At a minimum, it would help if you weren't committed to obviously self-destructive behavior, LB. Like commenting on the "Light" thread when you had the win sowed up. Just wrong.
Seems like a fair amount of this is also driven by people looking for affirmation and reassurance. I wouldn't mind seeing the female to male version of that conversation disappear as well.
Sure -- because being content with your appearance and not worrying about it makes you an arrogant asshole, you end up fishing for reassurance from others. It's the same dynamic.
I dont know heebie at all. But, from her comment about looking at her butt in the mirror, my first thought was how nice it was that she was comfortable with herself, not "wow she must have a great butt!"
I suspect that most people are more attracted to healthy self-esteem than a sweet tush. Put another way, you can make your sweet tush two sizes bigger with a bad attitude.
I suspect that most people are more attracted to healthy self-esteem than a sweet tush.
Kind of hard to spot a great esteem from across the room though.
But saying that last makes me wince and cringe, waiting for someone to cut me down to size the way I deserve.
Sometimes (though probably not in your case) cutting people down to size is the right thing to do. I've met attractive men who were quite vain about their looks, real dandies. Cutting those people down with teasing is useful, because they're too self-obsessed. It's important to do it in a way that pokes fun at their vanity without demeaning their bodies of course.
People shouldn't despise the way they look, but people who are too aware of how good looking they are are rather annoying.
A lot of the really terrible behaviors you describe are ones I noticed in high school (co-ed after four years in a single-sex environment.) I haven't seen them so much since then.
pick up a Men's Health or a Maxim or any similar mag - there's a surplus of articles telling men how many crunches they need to do to get that six-pack, and what to do to get Gun and Buns of Steel.
"Kind of hard to spot a great esteem from across the room though."
"Honey I was just checking out her great self-esteem."
Sure, but it's worth noting how standard it is to attack a woman for being confident about her appearance. The words "stuck-up bitch" are a boilerplate insult; and if you've been following the 'AutoAdmit' story -- that law-students' message board that had all the godawful sexist bullshit over pictures of female law students they were rating and discussing, one of the responses to a woman who objected it was that she deserved it: she put a picture of herself up on line and clearly thinks she's pretty.
Oh god, that AutoAdmit story. I try not to assume that lawyers are the world's worst people (present company excluded), but that story ain't helping.
I swear we really aren't any likelier to be bad people than anyone else. It's just that for those of us who are, the lawyering skills allow us to express our evil more fully than the average person can manage.
I wonder whether this isn't a mostly-American thing. My data set of one (1) is a 20-year-old distant Dutch cousin I met awhile back, who was about 40 pounds overweight by any American standard but projected self-confidence and seemed completely pleased with herself.
Once you're completely off the dating / climbing scene you tend to notice how appallingly important first impressions are in the fast-paced hip young upper-middle-class world. I've seen professionally-oriented people I know agonizing about silly little details of appearance (how long to trim his mustache, exactly what kind of shoes she should wear) for job interviews, and the dating scene is a whole additional, even worse level (with completely different solutions).
On a related topic, have you ever noticed that the people with the license plates that say "2hot4U" are the nastiest looking people?
It's important to do it in a way that pokes fun at their vanity without demeaning their bodies of course.
Throw everything you've got at them. Why not?
I swear we really aren't any likelier to be bad people than anyone else.
Of course you would say this. You probably even think you're pretty! You're so stuck up.
4: False dichotomy: high self-esteem and good looks often come together. Plus you're discounting the fact that people often search for emotionally vulnerable partners, especially in more casual dating situations.
Emotionally vulnerable, yes, but I've found that "psycho" doesn't really work. I'm not saying you should change your on strategy or anything, Adam.
Oddly, McManus claims that it does work for him.
6: I suppose you call it as you see it, but I doubt the usefulness of a lot of this correction, and think many people justify real cruelty to themselves in this way.
ignoring it or waving it off makes you a bad person
How much of that is related to age and experience? Over decades I'm finding I care less and less about what others think of me, and am doing so in a really indifferent way rather than in a defiantly "I'm so goth" manner.
17: Right. There seem to be plenty of male and female Maxim/Vogue types out here with enough self-anxiety to power a medium-sized nation.
and am doing so in a really indifferent way rather than in a defiantly "I'm so goth" manner.
So great.
. There seem to be plenty of male and female Maxim/Vogue types out here with enough self-anxiety to power a medium-sized nation.
In the interests fairness, it's not all done by them.
