So I finally got around to watching the last episode written pre-strike of “Ugly Betty” yesterday, and there was a great moment when Betty’s boss Daniel drops in on her at home and is shocked to see her sister with a face mask on, and she glares at him and says something like, “Do you think gorgeous just happens?” It was a really funny joke, because Daniel is portrayed as a typical rich boy dog on the show, and yes, he feels fully entitled to plenty of sex with starved women whose wealth hides the mountains of effort that goes into their good looks. He’s exactly the guy who feels entitled to believe that gorgeous just happens.
Which is exactly who I thought of when I read this article sent to me by Anne, who pointed out that there’s not actually much reason to think that the author loves imperfections, he just feels entitled to a woman who is perfect in a way that seems effortless to him. It’s a maddening article, and I guarantee that unless you are 100% asshole-proof (and who is?), then your self-esteem will be lower for reading what is supposed to be one of those “go girl!” articles. He can’t even put a minimal amount of effort into gathering non-existent evidence for his thesis, which is that men by and large prefer someone with a flawed body over someone with a perfect body obtained through obsessive plastic surgery. He’s actually doubling up the perfection requirements on women, saying not only do you have to be gorgeous, you have to refrain from showing your work and making him uncomfortable.
He starts off by describing a woman that he found acceptable to date—which is something that is pretty rare for him, he admits, going months without meeting such women.
But even in the midst of all that glitz, Tessa was the main attraction. She was a slender, vibrant redhead in a bright orange dress—you couldn’t miss her…..
Tessa was smart—an investment banker—and had a great laugh. Somehow, she was still single…..
Tessa wore a clingy black dress, and over dinner she lit up with stories of four-million-a-minute losses in the futures market. Sexy. When she asked me back to her place after the check came, I couldn’t say yes fast enough.
At what point he discovers—and judges harshly—her breast implants. Date over. He confesses to having a string of dates and relationships with women who’ve had plastic surgery and are maddeningly resistant to telling him about it. Which is exactly what you would predict would happen when women have the expectation put on them, as he does, that they be practically perfect in every way and not have put any hard work into it. The former is impossible without the latter, so deceit is inevitable. He finally meets a woman who admits to having breast implants immediately, and he’s grateful for the honesty enough to date her. Hers is a sad story, too.
It turned out a former boyfriend had woken her up one morning with a very romantic question: “Hey, you ever think about getting better tits?” Callie loved this guy, and after a series of failed relationships, she wanted to please him, so she went out and bought big, D-cup implants a few months later. Unsurprisingly, they broke up soon after that, and Callie was left with a very strange relationship souvenir. Some girls have tattoos of old lovers’ names; Callie had an $8,000 pair of breasts.
It’s times like these when I reflect on people who ask me why live in red state hell instead of one of the more jumping coastal cities.
He likes her honesty, but she decides to dump him and get her breast implants removed, sensibly realizing that her tendency to fall in love with men who have perfectionist demands on women is not healthy for her. She characterizes “people who put these exacting demands on me” with “men”, which I think largely is the problem here. I mean, I believe that is her experience, which is why a little “go girl with your imperfections” bullshit article is not all that helpful. Telling a woman that men actually like imperfections is going to fall on deaf ears in the case of this woman, whose experience tells her the opposite. And basically, all of us who are well aware that no one got less dates for having smaller thighs or more perfect tits. Which is why I pounded my head against the desk when I read this self-congratulatory crap:
I came to a realization about why I was so wary of women with plastic surgery. As far as I could tell, almost all the women I’d met who had changed their bodies through surgery had either done it to bandage some adolescent body issue or to make themselves more attractive to men. I didn’t like that—it didn’t seem like a celebration of beauty, but a scrambling attempt to fix something. What I wanted was to be with a woman who worshiped herself as much as I worshiped her. I mean, come on, this is the female form here, the most beautiful thing on earth. To me, surgery somehow implied a lack of confidence.
But throughout the article, his vivid descriptions of the perfection in women he dates makes it very clear that confidence is just another in a long list of bare minimum requirements of having a perfect body, a great job, a sparkling laugh, etc. I’m not entirely sure what to say to this. Plastic surgery is common, but not as common as he’s implying here. He’s clearly drawn only to women who are capable of putting forward this image of perfection that’s not possible without work. But the work itself is treated like a flaw and he doesn’t really do well with flaws.
Realizing he’s backed himself into a corner on this contradiction, he allows that a woman can have some physical flaws and still be lovable. After dating a lot of women who imperfectly strive to be perfect, he finds someone who has an imperfection of sorts that she’s basically decided to live with.
Kara was a novelist from New York who looked lean and fit and, best of all, completely real, in jeans and a T-shirt. When I thought about getting my hands on her au naturel parts, my mind reeled. During our second make-out session, she stopped me as my hands slipped under her shirt. “Don’t get too excited,” she joked. “They’re awful.” Were they? Well, one was noticeably larger than the other, and they didn’t look like breasts I was used to seeing on lingerie billboards, but I loved that they were…hers.
A lesson learned? His requirements for perfection in women might be what’s leading him to be less satisfied with women altogether? A meager lesson for sure, but he finishes off this tale of lessons learned with hokum that refuses to admit that it takes a man like him a lot of hard knocks to realize the minimum perfection requirements aren’t so great, and insists that men on the whole are preternaturally open-minded.
This is the part I think women don’t understand. When a guy falls in love, his lover’s body parts become bewitching. I’m not going to tell you that our heads don’t turn when we see a stacked blond walking down the street. But when we fall for you—really, really fall for you—you hijack our sense of beautiful. What’s sexy to us? You—in the “before” picture.
Except that it took him a long time to even get to the point where he accepted a woman with only one extremely minor physical imperfection. And he told a story about a guy who insisted that his girlfriend get expensive, painful surgery to be acceptable for future dating. I believe there are men out in the world who are in fact open-minded, reality-based, and flexible about their definitions of beauty, but such men don’t exist in the world of this story. Based strictly on the evidence in this story, you have men who are either completely rigid perfection-demanders or men who loosen up to allow exactly one minor flaw after a long, arduous dating process where they learned that absolute perfection is impossible. Sure, there are men like the ones described in the last paragraph. But they exist well outside the parameters established by this story.
