I must be honest, as for the majority of the males who have posted here…you wouldn’t have half a chance with me. Why? Because the assumption that I would want to have sex with a man who translates beauty as skin deep is utterly repellant. I’ve dated men like this and quickly found them borish, and that attitude a physical turnoff.

If great sex really is the ultimate goal, then you have a long way to discover it! It won’t be found on that pathway. It’s found in loving someone as yourself, and may at times be a sacrificial thing.

My father gave me a beautiful insight into this one day…my mother and I were getting her ready to go out on a special occasion. He walked in and was hurt and affronted that she’d put make-up on. His explanation:’I like her the way she is!’ My mother is 73, and still manages to bring a gleam of joy to my father’s eye, and heart.

Anthony, maybe if you can learn to love like that, you’ll finally discover
the magic and beauty and Truth of the universe that you aspire to embrace.

As I have said before, “a Mistress does not a Wife make.”

And I offered Jessica Simpson as a news hook, not an example. Jessica Simpson is dimwitted and definitely FAR from my personal flavor of female beauty. But to a Congressman from middle America who hasn’t had sex with his wife in 10 years, that girl is a walking orgasm.

You, however, imply that one has to choose: one either can have a witty, vivacious, talented “plain” girl, or can have a hot one who is functionally retarded.

And that was the reason I wrote the post in the first place – that psychosocial bigotry that the intelligentsia engages is, that is, “if she’s hot, she certainly can’t be witty, vivacious and intelligent.”

And to your question “who wants to be with someone who spends their human potential this way…” I’d ask, even if I grant you that human potential is “wasted” on beauty [note: I don't, I very much disagree] – where does one draw that line? What if she enjoys other pleasures you find “frivolous” – a certain television show, a silly hobby, etc. Does a mate have to be constantly engaged in activity that you judge as a high intellectual calling?

You’ve clearly stated that female beauty is relatively unimportant to you, and I think that’s somewhat unusual. But if you would actually *prefer* a plain girl over a beautiful girl, with other factors relatively equal, that would make you *extremely* unusual (not that there’s anything wrong with that..)

Also, I think the standards to which you refer impact men as well – and probably more so. I doubt it’d be real easy to work one’s way to the “premium” segment of the dating pool as an unemployed, soft-spoken, diminuitive male who lives with his mother.

It’s true that most cultures have a concept of “female beauty” and that the concept is usually centered around elements that show a potential sexual mate as being genetically desirable -€“ evenness of features, general health, so on. Some standards of beauty have other origins – for example, in the case of Chinese foot-binding (or high heels), the imposition of limitations on women’s mobility to ensure their sexual fidelity. Female castration/genital mutilation is sometimes societal justified on a moral scale to serve an ulterior purpose – e.g., good/desirable women undergo genital mutilation (which is though to reduce libido/promiscuity, a good) while bad/evil/undesirable women do not. Still other standards have correlation to greater societal practices, such as ritualistic scarification and so forth, that modify the body with no functional ramifications.

Cultural standards of beauty are not normative, and they’re not absolute. That means there’s no such thing as a kind of universal ‘beauty’ that women can subscribe to, beyond, as I noted, even features, good health, etc. Skinny/plump, passive/aggressive, short-haired/long-haired, small-breasted/large-breasted, blondes/brunettes, elfin/roman noses; each of these things are judged beautiful or not by various cultures and change pretty quickly. I’m not even going to get into racial issues.

These standards are not ‘€œhard-wired’ into the brain – it’s true that we have reactions to our ideal of beauty, but that ideal is not a universal, so it does not make much sense to talk about it as though it were, which is what most of your posts suggest -€“ an agreed upon idea of ‘€œbeauty’ that’s centered on a western standard of physical attractiveness that might be epitomized by Jessica Simpson.

The standards of beauty, being mutable, should be examined and critiqued to see if they produce bad effects since they can be changed over time. In my previous post, I’ve pointed out some problems with the way our standards impact women – this of course says nothing about raising false consciousness in men.

**

Personally, as a complete aside, I’d rather date a ‘plain’ girl who is witty, vivacious, intelligent and talented, rather than a Jessica Simpson. A woman who would spend her time obsessing over lipstick is fundamentally unattractive; who wants to be with someone who spends their human potential in this way?