Hey, pleated pants, and they look fine!

Weird. And no way in hell do I want to see a pic of me kissing myself.

Other people might want to see a pic of you kissing yourself, gswift.

Other people like you!

Whoa.

Like voting Republican and vegetarianism, I instinctively know it's wrong.

This is how you make baby clones, right?

3 - yes.

Great photos. I'd like to see just about all my friends kissing themselves I think. I'm sure Sandbach Rugby Club would enjoy them too.

Didn't Escher do a similar piece?

How did they do that? That's some impressive Photoshoppery.

That is hot.

Strange. While normally I'm all about the faintly perverse, there's no frisson at all. I'm not sure why.

But yeah, that's some fantastic Photoshopping.

there's no frisson at all

A lot them look silly! Kissing looks silly! (Not stupid silly, just funny silly.) This must be why I don't watch much pron.

I should say that to me, some, even most, are not hot, but those that are, um, are.

Yeah, they all kind of look like they're kissing air, which they must be, but the concept is kinda hot.

See, it's the concept that's not hot, as far as I'm concerned. The pictures themselves don't do much for me either. To be interesting, there has to be a degree of game-playing and power struggle and, I don't know, negotiation of social position which are all pretty much absent in the "kissing one's clone" scenario.

This is why gay chicken is teh hot, for example. Although I prefer it fraught with relationship negotiation rather than as practiced amongst wholesome, healthy rugby players.

Actually, after having watched that video about a hundred times, I'm fairly sure the Sandbach Rugby Team is not in the business of Gay Chicken. What do you call it when there's no longer any fear, shame, or aversion? I think we might just call it gay, right?

The ones I like best are the woman with the cigarette and the heavy guy with his hands wrapped.

Negotiation of social position? That's weird.

I didn't watch any of the gay chicken things, of course (dial-up), so I don't know about that.

But yeah, the concept is not hot; if you've ever been in a relationship with someone who's basically a clone of you, it's compelling, sexually and otherwise, for a time, until it turns into teh Hate.

Huh.

I wondered whether the pictures reflected how much each subject loved him or herself.

the heavy guy with his hands wrapped.

This is my favorite, by a long shot.

18: It's not weird. It's interesting. You know, class and status and stuff--the various thrills available in cross-class relations, the little negotiations of status within a group or a social formation, the whole business of figuring out where someone's from. Both a time-honored trope in pron and something that lends a good deal of thrill to even the non-sex/non-making-out parts of being around someone you're interested by. In fact, for me the actual sex and making-out can't really be interesting if the "where someone's from" part isn't.

I liked the heavy guy with his hands wrapped the best too. I'm having trouble articulating why -- somehow it was the most unexpected.

21: Since it's quiet and nobody's watching, and this is a desultory conversation, okay:

I guess it can be interesting, but you seem to be conflating social class (actually, is that economic or educational?) with what I'd call mere power status. The latter being a function of how self-assured someone is. Say.

mm, no, rereading, I actually don't really know what you're talking about: "where someone's from" is interesting, yes, but sexually titillating I don't quite see.

Since I don't watch pron, I don't particularly know about the tropes of which you speak, but I assume it's something to do with the the Beverly Hills housewife banging the pool guy. I don't see the thrill.

You've never seen the pool guys in Bevery Hills. Rrowrrr.

Bevery Hills is the hill next to Beverly Hills where they keep all the beer.

Well, most of the thrills of the pron don't really thrill me personally, for reasons too blurry to articulate well in short form.

But both the class/education thing and the power-within-a-specific-interaction thing are teh hott. Especially because sex changes up what you think the relationships are.

On the not-sex-but-alluring front: it's like when you're interested in someone and they take you to visit some place that's important to them, or their family's house, or the town where they grew up. The way you have a whole new set of things that you know about the person and a whole new set of speculations about why they are the way they are. It sort of estranges them and makes them more familiar at the same time, allowing both intimacy and objectification, so to speak.