97 Responses to “Pat me on the back, I only demand near-perfection”
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I…don’t get this comment:
Can you explain that to thickheaded ol’ me? As near as I can tell, you’re saying, “It’s not like the coasts are any/much better off. Men are assholes there, too.”
Or am I way off base?
Now you see, this is exactly why Twisty has that policy about ellipses on her blog.
At what point he discovers—and judges harshly—her breast implants. Date over.
Something tells me that Douchy here dates a lot of women who, if he didn’t reject them first for slight imperfections, would be dumping him in the near future anyway. A useful defense mechanism if you’re a no-name actor trying to be seen with LAs most accomplished and beautiful bachelorettes.
Ok, I’ll admit it - I don’t like women with imperfections. Dishonesty, venality, cruelty - dealbreakers, every one. Call me shallow, but I do have my standards.
MH, mostly a joke. I get to turn heads on rare occasions in Texas. Not a reason to live somewhere, of course, so it was mostly a joke.
Dolph Lundgren is a stacked blond. He means a stacked blonde.
I noted another eye-roller of a “virtue” in the perfect body / personality up the wazoo sweepstakes: idealized women and girls (daughters or trophy wives) who aren’t just perfect physically, but unpretentious “tomboyfriend” good sports. They wave away the guy’s concerns about pudginess and whip out the fast food menus, then unselfconsciously eat huge amounts of food and don’t give a shit about sauce dribbling down their chins, etc. OH OH OH and aren’t bulimic.
Not a Nice Guy ™ per se, but a close cousin. What they have in common is an outrageous sense of entitlement. “I’m ENTITLED to perfection in a woman, dammit, but she’d better love me just as I am!”
I believe that this is more rampant in coastal cities, specifically New York and Los Angeles (perhaps that’s why Amanda said she’s grateful to live in Texas). Not so much San Francisco, Boston or Portland, but New York and LA probably DO have the majority of the men who set an impossibly high and demanding bar for their dates. These cities are the epicenter of the beauty and glamor industries, hence, you get a skewed sex ratio and also loads of women who have had plastic surgery in order to compete as models or actresses or work in a glamor industry.
BTW, I’m betting Mr. Douchenozzle, in the article above, is going to spend a loooooong portion of his best years alone, and then wake up at 39 wondering “What happened?” One can hope he wises up, instead of saying “Oh well, I’ll just order some young, pretty girlflesh off of a mail order bride website.” (Aaaand if he does - she no doubt will dump him when she gets her green card.)
OK, so the takeaway here is that many men prefer their women to be extremely sexually attractive. And that as a result of this preference they are assholes.
Right. In contrast to all the supermodel women who date fat and pasty losers with no money. As long as we’re consisten.
I was going to make a nasty comment about this guy’s own perfection (or lack thereof), but I realized it doesn’t matter. That would just be buying into his framing anyway.
Nobody should get to judge women that harshly. And the more you feel the need to do so, the less you deserve to be in a relationship with anyone else…
Don’t you know she has to be a naturally perfect beauty, because he wants perfection at the genetic level… so they can make beautiful babeeez together. If it’s surgery, the kids won’t inherit the perfection. Ick.
Oh, and what you said too - plain and simple privilege. Don’t make me see the servants who make my lifestyle possible. Don’t make me see the global poverty that allows my standard of living in the US. Don’t ask me to view the pain and time it takes for women to create my eye candy. That negative stuff just blocks my chi.
Ailurophile, I think that kind of entitlement is inherent in anyone who would write this kind of tripe. If a guy is so drunk on his own privilege that he can simultaneously judge women for getting surgery and still demand that kind of highly prepped flesh be served to him, I’d wager a few ducats that he’d be absolutely floored if a woman pulled the same overentitled crap on him. Now that I’d like to read about.
Meanwhile, I suppose we can just leave comments explaining to the guy that you are the problem, nitwit, for all the good it’ll do.
Yecch. I still feel dirty for having signed up there.
Ok, I’ll admit it - I don’t like women with imperfections. Dishonesty, venality, cruelty - dealbreakers, every one. Call me shallow, but I do have my standards.
nah, even those can be fun if embodied correctly.
alexa try reading it again - the “takeaway” is not what you think it is
Come back when there’s an epidemic of fat and pasty losers starving themselves, spending all their time on the treadmill, and going under the knife in large numbers in order to gain acceptance. Also, they have to shut up about it and pretend that it just happens naturally, so they can live up to a beauty standard achievable only via Photoshop.No, wait, come back when men who are considered average start doing that too because it’s expected that they’ll look a certain way, and women don’t want to have their beautiful minds stained with the knowledge of what they’re demanding.
Nothip: does anyone actually say “block my chi”? I don’t think I could take anyone seriously who used my phrase. It’s a half-step below “harsh my mellow”.
Ok, I had to blog about this one because the author is just so creepy (it’ll show up tomorrow, Sabotabby just posted and I don’t want to step all over hers. If anyone cares)
Anyway, did anyone else notice the part where he’s really, really creepily interested in the surgeries his girlfriends had. Like Mike Adams complaining that feminists make his penis soft, Gabriel here couldn’t perform in bed because he was busy imagining the gory details of Tessa’s surgery, then he treats the other girl’s not mentioning her nose job as a lie of omission, a shocking betrayal of trust.
This seems like a guy with more problems than just your standard asshole-who- thinks-women- owe-him-the- sun-moon-and-stars, although that’s here too.
