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exactly! I know girls who spend 70% of their income on their face. That doesn't mean that they're rich. It means that they don't spend it on something else lik

exactly! I know girls who spend 70% of their income on their face. That doesn't mean that they're rich. It means that they don't spend it on something else like holidays or paying when eating out (going on loads of dates).

User23 8y ago
Investing in self-improvement is actually a very wise allocation of resources.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  True, but a bit sad that we live in a world where it makes sense for a woman to invest 70 percent of her income on her face so she can eat for "free" via dates. Sounds like a polite form of probably very underpaid prostition. They would likely make more as actual sex workers, but their self esteem and social standing would take a hit. (Which means some of these folks seeming or claiming to "spend 70 percent on their face" may actually be sex workers making more money than others think, but hiding that fact.)
  - User23 8y ago
    By definition self-improvement raises one’s value in the marketplace, be it the job market, the mating market, or any other. This holds independent of sex. Negotiating in exchange for that value is of course a separate skill. I’m not sure why you’re so focused on prostitution, but beautiful women have other more advantageous and higher status opportunities if trading on their looks is what they want to do. And who is anyone else to say that isn’t their right if they do?
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      I'm not questioning their right. By all accounts, I was beautiful woman back in the day. I was also tall and thin at age 17 and toyed with the idea of being a model as a seeming easy answer for life. As a woman who has six years of college and a serious interest in intellectual topics, I'm quite frustrated at my inability to get taken seriously and develop a real career. Most women who have money and power seem to trade on their looks and sex appeal. They seem to mostly be actresses, singers, models, run fashion or make up empires or sell perfume, etc. My feeling is that a lot of women make such career choices not because they are truly passionate about things like fashion but because that's the most viable avenue for a smart, pretty woman who doesn't want to be a second class citizen who can't stand up to her husband for fear he will leave her and his income is higher than hers. Even so, the #MeToo movement suggests that women with real careers routinely put up with sexual harassment and even sexual assault as part for the course and it appears this is not generally true for men. I have no problem with women trading on their looks if they so desire. As a woman who wants something else out of life and can't seem to get it, I have quite a big problem with that seeming to be the only real option a woman has. My subjective experience makes me feel like it very much boils down to treating women as sex objects, not real people. And women who fail at being marketable sex objects can just go starve as far as the world is concerned.
      - User23 8y ago
        Your frustration is understandable, but I hope you don’t give up. The history books are full of people who’ve made invaluable contributions despite facing any manner of social challenges. It’s worth noting that trading on sex appeal for money and power is an avenue plenty of men pursue as well. We are a sexually reproducing species so it’s always going to be of major importance thanks to selection pressure.
        DoreenMichele 8y ago
        Sure. In a nutshell, the problem is that a successful man is sexually attractive because of his success and success can make an otherwise not attractive man sexually viable. This seems to not be true for women. Her career success is often seen as a deterrent to a personal life. Also, being female seems to make it difficult to network because most successful business people are heterosexual males. So that makes it complicated and challenging. Networking between two hetero men is obviously networking. Networking between a hetero man and a hetero woman is much less clear and readily leads to unfortunate misunderstandings, even in a best case scenario where he's not actually some troglodyte who sees women as nothing but sex objects.
        User23 8y ago
        It’s women’s mate preferences that determine which men are sexually attractive, so that one can’t be laid on men. For the flip side you’re of course correct, because men are primarily attracted to fertility proxies. Nobody can change either of these facts though, so one has to work within those constraints. Similarly sex will always complicate interactions between the sexes. Our society is observably wrestling with that now and I don’t know how it will turn out. What I do know though is that any sustainable arrangement has to be in concordance with reality. However, in news you may find encouraging, women are achieving overwhelming success in at least one field where they aren’t trading on sex appeal: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/02/how-women-took-over-the-military-industrial-complex-1049860 https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/02/how-women-took-ove...

User23 8y ago

Investing in self-improvement is actually a very wise allocation of resources.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
True, but a bit sad that we live in a world where it makes sense for a woman to invest 70 percent of her income on her face so she can eat for "free" via dates. Sounds like a polite form of probably very underpaid prostition. They would likely make more as actual sex workers, but their self esteem and social standing would take a hit. (Which means some of these folks seeming or claiming to "spend 70 percent on their face" may actually be sex workers making more money than others think, but hiding that fact.)
- User23 8y ago
  By definition self-improvement raises one’s value in the marketplace, be it the job market, the mating market, or any other. This holds independent of sex. Negotiating in exchange for that value is of course a separate skill. I’m not sure why you’re so focused on prostitution, but beautiful women have other more advantageous and higher status opportunities if trading on their looks is what they want to do. And who is anyone else to say that isn’t their right if they do?
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    I'm not questioning their right. By all accounts, I was beautiful woman back in the day. I was also tall and thin at age 17 and toyed with the idea of being a model as a seeming easy answer for life. As a woman who has six years of college and a serious interest in intellectual topics, I'm quite frustrated at my inability to get taken seriously and develop a real career. Most women who have money and power seem to trade on their looks and sex appeal. They seem to mostly be actresses, singers, models, run fashion or make up empires or sell perfume, etc. My feeling is that a lot of women make such career choices not because they are truly passionate about things like fashion but because that's the most viable avenue for a smart, pretty woman who doesn't want to be a second class citizen who can't stand up to her husband for fear he will leave her and his income is higher than hers. Even so, the #MeToo movement suggests that women with real careers routinely put up with sexual harassment and even sexual assault as part for the course and it appears this is not generally true for men. I have no problem with women trading on their looks if they so desire. As a woman who wants something else out of life and can't seem to get it, I have quite a big problem with that seeming to be the only real option a woman has. My subjective experience makes me feel like it very much boils down to treating women as sex objects, not real people. And women who fail at being marketable sex objects can just go starve as far as the world is concerned.
    - User23 8y ago
      Your frustration is understandable, but I hope you don’t give up. The history books are full of people who’ve made invaluable contributions despite facing any manner of social challenges. It’s worth noting that trading on sex appeal for money and power is an avenue plenty of men pursue as well. We are a sexually reproducing species so it’s always going to be of major importance thanks to selection pressure.
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        Sure. In a nutshell, the problem is that a successful man is sexually attractive because of his success and success can make an otherwise not attractive man sexually viable. This seems to not be true for women. Her career success is often seen as a deterrent to a personal life. Also, being female seems to make it difficult to network because most successful business people are heterosexual males. So that makes it complicated and challenging. Networking between two hetero men is obviously networking. Networking between a hetero man and a hetero woman is much less clear and readily leads to unfortunate misunderstandings, even in a best case scenario where he's not actually some troglodyte who sees women as nothing but sex objects.
        User23 8y ago
        It’s women’s mate preferences that determine which men are sexually attractive, so that one can’t be laid on men. For the flip side you’re of course correct, because men are primarily attracted to fertility proxies. Nobody can change either of these facts though, so one has to work within those constraints. Similarly sex will always complicate interactions between the sexes. Our society is observably wrestling with that now and I don’t know how it will turn out. What I do know though is that any sustainable arrangement has to be in concordance with reality. However, in news you may find encouraging, women are achieving overwhelming success in at least one field where they aren’t trading on sex appeal: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/02/how-women-took-over-the-military-industrial-complex-1049860 https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/02/how-women-took-ove...