Over decades I'm finding I care less and less about what others think of me, and am doing so in a really indifferent way rather than in a defiantly "I'm so goth" manner.
Certainly being older makes it easier -- being married and in my late thirties makes it easier to dismiss questions of appearance as not my problem -- there's no reason for it to matter to me or anyone else but Buck anymore. Still doesn't change the fact that expressing a positive or confident assessment of my own appearance continues to give me the willies.
Still doesn't change the fact that expressing a positive or confident assessment of my own appearance continues to give me the willies.
I think this is because we ascribe a certain authority to attractiveness even as we think (or claim to think) that such ascriptions are illegitimate.
"Sometimes (though probably not in your case) cutting people down to size is the right thing to do. I've met attractive men who were quite vain about their looks, real dandies. Cutting those people down with teasing is useful, because they're too self-obsessed. It's important to do it in a way that pokes fun at their vanity without demeaning their bodies of course."
Vanity is usually assumed by something about how people dress??
Just brag in a very small, quiet way, LB. Claim to be pleasant-looking. No one wll call you a bitch for that.
Claim to be hotter than Jesus. This will simultaneously establish that you are a) attractive, and b) holy, and therefore above criticism.
Apropos of nothing in particular: what's weird to me is that I think I'm pretty, and I know that not only do others disagree but most of the people I find really attractive aren't attractive to others. (This does, granted, give me a pretty uncluttered dating pool.)
I mean, I'm fattish and all and I wish I weren't, but I find women of my general type--fancy glasses, thick hair, big features, goodly amount of chest, sarky expression, maybe not so slim--almost universally attractive (and I do, you know, go for women, so it's not like this is mere projection and wish-fulfillment on my part), so I find it hard to internalize that I'm as homely as my experiences with others and our lovely culture suggest that I am.
Relatedly, a friend and I were driving along somewhere this weekend and we noticed this big, tall, fat guy walking along. Friend made a remark to the effect that he had a weird walk (which he did, in fairness, have, but which I think stood in for "I think he's funny looking"). We drove past him and I realized that he was this activist guy I hadn't seen for years and used to have a crush on--and it wasn't that he'd changed, he was a big fat muscley guy then too. Sadly, I didn't leap out of the car and proclaim my feelings--one more opportunity gone.
18: You've got to hit that sweet spot between "vulnerable" and "needy."
25 and 20: I'm pretty loath to do this most of the time, and all I meant by "cutting down" was affectionate teasing. It isn't good when people take themselves too seriously. I'd only ever be willing to do it in the most obvious situations.
Don't back down, BG. IDP is a wuss.
Frowner:
HOOKER ONE
Well, the little guy, he was
kinda funny-looking.
MARGE
In what way?
HOOKER ONE
I dunno. Just funny-looking.
Adam: and also the sweet spot between "dramatic" and "frightening".
28: Well, yeah, that's right back to the 'objective standard' weirdness. People are attracted to whoever they're attracted to, and not everyone agrees about who's more attractive than whom. You'd think this would be something that made people happy: differing tastes mean less competition, whatever your own tastes are. But instead you get indignation and belittling of anyone who's happy with their own appearance if they don't 'objectively' measure up, and of anyone who's attracted to people who aren't 'objectively' attractive.
It's a status game, on some level.
5: That's just less true than you think. It's the women with high self esteem that you actually notice, and then you notice all the things about them that are pretty. It's like a time-compressed version of that dynamic whereby we tend to think people we know are better looking than people we don't know.
("less true than you think != "entirely untrue", natch. But I can definitely correlate the amount of (non-hassle) attention I attract inversely with my anxiety levels, much more so than with makeup or how I'm dressed. Unless I wear a hat. The coefficient on "wearing a hat" is even larger than the one on self -confidence.)
And LB, re: your question, what kind of half-works for me is being utterly cynical and manipulative about it: noticing how the way you look affects how people respond to you, deciding how much that's worth to you, and so deciding how much energy you want to invest in your appearance. Similarly you consciously decide which women will respond well to self-deprecation, and which men will respond well to a bit of laughing arrogance (men who respond well to self-deprecation should generally be avoided.) Knowing that it's just a game of manipulation you're playing helps you stop thinking your appearance has anything to do with your actual value as a person.
Oh, and also: the men who are most likely to put down a woman's looks are the men who have the most to gain from keeping all women insecure: ie they'd never get laid by someone with actual self-esteem and standards. It's useful to remember that when you feel the fear of being cut down to size.