I read the article while bracing myself for the worst. Yeah, the guy comes across as douchey and entitled but I was really amused by his total lack of self-awareness. Perhaps it is the way he described these scenarios, but it appears that he is the one being repeatedly rejected. This scene made me chuckle:
He’s a real smooth operator. He goes on to say that Our relationship ended pretty quickly after that. Of course, he blames his lack of trust in her for not confiding in him about the nose job earlier. Methinks she dumped his ass because he’s a wanker with abysmal social skills. Naturally, he would never make this conclusion because it is, after all, so much easier to point out the faults in the women he dates than to take a hard look at himself and see where he fails to measure up. Did it ever occur to him that he did not meet their standards?
What made me cringe even worse than this douchehound’s attitudes towards particular features of women’s bodies was his completely unexamined assumption that every single fucking aspect of a woman’s existence–intelligence, laughter, body composition, fitness, jeans, career, wealth–has no meaning in the world other than to please, or fail to please, him. This asshole makes me ashamed to be a man.
then he treats the other girl’s not mentioning her nose job as a lie of omission, a shocking betrayal of trust
Yeah, I thought it was interesting that part of his problem was that *gasp* they might be hiding something from him, in that they didn’t feel free to tell him about all their surgeries!
You know, my most interesting, most cherished friends are “interesting” in a number of “imperfect” ways. One is so honest and up front that she should come with a warning, another is somewhat capricious and cruel, not to say self-centered… all of which is will freely admit to.
This guy would find them repulsive, I guess, regardless of what their bodies looked like. For me, that really says it all. No one is perfect. Anyone telling you other wise is lying. So you might as well go for people with problems you can *see*, because otherwise god only *knows* what treats await. Looking for perfection is going to find you deception.
“OK, so the takeaway here is that many men prefer their women to be extremely sexually attractive. And that as a result of this preference they are assholes.”
You forgot “And that even extremely attractive women aren’t good enough if they’re gauche enough to let you find out they invest any effort in attaining or maintaining that attractiveness.” It goes in the middle.
Please, this is total women’s-magazine-ese. Here’s your tipoff: Was I really going to let plastic surgery get in the way of my search for love—again? The “again” really sells it. God knows what the guy really thinks. The article is about what the editors think women wanna read.
I have to admit, a woman who would look at herself in the mirror and think, “Boobs are way too small. Better get some sacks of goo stuffed up there” is probably not my soulmate.
This is totally anecdotal but I live in L.A. and work within the entertainment business and I can say that this guy seems to be in the minority with his views on plastic surgery. Most actors/directors/writers who are men just don’t give a shit as long as they have something pretty.
And men really do need to realize how they’re apart of the problem. I’ve sat in a writers room as actors go over actresses audition tapes and I was amazed at how the female bodies were broken down into parts and actresses were turned down because they weren’t “hot” enough, though there was talent there. It was disheartening and made me very self conscious around the men I worked with.
I guarantee that unless you are 100% asshole-proof (and who is?), then your self-esteem will be lower for reading what is supposed to be one of those “go girl!” articles.
If anything, my self esteem went up because this self-satisfied schlub wouldn’t find me attractive.
Er, wait. I don’t wear makeup, I can’t walk in high heels, my boobs (and nostrils) are totally different sizes, I don’t shave my legs, and I in no way make it look like I invest in my appearance. I even have a fuzzy blonde mustache and man-arms. I’m so imperfect! I sound like I’m exactly what this guy wants! Gross! Self-esteem plummeting! Quick, toss me the mascara and a Mach 3 razor!
God what an asshole. Reminds me a bit of my ex to be honest. He didn’t like it when I wore make-up (and would constantly complain about it) but I wasn’t pretty or confident enough without it (”you look old” - great thing to hear at 16). He was the same about what I wore too, making me change my outfit at least 3-4 times before we could go anywhere, and then he’d complain about how girls take too long to get ready. Looking back, it’s no wonder my self-esteem plummeted to the point I became anorexic and depressed. No matter what I did, or didn’t do, I was never good enough. Again, what a freaking asshole.
Hector, it’s silly to write off a woman just because of that. All our lives we’re bombarded with the message that we need bigger boobs! smaller waist! blonder hair! that we believe it because most of the time nobody (and by that I mean a guy not related to you) will tell us otherwise and mean it. I had been seriously considering implants (despite not really wanting them) so that I would be liked. It took one guy to tell me he likes mine as they are to change my mind. He’s the only guy to tell me that actually. Well, other than my dad, but he doesn’t count, lol.
Question: how much of that was because they preferred to have attractive women doing the roles, and how much of that was because they needed attractive women doing the roles in order to get a male audience or for legit story reasons? I suspect much more the former than the latter two.
I’m wondering because there are shows and movies such as “Nip/Tuck”, or “Ugly Betty” where an actress’s physical appearance is rather important for legitimate reasons given the setting (or, to use the extreme example “mainstream porn” where appearance is rather important, even for the men since Viagra was invented).
My boyfriend: “This is one of those Nice Guys, isn’t it?” two lines in.
But when we fall for you—really, really fall for you—you hijack our sense of beautiful. What’s sexy to us? You—in the “before” picture.
What about those of us who’ve never had a guy fall for us?
I know we’re not a very common sight (especially those of us over 30), but we do exist. And I suspect that those who get plastic surgery do so because they’re scared of joining our numbers.
But when we fall for you—really, really fall for you—you hijack our sense of beautiful. What’s sexy to us? You—in the “before” picture.
What about those of us who’ve never had a guy fall for us?
I know we’re not a very common sight (especially those of us over 30), but we do exist. And I suspect that those who get plastic surgery do so because they’re scared of joining our numbers.
PhysioProf says:
I love that his last section was titled “Understanding what I really needed.” Because really, that’s all that matters.I ran into about 5,206,249 guys like this (give or take) when I was stripping. They never seemed to comprehend that there is no such thing as a naturally pencil-thin woman with naturally huge and gravity-defying breasts. So they’d drool over the women with implants, but if they ever thought the breasts were implants? Total turnoff. Ew, yuck, I hate fake ones.
No, assholes, you just hated being reminded that you have a fantasy about plastic.
As for the article, sounds like a typical guy who can’t stand it if the bitches put one over on him. How DARE she fool him by having had a nose job and not telling him before sucking his dick?!
