we're 'centering the female gaze', because that would imply you had trouble attracting women and therefore were incompetent and thus low status....
...but, it most definitely drives a LOT of male behavior.
Even Batman had to admit, "Chicks love the car."
I read that as kind of the point she's making. Men do things to attract women without fearing we're committing a thought crime.
Yes, exactly.
But there is a thought crime--look at the whole 'objectification' thing. You're not even supposed to want sex these days. Not to mention the submissive role feminists advocate for men having is diametrically opposed to what the majority of women actually want. Of course a lot of guys just rebel overall and go way in the opposite direction--the hardcore redpill and so on.
I should add that I basically agree with the overall thrust of her argument--the sexes don't want the same things on average, so true equality is unlikely. I should probably post a supportive comment in addition--it's a bit unfair to someone who's written something you 80% agree with to post about the 20% you don't.
But this is the opposite end of things. Everyone is ok with men trying to look good for women. You're talking about *wanting* women, which of course is more politicized.
Hmmmm..."You're not even supposed to want sex these days." FWIW my impression of where we are, at least in the US is:
- What it is to be masculine is contended.
- There's a LOT of backlash to anything even remotely feminist.
- There are lots of people saying it's actually fine for men to want sex in a number of different ways, some (but not all) of which can be kinda gross.
This might be unsettle-able in an "I lick my finger, hold it up to the wind and go 'no no I think the state of the zeitgeist is blowing this way'" kind of way.
Yeah, I agree, it's pretty place-dependent. For that matter the Mommy Wars on Team Woman are pretty place-dependent too--whether you get more flak for having kids or not having kids depends heavily on who your friends are.
I think this is true but also under-rates status competition *between men*.
Absolutely the case too!
Obviously I get why this is much more difficult for women -- having the role of "being attractive" be made "one's place" since forever makes it a lot more fraught to figure out what *you* want vs. what *society* wants.
For me, at least, the strong curiosity about takes on women's attraction is due to ... wanting to be attractive to women, or to see myself as someone who is, I suppose. That's something that is not intuitive, I think particularly for men who did not stand out socially in high school or college. That's partly because women's attraction is weirdly politicized and it's quite common to deny it exists altogether. and, Post-classical Hollywood there's been less of a male-targeted message about what it is to be attractive to a woman. At least for me growing up, what felt like the dominant trope was "adam sandler lookin ass dude is a schlub which pisses her off but they get together at the end anyway" - the tail end of an era that was about to inspire a firm (rhetorical, if not necessarily actual) demand for men cleaning up their act. And for the good! but we need a manual for this stuff lol
Growing up I was friends w/ or dating enough girls to know what *wasn't* true about them (they did not seem asexual or hypergamously pursuing only gigachad physiognomy), which I guess put me ahead of the curve. Still, I remember seeing Turning Red as a full adult and being kinda surprised by its frank depiction of girl *lust,* which is something I hadn't seen before in that genre (ofc I'm not watching a ton of kids movies these days.... so). Curious how insufferable I woulda been if I saw carter murphy-mayhew as a kid... or maybe I just woulda been more on my guard around those scene girls
I'd be interested in perspective from zoomers. My assumption is that given the rhetoric of the gender war, it's harder for young guys who are not given to confidence to tell why a girl would like them at all. Heart broke many times watching Adolescence, but the cute (murdering) lead calling himself ugly hit home
Not sure it helps resolve a cultural issue by opening up an economic front but there is a clear analogy to the trade relations.
CHH doesn't value shaving her legs directly, but Mr. CHH does, and it means more to Mr. CHH than it costs for CHH to do. But although that would be a nice thing for CHH to do to maximize their combined well-being, CHH also gets things from Mr. CHH (yard work, cleaning) that someone has to do and would cost CHH more than Mr. CHH.
Trade indicates difference, but not always hierarchy. The 1950s breadwinner and housewife dynamic is arguably an illustration of comparative advantage between a wealthy developed country and a poor underdeveloped country. The housewife can't earn from a job (or not nearly as much), so her most productive option is to do the things that a job precludes in exchange for being taken care of by her husband. But while the housewife's "choice" may make her life better (than say being destitute on her own, or insisting on working just as much as her husband but with them both poor and busier), there is nothing equal or fair about it. You'd clear rather be the man in that circumstance, and the woman's quality of life is more dependent on the man's generosity (which varies) than any universal moral sense of what she deserves (equality obviously).
So I can see why chore specialization leaves a bad taste in people's mouths, but it's the most natural thing for people to do in a relationship. The modern relationship has more people earning at parity, and many women our earning their partners, but some division of labor is in order.