It's difficult for me to find someone really interesting without also finding them (though usually not in a serious, let's-pursue-now way) attractive. This may be unique to me, but as I've observed here before, it does mean that the pool of people I find attractive is fairly large.

(Just as a corollary...real, serious dramatic differences in power and real, serious hostility put me off. It's the little differences, the ones that can be negotiated in a playful way, that are fun, or revealing.)

23: Because I was in college right after the whole Dorothy Allison/Sex Wars thing, it was customary in the circles in which I moved to have a passing knowledge of pron. That whole sex-positive business, if you recall. It was a different climate, because there simply wasn't the whole internet/DVD network and popular culture wasn't as sexually explicit. (And it was only ten years ago! Well, twelve.) It was considered politically-correct to be pro-porn, whereas now that's rather like being pro-, oh, I don't know, pro-government or something, in that it's certainly possible to be anti-government, but the government hardly needs your efforts to be hegemonic.

I wonder how much reactions to these pictures overlap with positions on the "would you fuck your clone?" issue.

Well, my position on clone-fucking is that I would be more than happy to sleep with my (same-age) sex-switched clone, but profoundly uninterested in my (same-age) same-sex clone/double, though I have happily slept with several other (not-me) women.

I'd fuck your clone, rfts. But only if that wouldn't piss off snarkout's clone.

Interesting, not especially hot, and gswift needs to get over his homophobia.

Mighty white of you, apo.

Apo once again outs himself as a dirty clonefucker.

Racist! Simulations show that that an apostropher of color would also sleep with your clone.

several other (not-me) women

I do love a conversation where that clarifying parenthetical is necessary.

For me, as a shallow person, the hotness of each picture was largely a function of the attractiveness of the subjects.

"This is why gay chicken is teh hot, for example. "

First time i've heard this admitted.

Also, those pictures are the first time i realized just how ugly hairy thighs are. How many years until guys leg shave, do you think? I wonder when i have kids it will be something done on the then-current-queer-eye type shows.

Hairy thighs are a sign of youth, no? Older men's legs get increasingly hairless, while their backs and shoulders get hairier.

When I worked at a famous spa, most of my coworkers were 19-year-old rich girls from Long Island who would fill entire days talking about how gross hair on men's bodies was. "Like, when a guy has, like, hayuh? Awl ovah his foreawms? Oh my gawd, it makes me fucking puke." And I would laugh and laugh at them. "What's so funny?"

"Clearly, you should totally try dating women. They're much less hairy. You'd like it."

Okay, so I realize an appreciation for body hair is not the only thing that makes someone straight or not, but it is pretty common when straight guys look at a sexualized male body, it strikes them that body hair is gross, in a way that it wouldn't to me.

i'm always so shocked by old dudes balsacks that i don't notice how much leg hair they have. losing leg hair seems like a reversal of usual, which is to trend increasing masculine with age with hair patterns.

Yeah, but i have arguments with girls commonly who say I have to wear pants and have to wear socks and shouldn't wear sandals or have to button up my shirt because it shows off body hair on the revealed portion. maybe girl-on-guy sexualization of body is a more particular event and not as broad as guy-on-girl sexualizing.

Body hair is a sign of high testosterone in both men and women. It's pretty reasonable and telling, I think that many people feel strong aversions to body hair, because it really does say something about what kinds of testosterone levels they seek out in partners. At least, I don't think I've ever known someone whose body-hair preferences didn't reflect something pretty significant about their attitudes toward sexual aggressiveness.

i suppose all that is a good argument for going shopping with somone of the opposite sex, to avoid trendy but unhot clothing pix. for example, those lampshsade dresses or this top http://images.saksfifthavenue.com/images/products/04/459/8319/0445983196461/0445983196461_ASTL_300x400.jpg

haha, i'm totally going to ask girls how much body hair they like, as a way of knowing how aggressive i should be. i hope you don't me me using your information for these purposes.