The sad thing here is there is probably a good article to be written about how many men find plastic surgery unattractive for a variety of reasons. (Although that’s probably a hard thing to write properly) This wasn’t it. His complaint seems to be is that his hotty turned out to be from Playboy rather than Perfect 10.
Question: how much of that was because they preferred to have attractive women doing the roles, and how much of that was because they needed attractive women doing the roles in order to get a male audience or for legit story reasons? I suspect much more the former than the latter two.
Answer: For the show that I was working on at the time, “hot” or “attractive” actresses shouldn’t have been a consideration AT ALL, given the content of the show. And no, because it’s recently back on the air I’m not going to tell you what show it is.;)
But even when *some* (re: female) staff members would try to point out that our actresses didn’t, and quite frankly SHOULDN’T be wearing make up or look like they just stepped out of a salon given the circumstances within the show they were met with a fierce smack down of “But we can’t have them look ugly,” when they wouldn’t have been, “ugly” they just would not have been wearing makeup and Playboy style hair extensions.
Even despite this, every time we had to cast for a female character it all came down to “is she hot” regardless of character type or plot. One actress was cast and while watching dailies one of the male writers said, “She’s good, but we could have got someone hotter.” I felt really bad for her even though he hadn’t said it directly to her.
There’s also an interesting trend going on with shows, mostly like those you see on TNT and such with “older” actresses, where they will shoot the show with traditional film instead of in HD because HD is unforgiving of flaws, especially for more mature actresses. Some of these actresses are making it a requirement before they sign on to act in the show.
This is the one that gets me:
Yes, this guy is obviously a terrific judge of “normal” proportions on women.
What an idiot. When someone I’m dating (or considering dating) does something to look more attractive, I’m going to consider it a compliment (which is self-centered, but choosing a mate really is about me) and do my best to be thankful. Sometimes that’s hard, since I find some things (most notably: eye makeup, too much of a tan, high heels) to be turnoffs. But I can usually get over it in such a way as to not be a total jackass. Being attractive can take a lot of work, sustained over a period of time, and can even require some money at some stage. I’ll never tell my carnal friend to stop hiring her trainer to come over for workouts, stop seeing that hairstylist, or to stop buying so much lingerie. She’s working hard to look good and was doing so before I was in the picture. And most of it is done for herself, so I know damn well not to criticize from an “It’s all about me” standpoint.
As someone said above, there’s a good story to be written about men’s reactions to plastic surgery and this isn’t it. This is a tale of rudeness and expectations, not much more.
I’m waiting for Amanda to review Bravo’s “Millionaire Matchmaker.”
I’m surprised heads aren’t already exploding over that one.
Lock this guy and Lori Gotlieb (”Settling”) in a room together and throw away the key. If there is hell on earth, this is it, this is it, this is it.
I don’t get this guy’s obsession with full disclosure about beauty preparation. We don’t demand full disclosure from our partners about stuff that actually matters, say, their past sexual histories. In fact, that’s usually considered highly inappropriate.
I have great breasts. Maybe I’ll go on a date with this guy and grill him: How many women have you fucked? How many men? Ever done something a woman asked you not to do? Ever dumped a woman because she wouldn’t do something you asked her to do? In fact, explain why you dumped or were dumped by your five previous flings. WHAT? I just want to know what I’m getting into!! I’m entitled to a fuck free of false pretenses!
It sounds to me like this guy is only attracted to women who look the way they do because of expensive “modifications,” and then becomes upset when he finds out about said modifications.
This is why Photoshop is the devil. Not that it’s the only culprit here. But it distorts our collective image of an ideal female body, to a point where this kind of asshole is far more common than it should be.
Question: how much of that was because they preferred to have attractive women doing the roles, and how much of that was because they needed attractive women doing the roles in order to get a male audience or for legit story reasons? I suspect much more the former than the latter two.
Question: How is either one somehow better than the other? It’s bullshit either way.
Ultra Magus, the HD question is nothing a ProMist™ filter of the right grade can’t fix, or suitable post-processing.
39- Sometimes a script calls for a beautiful woman– “Nip/Tuck” an obvious case.
“Ugly Betty” is the opposite case– why not cast an actual ugly actress?
It sounds to me like this guy is only attracted to women who look the way they do because of expensive “modifications,” and then becomes upset when he finds out about said modifications.
Exactly. As I was reading, I was thinking “But you probably wouldn’t even have noticed those women if they hadn’t gotten that surgery.”
KeithM: There’s no doubt that most people, male or female, prefer to watch nice-looking people on the screen. But there’s been a distinct turn in Hollywood for every actress to be a certain type: vanishingly small, huge eyes, inoffensively bland personality. This is true even when the role doesn’t call for it. Compare for instance the old Lois Lane played by Margot Kidder and the new one played by Kate Bosworth.
Seriously, we’re in an environment now where Katherine Heigel really sticks out from the pack because she’s so different looking, being tall and occasionally willing to partake of nutrition.
Well, I’ve been married for 28 years, eight months and 26 days to a woman who’s had zero plastic surgeries, doesn’t cover her grey, and has some body parts slightly closer to the ground than she did when we were married. Of course, I don’t have quite the body I did when I was 26, either.
I do, however, have my absolute minimum standards! I absolutely insist that she brush her teeth every day. Daily showere are pretty much expected.
This is one of the (rare) occasions where I agree with Amanda. The guy described is still seeking his trophy wife, even if he has slightly different ideas of what constitutes a trophy. He’s seeking a girlfriend or wife to impress other people.
Well, even if he finds such a wife, she’s going to get older, and, how ’bout that, might not be quite as impressive to others — the people he wants to impress — ten or fifteen years later. Then it’ll be time for a new wife, and he’ll combitch about how much it cost him to get rid of the old one, and that he has to pay child support, yada, yada, yada.