Also, hi, everyone. Sometimes I lurk but today I didn't.
Rep. Marion Berry (D. Ark.) recently called Rep. Adam Putnam (R. Fla.) a "Howdy-Doody-looking nimrod." If eel that this is a pretty good model for talking about people's appearance.
Berry is white, so it wasn't a hate crime. I checked.
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2005/11/19/831/59537
Yay, delurking! (and a very nice necklace of skulls you have there.)
Yeah, there are certainly tactics to get around it -- I just think it's worth talking about it explicitly as a way of trying to root it out. There is in fact nothing wrong with thinking you're acceptably attractive, and there's something fucked-up about being afraid that people will find out that that's what you do think of yourself.
Oh, well 'affectionate teasing' isn't going to make anyone stop doing something, it encourages the behavior. I wear crazy shit sometimes, and girls making jokes about it isn't a negative.
What I was going to add and forgot to was this: I often feel obliged to take part in the "oooh, I'm so fat and homely" conversation for several reasons: I want to bond with others, I feel bad about myself because I know that people who look like me are considered ugly, I really would like to lose some weight, and I feel like other people will think it's weird if I don't participate. I feel afraid that they all think "Hey, Frowner has a big nose and she's fat, and we who have cute noses and are thin think we're ugly, so she must be crazy or delusional or something if she doesn't think she's really ugly". In a strange way, I almost feel that they will be embarassed if I don't take part, because I feel like they'll be thinking "Should we tell her? Wouldn't it be kinder if she knew, so she didn't act on the assumption that she looks normal?"
How much of that is related to age and experience?
I have always felt inadequate with respect to some things, but the above is, I think, very much true about concerns about looks. I'm fat, plain looking and usually am dressed in what passes for the nerdy middle-aged guy who has no fashion sense style. Whatever. If someone does not like me for it, it does not make much of a difference to me. I think that this indifference is harder to acheive when you are young (although I do not remember feeling much different when I was younger).
expressing a positive or confident assessment of my own appearance continues to give me the willies
Hope it's ok when we do it for you.
Such is the instability of self-esteem that many of us have probably been chided for vanity and for unwarranted self-consciousness at different times. Probably opposite sides of the same coin, like many psychological phenomena.
I think a similar dynamic operates at any level of attractiveness, which is where the impossible standard comes in. I'm fairly attractive in an entirely non-traffic-stopping kind of way but someone who wanted to consider me delusional for thinking that of myself would have all sorts of evidence to work from: I'm nowhere near professionally pretty. So any impulse not to participate in cutting myself down because I'm actually pretty okay with how I look gets an internal chorus of how delusional I am to be contented, given the flaws in my appearance that stand between me and moviestardom. And the flawpicking game goes all the way up to actual moviestars.
I almost feel that they will be embarassed if I don't take part
What a wonder you are, Frowner; don't ever leave. If you weren't doing this for free we'd have to see about getting you a grant.
Seconded -- you consistently manage to say stuff I've been thinking and can't quite get said.
Actually, Frowner, I think you are in a perfect position to NOT play that game. If you were very attractive in a conventional way, then refusing to join in would probably upset the others; they'd be all like "that arrogant bitch! She thinks she's so perfect!" The fact that you're unconventionally attractive but YOU like how you look is more likely to get the reaction "aww, Frowner loves herself just like she is! That's.. actually kind of awesome." Especially when you can state with authority that YOU would totally do you.
For me calling myself "fat" or "out-of-shape" works as a diversionary tactic to keep myself from feeling like I am "ugly" or "funny-looking" in a way that could not be fixed by working out. Does that make sense? I'm saying, if I call myself "out-of-shape", then I can be more attractive if I put more effort into it; but if I call myself "ugly", well, I'll still be ugly after I get my exercise program going. (Not calling myself any of these adjectives doesn't seem to be one of the options historically, well except for the brief period around '96 when I was in genuinely good shape and thus didn't have any alternative to calling myself "ugly".)
32: It's a status game
It's a self-reassurance/cognitive dissonance reduction game, which is what status games mostly (but not always) reduce to. Any evidence that others survive and live quite nicely even while not doing it your way (what ever that way is) is a serious threat to some people 'cause they exist only as others perceive them. That threat has to be neutralized somehow.
You can pull those strings quite deliberately to your advantage if you want to. IMX it's not all that different from dealing with rats, they just want sustainence and warmth and will do what you want them to do in exchange for those.