Are you looking to pick an aesthetic fight with Kriston?

Photos: not hot. Bad color, bad composition, do not want!

I love body hair. Though have ended up married to a very smooth-chested, lightly-haired bloke. And eye up men with unbuttoned shirts and hairy chests.

Now picturing AWB nodding and putting me into *that* mental box.

I suppose i want a person's clothing aesthetics to reflect their underlying body-sexuality. If you like the look of potatoe sacks, buy a few and fill them with packing peanuts and sit them in your living room around your bong.

44: Hee hee! Actually, I'd love to know if you think it holds true, that generally you think of yourself as someone who's "into" hyper-aggressive men, but are also happy with someone who isn't as much. (I'm kind of that way, actually.)

Arm hair on women: teh hott.

Wasn't there a study, based on women's reactions to flashed images of men's faces, that claimed to have shown a trend toward favoring "rugged" men around a woman's ovulation, and "gentler" faces at other times?

47: teh crazy. its like the one drawback to indian women.

yes, there was. and thus it is now affected by birth contorl.

49: But...but almost all women have some arm hair, don't they? And surely it's better than arm stubble, or dating someone who never has any money or free time because he/she is constantly off being depilated.

What about if one likes less hairy men and more hairy women? Riddle me than, huh?

Although I sure wouldn't let the degree of hair on someone keep me from sleeping with them, did I like them.

"than" should be "that".

I tire of depilation.

i can't think forarm waxing takes much time compared to legs, and that actually is a requirement, so yeah i might be put off by excess arm hair. i'm definatly put off by hairy upper lips.

What about if one likes less hairy men and more hairy women? Riddle me than, huh?

I guess you like your men on bottom and your ladies on top, huh?

J/k, of course. I don't actually think this translates much into individual sexual choices, but I do suspect it is related to the way people think about their own ideal "types." Like, I had a gay male friend who was forever panegyrically describing dudes' forearm hair. Sure, a nice face and a keen intellect might make someone datable, but body-level attractions and aversions seem to take body hair into account. Like, I could have sex with a hairless guy. It just wouldn't occur to me to do so.

It's not just testosterone levels, surely? Some genetic lines are hairier than others right out of the box.

I am feeling a touch bitter and put upon about being a (not naturally hairless) girl.

40: yoyo, you're on crack.

I'm just baffled by types, actually. I mean, I have types (dark-haired femme-y fattish women of the curvy rather than muscle-y variety; insecure gangly punk-rock guys who dress badly; butch intellectual women with short hair and androgynous clothes; short chubby mean men with glasses) but that's really not strongly predictive. It predicts the person I'll notice first, maybe, but not the person I'll actually want to pursue. And two of the types in the list above are memorial types, so to speak--types forever fatal to me on the basis of one long-ago person. It's not that I can equipped with types and have neatly hooked up with appropriate people.

I'm pretty hairy myself, but it's all medium-blond and therefore not very visible. I'm sure that, genetically, some people get hair in different places and in different amounts, but maybe within that group testosterone matters? I didn't think about the connection until a girlfriend of mine in college told me about it. Her parents took her to a doctor when she was a teen because she was pretty alarmingly hairy for a girl. They found out she just had really high testosterone--not as much as a man's, but pretty high. And though she's very beautiful and feminine-looking, she's extraordinarily sexually and physically aggressive.

59: And you wonder why people suspect you of being in graduate school.

. It's pretty reasonable and telling, I think that many people feel strong aversions to body hair, because it really does say something about what kinds of testosterone levels they seek out in partners.

Hard to say, given that it's unclear which affects our preferences more: a deep unconscious desire for testosterone or a lack of it, or what we are conditioned to see as attractive. Given that body hair does seem to be linked to ethnic origin, I'm inclined to think the latter. A prejudice about an ethnic group generally might manifest by thinking that a characteristic of that group is less attractive.

