Apparently, I'm in the minority because I think the woman in the Levis ad is sickly looking. The Jessica Biel pictures were ok, but she needs to eat something too.
That's why I called skinny girl "pretty" since that usually confines the discussion to someone's face. (In fact, her face is beautiful, but she's definitely twiggy.)
Yeah, she stands with her hips back. Somehow she avoided learning the "don't look at my ass" tucked-butt stance, lucky woman. But it doesn't hurt that, god bless her, she's carrying some weight on them as well.
Based on a TV show I watched last night (also on that topic: Agassi!!!!!!11111!!!!One!) , I am compelled to ask: Does spousal privilege in general prevent the non-defendant spouse (nds) from being called to testify as to knowledge of the defendant spouse's criminal activity (not of the spousal or child abuse-type) which nds had prior to the marriage? Under the Federal Rules? Under California rules? If no one feels like doing research for me, I may do it myself.
IIRC - two privileges, one allows a spouse to refuse to testify against the other, but this privilege is held by the spouse who is refusing to testify (i.e., the spouse charged with the crime has no legal say in the matter); the other prevents a spouse from testifying as to what the other said, this privilege is held by the accused.
The first, I believe, applies to testifying about anything (pre or post marriage), the second applies only to marital communications (e.g., if they ask the spouse about what he/she saw the other spouse do, they can testify to that).
Spousal privilege prevents (with exceptions) one spouse from being called in a criminal trial against the other spouse.
Marital privilege prevents the spouse from being forced to testify as to confidential marital communications in a criminal or civil trial.
So the answer is that under Federal and (far more broadly) under California law, the nds would not have to, but could choose to, testify. So whart ugh said. I'm pretty sure this means one character on the show lied to the other, since that character A told character B that B no longer needed to have any worries about A's potential testimony, when in fact B only has no worries if B doesn't piss off A.
But a spouse could always choose to waive spousal privilege and testify, couldn't s/he? How is the law different depending on if the knowledge predates the marriage?
It turns out to be irrelevant legally, except for maybe in a federal civil trial, like forfeiture. But it's very relevant to the show, since these two characters have married at an extraordinarily early stage in their relationship only because B suggested it as a way to solve A's problems with trusting B not to eventually use B's knowledge of A's criminality against A. I'd be far more clear, but I assume that there might be other commenters who watch this show and haven't seen the relevant episode.
w/d: were you watching The Sopranos? I seem to remember an episode where Adriana went to a lawyer to ask whether marrying Christopher would get her off the hook with the FBI people.
I know plenty of people do, which seems a little strange to me, since just about every conversation I've ever had with every male friend is, I don't know, 20-40% just like this.
Ok, slight hyperbole, but in my experience, this is what guys talk about.
37 -- I keep hearing this statement all my life -- "this is what guys talk about" -- but almost all of the "who's hott" discussions I have participated in since high school junior high school, have been on the internet -- I must hang out with a different crowd or something.
Is the polite fiction the notion that males aren't supposed to talk about this in public/mixed company, or is it the notion that males are expected to have these sorts of conversations as forthright demonstrations of their unquestioned heterosexual maleness?
45 -- That's interesting, because that's what a large number of my guy friends tell me too, and they don't have any reason to lie to me. God knows they don't make a habit of hiding other, different, unsavory behaviors from me.
Maybe this is why it's so easy to fall back into male friendships
Is this generally considered the case with male friendships? I generally think of my old male friends the way I think of myself from a few years ago (as in, "how could I/he have been such an idiot"), while I have a much easier time reconnecting with old female friends.
The polite fiction would be that guys aren't always discussing whether women are physically attractive. (I think it's not entirely a fiction; I don't think I spend that much time on it. Ogged knew I would say that.) Which would be why not to talk about it in public/mixed company, because it shatters the polite fiction. (And my answer to 40 would be no, but it's not my blog.)
I picture ogged and his friends having these conversations while cruising slowly down the road in a beamer, pointing out the women on the street as they talk about them.
I rarely have "who's hot" conversations with my male friends. I have two friends who are both incorrigible lechers so if I am drinking with them it does come up more often but, tbh, most of the 'hotness' conversations I've had I've had with women.
Look people, ogged just recently lost part of a rib, a region of the male body known to contain significant amounts of vital essence. He's feeling unmanned, and needs to do some public ass-ogling to reassure himself that he's still got some spunk left in the tank.
It kills me that I've heard of Ms. Biel even though I've never even considered seeing a single movie she's been in and from the photos sort of wondered if she was the woman in Lost. And now, not only have I heard of her, I have an opinion about her ass.
54 - I picture ogged and his friends having these conversations while cruising slowly down the road in a beamer, pointing out the women on the street as they talk about them.
I picture ogged and his friends having these conversations while cruising slowly down the road in a beamer, pointing out the women on the street as they talk about them.
Not a beemer, because I don't hang out with Iranians, but of course I've done this. Seriously, some of you other guys haven't? Let me guess, you were off somewhere listening to Sufjan Stevens?
ttaM said, most of the 'hotness' conversations I've had I've had with women.
In my experience, women talk about this subject a lot. Too much, in my view. And my women friends are very likely to add a physical description when you ask what a third, non-present, party is like. I wasn't asking for a physical description, I was asking what she was like.
I spend very little time discussing the hotness of people who aren't either within visual range or expected to be shortly. Shortly might be as much as a day or two. The driving around thing happens, though much less since I've lived in New York.
I think my "who's hot" conversations happen with my male and female friends with equal frequency; the subjects of the conversations, to be honest, probably skew female by about 70/30.
70: I think the percentage goes down as you age, but those conversations are pretty common. Among groups of friends that don't have those explicit conversations, it's there as subtext.
Seriously, this is what guys do. Enlightened guys just don't let it happen at work, or if it does happen at work it's very discreet and doesn't impact anyone's performance reviews, etc.
Seriously, some of you other guys haven't? Let me guess, you were off somewhere listening to Sufjan Stevens?
I've found myself in the middle of plenty of guys-ogling-women conversations, and they've always seemed like desperate and overbearing exercises in masculine posturing conducted by gender-issue-laden obsessives with something to prove.
Not that that label could possibly apply to anyone here, of course.
I've found myself in the middle of plenty of guys-ogling-women conversations, and they've always seemed like desperate and overbearing exercises in masculine posturing conducted by gender-issue-laden obsessives with something to prove.
I'll grant stras that there are offensive ways to do this, and I've heard conversations like this that made me want to punch the guys, but usually I'm not bothered.
This is true. When done properly, ogling and discussing of the sort I describe in 79 is not something of which the subjects are ever aware, and it's not discussed in desperation.
86 - I think the difference is whether animated guys in question are "excited" and respectful in their tone by what they see versus derogatory in their tone.
87: Yeah, this could just be a different strokes, different folks kind of thing. I tend to think of these types of discussions as similar to conversational candy: easy, pointless, and enjoyable, and possibly bad for you if you consume too much. Same with political discussions, gender discussions, and, frankly, most conversations that aren't rooted in some specific decision to be made.
91: They were unavailable. And if they had been available, I probably would have had to use rubber cement to make them adhere. Apparently licking postage stamps and stickers is disgusting to the average Chinese citizen. The post offices always had a station with little pots of glue to use to seal your envelopes and attach the stamps. The counter was always covered in thick strands of stray rubber cement, and it was common for lots of envelopes to get stuck to each other in the mailbox.
So, even if available, stars would have been a lot of trouble. Plus, having the students' papers all stuck together might have given some of them the wrong idea about how enthusiastic I was with their writing.
Eh. And I should say that I don't find this sort of conversation very creepy, just a little, and just when it goes on for too long. Nothing wrong with ogling attractive people, it's the sort of desultory 'shopping' tone that strikes me weirdly.
I like her sweater-vest in the linked photo. It's not every woman who looks hot in a sweater-vest. And with that last bit of objectivizing, I'm outta here!
On most white women (actually, I suppose most non-black women) the top contour of the upper lip is three concave-upward curves -- a long swoop from the corner of the mouth to under the nose, a short curve under the nose, and then another long swoop down to the other corner. When you plump the top lip out with collagen, the two outer curves go from concave-up to concave-down, producing a shape that's common on black women, but much less common on non-surgically enhanced non-black women.
I think you're probably right about the lips, JM. Here's a picture from seven years ago, and though she has nice lips, they (especially the top lip) aren't as full as they are now.
I think the difference is whether animated guys in question are "excited" and respectful in their tone by what they see versus derogatory in their tone.
I think they start getting decidedly creepy when the subjects in question are held up to an imagined ideal of Hotness and critiqued against that. Thus, "she's very pretty" or "she's really hot" turns into "she looks sickly" or "she needs to eat more" (which I'll note has become the new "she needs to lose weight." Notice how as one has become less acceptable in Liberal, Enlightened circles, the other has become increasingly common).
12: He may occasionally write a decent post, but he's a complete misogynist nightmare. I actually banned him from my place.
As to the "hot chick" thread frequency, well, it's Ogged, after all. Of course people have those kind of conversations, but obviously different topics resonate differently in different contexts.
On most white women (actually, I suppose most non-black women) the top contour of the upper lip is three concave-upward curves -- a long swoop from the corner of the mouth to under the nose, a short curve under the nose, and then another long swoop down to the other corner. When you plump the top lip out with collagen, the two outer curves go from concave-up to concave-down, producing a shape that's common on black women, but much less common on non-surgically enhanced non-black women.
Based solely on the fact that you, of all people, know that, I'm willing to concede that men are oppressive bastards, and I apologize for my gender.
I think they start getting decidedly creepy when the subjects in question are held up to an imagined ideal of Hotness and critiqued against that.
Yeah, that's the 'shopping' tone that I find weird. "OMG she's so hottt!!1!!" isn't particularly creepy, "She'd be perfect if she just took off/put on some weight, and dyed her hair, I dunno... chestnut?" is. It starts sounding like people are wondering if the couch they're looking at comes in camel.
Ok, slight hyperbole, but in my experience, this is what guys talk about.
I don't think I've ever really had a conversation with my male friends about the hotness of anyone (though I have sometimes with some female friends), although the last time I was in Berlin I was constantly pointing out the attractive women I and the friend with whom I was staying passed. That got old after a while, though.
I think they start getting decidedly creepy when the subjects in question are held up to an imagined ideal of Hotness and critiqued against that.
Yeah, this can be uncomfortable, but I think it's often just a way to debate varying conceptions of The Hot, and to talk about one's preferences. "I like a nice, tight ass, like Rachel Wacholder's." "Rachel Wacholder?! She has a boy's ass. No, she doesn't have an ass, she needs to eat! Jessica Biel has an ass...." Like that.
115: If memory serves, there was a link back? But it was a while ago, I could be wrong, in which case I regret slandering your friend, even though his blog kind of icks me out.
Well, insofar as the job of the guy at WWTDD (I think it's a commercial enterprise, not just some guy's hobby) is to write something funny about non-events in celebrity world, I think he's brilliant.
"I like a nice, tight ass, like Rachel Wacholder's." "Rachel Wacholder?! She has a boy's ass. No, she doesn't have an ass, she needs to eat! Jessica Biel has an ass...." Like that.
But these discussions almost never take place in subjective terms ("I like X, I like Y"). They take place in objective, prescriptive/proscriptive terms ("X is hot, so-and-so should do Y to be more hot," etc.). It's a far more possessive and creepier way to discuss beauty. It's not about showing appreciation for what you think is beautiful; it's about pointing out deficiencies and deviations from an objective standard of beauty.
107, 127: What? I look at people. I have well formed thoughts on collagen-lips because they look weird to me: they started showing up sometime in the 90's, and all of a sudden half the actresses I was looking at looked as though they'd been punched in the mouth.
Seriously, that top-lip shape isn't something you see on women who aren't in media, which means that it's artificial.
It's not about showing appreciation for what you think is beautiful; it's about pointing out deficiencies and deviations from an objective standard of beauty.
Depends on the conversation, and also how you read it. Like I say, I take the pointing out of deviations to be a way of discussing the standard itself. If we all thought like LB, with her three upward concave curves, maybe we could discuss it in those terms, but most people think "I like so-and-so's such-and-such, not someone else's such-and-such."
Not really. But I'm soulless, suspect that most human relationships are relationships of convenience, and worry much more about the harms people cause by overestimating their concern about others than the harms they cause by underestimating it. So you probably shouldn't go by me.
Like I say, I take the pointing out of deviations to be a way of discussing the standard itself.