That's kind of still playing though -- "I'm free to be happy with my appearance because I'm happy with being 'objectively' ugly. It would be unacceptably vain of me to be happy with my appearance without qualification, but if I accept and am pleased with being ugly, I'm neither vain nor delusional." It still accepts the premise. (Not that there's any easy way not to accept the premise, and I'm taking the objective ugliness on Frowner's word and biting back my social impulse to deny that she could possibly be evaluating her looks correctly, which is a ridiculous impulse given that I've never met her.
(I mean during that period I had much higher self-esteem than I've generally had; but I still couldn't get away from a sense that I was peculiar-looking in a bad way.)
they just want sustainence and warmth
And good drugs.
In a strange way, I almost feel that they will be embarassed if I don't take part, because I feel like they'll be thinking "Should we tell her?
I feel exactly the opposite. I feel that this kind of talk is engaged in by those who feel fairly sure that someone will reply "nonsense, you look great"; and that if I were to say "oh gosh I'm so fat I need to lose 20 lbs" the honest reply would be "you sure do" or "make that 30", thus putting my interlocutor in the embarrassing position of needing either to lie or to be insulting.
I find it infuriating when thin girls do the "I'm so fat" moan.
I don't know why this conversation always drives me nuts, but it does. People go after "attractive" people for the same reason they go after the rich and (to use ogged's excellent addition) the enwhiteled: because there is a silent, even unconscious, claim of extra authority or legitimacy that puts or seems to put other people at a disadvantage. Didn't someone above use the phrase "taken down a peg"? That's what it means.
That's not to say it's OK, and that doesn't specifically explain either the frequency or the virulence with which this tactic is deployed against women. But the general explanation doesn't seem that mysterious.
42: Curiously, I am indirectly supported by grants already. And this very computer was paid for by a grant. Sadly, not my grant. And even sadder, it's not a grant about posting on Unfogged. Unless by "Unfogged" you mean "bacteriophages". Which would be interesting, I guess.
47: Yeah, it's hard to get away from the premise, which I guess I'd formulate as "society has a right to judge your appearance all the time even when it's not relevant, and this judgement will be considered to stem from "society" rather than from "Joe who only likes redheads with no hips" or "Phil who hasn't been laid in a year" or "Mary who secretly envies your legs" or "Sarah who wants you to stay away from her crush-object".
53: And therefore, I've had crushes on all of you for many years, secretly.
Aren't you all disembodied brains in a fish tank? How can that ever be ugly?
47: I think I'm coming from a subtly different set of premises than you, LB. Trying to work it out.
Ok, I got it. There was a recent Feministe thread where people stepped up and nice things about themselves. And it was a fantastic idea, and a lot of people said what they liked about their bodies, and yet as I read the thread I found myself getting incredibly annoyed by it. And I didn't post on it all "Well, I love my big tits and long legs and high cheekbones," because I felt like other women might be having the same reaction as me. Like, all these women ticking off the checkboxes where they met patriarchal beauty standards just emphasised all the boxes I couldn't tick. I actually do think it's kind of annoying to openly take a lot of pleasure in conforming to those standards; it's bad manners in the same way as openly gloating about being wealthy is bad manners. But taking pleasure in your appearance doesn't have to mean that; it's possible to appreciate your own looks in a way that doesn't involve making other women feel bad. Probably more possible for women who aren't conventionally attractive, purely because of what other people will project on to you.
To the extent this is a status game, its a game of making sure everyone is equal.
I swear we really aren't any likelier to be bad people than anyone else.
I'm sure this is somewhat true (i.e., lawyers get a bad rap, and you are likely to find lots of decent people lawyering if you try). I don't really buy the idea that choice of career is completely neutral in this respect.
Folks should probably make a distinction between physical beauty and attractiveness. Most women are attractive, even though few people are beautiful (or even pretty). A lot of grief and assholery could be avoided if people stopped conflating the two.
Self esteem is a mixed blessing. I've always had a better opinion of myself than anyone else did [of me]. People don't really like that.
Self-concern by anyone, either positive or negative, is not regarded well of others. Neurotics are looked down on, and arrogant are dispised too. I think its because people would rather have others focus on them. If person A is focued on himself, person B is pissed that person A is focus not on person B, but on A.
Yeah, I'm thinking what I'd really like to do is rehabilitate vanity as harmless. Look, if appearance really isn't so important, then who cares if you're delusionally pleased with yourself -- why need to cut anyone down for it? And then we can all stop beating each other up over it.
I bet you think this thread is about you, don't you, don't you?