Then again, as his wife ages, he will too. And if it’s his mentality that a wife is a commodity to be used to impress other people, there’s every chance that she might happen to think the same way about a husband — and as he gets older, he might just discover that she has figured out that there are other men out there, younger, better looking and wealthier.
Amanda wrote:
Being tall was always acceptable. There migt be a slightly different attitude about women being taller than their husbands or boyfriends these days, but being tall has been “desireable” for a long time now.
I have 2 fake ‘motivational’ posters which sort of apply here. One is called “Dysfunction” and says “The only consistent feature of all your dis-satisfying relationships is you”.
The other is called “Beauty” and has a picture of a pearl on it. The caption is “If you’re attractive enough on the outside, people will forgive you for being irritating to the core”.
The credit to these “Demotivators” if you haven’t seen them is www.despair.com.
My favorite Demotivator is “Consistency: It’s only a virtue if you aren’t a screw-up”
Very apropos of this dude, who appears to be an extremely consistent asshole.
We have demotivators on the wall at my workplace. Despair and Get To Work.
I’ll bet you $5 the writer had, earlier in the course of the relationship with Nose Job Girl (his reductionism, not mine, no?), told her how cute her nose was, how natural, possibly thinking that she had good nose genes and would pass down her cute nose to their potential children. Which would be a big deterrent to telling him she’d had a nose job, yes?
Ultra Magnus:
Why is that an effectively fierce smackdown, instead of a prompt for mocking laughter? No, seriously? Is it because “looking ugly” is so terrifying for women in The Biz that you accept it? Is it because The Biz is what any other line of work would call an “illegally hostile work environment”?
The thing is, I think your industry is a *huge* part of the problem, much more than its fair share. What do you think it would take to change it, to get Hollywood through Feminism 101?
I’m not allowed to put up the Demotivators here at work, so instead, I run it as a screensaver on my computer. It looks just real enough that I don’t get complaints from those humorless people who can’t deal.
Except when I’m in the field that is. Then, my screensaver is strictly professional. Ugh.
Dana, it used to be, but part of the incredible shrinking actress thing has been a lowering of height. Part of the shortness of actors in general has something to do with how it’s easier to get them to look good in frame, but it’s just sort of startling how so many actresses are itty-bitty nowadays.
Margalis:
Yup; there’s almost too much there to face doing a review. A couple of times I tuned in Bravo looking for Project Runway reruns and caught a few minutes of Millionaire Matchmaker. Greatest hits: “Men have this thing about redheads, that they’re not the freshest produce in the aisle” (so, no redheads in her agency); “I don’t like girls with curly hair…get it straightened”. Worse, when one of the women she had orderd to get smooth hair extensions refused, the matchmaker started flipping shit: “they (her male clients) don’t want to touch Brillo!” It’s like a parody of our culture’s racism, sexism, and ubercapitalism.
Back on topic, it saddened me that the novelist our dear author finally accepted had the ‘good grace’ to apologize for her breasts, “warning” him with a self-deprecating “joke”. I bet this is what our author thinks of as a “great sense of humor” in a woman.
– Come back when there’s an epidemic of fat and pasty losers starving themselves, spending all their time on the treadmill, and going under the knife in large numbers in order to gain acceptance.
Well, there are these guys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbEvPuzlvHM
And in a couple years when he’s forgotten how miserable being single is, he’ll dump her and go back out there searching for the effortless beauty he still thinks he deserves. Bet on it.
Are they really shrinking, heightwise? Admittedly, I don’t watch a lot of fiction television, but it would seem easier to make a taller woman look skinny. Of course, there could be the Tom Cruise problem, with a short actor not feeling secure playing opposite a taller actress. (Allegedly, part of his problem with Nicole Kidman was that she’s 5′11″ while he’s only 5′8″ — and then he turned around and married Katie Holmes, who’s 5′10″)
You may or may not want to show the clip from Colbert interviewing a gay Lobbyist.
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2008/02/better_know_a_l_1.html#comments
Look at the guy’s reaction to the word “vagina”.
Itty-bitty people tend to have a bigger ratio of head to body size, which makes them look more like the “heroic ideal” that the greeks popularized…
I’ve seen this behavior a lot. When a guy gets to the point where he’s not having any trouble bedding gorgeous, successful women, he tries to find ways of raising the bar even higher. He invents additional hoops women have to jump through to be “good enough”. They have to be able to do all the normal stuff, but now… blindfolded! Okay, now… with one hand behind your back! Endless amusement. It usually starts with men talking about how they hate women who are neurotic about food, and how they like a woman who likes to eat… as long, of course, as she stays rail-thin.
To be fair, lots of straight women do the same thing. Once they can successfully attract men who are professionally competent and financially successful, they start to complain about men who are obsessed with their careers. Like men wanting a woman who’s thin while still liking food, these women now want a man who’s rich without having to work, or who is influential without having any responsibilities.
In my experience, heterosexuality (I can’t speak for the non-het experience, although I suspect the same problems arise) contains an almost-unavoidable kernel of hostility and aggression. People like to exert power over each other. When one gives in to this perversity, one sometimes has to invent ways to make one’s partners feel inadequate. Men and women in middle-class white America tend toward these two tactics, but of course, there are many other manifestations of this basic impulse, and indeed, the roles I’ve assigned to men and women in this description are often reversed. I’m also not claiming that men and women are necessarily vicitmized by this behavior to the same extent.
What I am saying is that the two behaviors are homologous, in that they both arise from:
1) a perverse desire to hold sexual partners to ever-higher and more arbitrary standards, and thereby always be able to find fault with them, which can be used to both deflate the other’s sense of self-worth and to justify one’s own bad behavior; and
2) a need to feel superior to one’s peers by pretending to disdain their shallowness, when in fact one still retains the same standards for superficial qualities, but now augmented by additional, more arbitrary standards whose obscurity masks their superficiality.
No, there are legitimate reasons for wanting an attractive actor/actress for certain roles. Using the examples I gave, “Nip/Tuck” is a show about cosmetic surgeons working mostly in the beauty business, “Ugly Betty” has models running around. It would be unrealistic to have characters who, well, didn’t look like models or women who’ve had plastic surgery. In “Tango and Cash”, Tango’s sister was a popular stripper, so you’d need good looking for that.