I'm not sure how you can discuss a standard, and deviations from such, without implicitly or explicitly critiquing the subject for failing to meet that standard. And in fact most of these discussions I've seen, here and elsewhere, include any number of fairly demeaning characterizations of fairly beautiful people by any number of loveless male geeks who would presumably not turn their noses up at Rachel Wacholder's boylike ass in person.
And in fact most of these discussions I've seen, here and elsewhere, include any number of fairly demeaning characterizations of fairly beautiful people by any number of loveless male geeks who would presumably not turn their noses up at Rachel Wacholder's boylike ass in person.
That's sounds suspiciously like, "You're not sufficiently worthy to make such criticism," sj. Which is probably roughly true, and may be why Wacholder's not putting much stock in such discussions.
I'm not sure how you can discuss a standard, and deviations from such, without implicitly or explicitly critiquing the subject for failing to meet that standard
You can't. Price of doing business.
who would presumably not turn their noses up at Rachel Wacholder's boylike ass in person
Exactly, which is a clue that they're really talking about the standard.
But a common trope in such conversations, in my experience, is that when someone starts applying such standards to people out of their league someone else will say something like, "Yeah, like you'd turn her down."
I don't entirely agree with LB's reasons, but I agree with her that the "so and so is hot" conversation is tiresome and annoying. I think, though, that it's more because the attractiveness (or not) of female celebrities is something every person on earth has an opinion on. And it's treated, unlike convos about which guys are hot, as if it were an important topic. Great hockey players is something hockey fans talk about; so and so is really smart is something people talk about in the context of praising a specific person; and when one talks about attractive men, one doesn't get into minutae about lip shape, plastic surgery, precise curve of ass, or so on. And I mean, really: yes, talking about who is and isn't attractive is in and of itself fine, but this whole assessing women thing is hardly culturally neutral. Sucks for straight boys, but the fact is you can't do the comparing hot chicks thing without, on some level, sounding like an ass.
I also personally think that part of what's tiresome about it is that so many supposedly attractive women really look very similar. It's a bit barbieish.
The point is that there's a cultural presumption that being male makes one worthy to make such criticism.
I don't know if I agree with this, not fully anyway. Women judge other women's appearances all the time too; often times much more critically and judgemntally. Usually, when men talk about women's hotness we fixate on the positives.
The point is that there's a cultural presumption that being male makes one worthy to make such criticism.
My assumption is that "worthy" doesn't much enter into it. I would think worthiness enters into it only to the extent that you expect others to respect your opinion and act in some way on the basis of it. I don't, and I doubt the majority of participants do, either. As to maleness: several people have pointed out that women are nearly as likely to critique a woman's look as a man is, so I'm not sure that maleness enters into it, either.
Erm: because even that criticism takes the framework, that (whoever the impossibly beautiful subject being criticised is) is flawed and less desirable than she could be; and the evaluator isn't ridiculous because he's wrong, he's ridiculous because not only can't he afford anything more valuable than she is, he can't even afford her. She's still a consumer good.
That criticism doesn't argue with the creepy commodification of the woman involved, just mocks the speaker for his comparatively low status.
Sucks for straight boys, but the fact is you can't do the comparing hot chicks thing without, on some level, sounding like an ass.
Which is why we don't do it around women. See Ogged's comments way upthread. It's a "guy thing". But, you are right, it does get old, even amongst ourselves.
I also personally think that part of what's tiresome about it is that so many supposedly attractive women really look very similar.
This I don't agree with. There's lots of different flavors of attractive women. It's just that certain ones get all the press.
128: If you think these sorts of conversations take place in strange "objective, prescriptive/proscriptive terms," compare it to the other equivalent guy conversations: sports, movies, music, etc. The "objective" arguments about things that are clearly subjective "who's the best guitarist," "what was the best acting job this year," "who is more clutch Papi or Larry Bird," "who was a better center, Shaq or Wilt?" is the hallmark of this sort of guy conversation. I don't do the "hotness" conversation as much, but I sure have been involved in a lot of the other ones, and they always have this tone.
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08-29-06 12:26 PM
168
She's still a consumer good.
I'm not really sure to whom you're responding, LB. But this strikes me as pretty much the standard way we discuss almost everything in the US. She is a consumer good. So is he. That, I take it, is the whole point of the romance genre fiction--the shopping and acquiring experience.
158 is a response to 156. 164 looks like a different criticism, which on the surface says that noting flaws in some impossibly beautiful subject is inherently bad. But there must be ways to discuss someone's flaws without commodifying the, right?
But we're all, in part, objects that are looked at. I'd be disturbed if I got the sense that someone couldn't see other people as anything other than objects (or, in the case of serial killers like B, victims), but it's definitely one way of relating and evaluating and talking about people. I've also had discussions about attractiveness that incorporate personality, but again, I think that's a way of talking about personality, not about the people used as examples.
164 wasn't as clear as it should have been, and, you know, while I agree with sj I don't stay up at night worrying about this. Go on assessing women all you like.
But to put 164 in a different way: when you look at some woman, impossibly beautiful or not, and start assessing her based on deviations from THE OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF BEAUTY™, what you're saying is, on some level, no one with a choice would be attracted to her. There's better out there, and she doesn't measure up. You might want her if that was all you could get (and considering who you are, that probably is all you can get) but you are objectively right to be dissatisfied with the prospect.
And that's a fucked up way to look at a person.
(Not saying this is how any of you view real women, not saying it's a huge deal, yes, I have pre-emptively lightened up, but that's why it comes off to me as creepy.)
Does anyone know much about the Transformers? They seem to be different than from when I was teenager -- much more cosmic interstellar warfare, etc, and it doesn't really work for me. There's something odd about a robot that's fighting plantary-system-spanning battles, and yet camoflauges itself as a Dodge Viper.
Tim's worldwearier-than-thou act isn't doing much for me.
I'm not intending to come across that way. What I'm saying, not well, is that everyone behaves this way, as what appears to be a matter of mechanical fact. We may not all focus on attractiveness, but we all rate people against some "objective" standard when we talk about others, or make decisions about others. I'm not sure what the other option is.
159: Yeah, and the so-and-so is pretty thing also goes without saying, but pretty much always gets said, too.
What bugs me about the whole "yeah, like you'd turn her down" thing, though, is that the implication is "well, she's not exactly perfect, but I'll take what I can get." Which is a crappy thing to overhear boys saying about very pretty girls. I mean, who the fuck wants to think, "well, my boyfriend doesn't really think I'm all that, but he'll put up with my obvious failures to look like Rachel Wacholder because hey, I'm the best he can do." But that's the inevitable conclusion one draws from these kinds of discussions. I mean, I look at these pictures of Jessica Biel to see why everyone is saying "wow, what an ass," and I think, yes, it has a nice shape; I wonder if she has cellulite? And if her ass would be considered so magnificent in person, if you could see the cellulite, or if it jiggled too much? I mean, my butt looks fine in clothes, too...
Which is maybe the answer to a question long ago asked about why some guys pride themselves on liking "unattractive" women. Most of the things that are considered unattractive in celebrities, or even in obscure women whose pictures we look at for these discussions, are things that virtually all women have: sag in some places, bulge in others, cellulite, whatever.
And these discussions seldom sound, as LB is saying, like "omg, can you believe how amazingly gorgeous this woman is?" I mean, if you saw someone who looked that polished and well-turned out and flawlessly complected in real life, you'd boggle. But we discuss these things as if in fact these people, who look better than 90-something percent of us, were the average. Partly, no doubt, because we're so bombarded with (edited, airbrushed) images of women who are really astonishingly attractive by any reasonable standard. It's like our scales are all miscalibrated, or something.
Collectively, these conversations seem to imply that the women we actually *know*, who we think, in fact, are extremely beautiful/pretty/cute/whatever, are, at best, only sort of okay.
what you're saying is, on some level, no one with a choice would be attracted to her
I think this is just wrong, LB. See w/d's 158. When I've had these conversations, and I've had a lot of them, there's always the belief, usually made explicit, that everyone being discussed is fabulously beautiful and anyone would thank his lucky stars to be with any of them. Part of the fun is saying that manifestly beautiful people are "ugly," and having your friends say "You're on crack." That's not the point of the exercise, but it's part of the fun. People like to dispute about matters of taste, and they really like to talk about members of the sex to which they're attracted, so....
Women judge other women's appearances all the time too; often times much more critically and judgemntally.
This whole, "but women do it too, and they're meaner!" thing is really naive, guys. Of course we do it. We're the objects of it, and so we're sizing each other up constantly: is she prettier than me? Her ass looks funny--what is it about those jeans that causes that? Wow, she has pretty hair--wonder how she gets it to fluff just so? What a pretty girl--is she wearing makeup, or is her skin really like that? God, that bra doesn't fit her--doesn't she know that she's bulging out the top? When you are basically self-conscious about your own appearance most of the time, you're going to be hyperconscious of otoher people's appearance, too. It's like the problem one has, after grad school, of being almost unable to read without a pen in your hand. Once you've learned the task of critically evaluating your own appearance from someone else's point of view, of thinking of yourself in public as an object to be seen, then yeah: that's how you're going to look at everyone else.
Which is probably why women do, often, overreact to these conversations that men have. We're so conscious about our *own* appearance that when we hear you guys assessing someone else (another woman), we assume that you do that to *us* when we're not listening. And jeez, if some of these guys think that that gorgeous Levis girl, who is way more beautiful than I will ever be, isn't all that pretty because she's kinda thin, I wonder what the fuck they think of *me*.
DrB says Collectively, these conversations seem to imply that the women we actually *know*, who we think, in fact, are extremely beautiful/pretty/cute/whatever, are, at best, only sort of okay.
This is flat out untrue... I don't know what I could say to emphasize this more!
Which is maybe the answer to a question long ago asked about why some guys pride themselves on liking "unattractive" women.
"Unattractive" according to some mythical and unattainable ideals? Most of us are attracted to much less "attractive" women than the purported ideal and those of us that "pride ourselves on it" is to assure women we like REAL women better. The airbrushed women are nice to look at, but they're not real and we know it.
Why do women swoon over Brad Pitt or George Clooney? I'm sure they look different, and more real, in real life and wouldn't be seen as any less attractive for it.
Collectively, these conversations seem to imply that the women we actually *know*, who we think, in fact, are extremely beautiful/pretty/cute/whatever, are, at best, only sort of okay.
This is not the intent in the conversations I've had. I think ogged's 184 gets it exactly right.
Just to reinforce the first part of 191: I not infrequently marvel at the attractiveness of women I'm friends with, and wonder if I'd think they're as hot if I didn't know them.
184: It's wrong to you; okay, in good faith, I'll accept that. But I don't think you're understanding what LB is saying, which is that "she's pretty, but. . ." is something that those of us who think of ourselves as being, like her, objects to be assessed, hear as "that woman who is much prettier than anyone I actually know in real life, is still not pretty enough." It's not a question of being "wrong"; that is, in fact, how this sort of conversation comes across, that's the effect of it on women.
Not in and of itself this one single conversation, no; but since convos like this happen constantly and all the time (and obviously *not* just when women aren't around--after all, this convo is public, and as many have pointed out, women do it too. It's not like we're stupid and you're keeping some secret from us), then any one particular instance ends up being--and this sucks for guys, I freely admit; why shouldn't you be able to appreciate pretty women?--another piece of evidence that really, women who look like me and my sisters and my friends are just, yuck.
191: Yeah, but B. isn't talking about what you guys think. She's talking about what (lots of) you say. Often. Constantly. And regardless of your actual beliefs, or even of the contradictory things that you say other times, a lot of what you say is "that impossibly hot woman over there? Objectively, not quite good enough." Which makes us, mildly, nervous and insecure.
Why do women swoon over Brad Pitt or George Clooney? I'm sure they look different, and more real, in real life and wouldn't be seen as any less attractive for it.
Because they're attractive. Women, in our culture, don't put nearly the attention men do into analyzing their sex objects as insufficiently perfect.
190 - Fair point. Hencewhy, most considerate males don't oggle in front of women. But, like somebody said above, it's not just "beauty" that gets judged, so why is judging somebody's appaerance such a horrible thing? If I said "so-so" celebrity is an idiot. He/she doesn't even know who the vice president is, then that's "funny". But, if you say "so-so" celebrity is way too thin (or fat), then you're a sexist pig. How come?
if some of these guys think that that gorgeous Levis girl, who is way more beautiful than I will ever be, isn't all that pretty because she's kinda thin, I wonder what the fuck they think of *me*
Look, I understand this point, but it rests on a fundamental misperception. Guys (at least all the ones I know) use quite different standards in evaluating celebrities and strangers than in evaluating people they know. In conversations to which I've been a party, when people blur this distinction, they're pretty immediately browbeaten, and guys who blur the distinction regularly are bad guys who the rest of us don't hang out with. That's the truth, Ruth.