Female hyenas are dominant, larger than the males, and have more testosterone. They also develop male-seeming genitalia. Both genders are equally hairy, however. A hyena can eat an entire antelope, bones and all, except for the skull. They are not primarily carrion eaters, despite their reputation; in fact, the noble lion often waits for hyenas to make a kill, and then drives them off and eats it.

Short chubby mean men with glasses.

I swear I've never even met Frowner.

Male seeming? That sounds like an unpleasant surprise, John.

61: Because that's, like, the physical description of the enrollees of every humanities grad program ever? Yes, my dearth of graduate schooling means I do have to work harder for dates.

62: Okay, let's think about this. Women used not to shave their legs, right? At least from the 1900s through WWII. And yet everyone wasn't wildly repulsed and shrinking from having sex. And as innumerable pieces of seventies pornography testify, hairiness in men used to be a desireable characteristic--back when lots of women actually were on birth control. Ergo, I think something else is at work rather than "natural" responses to testosterone or the lack of it.

Yes, Emerson, when I wrote that little Sad-Scarlett-Johansson piece earlier I was really trying to work through my feelings for you. But don't worry, I respect the No Relationship Policy.

Only to hyena guys insecure in their masculinity. This is probably most of them, but the hyena ladies whip up on them if they make any snarky comments, so who really knows?

people used to not shower eiither. I think we're actually just making progress.

Exactly. Plus, think how many movies where the oily evil sidekick is a pale guy with gold chains nestled in black wiry chest hair. Maybe it's just me, but while I don't mind body hair, black body hair on a pale body isn't attractive to me, and I'm sure it's got nothing to do with testosterone and everything to the movies.

Sociobiology types who try to claim that contemporary American sexual standards are "natural" have a lot of trouble explaining how men back on the veldt could favor slender, hairless, odorless blonde women with large busts and almost no hips. Perhaps this is some sort of Hegelian dialectical outcome whuch was only reached in our time.

I always like the evil guy, though, just because one is so clearly meant not to. This explains a lot of my life choices, actually.

On a similar note, I read something interesting yesterday about a woman who has curly hair who was at a party in DC and someone said, "With hair like that, you must be a Democrat." And she thought about it, and realized that having really curly hair isn't considered as put-together or professional. Then she thought why, and realized that curly hair implies that you're not descended from all-American puritanical stock, but that you're Jewish or Italian or Latin or black.

73: Totally! I've been trying to convince people for years that whenever lots of products for curly-haired people start appearing, people will vote Democrat. Lots of commercials about taming frizz and straightening hair is a sign of a coming or popular Republican administration.

56: One would think so. Trouble is, no one got testosterone readings or hair counts on the guys who did for Custer and his 7th Cav troopers.

(If you can't tell, I'm treating this as a weird BS theory-spouting thread.)

It's certainly possible someone did a hair count on Custer, however.

76: I don't think the theory about the hair products is B.S. per se, but I do think it's a post-sixties theory, because before that everybody knew they had to make their hair look waspnormative if they wanted to get anywhere.

Personally, I am reasonably hairy. Chest hair curling out of the open shirt-collar, can grow a beard fairly quickly, etc.. And I'm slowly going bald, which I gather is related.

The body hair thing, while there's some correlation with particular ethnic groups, it varies a lot within them, surely. Actually, within my own family, I'm the only male with chest hair.

Also, I've also heard conversations like that reported by AWB in 37.

Hair on women, however, I have no particular preference, except really darkly hairy forearms on women, which I really don't like.

ttaM and I will rape you all!

74: We should be in luck then. I was informed by the guy who cut my hair that curly is 'in' again.

Honestly, though, it never would have occurred to me to straighten my hair in order to look more wasponormative. But when I did have the boring office job, pretty much every woman had a variation on the same sleek haircut with highlights.

as prematurly balding, i am hte tribal leader by divine right. shut up and get in line, ogg and ttaM.