Or for characters who are supposed to be gorgeous (or similar description). One example of where this didn’t happen, and it went wrong, was an episode of “CSI” where the lab rats were continually referring to the size of the DNA tech’s breasts (in a comedic episode, and she was getting annoyed and angry at constantly being referred to as “buxom”). Liz Vassey is good looking, but she isn’t especially endowed. If it had been a one-shot appearance (instead of a recurring secondary character who’d been around for a while), I can see casting an actress with the required attributes.
Other examples…Christine Hendricks in “Life”. Her character is supposed to make men drop their jaws when she walks in a room, and she’s playing, basically the trophy-wife-to-be of an older man. Again, that sort of role requires a good looking actress, so having a gorgeous, large breasted redhead play her is entirely appropriate.
You have that backwards. The Greek (and later “7.5 to 8 heads high” artistic ) ideal features a proportionally smaller head. Shorter people have proportionally larger heads in relation to their height because adult human heads don’t change size as much generally speaking as the rest of the body does. Has to do with the eyes and brain: eyes quickly reach adult size as you grow up , the reason large eyes are associated with youth: in younger vertebrates the eyes are larger in proportion to their heads than in adults, one reason we find young animals or all types cute. In humans, there’s an average brain size that has to be packed into the skull which puts limits on how much the size of the cranium can vary, both in minimum size and maximum.
To get to that heroic ideal with real people, you need height.
I was going to suggest people try to reread the article while Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” plays in the background, but now I fear this love song is full of hidden (to me) misogyny:
Don’t go trying, some new fashion,
Don’t change the colour of your hair,
You always have my, unspoken passion,
Although I might not seem to care.
I don’t want clever, conversation,
I never want to work that hard,
I just want someone, that I can talk to,
I want you just the way you are.
Weird Al has an entire song about it: “Close But No Cigar”
Final verse:
Julie played water polo
She wore a ribbon on her left manolo
She had me sweating like Nixon every time she was near
My heart was beating like a Buddy Rif solo
And she was everything I’ve dreamed of
She moved right up to #1 on my list
And did I mention she’s a world famous billionare
Bikini supermodel astrophysicist
Yeah, she was so pretty she made Charlize Theron
Look like a big fat slobbering pig
The only caveat is one of her earlobes
Was just a little tiny bit too big
This article reminds me of when I was briefly signed up at Match.com. It seemed like every guy would write in his profile that he was looking for a woman who was thin and beautiful, but didn’t know it.
Was she raised in a cave without any cultural influences and without a mirror? After being bombarded by messages her entire life that it’s her job to be decorative, how could she really have absolutely no perception of her own appearance, or the work that goes into maintaining it?
MH, mostly a joke. I get to turn heads on rare occasions in Texas. Not a reason to live somewhere, of course, so it was mostly a joke.
Are you imagining that the coastal cities are filled with people who uniformly have and/or demand plastic surgery? Or that they’re the only places where breast implants are performed? Because last I checked, Texas had a few plastic-surgery clinics and beauty salons.
Good grief, one of the regional bigotry things in the SF bay is that urban Texans are as shallow and appearance-obsessed as LA’ers.
regional bigotry things in the SF bay is that urban Texans are as shallow and appearance-obsessed as LA’ers.
My regional bigotry is greater than that: I think a female archetype present in the entire South is the would-be Beauty Pageant Contestant.
Thanks for bearing with me and answering my question!
Matt, your post reminds me of the article, linked to in an earlier post by Amanda, about the difference between Dutch and American culture when it comes to teen sex. One of the things I took away from the article - that struck me the most - was that there is no, or very little, “Mars and Venus” mentality in the Netherlands. The Dutch don’t subscribe to the “Men and women, boys and girls are polar opposites and out to exploit one another to the max” mentality that Americans have.
Not that an individual Dutch or other nationality person can’t be a raging asshat, but I wonder if this trophy mentality is distinctively American and part of our consumer culture. If we are used to seeing the world through the prism of consumption, is it any surprise that we treat our partners like just another “thing?”
I knew people wouldn’t be able to take the joke, even though I was trying to be self-deprecating. (i.e., I have to resort to living amongst the hicks to be considered attractive)
I think a female archetype present in the entire South is the would-be Beauty Pageant Contestant.
As a twenty-two year TN resident, I’m inclined to agree…. for a certain demographic.
My ethnically diverse city high school: nary a blonde cheerleader to be seen
My snotty white college in the same city: choked up with tanned blonde cheerleaders-for-life
The difference, though, is that the effort there is apparent. The platinum blonde hair and the darkly tanned skin combo is nothing like natural beauty and, in my opinion is the definition of fetish. The emphasis is not on the beauty of these qualities but on the possession of them - the cutaneous colors mean so much more than they are. (What they mean I’m not sure.)
Even despite this, every time we had to cast for a female character it all came down to “is she hot” regardless of character type or plot. One actress was cast and while watching dailies one of the male writers said, “She’s good, but we could have got someone hotter.” I felt really bad for her even though he hadn’t said it directly to her.
Mmm - I remember reading Mark Evanier making similiar comments. He pointed out that, having been in many many casting rooms, actresses were rejected for trivial comments about their looks (they reminded people of their exes, they thought there had been too many blondes on TV that week etc), and that actresses should NOT take it as slights on their looks - but that they always did.
He hated that part of the industry - it chewed in pretty young girls and spat out emotionally insecure pretty young women.
In my experience, heterosexuality (I can’t speak for the non-het experience, although I suspect the same problems arise) contains an almost-unavoidable kernel of hostility and aggression. People like to exert power over each other.
I would say that it’s closer to that people resent having power exerted over them, and that (by definition) participants who love each other in a relationship have power over each other. You get that kernel of hostility and aggression because you’re vulnerable when you love someone, and inevitably they’ll hurt you even without meaning to.