And again, I really don't think it's even the same kind of evaluation: I think the celebrity talk is about the standard, but the people we know talk is about the people.
195 - But, celebritries are 2D to us. We see them on a flat TV, movie, or computer screen. We're judging the beauty they "project" in only 2 dimensions, whereas a woman in real life is 3D and can be much more "attractive" to us than a glitzy image on a screen is. A woman on screen must be 150% better looking than a real life woman that we can see, smell, hear, and know from different angles. Real life women with some cellulite? Hot. Fake 2D woman with cellulite? Not as much. It's not even comparing apples-to-apples.
194 - see my other comment. Why is judging the attribute of "beauty" of females so dammning but judging any other attribite isn't as bad?
197: Like I said, I believe you; but what you don't seem to be acknowledging is that that impression that we get is neither insane nor nice. I mean, we can't read your minds. We don't know that "eh, she's a bit droopy" when applied to Scarlett Johanssen (or whoever) isn't even going to come up when you look at your girlfriend.
In other words, thinking you can make it okay by just *saying* "that's a fundamental misperception, I don't think of you that way, honey, really, you're beautiful!" is, itself, a fundamental misperception. We have feelings, and we're simply not capable (any more than any other human being) of hearing this sort of thing all the time without *feeling* bad, and thinking, "well, he says that he thinks I'm beautiful, but I know I'm nowhere near as beautiful as that woman over there who he thinks is "too" X, Y, or Z, so he's just saying that to make me feel better." Which is a shitty way to feel. I think that the expectation that we should be able to hear this kind of convo constantly without feeling bad is completely unreasonable; it's like expecting us to be some libertarian wet dream of a perfectly rational agent, or something.
But, if you say "so-so" celebrity is way too thin (or fat), then you're a sexist pig. How come?
One reason is that, in the media world we live in, celebrities aren't particularly different from the rest of us on the intellectual axis. Some are smart, some are dumb, some well-informed, some otherwise. So commenting negatively about a celebrity's intellect isn't a sweeping condemnation of the bulk of ordinary people.
On the other hand, women present in the media are wildly, wildly likely to be astonishingly beautiful compared to the average woman. I'm reasonably pretty, but next to anyone who has a job involving standing in front of a camera, I'm incomparably less attractive. When you say (professionally pretty woman X) doesn't meet your standards, you're saying that 95% of the women around you fall hopelessly, abjectly short.
If our media environment focused more on televised high-stakes math games, and you had a habit of sitting in a bar full of high-school graduates saying "Geezus, what a moron," whenever any of the geniuses on TV bobbled a question that neither you nor anyone else in the room would have had a hope in hell of figuring out, they might get a little tense with you as well.
201: Celebrities are 2D to everyone. But we're not assessing the women under discussion in this thread as celebrities; we're assessing them as women. I'm a woman. I identify with these objects we're assessing on some level. So when you're looking at a 2D object, I'm looking at a representation of someone like me. There's a quality of differentiation there that you can make, but that I can't. I mean, how hard is that to understand?
202: Exactly. Look, I'm not asking you guys to stop, and it's not a central worry in my life. But this sort of conversation does make women listening feel like crap about themselves on some small level, and saying that it shouldn't doesn't change that.
A agree with 197 insofar as it describes intent, but look: even if in one case you are describing "the standard" and in the other you are describing "the people", your critiques of beautiful celebrities for failing to attain "the standard" are going to have he inevitable effect of making "the people" feel that much further away from "the standard". Which makes them insecure, and understandably so.
It is interesting that, as many people have pointed out, girls do this too, but they do it to other women, and not nearly so often about "dreamy" guys. I don't think you hear many conversations where girl [a] says
"[x] is sooo dreamy!" and girl [b] says "No! His shoulders are slightly too narrow. He should really do some more shoulder presses" (especially when talking about a guy who is more fit and muscular, even across the shoulders, than 99% of the male population). Guys say those things about women.
I once sent a certain mysterious coblogger a version of 185 with all the action heroes replaced with the various 'matt' commenters at a certain other blog, who were legion.
202 - I don't know, B. Some women, like my wife for instance, are unphased about guys oggling at Playboy models, for example, because they know "they're not real". So, she doesn't compare herself to them and think she's any less. Same for me. I don't look anything like a "male model" but it doesn't phase me one bit (for better or worse). If somebody thinks I'm fat, ugly, and disgusting, then that's THEIR problem, truly. I don't internalize it and say "I'm ugly and worthless because somebody doesn't find me attractive or I don't look like Brad Pitt". Now, in my teens or 20s, I worried about my appearance and what people thought of it, but now in my mid-30s, who gives a fuck, really? Judge me on my character. And, if you still don't like me, then fuck you. That's your problem. :-)
I think that the expectation that we should be able to hear this kind of convo constantly without feeling bad is completely unreasonable
I'm not sure I "expect" anyone not to feel bad, but at some point we all make our peace with not being fantabulousy whatever. The not-nice way to say this is that the people who don't make their peace with it are humorless bitches, if they're women, and macho assholes, if they're men.
Unvarnished statement: what actually feels worst about this conversation to me is that Ogged and TD seem to expect LB and me to understand *their* point of view. Like I'm supposed to put aside the way that these kinds of conversations make me feel in order to empathize with you guys. But I don't see you empathizing with what LB and I are saying; your responses seem to be, if anything, completely incredulous, like it's incomprehensible to you that, as women, we wouldn't just assume (or see as neutral) the idea that *those* women are in a different class than we are, and that therefore we're not supposed to think that how you assess them has anything to do with how you assess us. Um, gee, thanks. It's always comforting to hear that one's in some kind of subcaste junior league.
Bizarrely, I've often thought it was nice, or at least inoffensive, to say that X celebrity isn't that hot, in front of women I actually know. It's a way of saying, I prefer real life to glossy magazine pictures, and I know that the person in the magazine, like all people, has flaws.
Pointing out the flaws in great detail, I could see how that would be annoying, or insulting, and at the very least, might make the speaker look mean-spirited.
But just to say, "I think that model is too skinny (assuming this is apropos of something, and not just announced)," that could be a way of saying "I prefer real women, and don't particularly enjoy being bombarded with these images." And assuming you didn't, yourself, pick out that image and shove it in someone's face, I don't see why it would necessarily be taken any other way.
Or at least I didn't see how it would be taken any other way previously.
Ogged and TD seem to expect LB and me to understand *their* point of view
Well, yeah. I mean, I love you B, but you're definitely on the "humorless bitch" side of the spectrum; it's not like I don't know other women, and it's not like they wouldn't tell me if they were bothered.
207 - but by your analogy, when I watch a football game, I identify with the players some because I used to play. But, if some bonehead says player X is horrible (no objective measure for this either, just as there isn't for beauty), and when I think to myself I could never run that fast or be that strong or be that good and this person is bashing that player, it doesn't make me feel any less?
I'm not trying to discredit your feelings, believe me. I'm just trying to understand why women internalize this beauty thing so much but they don't other qualities.
you had a habit of sitting in a bar full of high-school graduates saying "Geezus, what a moron," whenever any of the geniuses on TV bobbled a question that neither you nor anyone else in the room would have had a hope in hell of figuring out, they might get a little tense with you as well.
You should go to a sports bar. That's exactly what happens, and everybody understands that when we call Tim Duncan "soft," we mean soft by NBA standards.
Same for me. I don't look anything like a "male model" but it doesn't phase me one bit (for better or worse). If somebody thinks I'm fat, ugly, and disgusting, then that's THEIR problem, truly. I don't internalize it and say "I'm ugly and worthless because somebody doesn't find me attractive or I don't look like Brad Pitt". Now, in my teens or 20s, I worried about my appearance and what people thought of it, but now in my mid-30s, who gives a fuck, really? Judge me on my character. And, if you still don't like me, then fuck you. That's your problem. :-)
TD, you're a man. And actually, I'm disinclined to accept the testimony of any man w/r/t a woman's state of mind about her attractiveness and her relationship to a beauty standard, even if that woman is his wife. She may not want to discuss certain feelings with you, affect bravado, have grown out of something she felt when she was younger, etc.
To say "I don't let this bother me; that's their problem" in the midst of a conversation that's fundamentally sociological drastically misses the point.
Compare: "If someone calls me nigger/dyke/fag/spic, that's their problem! ;-) "
I mean, I love you B, but you're definitely on the "humorless bitch" side of the spectrum; it's not like I don't know other women, and it's not like they wouldn't tell me if they were bothered.
Or it could be that the women you know don't want you to call them humorless bitches.
219 - I hear that stuff, and I wince a little even as I KNOW that I'm prettier than average and that lots of men really and truly love the shapes of the women in their lives. Because would they love me more if I just looked more like her? Which I could maybe do if I stopped eating? Then I remember that I don't want to that bad. But the whole interaction cost me a momentary pang, which I didn't have to have. (It does this to me, and I'm more confident than most.)
213, 214: Oh, come on. It's not that we're getting cranky about recognizing that we're imperfect next to the professionally pretty people. It's that we're getting cranky about endless conversations about how professionally pretty women are not good enough, whether or not we're supposed to remember that we don't get graded on the same scale that they are.
216: Yep. With this kind of reaction, is it any wonder that TD's wife is 'absolutely unfazed' by this sort of thing? Oh, she might be, but obviously she wouldn't get a lot of sympathy if she brought it up.
As for "Ogged and TD seem to expect LB and me to understand *their* point of view"
I apologize for this. I guess in some, dillusional way I'm trying to help you not internalize this beauty issue so much (and, recall I've seen your picture. I know you're very good looking). And I am sympathetic to what you and LB are saying, really. If emoticons were allowded, you'd know that. It's just not coming across very well since I'm trying to hit the topic head-on.
I love you B, but you're definitely on the "humorless bitch" side of the spectrum; it's not like I don't know other women, and it's not like they wouldn't tell me if they were bothered.
In all honesty, that hurts. I play along with this shit all the time; I join in on the hot or not threads, I'm not particularly threatened by the idea that Scarlett Johanssen is gorgeous, I agree that Jessica Biel has a fabulous butt and that the Levis girl is very pretty indeed. I'm not sitting here saying, "god, but she's so skinny."
What I am doing is saying, okay; if we meet you halfway, if we concede (as LB has repeatedly done) that it's perfectly okay for you guys to play the "hot or not" game, if we play along (as I've repeatedly done) or laugh when it comes up, why can't you meet us halfway and acknowledge that we're not, in fact, being "humorless bitches" by asking that, in response, you recognize that on some level this kind of thing makes us feel bad? We're not even saying don't play the game; we're just saying throw us a bone and admit that it's not the most innocent or fair game in town.
I can't speak for your other women friends or what they're thinking. I don't know them. I do know that it's a lot harder for me to say this kind of thing in person than it is on a computer screen. And that I might not say this kind of thing in person if I thought that the person I were saying it to, who I really liked, would think I were a humorless bitch if I did.
I'm just trying to understand why women internalize this beauty thing so much but they don't other qualities.
Women, much more than men, are taught that their worth as human beings depends heavily on how attractive they are. I read a poll once in which some obscene percentage of women (a majority) said they'd rather be dumb than fat. I can't remember the source; it might have been from a women's mag, which would bias the sample a little.
we're just saying throw us a bone and admit that it's not the most innocent or fair game in town
I totally admit this, as long as it's not attached to a "therefore you must stop." Also, Megan's "momentary pang" is noted. I think that's true. I think guys feel that too when celebrity dudes are said to be hot. Yeah, absolutely, these conversations make people just a bit more insecure. But, well, I like 'em.
And apologies for hurting your feelings. I didn't, in fact, call you a humorless bitch, and I don't think you are, but you are more sensitive to this stuff than most of the women I know, and I said that in a too-dramatic way.
234: So if you ran into a bunch of people complaining about being the subject of racial and homophobic slurs on the internet, you would a) ask them why it bothered them so much and b) encourage them not to be bothered, because it wasn't their problem? That would be their response?
That's pretty apolitical, and it's pretty inadequate to say we should all just worry about ourselves. Of course, we should worry about ourselves, but we should also worry about society, and the way words and actions affect us and other people. Cheerfully deciding we don't care doesn't do anything for others, first of all, and on some level, it doesn't do anything for us on the level that we will always care.