. Look, if appearance really isn't so important, then who cares if you're delusionally pleased with yourself -- why need to cut anyone down for it?
Because, sad but true, appearance is important.
60: Insofar as lawyers really are more likely to be bad people, is that because bad people gravitate toward the law as a profession, or because the training lawyers get makes them mercenary and sophistical?
Maybe we should all talk about our idiosyncratic tastes.
67: It's an interesting question. For random reasons, I knew a lot more med school students than law students. I think they (MD's) get a similarly unrealistic reputation boost in the opposite direction from lawyers. My experience suggests every med school class has a healthy helping of grade A assholes from the very beginning. I could see some of the same personality types being drawn to lawyering instead, but don't have nearly as many samples of students.
None of this is saying, of course, that there aren't plenty of both who are truly decent people.
Common or garden 'being pleased with oneself' seems a perfectly admirable state to be in (absent overweening arrogance or other sorts of shitty concomitant behaviour).
Lawyers don't get to tell people to take their clothes off, or stick their fingers inside people. That's why people go into medicine, you know. Bunch of sickos.
I shared a flat with a couple of med students in college. They had parties a few times and I can state with certainty that they (medical students) were mostly wankers -- especially the one I made clean our shower after I caught him pissing in it [he thought I was a tad unreasonable] ...
if appearance really isn't so important, then who cares if you're delusionally pleased with yourself
This really cuts to the important issue. There should not be anything wrong with thinking you are physically attractive--and saying so, if you like--in part becasue there is nothing terribly important being attractive. Sure, it makes it slightly more likely that someone will want to have sex with you (but less, than many assume, I think), but mostly it says absolutely nothing about anything that's important about anyone.
hey, Frowner, I just actually read your self description properly and I wanted to say something I should have added to the posts above: if I met you, I would definitely fancy you. Just another datapoint to support the idea that you're not mental for thinking you're good looking.
73: But that's not true. There are financial rewards attached to being beautiful. There are all kinds of social rewards. It doesn't just make it more likely that someone will have sex with you, it also makes it more likely that someone will listen to you, think you're intelligent, seek out your company, elect you President, or acquit you of a crime. (This is all true for men as well as women, and the penalty for being ugly is generally even greater than the reward for being beautiful.) It IS important.
I'd say the main benefit for being around a self-confident person isn't that they're more attractive because of the confidence, but that you can appreciate their attractivness without dealing with their body issues.
75: I don't think the attractive are over-represented among Presidents of the United States, particularly. Not to detract from the other rewards you listed, which apply.
It IS important.
I'm not disagreeing as a descriptive matter, although I think its importance is overrated. I was making a normative statement.
(Although William Henry Harrison was, it must be owned, a handsome man.)
A beautiful comment, Adam, but not very attractive.
11: I swear we really aren't any likelier to be bad people than anyone else.
Generally speaking, the higher-paying and higher-prestige professions seem to draw the truly Xtreme douchebags with truly Xtreme frequency. But of course there are douchebags everywhere. (And those professions also draw plenty of nice, lovely people. Heck, I have one friend who's a lawyer.)
The fat obsession of American aesthetics seems to worsen as the obesity crisis worsens. Suggested solution: a continued frontal assault on fast foods and advancing radical notions like maybe people shouldn't be bombarded with advertising at every possible opportunity. Sometimes I feel like an Adbusters-esque "it's all the fault of corporations" type, but... sometimes it kind of is.
"Lawyers don't get to tell people to take their clothes off, or stick their fingers inside people."
You've never gone through a divorce?
well, of course it shouldn't be that important, but because it is, I feel being overtly proud of being beautiful is a form of boasting about privilege and not-very-classy. Simply acknowledging that you're pretty, and it's useful to you, is a different thing. And likng how you look is a different thing again.
Especially the one I made clean our shower after I caught him pissing in it [he thought I was a tad unreasonable] ...
Normal urine is sterile, as he knew, you ignorant bint. It just rinses right down the drain.
72: Well, there are worse things he could have been doing in the shower.
81: DS, but legal is funny that way. MD are generally speaking quite well paid and quite well respected. Lawyers are mixed in both senses. There are high paid lawyers, and there are lawyers who garner a lot of respect, but I dont' think it generalizes at all. There a working lawyers in mediocre paying, dead-end jobs that don't get much respect. There are lawyers reviled as `ambulance chasers' and the like, without real parallel in medicine (plastics notwithstanding). And there are loads of people with law degrees that don't use them directly.