Maturity is being able to live with it and let the pain go. If anyone knows how to do this, please tell me.
I would have thought that “what surgeries I’ve had in my life” wouldn’t be optimal early date conversation. I mean, I have never once confided in a date about the surgery I got at four years old to correct a lazy eye. Not because I’m hiding anything, but because having your parents barred from your hospital room (thank God that hospital procedures have gotten more humane since then) while you wake up puking from the anesthesia isn’t all that fun a story to listen to.
“It seemed like every guy would write in his profile that he was looking for a woman who was thin and beautiful, but didn’t know it.”
So all the women who think they’re fat and ugly should send him photos, and hope he thinks they’re wrong?
I knew people wouldn’t be able to take the joke, even though I was trying to be self-deprecating. (i.e., I have to resort to living amongst the hicks to be considered attractive)
Jokes work better when they’re, you know, funny.
And, gosh, why should I be expected to “take” a joke that not only implied that people in my area are shallow, but that nobody here could possibly find me attractive?
Ailurophile:
I didn’t read the article in question, but I think that this kind of polarization and inter-gender hostility is of course a consequence of living in a highly patriarchal society. In a culture where gender roles aren’t so strictly defined, it’s much easier for women to see themselves as something other than sex objects, and for men to see themselves as something other than meal tickets. This means that both men and women are less prone to manipulation by the application of pressure to the insecurities created by those gender roles: men are less afraid of falling short of the capitalist worker ideal, and women are less afraid of falling short of the supermodel housewife virgin-whore-mother ideal. (I’ll grant you that the second is a significantly tougher row to hoe than the first, but frankly, the first still sucks.) Not that these insecurities don’t exist in the Netherlands, of course, which is still quite attached to traditional gender roles overall, but it opens up a little bit of freedom for men and women to hitch their self-worth to something they choose, not to come strict, culturally-dictated stereotype. This in turn frees them significantly from manipulation by the military-industrial-media complex that dominates American life.
The political positions I advocate apparently place me in the “radical feminist” camp, despite the fact that I don’t have a terribly high opinion of women (or men). This blog regularly points out that patriarchy is bad for men for all kinds of reasons; I think that’s true, but more importantly, it’s bad for me and the people I care about, which is why I’m so adamantly opposed to it.
Ultra Magus, the HD question is nothing a ProMist™ filter of the right grade can’t fix, or suitable post-processing.
I know that Eric and a lot of prodcution crews know that as well, but those things can cost money and most productions won’t spring for it, so they shoot in film to avoid having to do it in the first place. There’s already a lot that goes into post-prodcution on a show and having to filter out all the “bad” parts an actress or a stuido won’t want the audience to see just adds another layer of time and cost.
The thing is, I think your industry is a *huge* part of the problem, much more than its fair share. What do you think it would take to change it, to get Hollywood through Feminism 101?
I agree with you, Doctor Science but I honestly don’t know. Before I came to live in this city I would have said more female executives developing and more female showrunners, hells more females in the writer’s room PERIOD would be good (out of 12 staff writers there were only three women, myself included and I wasn’t a writer) but I don’t know anymore. A lot of women are buying into it because it takes a hot chick to get asses into seats, or at least they believe that. You have to remember that they believe the most important market they have is the 18-49 male demographic, that’s the end all be all for advertisers for some reason that has yet to be explained to me, and they believe those men want to see hot women, or else they’ll just go back to their Xboxes and Play Stations.
It also has to do with actresses thinking that that’s what’s expected of them, so they botox and implant themselves into oblivion, and now you see a lot of shows casting British female actors, especially the older ones, because they can move their faces.
So all the women who think they’re fat and ugly should send him photos, and hope he thinks they’re wrong?
Ha! Actually, I think those men think the women who are fat should simply cease to exist.
““Ugly Betty” is the opposite case– why not cast an actual ugly actress?”
That’s what I thought when I first watched the show. However, I don’t think Betty is supposed to be ugly by any reasonable standard, but the superficial world in which she exists does not have reasonable standards.
Wasn’t the last episode, Which Amanda mentioned, the one with the ultra-douche pickup writer? The one whose book was called something like Tap That: How to Bang all the Hot Bitches?
Matt (at #60), ime/ymmv, people who want to exert power over other people do so because they don’t like themselves very much. If you have two people in a relationship who are reasonably-confident/well-adjusted, however, you *don’t* have those screwy power dynamics.
I also live in a blue state. As soon as I’m done posting this I’m going to start on the petition. This cannot stand!
But seriously. Moral scolding works better when it’s not, you know, fucking stupid.
I thought it was funny. I usually do when I’m making fun of myself.
Ultra Magus:
I actually know why the advertizers are all focused on young men! Or at least, I know the 2 reasons they acknowledge and the one they don’t.
1. Young males watch the least TV, so supply & demand makes their eyeballs most valuable.
2. Young males are more succeptible to advertizing than are women or older men. They buy more impulsively and they’re more apt to be influenced by what they perceive a brand “says”, less apt to be influenced by quality.
Women spend a lot more of the consumer dollar, but women tend to spend more prudently, and are thus much less attractive to advertisers.
3. Young men are cooler. The people making the decisions all wish they were still young men.
Er, or possibly because the young female disposable income is targetted in other ways, through ads for fashion and cosmetics which tend to have a different media mix?
PitoR:
No matter what medium you look at, advertisers are searching for that young male demographic, which they label with words like “elusive” and “coveted”.
See this recent article in Advertising Age, for instance, which admits that advertisers don’t know much about reaching women, because they haven’t tried.
“No, there are legitimate reasons for wanting an attractive actor/actress for certain roles.”
The operative words there being “certain roles.”
When the vast majority of females roles consist of nothing better than being annoyed at asshole remarks about one’s appearance (which should be a reasonable reaction but is rarely played as such)…that would be when it ceases to be a “legitimate reason.”
“So all the women who think they’re fat and ugly should send him photos, and hope he thinks they’re wrong?”
