For a reasonable definition of sexy, the term refers to letting a woman feel sexual tension. If you talk about social interactions it’s useful to have a word that refers to making another person feel sexual tension.
Of course you can define beautiful, attractive and sexy all the same way. Then you get a one dimensional model where Bob wants Alice with utility rating X. I don’t think that’s model is very useful to understanding how humans behave in mating situations.
I define it as “arousing sexual interest and desire in people of appropriate gender and culture”. Note that this is quite different from “beautiful” and is a narrow subset of “attractive”.
the term refers to letting a woman feel sexual tension.
“Tension” generally implies conflict or some sort of a counterforce.
“Tension” generally implies conflict or some sort of a counterforce.
Testosterone which is commonly associated with sexiness in males is about dominance. It has something to do with power that does create tension.
Of course a woman can decide to have sex with shy a guy because he’s nice and she thinks that he’s intelligent or otherwise a good match. Given that there are shy guys who do have sex that’s certainly happening in reality.
Does that mean that the behavior of that guy deserves the label “sexy”? I don’t think he’s commonly given that label.
There also words like sensual and empathic. A guy can get layed by being very empathic and just making woman that feel really great by interacting with him in a sensual way. I think it’s useful to separate that mentally from the kind of behavior that comes from testosterone that commonly get’s called sexy.
If you read an exciting thriller you are also feeling tension even when you aren’t in conflict with the book or there some counterforce. Building up tension and then releasing it is a way for human to feel pleasure.
In which case he failed to signal “sexy” and (a common failure mode) signaled “creepy” instead.
It depends on how you define the term.
For a reasonable definition of sexy, the term refers to letting a woman feel sexual tension. If you talk about social interactions it’s useful to have a word that refers to making another person feel sexual tension.
Of course you can define beautiful, attractive and sexy all the same way. Then you get a one dimensional model where Bob wants Alice with utility rating X. I don’t think that’s model is very useful to understanding how humans behave in mating situations.
I define it as “arousing sexual interest and desire in people of appropriate gender and culture”. Note that this is quite different from “beautiful” and is a narrow subset of “attractive”.
“Tension” generally implies conflict or some sort of a counterforce.
Testosterone which is commonly associated with sexiness in males is about dominance. It has something to do with power that does create tension.
Of course a woman can decide to have sex with shy a guy because he’s nice and she thinks that he’s intelligent or otherwise a good match. Given that there are shy guys who do have sex that’s certainly happening in reality.
Does that mean that the behavior of that guy deserves the label “sexy”? I don’t think he’s commonly given that label.
There also words like sensual and empathic. A guy can get layed by being very empathic and just making woman that feel really great by interacting with him in a sensual way. I think it’s useful to separate that mentally from the kind of behavior that comes from testosterone that commonly get’s called sexy.
If you read an exciting thriller you are also feeling tension even when you aren’t in conflict with the book or there some counterforce. Building up tension and then releasing it is a way for human to feel pleasure.