more...and more

[dungrollin]

Kneasy (or was it Barry?) wrote:
> Bugger society. It can mind it's own damn business. What you have 
> to worry about are individuals. You can safely ignore anyone who 
> can't screw up your life.
>
> Sitting in my dentist's waiting room I browse through the women's 
> mags - and you know what? It looks to me that most of the pressure 
> on women is coming from other women. "Do that....look like 
> this...enjoy the other....or you're a dowdy old bag and a failure 
> to boot."
> 

But it's not that simple. What are we to make of studies that
show a person is considered more attractive (to both sexes) if 
they're standing next to a thin person than if they're standing next 
to a fat person in a queue? Not being somebody else's idea of
fashionable or attractive *can* screw up a woman's life.  Eddie and 
Patsy only work as comic characters because they're an exaggeration 
of a type that we've all met.

There was another "Grumpy Old Women" on last night, which I caught 
part of (purely for research purposes). I noticed a difference in 
attitude according to age, too (half of them weren't old at all).
One of them actually said "When I die, I'm going to come back as a 
50-year-old man." 

> I'll let you into a little secret. Men aren't all that fussy. 
> They're just thankful for finding somebody who regards them as 
> even faintly interesting. So much so that they'll usually end up 
> marrying this person with such remarkable insight.

Er... Well, okay. I'm not convinced. Anyway, even if you're
right, it must be a very recent development, because something sure 
as hell selected for women to preferentially lay fat down on their 
hips, which has the single useful effect of making their waists look 
smaller. By which I mean to say that female body shape has most 
definitely been selected for by male preference. As you said, 
evolution isn't too quick off the mark, so I'd reckon that
the male preference is still there. 

Some men somewhere at some age must have been fussy, or at least had 
the opportunity (lucky them) to be fussy, otherwise we wouldn't
have invented make-up. You're not perhaps extrapolating from your 
own wisdom to a generalisation which might not be applicable to the 
majority of men, are you?

But then, maybe we're talking at cross-purposes. Getting married
is, after all, not what matters to evolution. 



Sean wrote:
> Another red herring: it is true that women have a dangerous 
> obsession with self-image; it doesn't change the fact that they 
> are still essentially in control of the mating game. So gaudy or 
> not, men are still flitting about gathering impressive trinkets, 
> beating their absurd six-packs and roaring about something or 
> other with ever-so-careless glances in the direction of the female 
> herd.

I'd argue that neither side is in control. Men gathering status 
symbols (which they do far more than women), and women seeking 
physical beauty (which they do far more than men) are rather 
different behaviours. Both are used for (or have the effect of) 
attracting the opposite sex. Not to say there aren't some
extremely vain men around, nor women obsessed with status. But there 
is a reason why successful (though not necessarily good-looking) men 
in their forties leaving their wives, buying a sports car and 
shacking up with a 25-year-old blonde is a cliché. Unfortunately
the 
rules for the game as played by both sides, are still based on what 
worked well in the African savanna, and aren't necessarily best 
suited to the constraints of modern life.

Funny how all biological thinking puts sex centre-stage. And yet I 
can't abide Freud.

Dot
Who's not sure whether she's ever actually seen a genuine
six-pack, except on the telly.