Ogged, why is your only comeback to accuse me of being another commenter?
"Only" is bizarre, has ogged not attempted to engage anything you've said in this thread? Also, it's not clear how it's an accusation in any conventional sense. Finally, because it's funny.
Because IOT was so hostile to me that it had become a joke
How much hostility towards you - as opposed to some idea or other you happen to be espousing at any given time - have I demonstrated? Every time you pull off this "you're so-and-so" nonsense it just strikes me as deeply paranoid and touchy, as if there's no reason someone could disagree with you unless they were secretly out to get you.
228: I don't want you to help me. I want you to hear to what I am saying.
224: Actually no. I loved Ogged too; otherwise I wouldn't be bothered.
229: Dear god, I love SB so much.
231: Or maybe it's that the women you know have a little bit of Stockholm syndrome and would argue to the grave that this kind of thing doesn't bother them one whit. But really, does any man who is close to a woman think that she *never* worries that she's too fat/too thin/too out of shape/too whatever? Do none of the women you know who you think are really beautiful *ever* say, "oh no, I'm not; my nose is too big/I need to get in shape/I've got cellulite/I'm too short"?
I'm just trying to understand why women internalize this beauty thing so much but they don't other qualities.
Because other people are freaks about it. When my weight swung by twenty pounds twice a year (for nationals in the fall and states in the spring) I could tell my weight as accurately by the way people treated me as by weighing myself. When people thought I was prettier, they wanted to talk to me and clerks gave me free shit and people waved me to the front of the line. Teachers thought I was smarter. My perceived value was inarguably higher when I was thinner and prettier.
No, SJ, I engage your points when you engage mine, but when you say something uncharitable, like your 225, it makes me wonder. Mainly, if you are Isle of Toads, I just wish you'd admit it, so I can stop wondering.
227 - 216: Yep. With this kind of reaction, is it any wonder that TD's wife is 'absolutely unfazed' by this sort of thing? Oh, she might be, but obviously she wouldn't get a lot of sympathy if she brought it up.
Untrue. You're making an assumption that I'm some insensitive ogre who doesn't care about my wife's feelings. Definitely not true. Truth be told, it's always been me who felt "guilty" looking at Playboy or porn because I didn't want her to have the precise feelings you ladies are expressing. But, over time, I finally believed her when she said it doesn't phase her. The fact that she was raised by her DAD instead of her mom, and had a brother with lots of friends (and no sisters) no doubt caused her to be de-sensitized.
So, again, I'm not trying to discredit your feelings. I'm just trying to figure out where they stem from (which is now pretty clear) and if there's no hope of more women not taking it personally?
So if you ran into a bunch of people complaining about being the subject of racial and homophobic slurs on the internet, you would a) ask them why it bothered them so much and b) encourage them not to be bothered, because it wasn't their problem? That would be their response?
Cripes, I hate this move. Slurs are, in fact, meant as "slurs." Discussions of attractiveness are something different. I assume we all felt there was a difference between the "humourless bitch" reference and discussions of a celebrities attractiveness.
Oh man, when I was dating the crazy blonde (who had been a ballet prodigy and still retained that build, and was indeed very, very pretty), I was amazed by the amount of stuff people just handed to her to free. Really, all the time.
236: Ogged, you're setting up a straw man. No one has said you ought not have these conversations here. LB specifically said multiple times that you're perfectly entitled and she doesn't mind that much. Neither do I.
And I do appreciate both the acknowledgement of the effect of such convos, and the apology. The former was all I wanted; the latter was completely unnecessary, but thank you.
(In all honesty, I think I'm way less sensitive to this stuff that most women. I actually think that I am attractive, and I've never so much as considered dieting. I think I am, perhaps *because* I'm not terribly sensitive about my appearance, maybe more honest than some about how this stuff feels.)
You're right to say we should scroll down, because she's not particulary pretty in the 1st set of photos, but is in the rest.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08-28-06 11:46 PM
Oh ick! Tyler Durden? Now I feel like I need a shower.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-28-06 11:47 PM
Something for everyone, Mr. Weman.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-28-06 11:48 PM
You see how that girl from the Levi ad disappears when she turns sideways? That's a sweet trick.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 08-28-06 11:49 PM
Apparently, I'm in the minority because I think the woman in the Levis ad is sickly looking. The Jessica Biel pictures were ok, but she needs to eat something too.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-28-06 11:58 PM
That's why I called skinny girl "pretty" since that usually confines the discussion to someone's face. (In fact, her face is beautiful, but she's definitely twiggy.)
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:00 AM
i'm going to attribute those jessica beil pics to wonderoos, because theres no way a real ass is that awesome.
Posted by yoyo | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:01 AM
I think she just has a big arch in her back. And maybe some wonderoos.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:06 AM
6 - ok, agreed
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:07 AM
8 - perhaps a butt implant by Dr. 90210. (that's a nice picture BTW)
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:09 AM
Yeah, she stands with her hips back. Somehow she avoided learning the "don't look at my ass" tucked-butt stance, lucky woman. But it doesn't hurt that, god bless her, she's carrying some weight on them as well.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:09 AM
And anyone who wants to diss What Would Tyler Durden Do? first has to convince me that this post isn't awesome.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:13 AM
I bet Seal gets more model-play per album sold than any working musician today.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:32 AM
wow, now that's a nice ass.
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 4:06 AM
Ogged is covering all bases -- one skinny, one not. That way we won't be able to figure out his real preferences. Cagy.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 5:23 AM
Whoa, that's like a SWAY-back for real.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 7:00 AM
2: A cold shower?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 7:14 AM
Based on a TV show I watched last night (also on that topic: Agassi!!!!!!11111!!!!One!) , I am compelled to ask: Does spousal privilege in general prevent the non-defendant spouse (nds) from being called to testify as to knowledge of the defendant spouse's criminal activity (not of the spousal or child abuse-type) which nds had prior to the marriage? Under the Federal Rules? Under California rules? If no one feels like doing research for me, I may do it myself.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 8:13 AM
I used to know the answer to this. There are actually two different privileges at work.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 8:17 AM
IANAL, but I'd be surprised if marriage converted previously available information to unavailable information.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 8:17 AM
IIRC - two privileges, one allows a spouse to refuse to testify against the other, but this privilege is held by the spouse who is refusing to testify (i.e., the spouse charged with the crime has no legal say in the matter); the other prevents a spouse from testifying as to what the other said, this privilege is held by the accused.
The first, I believe, applies to testifying about anything (pre or post marriage), the second applies only to marital communications (e.g., if they ask the spouse about what he/she saw the other spouse do, they can testify to that).
Posted by Ugh | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 8:32 AM
Spousal privilege prevents (with exceptions) one spouse from being called in a criminal trial against the other spouse.
Marital privilege prevents the spouse from being forced to testify as to confidential marital communications in a criminal or civil trial.
My question is as to exceptions to spousal.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 8:34 AM
So the answer is that under Federal and (far more broadly) under California law, the nds would not have to, but could choose to, testify. So whart ugh said. I'm pretty sure this means one character on the show lied to the other, since that character A told character B that B no longer needed to have any worries about A's potential testimony, when in fact B only has no worries if B doesn't piss off A.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 8:55 AM
But a spouse could always choose to waive spousal privilege and testify, couldn't s/he? How is the law different depending on if the knowledge predates the marriage?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 9:02 AM
Oh -- I see -- somehow I skipped over 21 before.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 9:03 AM
It turns out to be irrelevant legally, except for maybe in a federal civil trial, like forfeiture. But it's very relevant to the show, since these two characters have married at an extraordinarily early stage in their relationship only because B suggested it as a way to solve A's problems with trusting B not to eventually use B's knowledge of A's criminality against A. I'd be far more clear, but I assume that there might be other commenters who watch this show and haven't seen the relevant episode.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 9:06 AM
Did you have to turn this thread into law school? Don't you get enough law school outside of this thread? Some people come here to escape that stuff.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 9:13 AM
1: Huh. I think she looks prettiest in that first set of photos.
11: I was thinking that she does seem particularly aware of her ass, but...
8: ...that big arch probably adds to the look.
Conclusion: That is a wondrous ass.
Posted by annie | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 9:14 AM
I'm not back in law school for the year until tomorrow. I'm fiending for a fix, man.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 9:14 AM
The Levis girl has a pretty face, but not especially remarkable. I do like her hair, though.
Although I don't watch the show, I think the woman off of Vanished (the one who is kidnapped) is gorgeous.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 9:17 AM
The Levis model needs to have Jessica Biel buy her a sandwich, but yes: pretty and hot, respectively.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 9:28 AM
The Levis model looks a little pubescent to me. Is that hot these days?
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 9:59 AM
Does anyone else find these threads creepy?
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:01 AM
Yeah.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:05 AM
33: Which part: the Biel discussion or the spousal privilege issue?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:10 AM
w/d: were you watching The Sopranos? I seem to remember an episode where Adriana went to a lawyer to ask whether marrying Christopher would get her off the hook with the FBI people.
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:10 AM
Does anyone else find these threads creepy?
I know plenty of people do, which seems a little strange to me, since just about every conversation I've ever had with every male friend is, I don't know, 20-40% just like this.
Ok, slight hyperbole, but in my experience, this is what guys talk about.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:11 AM
Is this the woman you mean, Adam?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:15 AM
There may be a polite fiction issue here, ogged.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:15 AM
I thought this was the anti-polite fiction blog?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:16 AM
Black people can't swim!
Unless they're Cullen Jones.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:17 AM
37: I find those kinds of conversations fairly creepy too, among other things.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:17 AM
What's the polite fiction?
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:18 AM
Ok, slight hyperbole, but in my experience, this is what guys talk about.
Maybe this is why it's so easy to fall back into male friendships.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:18 AM
37 -- I keep hearing this statement all my life -- "this is what guys talk about" -- but almost all of the "who's hott" discussions I have participated in since
high schooljunior high school, have been on the internet -- I must hang out with a different crowd or something.Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:19 AM
I think you're right that something like this happened on Sopranos, but I've seen every Sopranos already.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:19 AM
There may be a polite fiction issue here, ogged
Is the polite fiction the notion that males aren't supposed to talk about this in public/mixed company, or is it the notion that males are expected to have these sorts of conversations as forthright demonstrations of their unquestioned heterosexual maleness?
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:19 AM
45 -- That's interesting, because that's what a large number of my guy friends tell me too, and they don't have any reason to lie to me. God knows they don't make a habit of hiding other, different, unsavory behaviors from me.
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:21 AM
Yeah, what 47 said.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:21 AM
Must be different crowds, Clownman.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:22 AM
Maybe this is why it's so easy to fall back into male friendships
Is this generally considered the case with male friendships? I generally think of my old male friends the way I think of myself from a few years ago (as in, "how could I/he have been such an idiot"), while I have a much easier time reconnecting with old female friends.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:22 AM
The polite fiction would be that guys aren't always discussing whether women are physically attractive. (I think it's not entirely a fiction; I don't think I spend that much time on it. Ogged knew I would say that.) Which would be why not to talk about it in public/mixed company, because it shatters the polite fiction. (And my answer to 40 would be no, but it's not my blog.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:22 AM
45 -- are you suggesting that I'm just saying 45 for the sake of my feminist cred? Cause if so, that's not what's going on.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:22 AM
I picture ogged and his friends having these conversations while cruising slowly down the road in a beamer, pointing out the women on the street as they talk about them.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:23 AM
I think it's not entirely a fiction; I don't think I spend that much time on it. Ogged knew I would say that.
At least you're polite.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:23 AM
I rarely have "who's hot" conversations with my male friends. I have two friends who are both incorrigible lechers so if I am drinking with them it does come up more often but, tbh, most of the 'hotness' conversations I've had I've had with women.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:23 AM
Look people, ogged just recently lost part of a rib, a region of the male body known to contain significant amounts of vital essence. He's feeling unmanned, and needs to do some public ass-ogling to reassure himself that he's still got some spunk left in the tank.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:24 AM
Or maybe the polite fiction is just that Ogged isn't always checking women out. In which case 40 is accurate.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:24 AM
Discussions of actresses on family-oriented WB shows are infrequent for me as well.
Posted by joe o | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:24 AM
It kills me that I've heard of Ms. Biel even though I've never even considered seeing a single movie she's been in and from the photos sort of wondered if she was the woman in Lost. And now, not only have I heard of her, I have an opinion about her ass.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:24 AM
Ogged is right, in my experience.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:25 AM
he's still got some spunk left in the tank
ATM.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:25 AM
60 - Ditto, Jackmormon. Ditto.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:26 AM
I think 62 was unnecessary.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:26 AM
Reading more carefully, 47 is good too.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:26 AM
54 - I picture ogged and his friends having these conversations while cruising slowly down the road in a beamer, pointing out the women on the street as they talk about them.