There’s gotta be a word for guys who are neither “alpha” nor “beta” (insert vomit emoji after both of those terms). I don’t like telling other people what to do and hate being told what to do (outside, like, bedroom stuff). I’m pretty much a bro type personality wise but if I was with a partner where the decision-making wasn’t 50/50, I’d be really bored! It would be like going on a date where you did all the talking and the other person just smiled and nodded.
That’s most guys I think! Rarely do binary roles fit anyone perfectly!
It’s seriously cool that you own it, I definitely wasn’t trying to be judgmental.
So Vox Day, the originator of ‘sigma’, has a six-category system involving alpha (super-alpha), beta, now rebranded Bravo (lesser alpha), delta (average joe), sigma (‘lone wolf’ alpha who still pulls hot girls), gamma (resentful liberal), and omega (total loser).
I guess you’d be a delta, but given that he invented the sigma category to cover himself I am somewhat suspicious of the whole enterprise.
omega males be fartin
I know I experience the phenomenon of getting in discourse about a specific thing in a relationship that I have baggage on, and then because I'm agitated getting partisan in a broader discussion. E.g. here you have taking the first move for men, and various beauty standards for women. If others have the same reaction, then the conversation can get polarized around "passive" and "active" regardless of whether that's a reflection of real preferences.
I was commenting yesterday about being, basically, a beta in this sense -- because I was thinking from a couple of specific angles. But of course every relationship I've had has basically just been equitable. Dates happened when we wanted to treat each other, give and take on grooming, etc.
I think most healthy modern relationships are like that! All the ones I've seen have seemed to be.
I think that part of this discourse is a backlash against the idea that women who don't do these things are gross or "lesser" and get discriminated against in more ways than dating.
Like body hair removal and makeup are fine expectations to have in a relationship but should not impact me getting a good job in a way that it wouldn't impact men.
I think part of the issue around this discourse is how much these things end up getting conflated.
You end up with a lot of "women should not have to.." "but I want to" "only because of social conditioning" stuff that imo plays very differently if you're discussing who will date you vs who will treat you fairly.
Agreed. It would be ideal if women's appearance didn't matter at all in society outside of sexual attraction (where it would be reasonably relevant, as well as men's appearance.) I think we've come a long way with things like women generally not expected to wear heels and skirts to work in most environments, but still have a long way to go.
So much of this is subconscious as well. Like people won't say "women should wear makeup" but will just feel the women who do are more professional... without knowing why.
I remember seeing a study somewhere that heavily bearded men get fewer job offers. I don't think it is quite as unequal as you think. And how would an interviewer even know if you don't shave your armpits ?
But it's not right that what women do to attract men is focused on their appearance while men get to focus on substantive qualities. (The tall/short thing sucks and is mean, but they don't spend any of their time trying to change it.) The time it takes every day to be an attractive woman is outrageous.
I don't have opinions on whether women should shave their legs. I do if someone will see them. My brother's fiancé doesn't shave any of her body hair. They're both astrophysicists. I'm really proud of my brother for who he has become. He's an attractive, smart person. He could have married someone whose best quality is that they are hot, but that's not what he's doing. Is GF is awesome.
My point is, women are damned if they do and damned if they don't when they spend time on their appearance. We would benefit from societal efforts to lower the amount of time when spend on their appearance. And I think it is possible. Style has changed enormously throughout history. I'm not attracted to men that wear tights or silver wigs. We can make it so being an attractive woman doesn't involve huge swaths of time and money. That's where our focus should be.
totally agree with this comment
"The time it takes every day to be an attractive woman is outrageous."
i am lucky that my spouse is attracted to me even though i don't shave or wear heels or wear makeup or really do anything with my hair. i did those things before i met him and god i can't imagine going back to expending that kind of time and effort. if he was like "oh i'll do more chores so you can spend that time making yourself look prettier" ummm maybe it's not rational but i would hate that. personal preference there i guess but i think that many women would indeed like to not feel pressure to spend as much time and money on this stuff as they currently do!
Yeah i actually don’t think it’s that outrageous? A lot of the really time consuming stuff is more about looking formal than sexually attractive. I haven’t had a professional haircut or manicure in like 10 years. It takes 5 minutes to do my makeup.
That's a good distinction between sexy and formal. I think you're right that formal takes longer. Professional, in many cases, takes way longer than sexy. News anchors and politicians, for example.
To be tactless, it kind of depends on your "base" attractiveness. If you have great skin you don't need much or any foundation. If you aren't thin, you kind of need to make up for it with excellent hair/makeup to still pass as attractive. And women have a much smaller window of acceptable weight to qualify as attractive. Meanwhile, I am attracted to men within like a 70-80lb weight range.
The monetary cost is certainly more for women unless you just buy men's version of stuff--razors, shampoo/conditioner.... make-up is obscenely expensive now, even at the drug store. And bras are expensive, even if you get the more utilitarian ones. I'd get them in six packs if I could.