In my circles, at least, I would say the default assumption is that anyone who has an M.D. is reasonably bright, and doing something worthwhile, while neither would hold as a default for laywers. Sampling bias and all that, I guess.
I think that one of the big factors here is that whatever the norm is, even people who don't really accept the norm tend to accomodate to it. Furthermore, people who deviate from the norm tend to be isolated individuals, or small countercultural groups who are usually sucked back into the norm as the counterculture's weaknesses become evident.
In the US we probably have more individual freedom than any people anywhere, from the point of view of government oppression or strangling of social custom. All you have to do is move to one of about twenty fair-sized cities (and a few countercultural non-urban areas) and you really can do almost anything.
On the other hand, everyone has to make a living, and it's hard to hold a job if you are wildly different than everyone else on the crew.
And in order to be part of the life around you, you have to deal with the generic, shared first reactions of the modal individual, if only by accepting the lowly place that the hierarchy grants you.
All truisms, but regardless of whether the opinions of the modal normally ambitious, normally successful TV-watching person are valid or reasonable, they're facts you have to live with.
Lookswise, a guy can be ruggedly handsome and sexy as hell, or even homely (but not "funny looking"). Being in some way physically imposing (tall, athletic, solid) is the non-negotiable part.
84: The only problem with that is that it isn't true.
82: "OK, Mrs. Jones, before we take a divorce client we're required to do a complete physical examination. You can shut your eyes if you wish."
84: Well, I was told that by someone who worked in urinalysis. We've been through this before, I think, but as far as I know golden showers are less of a health risk than kissing.
88: well it (normally) is at the moment of expulsion. Tends to get contaminated in the process. Lying around in your tub? Not so good.
The fat obsession of American aesthetics seems to worsen as the obesity crisis worsens. Suggested solution: a continued frontal assault on fast foods and advancing radical notions like maybe people shouldn't be bombarded with advertising at every possible opportunity.
I think the fast food industry gets the brunt of it when they're just a symptom of a larger problem. People should cut down on processed foods in general and get more exercise, but both take time that people feel like they don't have. Why don't people have time to cook or work out? Because of a lot of the issues touched on in the MotherLoad report in TAP -- workplaces don't support personal time, households need two incomes because housing's so expensive, and being poor or having kids have extra time costs, and these are all treated as individual rather than systemic problems.
92: I think you're mostly right, in that fast-food is a symptom rather than a cause. On the other hand, the entire industry has a hugely negative impace, and very little in the way of redeeming features.
Hey, ya'll, it's *the internet*. Tap into those moments where you think, "damn, I look pretty good" and talk up how hot you are.
re: 84
It wasn't really a health issue so much as a 'respect mah authoritah' issue. This was my place and if he wanted to behave like a cunt in it, there would be consequences.
93: It's the confluence of the abundance of food, the no-energy-expended workplace, and the unlimited ability of humans to fool themselves. The energy in vs. energy out thing has been understood for centuries; the FFI is as much to blame for obesity as whatever band was blamed for teen suicides.
87: I have a couple of guy friends who are short and wiry, and in general they won't even consider going out with any women who are taller, heavier or stronger than they are. Being short and finely built is pretty crummy for men, I know, but at the same time it would enlarge their dating pool if they weren't always looking for women even shorter and tinier than they are.
When I did date a short fellow, some years ago, we both found it extremely amusing that my feet were fractionally bigger than his. We're still friends, and I usually give him such of my clunky unisex shoes as I no longer wear.
86: MD are generally speaking quite well paid and quite well respected. Lawyers are mixed in both senses.
True. But large numbers of people still seem to go into law school with the expectation of money and prestige. That the actual profession isn't necessarily all that glamorous doesn't make much of a dent in its image.
92: I think the fast food industry gets the brunt of it when they're just a symptom of a larger problem.
True. Add the systemic problems (including badly-eroded worker rights) to the list. The fast food industry deserves to get a portion of the blame, not al of it.
96: like I said, it isn't the FFI, that's just a symptom. There just isn't really anything to like about the FFI, so they get the brunt of unsophisticated arguments about obesity.
I'm pretty much convinced the real problem is more lack of activity than diet. The human body was designed to process all sorts of crap as food, it's a good survival skill. That doesn't mean the lousy diet many (most?) north americans currently experience (for an example) is good for you, exactly, just that we can mostly survive it. One thing we weren't designed for though, is sitting around all day.
97: it would enlarge their dating pool if they weren't always looking for women even shorter and tinier than they are.
