Your comment is non-responsive because I was (mainly) referring to cases where the man doesn’t have advance knowledge of how much make-up the woman was using. In general, women aren’t expected to disclose such a thing to men they’ve just met, and don’t do it voluntarily. Hence why Morendil’s claim
Because women make no bones telling men they’re wearing make-up
is wrong.
Now, regarding your point:
I was under the impression that men both want a rather artificial appearance from women and despise women for their attention to the details needed to create it. I would be glad to find out that I’m mistaken.
Pjeby beat me to it: It’s another case of average vs. marginal. Men might expect women to do a lot to make themselves beautiful, but resent them wasting time on fruitless marginal units of effort when they “look just fine, what’s the fuss?”—especially when it makes them wait, of course. This isn’t a case of impossible expectations.
In terms of being attractive to men, most of the effort spent finding “just the right color” of lipstick or whatever is completely wasted. (I remember a Maddox rant about the different names for indistinguishable lipstick color.) Many a time I’ve been tempted to go up to a woman in the beauty aisle of a store and say, “Ah! That’s it! That’s why men don’t show enough interest in you! Because your make-up is a slightly wrong color! Aha! It makes so much sense now! The mystery is solved!”
Fortunately, even I have enough restraint not to do that. But the point is, most of this effort does not benefit men.
Though I’m obviously atypical, I thought you might be interested in this: One time I met a woman through a group and asked her out. She later confessed on a date that she was caught completely off guard because she was in her nurse scrubs, was tired from having worked a long shift, and hadn’t done anything to look good, and so couldn’t understand why I had been attracted to her.
Of course, I did the stupid thing by explaining it with appeal to the concept of a “beauty invariant” … but that’s about right: I (seem to) know a lot about how physically appealing a woman will be to me on average, even if my first impression is in the lower range. But I don’t know if this is true in general.
Many a time I’ve been tempted to go up to a woman in the beauty aisle of a store and say, “Ah! That’s it! That’s why men don’t show enough interest in you! Because your make-up is a slightly wrong color! Aha! It makes so much sense now! The mystery is solved!”
Men also spend lots of time doing things that are more impressive to their peers than to women. I sometimes wonder if this is part of a price-fixing game of sorts, where both genders work to keep individual attractiveness close to some group mean, in order to prevent all-out, no holds-barred competition for mates.
Perhaps we would expect to see some sort of slogan, promoting group loyalty over individual sexual fitness.… like, oh, I don’t know… “bros before ho’s”? ;-) Women don’t have such a catchy motto, but the same idea is definitely in effect. Otherwise, PUA literature wouldn’t need to teach strategies for the neutralization of jealous friends and giving women plausible reasons to “ditch” their girlfriends.
I think these things are much more symmetrical than you are claiming, and that you’re simply biased towards paying attention to the problems on the male side of the fence, without looking at how the same limits, penalties, stigma, etc. apply on the female side as well.
Men also spend lots of time doing things that are more impressive to their peers than to women. I sometimes wonder if this is part of a price-fixing game of sorts, where both genders work to keep individual attractiveness close to some group mean, in order to prevent all-out, no holds-barred competition for mates.
This is an interesting idea. I’ve observed that while there is a norm among men in mainstream white middle class culture that negatively judges men who put a lot of work into fashion and style, yet PUAs work a lot on their style, and it majorly pays off because it is a large factor in women’s perceptions of male status (and therefore, attractiveness). It is probably a good thing for most men that the average level of style is commonly so low, and men aren’t held to such a high standard for appearance. Yet the cat isn’t quite out of the bag about how much style actually effects women’s attraction, or some process is fixing the price. Knowing how powerful style is, I can’t go back to dressing like a normal guy.
Stored riff: I think mainstream American culture encourages men to go way below the human norm for interest in how they dress. As far as I can tell, the default is for men and women to put approximately equal effort into how they dress.
Your comment is non-responsive because I was (mainly) referring to cases where the man doesn’t have advance knowledge of how much make-up the woman was using. In general, women aren’t expected to disclose such a thing to men they’ve just met, and don’t do it voluntarily. Hence why Morendil’s claim
is wrong.
Now, regarding your point:
Pjeby beat me to it: It’s another case of average vs. marginal. Men might expect women to do a lot to make themselves beautiful, but resent them wasting time on fruitless marginal units of effort when they “look just fine, what’s the fuss?”—especially when it makes them wait, of course. This isn’t a case of impossible expectations.
In terms of being attractive to men, most of the effort spent finding “just the right color” of lipstick or whatever is completely wasted. (I remember a Maddox rant about the different names for indistinguishable lipstick color.) Many a time I’ve been tempted to go up to a woman in the beauty aisle of a store and say, “Ah! That’s it! That’s why men don’t show enough interest in you! Because your make-up is a slightly wrong color! Aha! It makes so much sense now! The mystery is solved!”
Fortunately, even I have enough restraint not to do that. But the point is, most of this effort does not benefit men.
Though I’m obviously atypical, I thought you might be interested in this: One time I met a woman through a group and asked her out. She later confessed on a date that she was caught completely off guard because she was in her nurse scrubs, was tired from having worked a long shift, and hadn’t done anything to look good, and so couldn’t understand why I had been attracted to her.
Of course, I did the stupid thing by explaining it with appeal to the concept of a “beauty invariant” … but that’s about right: I (seem to) know a lot about how physically appealing a woman will be to me on average, even if my first impression is in the lower range. But I don’t know if this is true in general.
Men also spend lots of time doing things that are more impressive to their peers than to women. I sometimes wonder if this is part of a price-fixing game of sorts, where both genders work to keep individual attractiveness close to some group mean, in order to prevent all-out, no holds-barred competition for mates.
Perhaps we would expect to see some sort of slogan, promoting group loyalty over individual sexual fitness.… like, oh, I don’t know… “bros before ho’s”? ;-) Women don’t have such a catchy motto, but the same idea is definitely in effect. Otherwise, PUA literature wouldn’t need to teach strategies for the neutralization of jealous friends and giving women plausible reasons to “ditch” their girlfriends.
I think these things are much more symmetrical than you are claiming, and that you’re simply biased towards paying attention to the problems on the male side of the fence, without looking at how the same limits, penalties, stigma, etc. apply on the female side as well.
pjeby said:
This is an interesting idea. I’ve observed that while there is a norm among men in mainstream white middle class culture that negatively judges men who put a lot of work into fashion and style, yet PUAs work a lot on their style, and it majorly pays off because it is a large factor in women’s perceptions of male status (and therefore, attractiveness). It is probably a good thing for most men that the average level of style is commonly so low, and men aren’t held to such a high standard for appearance. Yet the cat isn’t quite out of the bag about how much style actually effects women’s attraction, or some process is fixing the price. Knowing how powerful style is, I can’t go back to dressing like a normal guy.
Stored riff: I think mainstream American culture encourages men to go way below the human norm for interest in how they dress. As far as I can tell, the default is for men and women to put approximately equal effort into how they dress.