A beamer or an el camino?
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:27 AM
64: Weiner feels obligated to uphold, however perfunctorily, the grand old traditions of unfogged; he's just punchin' the clock.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:28 AM
A beamer on El Camino Real!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:29 AM
Like this: You know what's unnecessary? Your mom.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:29 AM
I picture ogged and his friends having these conversations while cruising slowly down the road in a beamer, pointing out the women on the street as they talk about them.
Not a beemer, because I don't hang out with Iranians, but of course I've done this. Seriously, some of you other guys haven't? Let me guess, you were off somewhere listening to Sufjan Stevens?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:30 AM
ttaM said, most of the 'hotness' conversations I've had I've had with women.
In my experience, women talk about this subject a lot. Too much, in my view. And my women friends are very likely to add a physical description when you ask what a third, non-present, party is like. I wasn't asking for a physical description, I was asking what she was like.
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:31 AM
I spend very little time discussing the hotness of people who aren't either within visual range or expected to be shortly. Shortly might be as much as a day or two. The driving around thing happens, though much less since I've lived in New York.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:32 AM
I think my "who's hot" conversations happen with my male and female friends with equal frequency; the subjects of the conversations, to be honest, probably skew female by about 70/30.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:33 AM
When I was in high school, the girls in my carpool used to play "That's your boyfriend!" which was basically a diss-fest. It's been a while, though.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:33 AM
Seriously, some of you other guys haven't?
It's not just driving the road, it happens basically anywhere and everywhere.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:34 AM
70: I think the percentage goes down as you age, but those conversations are pretty common. Among groups of friends that don't have those explicit conversations, it's there as subtext.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:35 AM
When I was in high school, the girls in my carpool used to play "That's your boyfriend!" which was basically a diss-fest. It's been a while, though.
We had a similar game, except it was "that's you in 15 years". Kids can be cruel.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:36 AM
Like this: You know what's unnecessary? Your mom.
But, but, Unfogged bills itself as "An Eclectic Web Magazine for YOUR MOM"!
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:37 AM
Seriously, this is what guys do. Enlightened guys just don't let it happen at work, or if it does happen at work it's very discreet and doesn't impact anyone's performance reviews, etc.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:38 AM
Seriously, some of you other guys haven't? Let me guess, you were off somewhere listening to Sufjan Stevens?
I've found myself in the middle of plenty of guys-ogling-women conversations, and they've always seemed like desperate and overbearing exercises in masculine posturing conducted by gender-issue-laden obsessives with something to prove.
Not that that label could possibly apply to anyone here, of course.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:39 AM
79 - Very true!
80 - See 79. Although, we all know guys who are like how you describe, they're not the majority.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:42 AM
I dispute the attributions of desperateness and overbearingness.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:42 AM
desperate and overbearing exercises in masculine posturing
Like I said, ogged just lost half a rib! It's part of his rehabilitation process!!
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:43 AM
ogged, 54 was a joke. Of course most guys do this all the time, but... you? Stop trying to act like you're "one of the boys."
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:43 AM
I've found myself in the middle of plenty of guys-ogling-women conversations, and they've always seemed like desperate and overbearing exercises in masculine posturing conducted by gender-issue-laden obsessives with something to prove.
You should totally not hang out with those guys.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:43 AM
I'll grant stras that there are offensive ways to do this, and I've heard conversations like this that made me want to punch the guys, but usually I'm not bothered.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:44 AM
You should totally not hang out with those guys.
See 51.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:46 AM
You should totally not hang out with those guys.
This is true. When done properly, ogling and discussing of the sort I describe in 79 is not something of which the subjects are ever aware, and it's not discussed in desperation.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:47 AM
86 - I think the difference is whether animated guys in question are "excited" and respectful in their tone by what they see versus derogatory in their tone.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:49 AM
83: Man, I gotta lay off those damn exclamation points.
I never used to use them till I started grading student papers, and then the unadorned "good work" just didn't seem perky and encouraging enough.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:49 AM
90 - what about using star stickers?
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:53 AM
87: Yeah, this could just be a different strokes, different folks kind of thing. I tend to think of these types of discussions as similar to conversational candy: easy, pointless, and enjoyable, and possibly bad for you if you consume too much. Same with political discussions, gender discussions, and, frankly, most conversations that aren't rooted in some specific decision to be made.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:54 AM
92.--Yeah, unless someone's going off the island, there's no point in discussing relative hotness.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 10:59 AM
but Jessica Biel is looking great lately
And I sure hope she gets a part in that new Laugh-In remake.
Posted by Paul | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:01 AM
91: They were unavailable. And if they had been available, I probably would have had to use rubber cement to make them adhere. Apparently licking postage stamps and stickers is disgusting to the average Chinese citizen. The post offices always had a station with little pots of glue to use to seal your envelopes and attach the stamps. The counter was always covered in thick strands of stray rubber cement, and it was common for lots of envelopes to get stuck to each other in the mailbox.
So, even if available, stars would have been a lot of trouble. Plus, having the students' papers all stuck together might have given some of them the wrong idea about how enthusiastic I was with their writing.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:02 AM
95: You were in China?
Posted by Matt Weiner's Understudy | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:04 AM
Sorry to get back to the objectivizing, but, yo, ogged, I think Jessica Biel's lips are no strangers to teh botox.
I relinquish any higher ground I may once have held.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:07 AM
I think Jessica Biel's lips are no strangers to teh botox.
Is there some tell?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:08 AM
I thought botox was foreheads, not lips. Bizarrely plump lips are collagen injections.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:09 AM
It's the upper lip's contours I'm suspicious of.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:09 AM
Dammit, 96, I specifically decided not to post that.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:10 AM
99.--Oh yeah. I knew I shouldn't have let my women's magazines subscriptions lapse back in 1998!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:10 AM
Eh. And I should say that I don't find this sort of conversation very creepy, just a little, and just when it goes on for too long. Nothing wrong with ogling attractive people, it's the sort of desultory 'shopping' tone that strikes me weirdly.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:13 AM
This gives me a special feeling.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:15 AM
I think you need to work harder to makew a convo about celebs hottness creepy compared to one about people nearby or esp. colleagues.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:17 AM
I like her sweater-vest in the linked photo. It's not every woman who looks hot in a sweater-vest. And with that last bit of objectivizing, I'm outta here!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:17 AM
Is there some tell?
On most white women (actually, I suppose most non-black women) the top contour of the upper lip is three concave-upward curves -- a long swoop from the corner of the mouth to under the nose, a short curve under the nose, and then another long swoop down to the other corner. When you plump the top lip out with collagen, the two outer curves go from concave-up to concave-down, producing a shape that's common on black women, but much less common on non-surgically enhanced non-black women.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:20 AM
I think you're probably right about the lips, JM. Here's a picture from seven years ago, and though she has nice lips, they (especially the top lip) aren't as full as they are now.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:20 AM
I think the difference is whether animated guys in question are "excited" and respectful in their tone by what they see versus derogatory in their tone.
I think they start getting decidedly creepy when the subjects in question are held up to an imagined ideal of Hotness and critiqued against that. Thus, "she's very pretty" or "she's really hot" turns into "she looks sickly" or "she needs to eat more" (which I'll note has become the new "she needs to lose weight." Notice how as one has become less acceptable in Liberal, Enlightened circles, the other has become increasingly common).
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:21 AM
12: He may occasionally write a decent post, but he's a complete misogynist nightmare. I actually banned him from my place.
As to the "hot chick" thread frequency, well, it's Ogged, after all. Of course people have those kind of conversations, but obviously different topics resonate differently in different contexts.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:21 AM
On most white women (actually, I suppose most non-black women) the top contour of the upper lip is three concave-upward curves -- a long swoop from the corner of the mouth to under the nose, a short curve under the nose, and then another long swoop down to the other corner. When you plump the top lip out with collagen, the two outer curves go from concave-up to concave-down, producing a shape that's common on black women, but much less common on non-surgically enhanced non-black women.
Based solely on the fact that you, of all people, know that, I'm willing to concede that men are oppressive bastards, and I apologize for my gender.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:23 AM
I think they start getting decidedly creepy when the subjects in question are held up to an imagined ideal of Hotness and critiqued against that.
Yeah, that's the 'shopping' tone that I find weird. "OMG she's so hottt!!1!!" isn't particularly creepy, "She'd be perfect if she just took off/put on some weight, and dyed her hair, I dunno... chestnut?" is. It starts sounding like people are wondering if the couch they're looking at comes in camel.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:25 AM
Ok, slight hyperbole, but in my experience, this is what guys talk about.
I don't think I've ever really had a conversation with my male friends about the hotness of anyone (though I have sometimes with some female friends), although the last time I was in Berlin I was constantly pointing out the attractive women I and the friend with whom I was staying passed. That got old after a while, though.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:26 AM
Yeah, that's the 'shopping' tone that I find weird. /i>
That strikes me as not very different from the way people talk about, for example, the dating scene (or "dating market," even).
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:27 AM
I actually banned him from my place.
I doubt very much that the person who writes WWTDD was commenting anywhere. How do you know they were the same person?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:32 AM
Maybe she means she banned him in the same sense that I've banned Jerry Falwell from my house? You know, sort of preemptively.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:36 AM
I think they start getting decidedly creepy when the subjects in question are held up to an imagined ideal of Hotness and critiqued against that.
Yeah, this can be uncomfortable, but I think it's often just a way to debate varying conceptions of The Hot, and to talk about one's preferences. "I like a nice, tight ass, like Rachel Wacholder's." "Rachel Wacholder?! She has a boy's ass. No, she doesn't have an ass, she needs to eat! Jessica Biel has an ass...." Like that.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:37 AM
115: If memory serves, there was a link back? But it was a while ago, I could be wrong, in which case I regret slandering your friend, even though his blog kind of icks me out.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:37 AM
Well, insofar as the job of the guy at WWTDD (I think it's a commercial enterprise, not just some guy's hobby) is to write something funny about non-events in celebrity world, I think he's brilliant.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:40 AM
I'm mostly impressed with how damn elegant she looks in those pictures ogged linked to. She's got that 1930s-actress type look going.
Hard to believe her big starring role to this point was "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake.
And re: 108, a picture of her from 7 years ago would make her what, 16? Are lips a done deal by that point?
Posted by rufus | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:41 AM
Not getting fuller and poutier after that point without technological assistance, no.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:44 AM
Are lips a done deal by that point?
I don't think lips keep growing.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:46 AM
Lily Aldridge for Levis. Ho hum. To paraphrase Cheers, "It's not widely known, but she's famous."
Posted by bill | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:46 AM
What is she famous for? Is she a "name" model?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:47 AM
Lips!
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:48 AM
114 gets it exactly right.
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:48 AM
LB, it really disturbs me that you know anything about this stuff. Please cancel your subscription to Cosmo immediately.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:50 AM
"I like a nice, tight ass, like Rachel Wacholder's." "Rachel Wacholder?! She has a boy's ass. No, she doesn't have an ass, she needs to eat! Jessica Biel has an ass...." Like that.
But these discussions almost never take place in subjective terms ("I like X, I like Y"). They take place in objective, prescriptive/proscriptive terms ("X is hot, so-and-so should do Y to be more hot," etc.). It's a far more possessive and creepier way to discuss beauty. It's not about showing appreciation for what you think is beautiful; it's about pointing out deficiencies and deviations from an objective standard of beauty.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:52 AM
107, 127: What? I look at people. I have well formed thoughts on collagen-lips because they look weird to me: they started showing up sometime in the 90's, and all of a sudden half the actresses I was looking at looked as though they'd been punched in the mouth.
Seriously, that top-lip shape isn't something you see on women who aren't in media, which means that it's artificial.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:53 AM
Everything you ever wanted to know about the Levi's ad. They're for "slim fit" jeans, you see....
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:53 AM
"I like a nice, tight ass" is not something I can actually imagine any real person saying.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:54 AM
But these discussions almost never take place in subjective terms ("I like X, I like Y").
Because that would be boring. No one says, "I quite enjoy The Wire." They say, "The Wire is the best tv show ever."
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:56 AM
But The Wire isn't a person. See why it's creepy?