Of course, it would also significantly enlarge their painful rejection and humiliation pool. There's a reason lots of short men have complexes about their height, not too dissimilar to the reasons many women have for insecurity about weight and breast size.
98: My bitterest rejection was by a woman who I'm convinced wouldn't go out with a guy the same height as her. Looking like a hot couple was important to her, and if I'd been 6-8" taller we would have been dynamite.
I think that obesity/bulimia is a pretty good example of a cultural disease complex. You have a lot of factors converging:
1. 24-hour access to food, snacking instead of meals, eating to relieve boredom or depression
2. More sedentary lifestyle
3. Insanely thin media role models; the importance of appearance and first impressions; relationships as the meaning of life (!!)
4. Traditional woman's identification with food, cooking, meals, etc.
5. High fat junk food engineered for flavor.
In other words, short guys don't accessorize well.
The obvious solution is to embrace depression, and just stop eating altogether.
The obvious solution is to exercise to exhaustion every evening. IMX Ogged is right, one drops inches and gains some pounds at the start. I think the latter effect should reverse as the chest pain and nausea continue.
Depression is a lot easier than exercising to exhaustion.
I once knew someone who, after getting called "fat" in public, hit on the combination of depression, cocaine and an insane cleansing regimen. Perhaps not entirely, you know, healthy and stuff, but as a weight-loss strategy it did work.
101: That's so weird. I cannot imagine seriously rejecting someone for such a stupid reason. (Which is not to say that I don't believe you, since I constantly encounter new variants on human stupidity.)
I think a lot of middle class problems are about managing abundance (or managing excess, if that's how it strikes you). We live in a culture whose economy needs a weird kind of constant expansion, an expansion which requires that we buy unneccessary things constantly--not just sometimes, not just when we want them. And the "need" for them is always increased by artificial pressures--like buying junk food for lunch because you eat at your desk while working all the time and you can't bear to get up at 5 insteand of 5:15 to make yourself a lunch before your commute. We are--sort of--poisoned to meet the needs of the economy.
I often think about how much of my spare time is involved with wrangling stuff--clothes, media stuff, books (god knows, books), more clothes, kitchen stuff. Dusting, washing, hand-washing, storing, organizing.
Too, I think about those utopian pictures from Dwell, where everyone is young and slim and a creative, and has a small well-chosen wardrobe, a few high-tech toys, and not much else. (Except about a gazillion dollars worth of house and high design furniture, of course). Just as we have the skinny-skinny celebrities and the fattening population, we also have the utopian, low-stuff life and the actual tide of office clothes/weekend clothes/sports clothes/formal clothes/books/papers/mail/etc.
My spare time is spent eating Girl Scout cookies, drinking coffee, and sitting on my fine, fine ass. I highly recommend this strategy, especially if you brag about it.
60, etc: I was a researcher before I went to law school; I'd been hired to do some research by a lawyer, and found the subject matter fascinating. I still do. It's the business of law that gave me pause [and the amount of chicanery that goes on in law firms]. I used to work for a firm rated as one of the best in LA. The sole female partner was a crappy lawyer and a Queen Bee; there would be no more female partners to threaten her rule. Did that have to do with her being a lawyer? Hell, if she'd been the lunch lady, she would have slain all the competition. OTOH, the male partner I worked with most was a great guy who did pro bono work because he believed it was the Right Thing to Do.
I suspect one sees less of Express Essential Evil in those whose occupations put them at a disadvantage - Lawyers, doctors, have more power than a bus boy. The latter may spit in your soup, but he's not going to be openly arrogant, because he's on the short end of the social stick.
I must, however, observe that I've met far more assholery in doctors. It was a relief to be referred to the one I have now; the one prior to my current MD thought He was more godlike than God. [Of course, the one I have now has probably lost a lot more patients in his career; he's part of a medical group with large AIDS practice.]
utopian pictures from Dwell, where everyone is young and slim and a creative, and has a small well-chosen wardrobe, a few high-tech toys, and not much else
There's a magazine about my life? Sweet.
By the way, a far greater percentage of doctors than lawyers are assholes, and I'd even say that the doctor assholes are bigger assholes than the lawyer assholes. I'd bet that something like 20-25% of doctors are certifiable psychopaths. That said, I'm glad that we as a society have found a relatively good outlet for their urges.
107: for that matter, amputation works too.
101: That's so weird. I cannot imagine seriously rejecting someone for such a stupid reason. (Which is not to say that I don't believe you, since I constantly encounter new variants on human stupidity.)