My blond sister has hair so naturally kinky that people think she has it done that way. Mostly people who think it looks awful and think it proves she's an awful person.

Curly hair is sexy. So is straight hair.

re: 82

Fight you for it.

Hair on the palms of your hands is the opposite of sexy, Ogged.

Emerson's going to require us to have horns to do that, i bet.

Hair on the palms of your hands is the opposite of sexy, Ogged.

Maybe, John, but years ago I was watching a White Sox game in which Frank Thomas reached way out over the plate and barely got his bat on a ball that nevertheless went out of the park. The great Hawk Harrelson commented, "You have to have hair on the soles of your feet to hit that out."

I feel your sister's pain, JM. I used to get withering looks of scorn and girls saying, "So, like, why are you still getting your hair permed it's so out."

Also, 'slowly going bald' s/b/ 'balding but in denial'.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v304/dwb/unf.jpg

I foretell an entire Flickr set in which the men of Unfogged compare pate spreadage in order to compete for the coveted "greatest sufferer of testosterone poisoning" title.

re: 91

Ah, I have less hair than you. Although I don't really have that thinning thing happening. My hair is either fairly thick/normal or absent.

re: 92

Men are nothing, if not competitive.

foretell an entire Flickr set

Funny, I just snapped a couple pictures of myself with my phone in order to check, but I'm not in the running with these bald dudes.

i still don't know how to make flirk work. photobucket works well enough for posting photoshops of funny faces.

Despite my copious body hair, I have not yet shown any signs of hair loss. Quite the contrary, actually.

I love that you and your folks are all wearing longsleeved plaid. My college boyfriend once appeared in a candid shot with his dad and grandfather in which all three of them were wearing short-sleeved blue-and-white plaid.

and you're all wearing denim too.

i had a flannel shirt once, it was green and blue, its was really comfy, but i lost it.

re: 96

Too young, my son. You have that to look forward too!

I didn't start receding until I was about 25 or 26. In fact, I had long hair until then. On the plus side, I've been overtaken by lots of friends who used to mock me 7 or 8 years ago for receding, who are now way balder than me.

its things like that, and food lines being discontinued of products you really like, that make you realize you'll die.

97, 98: What can I say? We're westerners.

100: True, I'm sure. On the other hand, I know quite a few guys my age who have thinning hair already.

hahaha. i had my photo taken for the school newspaper, and had two friends ask me if i was balding. took a few years to sink in. when i was a kid i made fun of my pops for his red facial hair and receding hair line, and i'm worse on both of those now.

101 referred to 99, btw.

I have all my hair at 60. Presumably my low testosterone makes the no-relationship policy possible. Alternatively, high testosterone causes inappropriate relationships which cause violence, self-destructive, clueless behavior, and hair loss. or maybe stupid relationships cause high testosterone which causes hair loss. Science is wonderful.

I've got no shortage of hair, but I shed everywhere, and the little parts on the corners of my face are definitely receding. I think I've got five or ten years left before it really starts to go.

re: 105

Man, you make some scary eye contact with the camera! But have otherwise enviable hair growth.

Some of us compensate for receding hairlines by growing small furry animals on our faces. (And yes, I was very tired when I took that photo, thanks, ben.)

I guess y'all have moved on from the clonefucking, but I just wanted to agree with this from 15:

To be interesting, there has to be a degree of game-playing and power struggle

And now that I can actually see the photos, there are in fact five of them that struck me as meeting this condition ("Celia," "Mylinh," "Vincent H," "Francois" and "Perrine") and indeed they're the five I find most interesting, with three of them actually being fairly hot. Most of them: meh.

You know how easy it is to get really hammered at airport bars? I mean, you're sitting alone waiting for your flight, so you aren't talking to anyone and you don't notice that you are slurring your speech. You have no reason to stand up and go anywhere, because the flight isn't for hours, so you don't notice that you are stumbling, or even that your feet have fallen asleep.