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:57 AM
Deadwood is the best tv show ever.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 11:58 AM
Deadwood was the best show ever, slol.*
*It wasn't, but still, it was very good. Still cancelled, though.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:00 PM
To add to 129: collagened lips also look weird because sometimes the top lip ends up the same size or even larger than the bottom lip.
By the way, skinny jeans are a fashion atrocity.
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:00 PM
It's not about showing appreciation for what you think is beautiful; it's about pointing out deficiencies and deviations from an objective standard of beauty.
Depends on the conversation, and also how you read it. Like I say, I take the pointing out of deviations to be a way of discussing the standard itself. If we all thought like LB, with her three upward concave curves, maybe we could discuss it in those terms, but most people think "I like so-and-so's such-and-such, not someone else's such-and-such."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:01 PM
Deadwood was the best tv show ever and it concluded with a "slolernr" shout-out.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:01 PM
"I like a nice, tight ass" is not something I can actually imagine any real person saying.
I'm telling you, different crowd.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:02 PM
"You're really fun" is more objectionable than "I had a really good time with you"?
"S/he's really fun" is more objectionable than "I had a great time with him/her"?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:03 PM
136 gets it exactly right.
138 - And what was this slolernr shout out?
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:04 PM
133: People talk that way about all human attributes, not just attractiveness. "X is a genius." "Y is the best hockey player ever."
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:05 PM
138 - And what was this slolernr shout out?
You're telling me you didn't notice Al apostrophizing the Chief, talking about "the original slow learners"?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:06 PM
It's not creepy with unconditional approval, so much -- it gets creepy as a tone for pointing out flaws.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:07 PM
And now what's going to be on HBO this Sunday?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:07 PM
A whole bunch of Lucky Louie, which I gave up on after the first episode, I think.
Posted by washberdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:08 PM
I thought of you at precisely that moment, slol.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:09 PM
120. You can't forget Stealth, a masterpiece in the category of Movies to Watch When You Come Home Drunk at 3am.
Posted by Heather | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:09 PM
But The Wire isn't a person. See why it's creepy?
Not really. But I'm soulless, suspect that most human relationships are relationships of convenience, and worry much more about the harms people cause by overestimating their concern about others than the harms they cause by underestimating it. So you probably shouldn't go by me.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:09 PM
Like I say, I take the pointing out of deviations to be a way of discussing the standard itself.
I'm not sure how you can discuss a standard, and deviations from such, without implicitly or explicitly critiquing the subject for failing to meet that standard. And in fact most of these discussions I've seen, here and elsewhere, include any number of fairly demeaning characterizations of fairly beautiful people by any number of loveless male geeks who would presumably not turn their noses up at Rachel Wacholder's boylike ass in person.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:10 PM
I thought of you at precisely that moment, slol.
Woo!
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:12 PM
You're telling me you didn't notice Al apostrophizing the Chief
I've trained myself to look away before Al starts doing that to himself.
Posted by Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:12 PM
And in fact most of these discussions I've seen, here and elsewhere, include any number of fairly demeaning characterizations of fairly beautiful people by any number of loveless male geeks who would presumably not turn their noses up at Rachel Wacholder's boylike ass in person.
That's sounds suspiciously like, "You're not sufficiently worthy to make such criticism," sj. Which is probably roughly true, and may be why Wacholder's not putting much stock in such discussions.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:13 PM
I'm not sure how you can discuss a standard, and deviations from such, without implicitly or explicitly critiquing the subject for failing to meet that standard
You can't. Price of doing business.
who would presumably not turn their noses up at Rachel Wacholder's boylike ass in person
Exactly, which is a clue that they're really talking about the standard.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:13 PM
A whole bunch of Lucky Louie
Jeez, I don't even know what that is.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:13 PM
That's sounds suspiciously like, "You're not sufficiently worthy to make such criticism," sj
The point is that there's a cultural presumption that being male makes one worthy to make such criticism.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:13 PM
You can't. Price of doing business.
Then maybe you shouldn't.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:17 PM
But a common trope in such conversations, in my experience, is that when someone starts applying such standards to people out of their league someone else will say something like, "Yeah, like you'd turn her down."
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:18 PM
Then maybe you shouldn't.
Why?
And 158 is right. It's so common that I think it basically goes without saying, even though someone pretty much always says it.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:19 PM
I don't entirely agree with LB's reasons, but I agree with her that the "so and so is hot" conversation is tiresome and annoying. I think, though, that it's more because the attractiveness (or not) of female celebrities is something every person on earth has an opinion on. And it's treated, unlike convos about which guys are hot, as if it were an important topic. Great hockey players is something hockey fans talk about; so and so is really smart is something people talk about in the context of praising a specific person; and when one talks about attractive men, one doesn't get into minutae about lip shape, plastic surgery, precise curve of ass, or so on. And I mean, really: yes, talking about who is and isn't attractive is in and of itself fine, but this whole assessing women thing is hardly culturally neutral. Sucks for straight boys, but the fact is you can't do the comparing hot chicks thing without, on some level, sounding like an ass.
I also personally think that part of what's tiresome about it is that so many supposedly attractive women really look very similar. It's a bit barbieish.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:19 PM
The point is that there's a cultural presumption that being male makes one worthy to make such criticism.
I don't know if I agree with this, not fully anyway. Women judge other women's appearances all the time too; often times much more critically and judgemntally. Usually, when men talk about women's hotness we fixate on the positives.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:20 PM
The point is that there's a cultural presumption that being male makes one worthy to make such criticism.
My assumption is that "worthy" doesn't much enter into it. I would think worthiness enters into it only to the extent that you expect others to respect your opinion and act in some way on the basis of it. I don't, and I doubt the majority of participants do, either. As to maleness: several people have pointed out that women are nearly as likely to critique a woman's look as a man is, so I'm not sure that maleness enters into it, either.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:21 PM
You probably mutilated barbies as a child too, didn't you, B?
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:21 PM
Erm: because even that criticism takes the framework, that (whoever the impossibly beautiful subject being criticised is) is flawed and less desirable than she could be; and the evaluator isn't ridiculous because he's wrong, he's ridiculous because not only can't he afford anything more valuable than she is, he can't even afford her. She's still a consumer good.
That criticism doesn't argue with the creepy commodification of the woman involved, just mocks the speaker for his comparatively low status.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:23 PM
You're telling me you didn't notice Al apostrophizing the Chief, talking about "the original slow learners"?
I'm sure I would have noticed that, if I watched Deadwood.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:23 PM
Sucks for straight boys, but the fact is you can't do the comparing hot chicks thing without, on some level, sounding like an ass.
Which is why we don't do it around women. See Ogged's comments way upthread. It's a "guy thing". But, you are right, it does get old, even amongst ourselves.
I also personally think that part of what's tiresome about it is that so many supposedly attractive women really look very similar.
This I don't agree with. There's lots of different flavors of attractive women. It's just that certain ones get all the press.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:26 PM
128: If you think these sorts of conversations take place in strange "objective, prescriptive/proscriptive terms," compare it to the other equivalent guy conversations: sports, movies, music, etc. The "objective" arguments about things that are clearly subjective "who's the best guitarist," "what was the best acting job this year," "who is more clutch Papi or Larry Bird," "who was a better center, Shaq or Wilt?" is the hallmark of this sort of guy conversation. I don't do the "hotness" conversation as much, but I sure have been involved in a lot of the other ones, and they always have this tone.
Posted by Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in." (9) | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:26 PM
She's still a consumer good.
I'm not really sure to whom you're responding, LB. But this strikes me as pretty much the standard way we discuss almost everything in the US. She is a consumer good. So is he. That, I take it, is the whole point of the romance genre fiction--the shopping and acquiring experience.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:27 PM
158 is a response to 156. 164 looks like a different criticism, which on the surface says that noting flaws in some impossibly beautiful subject is inherently bad. But there must be ways to discuss someone's flaws without commodifying the, right?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:29 PM
But we're all, in part, objects that are looked at. I'd be disturbed if I got the sense that someone couldn't see other people as anything other than objects (or, in the case of serial killers like B, victims), but it's definitely one way of relating and evaluating and talking about people. I've also had discussions about attractiveness that incorporate personality, but again, I think that's a way of talking about personality, not about the people used as examples.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:30 PM
164 wasn't as clear as it should have been, and, you know, while I agree with sj I don't stay up at night worrying about this. Go on assessing women all you like.
But to put 164 in a different way: when you look at some woman, impossibly beautiful or not, and start assessing her based on deviations from THE OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF BEAUTY™, what you're saying is, on some level, no one with a choice would be attracted to her. There's better out there, and she doesn't measure up. You might want her if that was all you could get (and considering who you are, that probably is all you can get) but you are objectively right to be dissatisfied with the prospect.
And that's a fucked up way to look at a person.
(Not saying this is how any of you view real women, not saying it's a huge deal, yes, I have pre-emptively lightened up, but that's why it comes off to me as creepy.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:30 PM
Tim's worldwearier-than-thou act isn't doing much for me.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:31 PM
the "so and so is hot" conversation is tiresome and annoying.
This, definitely, in the same way that a conversation about who would win a Gandalf-Megatron deathmatch is tiresome and annoying.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:31 PM
I've had these typpes of convos maybe twice in my life. Thrice with this thread, I guess.
You know, celeb blogs have overwhelmingly female readers according to the blogads surevey.
Celeb blogs comments tend to often have a misogynist undercurrent, and be genereally creepy and offputting. Wonder if that's not mostly women too.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:32 PM
It's Megatron, btw.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:34 PM
But Gandalf would totally win! He's been to hell and back!
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:34 PM
a conversation about who would win a Gandalf-Megatron deathmatch is tiresome and annoying
I dunno, that sounds like a pretty awesome discussion.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:35 PM
Before or after Orson Welles ate Megatron?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:35 PM
173: The social and cultural ramifications of widespread objectification of Gandalf and Megatron are probably more limited, though.
And you're crazy. Gandalf would kick Megatron's ass.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:36 PM
Does anyone know much about the Transformers? They seem to be different than from when I was teenager -- much more cosmic interstellar warfare, etc, and it doesn't really work for me. There's something odd about a robot that's fighting plantary-system-spanning battles, and yet camoflauges itself as a Dodge Viper.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:37 PM
Tim's worldwearier-than-thou act isn't doing much for me.
I'm not intending to come across that way. What I'm saying, not well, is that everyone behaves this way, as what appears to be a matter of mechanical fact. We may not all focus on attractiveness, but we all rate people against some "objective" standard when we talk about others, or make decisions about others. I'm not sure what the other option is.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:37 PM
And you're crazy. Gandalf would kick Megatron's ass.
No way. Gandalf would be all, Wait a sec while I deputize some hobbits, and Megatron would shoot him in the head.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:38 PM
159: Yeah, and the so-and-so is pretty thing also goes without saying, but pretty much always gets said, too.
What bugs me about the whole "yeah, like you'd turn her down" thing, though, is that the implication is "well, she's not exactly perfect, but I'll take what I can get." Which is a crappy thing to overhear boys saying about very pretty girls. I mean, who the fuck wants to think, "well, my boyfriend doesn't really think I'm all that, but he'll put up with my obvious failures to look like Rachel Wacholder because hey, I'm the best he can do." But that's the inevitable conclusion one draws from these kinds of discussions. I mean, I look at these pictures of Jessica Biel to see why everyone is saying "wow, what an ass," and I think, yes, it has a nice shape; I wonder if she has cellulite? And if her ass would be considered so magnificent in person, if you could see the cellulite, or if it jiggled too much? I mean, my butt looks fine in clothes, too...
Which is maybe the answer to a question long ago asked about why some guys pride themselves on liking "unattractive" women. Most of the things that are considered unattractive in celebrities, or even in obscure women whose pictures we look at for these discussions, are things that virtually all women have: sag in some places, bulge in others, cellulite, whatever.
And these discussions seldom sound, as LB is saying, like "omg, can you believe how amazingly gorgeous this woman is?" I mean, if you saw someone who looked that polished and well-turned out and flawlessly complected in real life, you'd boggle. But we discuss these things as if in fact these people, who look better than 90-something percent of us, were the average. Partly, no doubt, because we're so bombarded with (edited, airbrushed) images of women who are really astonishingly attractive by any reasonable standard. It's like our scales are all miscalibrated, or something.