Oh, I buy it in both directions -- men are supposed to be bigger and stronger than women, and in romantic relationships both genders have a tendency to police gender roles. Stupid, but that's exactly how people are.
110: to expand on earlier, my comments were not meant as any judgment of the population percentage of assholes in medicie or law; just partially addressing teh question of whether or not *students* start off that way or are affected by the education. Only partial, because I've only known a handful of law students as students.
102: And let's not forget high fructose corn syrup. It's just plain unhealthy and it's everywhere in the States.
Maybe I've just been lucky, but most of the doctors I've had or known have been perfectly decent people.
111: Ogged is just being all pissy because he just found out his kidney was perfectly healthy. His doctor had to perform an unnecessary operation because he lost a bet. He needed the practice anyway
108: It turned out that the woman in question was a femme fatale. Men were moths to her candle. She could afford to be arbitrarily picky. I became friends with one of her exes, who reported that "Experiencing men is her thing". But not short guys.
Or maybe, John, it wasn't short guys. It might've just been you.
116: Could be. I know lots of decent people who happen to be MD's too. I wasn't trying to suggest a majority of them were assholes; just a significant minority in my aquaintance.
That goes without saying. She did have a statistically significant tall-guy pattern, though (100% of several.) This was long before my no-relationship policy, though ultimately it became part of the motivation.
Well, tall guys are likelier to have bigger dicks.
I'm short, but I wear 11EE shoes. That's where you're supposed to look.
A very cute Iranian woman I know declared recently that she wouldn't date anyone under 5'10". She's about 4'9".
My 5'2" cousin vowed up and down that she wouldn't marry anyone under 6'; fortunately, her 6'2" husband is also a great guy.
I always wonder two things about these expressed desires: how the mechanics work out, and whether the women aren't just trying to engineer the genetics of their children.
No, wait, that first woman is 4'11". I don't want anyone thinking she's got pituatary problems.
The 1998 Ig Nobel award in statistics was awarded to 'Jerald Bain of Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto and Kerry Siminoski of the University of Alberta for their carefully measured report,
"The Relationship Among Height, Penile Length, and Foot Size."
[Published in "Annals of Sex Research," vol. 6, no. 3, 1993, pp.
231-5.]' According to their research, penile length is not correlated with foot size once you correct for both of their correlations with height. So 122 could not be more wrong.
trying to engineer the genetics of their children
I used to think about this, because athletic kid=possible early retirement (as long as you haven't alienated them too much), but now I'm old enough that it probably won't shave that much time off my working years, plus there's the chance that I'll kick it early anyway, so maybe I'd marry a clumsy woman who is very beautiful, but it's going to feel like settling.
Yeah, no shit. I mean, who wants to marry someone who has a family history of early cancer?
Someone who doesn't want a needy old guy around, but wouldn't mind some company in the meantime. Of course.
It's all about marrying way outside the gene pool. I'm hoping that my mom's having done so will spare me all the crackpot inbred characteristics of her family.
128: I was thinking of the children. Unlike you, you selfish bastard.
129: Let's hear it for hybrid vigour!
Screw you and your junk science, Unfoggedatarian!
I think that JM should marry a cousin just out of curiosity, to see what her recessive traits are.
My family has a lop ear. My brother has two rare hereditary diseases that are completely boring and not life threatening. His MD was tickled to see such rare diseases.
I know what they are. An aunt married a nearish relative. Children of that union: missing adult teeth, depression, pituatary gland problems, and, probably, early hearing loss. Very attractive, all of them.
My family has a lop ear.
Do you keep it in one place, or does everyone get a year to put it on their mantlepiece, or something?
I'll be back later to read your mockery.
Right now it's no 2 brothers, a nephew, and a grandnephew. We've never inventoried it systematically, there are probably more.
My spare time is spent eating Girl Scout cookies, drinking coffee, and sitting on my fine, fine ass.
Yeah right.
Like you have spare time.
I was eating girl scout cookies, drinking coffee, and ass-sitting when I wrote that comment. So there.
Also, my mother's parents were first cousins.
140: is that where you got the fine ass?
trying to engineer the genetics of their children
My 6'1" cousin said she wouldn't marry a man taller than 5'10", because she didn't want to give birth to a race of giants.
123: that kind of thing from women is like men insisiting they would never marry anyone who didn't have at least a D cup with no more than a 26 inch waist. Except it's not as stigmatized when women do it.