I briefly dated a guy just like this. He complemented me profusely on my looks and gushed about how great it was that I was “hot but didn’t know it”. He described an ex of his who’s flaw was that she was “beautiful but really knew it”.
So what I got out of that is that it was very, very important to this guy that the women he date not be too confident. Sadly, I think he’s far from alone in that respect.
Matt, I appreciate that you are only speaking from your experience as a heterosexual. I am only a sample of one, so not necessarily representative of anyone but myself, but I don’t look to trade up when I am seeing someone, nor do I worry that she’s looking for someone taller than my 5′0″, or thinner than my 135 pounds, or with whiter teeth or what. All my relationships have lasted however long they have, or have failed on their own merits. And this is even after being “left for” someone (though it’s possible that I feel fine about that because the other woman ended up making my ex’s life miserable while she and I managed to rekindle our close friendship after a healing period, so I figure there are other dykes who know that the grass isn’t necessarily greener). It could also just be my personality and not a lesbian thing, but I also don’t know too many coupled friends who keep looking after they are in a relationship.
I’ve been watching the DVD sets of “Enterprise,” and it struck me that Jolene Blalock (T’Pol) is the epitome of the “big eyes, petite build” phenomenon being discussed. The only inconsistency is she definitely has personality.
Margalis:
Laughing my ass of at your last post.
Spot on. Sometimes we get pissy about the stupidest shit.
Argh, this particular “beauty balancing act” makes me crazy.
I regularly read celeb gossip site OhNoTheyDidnt which is a nightmare if you’re a feminist because the majority of commenters there (and there are many) are young, female and have absorbed every last ounce of patriarchy that can fill a young soul.
One thing that drives me INSANE is when the weight of a young female celeb is discussed in that whole “she’s too fat, now she’s too thin” way and there is a complete lack of awareness that the “perfect weight” they’re describing as so easily achievable hovers about 1 kilo up and 1 kilo down. Ie. a woman gains 2 kilos and everyone says she looks fat and then loses 4kgs again and she’s at death’s door and “she’s needs to gain weight”. And there is absolutely NO understanding that this delicate hovering act at one set weight is absolutely impossible, especially for women who are already at such a low weight as to make any change very obvious.
I’m definitely more sensitive to this particular issue as I have an eating disorder but not any of the typical body dysmorphia that goes with it, so I know full well that my ideal weight looks good on me (not sick, just right) but it’s impossible to maintain and I am someone on whom those extra couple of kilos do make a difference.
Also, on the topic of average looking or ugly actresses being cast in something like “Ugly Betty”, I think at least part of it is that the audience is far more likely to love and embrace Betty in the knowledge that the actress playing her is gorgeous IRL, so they don’t have to deal with the discomfort (the horror!) of a person who would genuinely be considered less desirable than her peers in Hollywood in reality. Whether that’s a perception of the audience or truly how the masses feel I don’t know, but I’m inclined to believe the latter.
Laima:
Matt (at #60), ime/ymmv, people who want to exert power over other people do so because they don’t like themselves very much. If you have two people in a relationship who are reasonably-confident/well-adjusted, however, you *don’t* have those screwy power dynamics.
one jewish dyke:
It could also just be my personality and not a lesbian thing, but I also don’t know too many coupled friends who keep looking after they are in a relationship.
Kudos to both of you for being happy and well-adjusted, and therefore not exposed to the dynamics I described. It would be better world if more people were in your position.
For the rest of us self-hating, petty, egocentric freaks, though, romantic love is closely tied to the urge to destroy another human being.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
(NB: I’m being almost completely serious.)
Matt, I meant “too many lesbian couples.” I don’t mean to imply that we’re better or more monogamous or anything because I’ve had other friends who do the bar scene tell me that I’m naive and that I don’t know how some women look at other women, and it’s only my little lesbian-feminist bubble that’s full of long-term monogamous couples. The rest are apparently hooking up with different women each weekend at the bar. But that’s completely not my experience at all. I had a lot of friends who did that when I was in my twenties, but now that I’m in my thirties and my friends are my age and older, I see much less of it.
Also, being one Jewish dyke, I do not fall into that demographic of being part of a long-term couple. But I still tend to get blinders when I am in a relationship, and don’t notice anyone but her.
OJD: it could definitely be your age. IME, while there are those (men and women) who get burnt out, bitter and cynical as they get older, an equal or perhaps greater proportion grow the hell up and lose their sense of entitlement and “grass is always greener” complexes.
one jewish dyke:
I don’t mean to imply that we’re better or more monogamous or anything
I hope you didn’t read my comment as sarcastic or skeptical. A little flip and over-the-top with my misanthropy, maybe, but not sarcastic.
I don’t doubt that the sexual neuroses of the lesbian and straight communities differ in some respects, as would be expected. I’m sure that Ailurophile is right that this behavior is closely linked to self-loathing and sexual insecurity, which I’m sure manifest quite differently in gay women and straight men and women in our culture. I also suspect that the dynamic I’m describing diminishes somewhat as people age and have less time and energy to engage in such unproductive perversity; it may be just another stage of sexual experimentation that people grow out of, like the “if you love me, then you will put up with anything I do, no matter how narcissistic and atrocious” phase. (Most people do grow out of that, right?)
Then again, two people trapped in a marriage often have plenty of time with nothing to do but try to destroy each other. So maybe it doesn’t necessarily get better with age.
Of course, once men realise all this, their first instinct is to tell you that, well, you are beautiful just the way you are… which wasn’t the point.
For those who need it spelled out for them: the point is that we don’t want to be judged, for better or worse. If I can be judged beautiful by a man, I can be judged ugly. A compliment or words spoken in the heat of passion, when they sound genuine and loving, are completely different. Reassuring me when I’m talking about hating the feeling that I have to live up to a man’s expectations that, hey, I live up to his, is counter productive.
That’s what the author of the article does and doesn’t get. He knows he’s supposed to fall for the woman, not her body, but he fails to grasp that in this context, his compliments are completely hollow.