Collectively, these conversations seem to imply that the women we actually *know*, who we think, in fact, are extremely beautiful/pretty/cute/whatever, are, at best, only sort of okay.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:39 PM
what you're saying is, on some level, no one with a choice would be attracted to her
I think this is just wrong, LB. See w/d's 158. When I've had these conversations, and I've had a lot of them, there's always the belief, usually made explicit, that everyone being discussed is fabulously beautiful and anyone would thank his lucky stars to be with any of them. Part of the fun is saying that manifestly beautiful people are "ugly," and having your friends say "You're on crack." That's not the point of the exercise, but it's part of the fun. People like to dispute about matters of taste, and they really like to talk about members of the sex to which they're attracted, so....
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:39 PM
who would win a Gandalf-Megatron deathmatch
The answer is neither, by the way.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:40 PM
Comments like 184 are just intensely alienating. I don't understand why that's fun at all.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:45 PM
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/showdown
That's awesome. But I object to the inclusion of Abraham Lincoln, and the exclusion of George Washington makes the conclusion dubious.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:46 PM
It's a Mexican thing, SJ. You wouldn't understand.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:46 PM
186: To whom?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:47 PM
Women judge other women's appearances all the time too; often times much more critically and judgemntally.
This whole, "but women do it too, and they're meaner!" thing is really naive, guys. Of course we do it. We're the objects of it, and so we're sizing each other up constantly: is she prettier than me? Her ass looks funny--what is it about those jeans that causes that? Wow, she has pretty hair--wonder how she gets it to fluff just so? What a pretty girl--is she wearing makeup, or is her skin really like that? God, that bra doesn't fit her--doesn't she know that she's bulging out the top? When you are basically self-conscious about your own appearance most of the time, you're going to be hyperconscious of otoher people's appearance, too. It's like the problem one has, after grad school, of being almost unable to read without a pen in your hand. Once you've learned the task of critically evaluating your own appearance from someone else's point of view, of thinking of yourself in public as an object to be seen, then yeah: that's how you're going to look at everyone else.
Which is probably why women do, often, overreact to these conversations that men have. We're so conscious about our *own* appearance that when we hear you guys assessing someone else (another woman), we assume that you do that to *us* when we're not listening. And jeez, if some of these guys think that that gorgeous Levis girl, who is way more beautiful than I will ever be, isn't all that pretty because she's kinda thin, I wonder what the fuck they think of *me*.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:48 PM
DrB says Collectively, these conversations seem to imply that the women we actually *know*, who we think, in fact, are extremely beautiful/pretty/cute/whatever, are, at best, only sort of okay.
This is flat out untrue... I don't know what I could say to emphasize this more!
Which is maybe the answer to a question long ago asked about why some guys pride themselves on liking "unattractive" women.
"Unattractive" according to some mythical and unattainable ideals? Most of us are attracted to much less "attractive" women than the purported ideal and those of us that "pride ourselves on it" is to assure women we like REAL women better. The airbrushed women are nice to look at, but they're not real and we know it.
Why do women swoon over Brad Pitt or George Clooney? I'm sure they look different, and more real, in real life and wouldn't be seen as any less attractive for it.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:49 PM
Collectively, these conversations seem to imply that the women we actually *know*, who we think, in fact, are extremely beautiful/pretty/cute/whatever, are, at best, only sort of okay.
This is not the intent in the conversations I've had. I think ogged's 184 gets it exactly right.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:54 PM
Just to reinforce the first part of 191: I not infrequently marvel at the attractiveness of women I'm friends with, and wonder if I'd think they're as hot if I didn't know them.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:55 PM
184: It's wrong to you; okay, in good faith, I'll accept that. But I don't think you're understanding what LB is saying, which is that "she's pretty, but. . ." is something that those of us who think of ourselves as being, like her, objects to be assessed, hear as "that woman who is much prettier than anyone I actually know in real life, is still not pretty enough." It's not a question of being "wrong"; that is, in fact, how this sort of conversation comes across, that's the effect of it on women.
Not in and of itself this one single conversation, no; but since convos like this happen constantly and all the time (and obviously *not* just when women aren't around--after all, this convo is public, and as many have pointed out, women do it too. It's not like we're stupid and you're keeping some secret from us), then any one particular instance ends up being--and this sucks for guys, I freely admit; why shouldn't you be able to appreciate pretty women?--another piece of evidence that really, women who look like me and my sisters and my friends are just, yuck.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:56 PM
191: Yeah, but B. isn't talking about what you guys think. She's talking about what (lots of) you say. Often. Constantly. And regardless of your actual beliefs, or even of the contradictory things that you say other times, a lot of what you say is "that impossibly hot woman over there? Objectively, not quite good enough." Which makes us, mildly, nervous and insecure.
Why do women swoon over Brad Pitt or George Clooney? I'm sure they look different, and more real, in real life and wouldn't be seen as any less attractive for it.
Because they're attractive. Women, in our culture, don't put nearly the attention men do into analyzing their sex objects as insufficiently perfect.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:56 PM
190 - Fair point. Hencewhy, most considerate males don't oggle in front of women. But, like somebody said above, it's not just "beauty" that gets judged, so why is judging somebody's appaerance such a horrible thing? If I said "so-so" celebrity is an idiot. He/she doesn't even know who the vice president is, then that's "funny". But, if you say "so-so" celebrity is way too thin (or fat), then you're a sexist pig. How come?
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:57 PM
if some of these guys think that that gorgeous Levis girl, who is way more beautiful than I will ever be, isn't all that pretty because she's kinda thin, I wonder what the fuck they think of *me*
Look, I understand this point, but it rests on a fundamental misperception. Guys (at least all the ones I know) use quite different standards in evaluating celebrities and strangers than in evaluating people they know. In conversations to which I've been a party, when people blur this distinction, they're pretty immediately browbeaten, and guys who blur the distinction regularly are bad guys who the rest of us don't hang out with. That's the truth, Ruth.
And again, I really don't think it's even the same kind of evaluation: I think the celebrity talk is about the standard, but the people we know talk is about the people.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 12:58 PM
Women, in our culture, don't put nearly the attention men do into analyzing their sex objects as insufficiently perfect.
Well, you've only just been put in a position to really do so in the last thirty years. Give yourselves time. Rome wasn't built in a day.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:01 PM
This is your source for 158.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:02 PM
, and guys who blur the distinction regularly are bad guys who the rest of us don't hang out with.
They're not even bad guys; they're sad guys. Fantacists, really, because such blurring just isn't credible.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:03 PM
195 - But, celebritries are 2D to us. We see them on a flat TV, movie, or computer screen. We're judging the beauty they "project" in only 2 dimensions, whereas a woman in real life is 3D and can be much more "attractive" to us than a glitzy image on a screen is. A woman on screen must be 150% better looking than a real life woman that we can see, smell, hear, and know from different angles. Real life women with some cellulite? Hot. Fake 2D woman with cellulite? Not as much. It's not even comparing apples-to-apples.
194 - see my other comment. Why is judging the attribute of "beauty" of females so dammning but judging any other attribite isn't as bad?
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:04 PM
197: Like I said, I believe you; but what you don't seem to be acknowledging is that that impression that we get is neither insane nor nice. I mean, we can't read your minds. We don't know that "eh, she's a bit droopy" when applied to Scarlett Johanssen (or whoever) isn't even going to come up when you look at your girlfriend.
In other words, thinking you can make it okay by just *saying* "that's a fundamental misperception, I don't think of you that way, honey, really, you're beautiful!" is, itself, a fundamental misperception. We have feelings, and we're simply not capable (any more than any other human being) of hearing this sort of thing all the time without *feeling* bad, and thinking, "well, he says that he thinks I'm beautiful, but I know I'm nowhere near as beautiful as that woman over there who he thinks is "too" X, Y, or Z, so he's just saying that to make me feel better." Which is a shitty way to feel. I think that the expectation that we should be able to hear this kind of convo constantly without feeling bad is completely unreasonable; it's like expecting us to be some libertarian wet dream of a perfectly rational agent, or something.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:04 PM
197 = exactly!
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:05 PM
But, if you say "so-so" celebrity is way too thin (or fat), then you're a sexist pig. How come?
One reason is that, in the media world we live in, celebrities aren't particularly different from the rest of us on the intellectual axis. Some are smart, some are dumb, some well-informed, some otherwise. So commenting negatively about a celebrity's intellect isn't a sweeping condemnation of the bulk of ordinary people.
On the other hand, women present in the media are wildly, wildly likely to be astonishingly beautiful compared to the average woman. I'm reasonably pretty, but next to anyone who has a job involving standing in front of a camera, I'm incomparably less attractive. When you say (professionally pretty woman X) doesn't meet your standards, you're saying that 95% of the women around you fall hopelessly, abjectly short.
If our media environment focused more on televised high-stakes math games, and you had a habit of sitting in a bar full of high-school graduates saying "Geezus, what a moron," whenever any of the geniuses on TV bobbled a question that neither you nor anyone else in the room would have had a hope in hell of figuring out, they might get a little tense with you as well.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:06 PM
Are we talking this Megatron or the old one?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:06 PM
185: Way to ruin my threadjack.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:08 PM
201: Celebrities are 2D to everyone. But we're not assessing the women under discussion in this thread as celebrities; we're assessing them as women. I'm a woman. I identify with these objects we're assessing on some level. So when you're looking at a 2D object, I'm looking at a representation of someone like me. There's a quality of differentiation there that you can make, but that I can't. I mean, how hard is that to understand?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:08 PM
202: Exactly. Look, I'm not asking you guys to stop, and it's not a central worry in my life. But this sort of conversation does make women listening feel like crap about themselves on some small level, and saying that it shouldn't doesn't change that.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:10 PM
A agree with 197 insofar as it describes intent, but look: even if in one case you are describing "the standard" and in the other you are describing "the people", your critiques of beautiful celebrities for failing to attain "the standard" are going to have he inevitable effect of making "the people" feel that much further away from "the standard". Which makes them insecure, and understandably so.
It is interesting that, as many people have pointed out, girls do this too, but they do it to other women, and not nearly so often about "dreamy" guys. I don't think you hear many conversations where girl [a] says
"[x] is sooo dreamy!" and girl [b] says "No! His shoulders are slightly too narrow. He should really do some more shoulder presses" (especially when talking about a guy who is more fit and muscular, even across the shoulders, than 99% of the male population). Guys say those things about women.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:11 PM
I once sent a certain mysterious coblogger a version of 185 with all the action heroes replaced with the various 'matt' commenters at a certain other blog, who were legion.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:11 PM
Since nobody else seems willing to perform the unsavory but necessary task, I'd just like to take this opportunity to say, "Oh, come on."
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:11 PM
Are we talking this Megatron or the old one?
The old one, before penis insecurity turned him into Galvatron.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:12 PM
202 - I don't know, B. Some women, like my wife for instance, are unphased about guys oggling at Playboy models, for example, because they know "they're not real". So, she doesn't compare herself to them and think she's any less. Same for me. I don't look anything like a "male model" but it doesn't phase me one bit (for better or worse). If somebody thinks I'm fat, ugly, and disgusting, then that's THEIR problem, truly. I don't internalize it and say "I'm ugly and worthless because somebody doesn't find me attractive or I don't look like Brad Pitt". Now, in my teens or 20s, I worried about my appearance and what people thought of it, but now in my mid-30s, who gives a fuck, really? Judge me on my character. And, if you still don't like me, then fuck you. That's your problem. :-)
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:13 PM
I think that the expectation that we should be able to hear this kind of convo constantly without feeling bad is completely unreasonable
I'm not sure I "expect" anyone not to feel bad, but at some point we all make our peace with not being fantabulousy whatever. The not-nice way to say this is that the people who don't make their peace with it are humorless bitches, if they're women, and macho assholes, if they're men.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:13 PM
I see my comment came way too late, and had already been better-said by the ladies. Oh well, such is life.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:14 PM
Unvarnished statement: what actually feels worst about this conversation to me is that Ogged and TD seem to expect LB and me to understand *their* point of view. Like I'm supposed to put aside the way that these kinds of conversations make me feel in order to empathize with you guys. But I don't see you empathizing with what LB and I are saying; your responses seem to be, if anything, completely incredulous, like it's incomprehensible to you that, as women, we wouldn't just assume (or see as neutral) the idea that *those* women are in a different class than we are, and that therefore we're not supposed to think that how you assess them has anything to do with how you assess us. Um, gee, thanks. It's always comforting to hear that one's in some kind of subcaste junior league.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:14 PM
In googling around for Megatron, why am I not completely shocked to come across this?
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:17 PM
Bizarrely, I've often thought it was nice, or at least inoffensive, to say that X celebrity isn't that hot, in front of women I actually know. It's a way of saying, I prefer real life to glossy magazine pictures, and I know that the person in the magazine, like all people, has flaws.