Disagree about the “weight window”, it’s all about how it’s distributed on the woman.
I've been thinking about this comment. My gut agrees, but which of these points are you making:
1. The time it takes to be attractive enough to attract men is very large, absolutely? ("Men are picky")
2. The time it takes to be attractive enough to attract men is very large due to intrasex competition? ("It's an arms race that's gotten out of hand?")
3. The time it takes to be attractive is a sunk cost because it _only_ solves the one problem of being attractive to men, where-as the time men spend on doing things to be appealing to women *also* benefit them in a vacuum? ("This is a time sink compared to the self improvement men get to do?")
There's clearly a value judgment you're making - personally I happen to agree with the intuition and if I were a woman I'd probably be frustrated by it.
Probably number 3 is the closest to what I'm thinking.
I was just reading another commenter's blog - turns out he worked as a dating coach for men...he said something I hadn't read before that ties into this.
https://getbettersoon.substack.com/p/the-state-of-the-romantic-marketplace
For men, attractive women are scarce - in that it's hard to get matches on dating apps.
For women, quality relationships are scarce - in that it's hard to get the guy to stick around/commit.
When it comes to "things to be attractive to start a relationship", I agree with (3) and feel your pain...most of what I had to do to be attractive in my twenties was stuff I would have done anyway: tried to get a good job, moved into my own housing (so much easier last century, I feel for the kids), exercise, have hobbies and a generally interesting life.
So my thought putting this together is that when it comes to the things women can do to improve their odds of getting a relationship (and not just a date/match sex) with a guy...I would not put "be more attractive" on that list. If the relationship started, she is attractive enough.
Where this breaks down is: I don't know what those things she can do would actually be.
I think it’s more that on the overall spectrum, men are physically ugly, women are hot. So it’d make sense for guys to focus more elsewhere to impress women. I’m not so sure what men do to impress women in free countries is comparatively very substantive though.
This is a funny example for me because as a male virginal teenager I was under the impression (from porn and the advice of two fellow virgin friends) that women wanted men to have their pubic hair shaved.
Thankfully after my first sexual encounter and discovering my partner’s pubic area was unshaved and I had no care about it, I realized there was no need to shave myself.
I don’t know if I ever really cared about women shaving their arm pits. I’m sure I would probably follow along if friends made remarks about women with armpits in middle/high school, but my wife rarely shaves her armpits (e.g we’re going to the beach) and I’ve never minded.
Pubic hair feels way more individual in preference. I've heard guys say they expect a woman to have it and find it a turnoff if we don't (I think millennial men are different lmao.) maybe this is another article topic.
> two fellow virgin friends
Blind leading the blind
If I'm going to nitpick I should also list the things I agree with here:
1. You begin by acknowledging the weakness of a prior example
2. You bring up an excellent example with the body hair that's facially neutral but points up the fact that the sexes are attracted to different things.
3. You acknowledge many of the complaints men have about women's preferences
4. You point out the silliness of much of the 'empowering' narrative
5. You argue heterosexuality is OK (and if it isn't, we've got a problem...)
6. You provide a realistic solution to the problem (inequality is OK if both parties like it)
7. You focus on making people happy
8. You're fair to both sides as far as I can tell.
This is very nicely done and very well argued. Thank you!
You’re on fire. One point I’ll add to: it’s female biology to “center men” when it comes to attraction. Women WANT male attention for being sexy. I submit exhibits A and B: TikTok and IG. No one forces women to wear skimpy outfits or take sexy photos or dance provocatively alone in their bedroom. So why do they do it? Because they want sexual attention from men. And that’s OK! It’s why I lift weights and stay in shape—because I want women to find me attractive! And there’s nothing wrong with either sex wanting to do this.
I feel like the link between "female biology" and "TikTok/IG" is tenuous.
TikTok and IG are computer programs that gamify a certain kind of online interaction.
So they reveal a preference, but this strikes me as a *social* phenomenon that may have biological roots, but this link is a hypothesis, not empirical. How would we tease apart the role of biology, culture, and technology?
I don't think you're totally wrong here, but I see a lot of "it's evolutionary biology, duh" in gender discourse these days, so I'm poking it with a stick.
Yeah that’s a good point no doubt. And to be fair some female friends have told me they feel pressure to post sexy photos or videos because other women are doing it so they sorta have to. I enjoy aspects of social media, but clearly it has adverse affects in lots of ways. Actually published a post today to that point. https://getbettersoon.substack.com/p/influencers-arent-normal-people-what
I agree with that post you wrote pretty much 100%...one of the things I try to take seriously as a father is trying to help my kids understand the heavily distorted lens that is "what they see online."
I’ve grown up terminally online and I can’t relate to the first sentence at all lol. Why would e-girls “make” me join them in posting thirst traps?