So I'm in LA for another half hour, if anyone wants to have a meetup at gate 56.

/threadjack

Welcome back, helpy-chalk; I've been following your China photos on Flickr.

Don't pee on yourself.

hey, I'm glad to hear there's an audience.

Also, Happy Father's day to all the dads out there, esp new dad Apo.

gswift needs to get over his homophobia.

Being weirded out by the thought of kissing yourself is not homophobia.

It's not just testosterone levels, surely? Some genetic lines are hairier than others right out of the box.

Quite a lot of variation. I have very little torso hair which is pretty obviously inherited from my dad.

Being weirded out by the thought of kissing yourself is not homophobia.

I'd say it's the most homo- of all homophobia. What can be for homosexual than sex with oneself?

Touche.

Yeah, i have very hairy legs, moderately hairy arms, and less-full than normal facial hair, and very early balding. Not much in the way of back hair or chest hair. People who go on steroids have very different hair experiences. Lot of individual variation.

This is disturbingly hot. I blame BtVS fandom for permanently perverting my thought patterns. Curse you, Willow/Evil Willow slashfic!!!! Also, Cool Xander/Dork Xander. Also, Buffy/Faith even though they are not at all physical clones have that same hott sex as metaphor for struggle within the psyche thing... mmm, Buffy/Faith. Dammit, I may have to go read some slash now. I kicked that habit YEARS ago.

I wouldn't want to dance with myself, never mind grope and suck face. I draw the line at holding hands.

111 -- and likewise to you.

Well, a little gropage isn't totally out of the question.

I hesitate to admit how many comments into this thread it took me to understand that there was more than just the one photo.

Also, Jake is younger than I thought.

I think the possible awesomeness of knowing how to be really good in bed for your clone would be mitigated by all her moves being totally predictable.

Presumably one of you would turn into your Other. One AWB would develop the 457.2 meter stare, and the other AWB would continue on as always.

No baldness yet. (two summers ago, but pretty much identical to current)

Jake is now officially Unfogged's "most likely to kill a co-worker."

Yeah, seems like in addition to knowing how to be really good in bed for you, you would know how to be really fantastically annoying to you and to push all your buttons with pinpoint certitude.

122: That's it. I'm going to quit dating and hold out for me. I am gonna be so good.

Actually, it would be really awesome if, when someone asked Teo about his V, he responded, "I'm saving myself for my clone." I think it might even get him laid.

I think that was actually the plot of Mick Jagger's "Performance", and maybe one of Ingmar Berman's movies too. I saw "Performance", but I was loaded in some respect and didn't follow it very well.

Re. Bergman films, ought I to watch more of them? I was blown away by Wild Strawberries, thought it was one of the best movies I'd ever seen, but found The Seventh Seal did not really hold my attention, lovely though the photography was, and couldn't sit through more than about half an hour of Fanny and Alexander.

I still have good memories of "The Magician". Maybe "Through a Glass Darkly".

"Persona" was the one in which one person turns into the other person.

I admire Jake for posting an unflattering picture of himself; there are other ones in that stream where he looks like a nice young man.

It may verge on truism, but all the most annoying people I've ever met have exhibited personal foibles that I in retrospect recognize to be embarrassingly common in myself. Which makes me think I wouldn't make a good couple.

46 - Honestly, I've not really noticed any variation in agression (sexual or otherwise) as related to body hair. Sorry to be so boring!

I think the possible awesomeness of knowing how to be really good in bed for your clone would be mitigated by all her moves being totally predictable.

And, of course, there are things I like having done to me that I probably wouldn't enjoy doing quite as much.

things I like having done to me that I probably wouldn't enjoy doing

Misogynist.

s/b "things I enjoy doing to others that I probably wouldn't like to be on the receiving end of"