Pointing out the flaws in great detail, I could see how that would be annoying, or insulting, and at the very least, might make the speaker look mean-spirited.
But just to say, "I think that model is too skinny (assuming this is apropos of something, and not just announced)," that could be a way of saying "I prefer real women, and don't particularly enjoy being bombarded with these images." And assuming you didn't, yourself, pick out that image and shove it in someone's face, I don't see why it would necessarily be taken any other way.
Or at least I didn't see how it would be taken any other way previously.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:18 PM
Ogged and TD seem to expect LB and me to understand *their* point of view
Well, yeah. I mean, I love you B, but you're definitely on the "humorless bitch" side of the spectrum; it's not like I don't know other women, and it's not like they wouldn't tell me if they were bothered.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:18 PM
207 - but by your analogy, when I watch a football game, I identify with the players some because I used to play. But, if some bonehead says player X is horrible (no objective measure for this either, just as there isn't for beauty), and when I think to myself I could never run that fast or be that strong or be that good and this person is bashing that player, it doesn't make me feel any less?
I'm not trying to discredit your feelings, believe me. I'm just trying to understand why women internalize this beauty thing so much but they don't other qualities.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:19 PM
you had a habit of sitting in a bar full of high-school graduates saying "Geezus, what a moron," whenever any of the geniuses on TV bobbled a question that neither you nor anyone else in the room would have had a hope in hell of figuring out, they might get a little tense with you as well.
You should go to a sports bar. That's exactly what happens, and everybody understands that when we call Tim Duncan "soft," we mean soft by NBA standards.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:20 PM
Stras, ew. I thought the description in 205 was a joke.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:21 PM
Same for me. I don't look anything like a "male model" but it doesn't phase me one bit (for better or worse). If somebody thinks I'm fat, ugly, and disgusting, then that's THEIR problem, truly. I don't internalize it and say "I'm ugly and worthless because somebody doesn't find me attractive or I don't look like Brad Pitt". Now, in my teens or 20s, I worried about my appearance and what people thought of it, but now in my mid-30s, who gives a fuck, really? Judge me on my character. And, if you still don't like me, then fuck you. That's your problem. :-)
TD, you're a man. And actually, I'm disinclined to accept the testimony of any man w/r/t a woman's state of mind about her attractiveness and her relationship to a beauty standard, even if that woman is his wife. She may not want to discuss certain feelings with you, affect bravado, have grown out of something she felt when she was younger, etc.
To say "I don't let this bother me; that's their problem" in the midst of a conversation that's fundamentally sociological drastically misses the point.
Compare: "If someone calls me nigger/dyke/fag/spic, that's their problem! ;-) "
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:22 PM
Humorless bitch? Geez ogged, you might be jeopardizing your chances.
Also, where is the humor here (that B and other humorless bitches are missing)? "Oversensitive" I could see, I guess; "humorless" I don't get at all.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:23 PM
I mean, I love you B, but you're definitely on the "humorless bitch" side of the spectrum; it's not like I don't know other women, and it's not like they wouldn't tell me if they were bothered.
Or it could be that the women you know don't want you to call them humorless bitches.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:24 PM
219 - I hear that stuff, and I wince a little even as I KNOW that I'm prettier than average and that lots of men really and truly love the shapes of the women in their lives. Because would they love me more if I just looked more like her? Which I could maybe do if I stopped eating? Then I remember that I don't want to that bad. But the whole interaction cost me a momentary pang, which I didn't have to have. (It does this to me, and I'm more confident than most.)
Posted by Megan | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:25 PM
215: But nonetheless appreciated.
213, 214: Oh, come on. It's not that we're getting cranky about recognizing that we're imperfect next to the professionally pretty people. It's that we're getting cranky about endless conversations about how professionally pretty women are not good enough, whether or not we're supposed to remember that we don't get graded on the same scale that they are.
216: Yep. With this kind of reaction, is it any wonder that TD's wife is 'absolutely unfazed' by this sort of thing? Oh, she might be, but obviously she wouldn't get a lot of sympathy if she brought it up.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:26 PM
DrB, what 218 said for one.
As for "Ogged and TD seem to expect LB and me to understand *their* point of view"
I apologize for this. I guess in some, dillusional way I'm trying to help you not internalize this beauty issue so much (and, recall I've seen your picture. I know you're very good looking). And I am sympathetic to what you and LB are saying, really. If emoticons were allowded, you'd know that. It's just not coming across very well since I'm trying to hit the topic head-on.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:26 PM
I would like a t-shirt that says "Humorless Bitch", because in this, as in other matters, I am a humorless bitch.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:27 PM
I love you B, but you're definitely on the "humorless bitch" side of the spectrum; it's not like I don't know other women, and it's not like they wouldn't tell me if they were bothered.
In all honesty, that hurts. I play along with this shit all the time; I join in on the hot or not threads, I'm not particularly threatened by the idea that Scarlett Johanssen is gorgeous, I agree that Jessica Biel has a fabulous butt and that the Levis girl is very pretty indeed. I'm not sitting here saying, "god, but she's so skinny."
What I am doing is saying, okay; if we meet you halfway, if we concede (as LB has repeatedly done) that it's perfectly okay for you guys to play the "hot or not" game, if we play along (as I've repeatedly done) or laugh when it comes up, why can't you meet us halfway and acknowledge that we're not, in fact, being "humorless bitches" by asking that, in response, you recognize that on some level this kind of thing makes us feel bad? We're not even saying don't play the game; we're just saying throw us a bone and admit that it's not the most innocent or fair game in town.
I can't speak for your other women friends or what they're thinking. I don't know them. I do know that it's a lot harder for me to say this kind of thing in person than it is on a computer screen. And that I might not say this kind of thing in person if I thought that the person I were saying it to, who I really liked, would think I were a humorless bitch if I did.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:27 PM
Or it could be that the women you know don't want you to call them humorless bitches.
Or to slap them around. Yeah.
You are so Isle of Toads.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:27 PM
I'm just trying to understand why women internalize this beauty thing so much but they don't other qualities.
Women, much more than men, are taught that their worth as human beings depends heavily on how attractive they are. I read a poll once in which some obscene percentage of women (a majority) said they'd rather be dumb than fat. I can't remember the source; it might have been from a women's mag, which would bias the sample a little.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:28 PM
In other other matters, I am a humorful bitch. Let us all acknowledge that the oggedian position is untenable, and turn to other matters.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:29 PM
223 - Compare: "If someone calls me nigger/dyke/fag/spic, that's their problem! ;-) "
On some level, yes. If you're interested in peace of mind, you have to know you can't change some people who don't want changed.
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:29 PM
231: Ogged, why is your only comeback to accuse me of being another commenter? You've done this, what, four or five times by now?
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:29 PM
we're just saying throw us a bone and admit that it's not the most innocent or fair game in town
I totally admit this, as long as it's not attached to a "therefore you must stop." Also, Megan's "momentary pang" is noted. I think that's true. I think guys feel that too when celebrity dudes are said to be hot. Yeah, absolutely, these conversations make people just a bit more insecure. But, well, I like 'em.
And apologies for hurting your feelings. I didn't, in fact, call you a humorless bitch, and I don't think you are, but you are more sensitive to this stuff than most of the women I know, and I said that in a too-dramatic way.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:31 PM
I'm not sure I "expect" anyone not to feel bad, but at some point we all make our peace with not being fantabulousy whatever.
Don't buy that. None of us ever make peace with it; we just get too tired to care.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:33 PM
Ogged, why is your only comeback to accuse me of being another commenter?
Because IOT was so hostile to me that it had become a joke; I couldn't take the criticism seriously anymore.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:33 PM
the oggedian position is untenable
Ogged is missing a rib. He can assume positions the rest of us can't.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:35 PM
234: So if you ran into a bunch of people complaining about being the subject of racial and homophobic slurs on the internet, you would a) ask them why it bothered them so much and b) encourage them not to be bothered, because it wasn't their problem? That would be their response?
That's pretty apolitical, and it's pretty inadequate to say we should all just worry about ourselves. Of course, we should worry about ourselves, but we should also worry about society, and the way words and actions affect us and other people. Cheerfully deciding we don't care doesn't do anything for others, first of all, and on some level, it doesn't do anything for us on the level that we will always care.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:35 PM
Ogged, why is your only comeback to accuse me of being another commenter?
"Only" is bizarre, has ogged not attempted to engage anything you've said in this thread? Also, it's not clear how it's an accusation in any conventional sense. Finally, because it's funny.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:35 PM
That would be their response?
"their" s/b "your"
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:36 PM
Because IOT was so hostile to me that it had become a joke
How much hostility towards you - as opposed to some idea or other you happen to be espousing at any given time - have I demonstrated? Every time you pull off this "you're so-and-so" nonsense it just strikes me as deeply paranoid and touchy, as if there's no reason someone could disagree with you unless they were secretly out to get you.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:36 PM
some obscene percentage of women (a majority) said they'd rather be dumb than fat
What's wrong with believing that? I think I might believe that, depending on what we mean by "dumb" and "fat."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:37 PM
228: I don't want you to help me. I want you to hear to what I am saying.
224: Actually no. I loved Ogged too; otherwise I wouldn't be bothered.
229: Dear god, I love SB so much.
231: Or maybe it's that the women you know have a little bit of Stockholm syndrome and would argue to the grave that this kind of thing doesn't bother them one whit. But really, does any man who is close to a woman think that she *never* worries that she's too fat/too thin/too out of shape/too whatever? Do none of the women you know who you think are really beautiful *ever* say, "oh no, I'm not; my nose is too big/I need to get in shape/I've got cellulite/I'm too short"?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:37 PM
I'm just trying to understand why women internalize this beauty thing so much but they don't other qualities.
Because other people are freaks about it. When my weight swung by twenty pounds twice a year (for nationals in the fall and states in the spring) I could tell my weight as accurately by the way people treated me as by weighing myself. When people thought I was prettier, they wanted to talk to me and clerks gave me free shit and people waved me to the front of the line. Teachers thought I was smarter. My perceived value was inarguably higher when I was thinner and prettier.
Posted by Megan | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:38 PM
No, SJ, I engage your points when you engage mine, but when you say something uncharitable, like your 225, it makes me wonder. Mainly, if you are Isle of Toads, I just wish you'd admit it, so I can stop wondering.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:39 PM
227 - 216: Yep. With this kind of reaction, is it any wonder that TD's wife is 'absolutely unfazed' by this sort of thing? Oh, she might be, but obviously she wouldn't get a lot of sympathy if she brought it up.
Untrue. You're making an assumption that I'm some insensitive ogre who doesn't care about my wife's feelings. Definitely not true. Truth be told, it's always been me who felt "guilty" looking at Playboy or porn because I didn't want her to have the precise feelings you ladies are expressing. But, over time, I finally believed her when she said it doesn't phase her. The fact that she was raised by her DAD instead of her mom, and had a brother with lots of friends (and no sisters) no doubt caused her to be de-sensitized.
So, again, I'm not trying to discredit your feelings. I'm just trying to figure out where they stem from (which is now pretty clear) and if there's no hope of more women not taking it personally?
Posted by TD | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:39 PM
I don't want you to help me. I want you to hear to what I am saying.
This is such A Deborah Tannen moment.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:40 PM
So if you ran into a bunch of people complaining about being the subject of racial and homophobic slurs on the internet, you would a) ask them why it bothered them so much and b) encourage them not to be bothered, because it wasn't their problem? That would be their response?
Cripes, I hate this move. Slurs are, in fact, meant as "slurs." Discussions of attractiveness are something different. I assume we all felt there was a difference between the "humourless bitch" reference and discussions of a celebrities attractiveness.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:40 PM
clerks gave me free shit
Oh man, when I was dating the crazy blonde (who had been a ballet prodigy and still retained that build, and was indeed very, very pretty), I was amazed by the amount of stuff people just handed to her to free. Really, all the time.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:43 PM
236: Ogged, you're setting up a straw man. No one has said you ought not have these conversations here. LB specifically said multiple times that you're perfectly entitled and she doesn't mind that much. Neither do I.
And I do appreciate both the acknowledgement of the effect of such convos, and the apology. The former was all I wanted; the latter was completely unnecessary, but thank you.
(In all honesty, I think I'm way less sensitive to this stuff that most women. I actually think that I am attractive, and I've never so much as considered dieting. I think I am, perhaps *because* I'm not terribly sensitive about my appearance, maybe more honest than some about how this stuff feels.)
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-29-06 1:43 PM