4 ms·

I was a ridiculously cute little girl and I'm pretty damn sure a lot of my social issues as a young adult were rooted in getting essentially trained to play to

I was a ridiculously cute little girl and I'm pretty damn sure a lot of my social issues as a young adult were rooted in getting essentially trained to play to the crowd as a toddler. At that age, it's a form of brainwashing and it's amazingly hard to root out after you become an adult and are puzzled that your antics no longer get you adoration. (PSA: Please don't do this to your own children. It's an awful thing to experience.) My oldest son was a ridiculously cute toddler but I never taught him that he was expected to play to the crowd. So when he got to be school age and found that too much social attention was actively problematic, he was able to choose to intentionally behave differently. This is likely to some degree a gender difference. Girls seem to get a lot more social pressure generally to "be cute" and to engage socially in a performative manner.

SuoDuanDao 6y ago
On a tangentially related note, I've noticed that many heterosexual men imagine the comedian Felix Kjellberg (AKA Pewdiepie) must be the height of attractiveness for women, while few heterosexual women find him particularly attractive. I found this very confusing, but after a few discussions with heterosexual female friends of mine we've come to the conclusion that the kind of playfulness and disinhibition this persona consists of is looks like vivaciousness in a woman but immaturity in a man. I imagine some similar dynamics must be in play there.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  If you are heterosexual, "opposites attract." What is attractive for a woman will almost by definition not be attractive to a woman.
- graeme 6y ago
  Do you mean personality wise? Physically, I just googled and found he won a most beautiful faces award this year and consistently ranked on the same list. Never heard of TC Candler but their youtube lists have millions of views. I doubt he’s actually objectively #1 but clearly they don’t think he’s unattractive. There’s a lot of variance in female taste, so you frequently see comments along the lines of “[Objectively attractive celebrity X] is not attractive AT ALL”. And the comment is true, for that woman. But it’s very risky to generalize based on a small sample, especially if it’s all from your personal bubble. I guarantee that if Pewdiepie wasn’t famous and you put his photos on Tinder they would do well. He’s lean, young, 5’10”, has good skin and a reasonable fashion sense, and there’s nothing obviously wrong with his face. That alone more or less puts him in the 90% percentile. https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/pewdiepie-most-handsome-2020-trending/ https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/pewdiepie-most-handsome-20...
  - SuoDuanDao 6y ago
    >He’s lean, young, 5’10”, has good skin and a reasonable fashion sense, and there’s nothing obviously wrong with his face. That alone more or less puts him in the 90% percentile. Well yes, not to mention that he's a completely self-made multimillionaire with a charming accent. He's certainly what I imagine going for were I attracted to men. Having anyone who is into men say they're not interested is noteworthy, such a large percentage of even a fairly small sample size was definitely pointing to something unusual.
    - graeme 6y ago
      Have you talked to women about attraction? It’s extremely common to hear them say “ugh celebrity x is not at all attractive”. No woman universally finds all celebrities attractive. Okcupid had an excellent blog series on attractiveness ratings by gender. When rating women, men used more or less a normal distribution. Whereas the default female rating was “unattractive”, and only a tiny fraction are rated extremely attractive. And from my own experience the variance is high: different women find different types of men attractive. Check out okcupid’s graphs here, see the chart female messaging and male attractiveness: https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/yourlooksandyourinbox.html https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/yourlooksandyo... I don’t follow pewdiepie and I certainly wouldn’t claim he’s the most attractive man in the world or anything. I’m pushing back against the idea that he’s unattractive or against the idea that some women saying he’s unattractive means he doesn’t also have a ton of women who find him attractive.
      - SuoDuanDao 6y ago
        My point wasn't really about absolute numbers so much as how consistently men overestimate his attractiveness to women. I'm not saying he's the only one or would be considered more unattractive than the average man, just that it's surprising how poorly we understand what the opposite gender finds attractive. If you doubt that is an objective observation, it would be quite easy to test and I'd certainly be interested in the results. One possible protocol would be to select several celebrities, make pairs of them at random, and ask your friends both which of the pair they find more attractive and which of a different set of pairs they imagine the other gender would find more attractive.
- randycupertino 6y ago
  As a heterosexual female, Matt Bomer is the height of peak male attractiveness. I'd say Charlize Theron would be tops for females. Pewdiepie - ha. I actually find him repulsive, but you are right it's the personality - too loud, too awkward, too ... zany. I think I'd find that offputting in a female as well.
  - SuoDuanDao 6y ago
    Interesting, Theron is certainly an example of someone whose attractiveness I've mostly heard affirmed by people not sexually attracted to women - there seem to be a fair number of people who possess what we might call beauty without much in the way of sex appeal. What's strange is how unconsciously we'll imagine that someone is highly desired without ever encountering a reality check.
    - kridsdale1 6y ago
      Agree. She has all the metrics (symmetry, blonde, tall, in shape) and yet she does nothing for me at all. She activates the sense in me of "That is like my mom: Female but not a sex object". As I get older the more I come to terms with the most attractive women being those who Hollywood never tried to push on me: slightly thick, introverted, and grumpy.
      - randycupertino 6y ago
        ha! I think we're a love match but sorry not on the market :)
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  I dunno, if he wasn't such a prick I'm sure he'd be considered attractive enough. Not everyone's cup of tea, but then, who is?
b0rsuk 6y ago
You'd be surprised. Male attractiveness is simply NOT TALKED ABOUT much, especially around older people. But my mother, who is quite reserved, once blurted out that in his early years father looked 'like a young god'. And yeah, I've seen a black&white photo. He looked pretty much like Clark Kent. Square jaw, glasses, swole from muscles... except he wore a linen shirt instead of a suit. He always enjoyed labor. I wouldn't get this description if I just asked about him. Many women don't feel comfortable openly saying they find some men attractive. That doesn't mean they don't care about it a lot.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Women having sexual preferences and predilections is not at all the same thing as men getting a ton of social pressure from all quarters to look and act a certain way. A very attractive female actress once said "I dress for women. I undress for men." For that and other reasons, I'm not convinced that male sexual preferences really drive the female tendency to try hard to look good and dress well, even though that's the supposed justification. Society gives women a lot of silly ideas about what men want and I think most women don't really bother to ask men if any of that actually holds water or not. When I was relatively young and married I bought a new coat and got all mad when my husband failed to notice my new coat at all and, thus, failed to compliment me on it. I have to wonder how much women go around demanding that men tell them they like and approve of X, Y and Z rather than checking to find out if he even really, truly cares about X, Y or Z at all. During my long, drawn out divorce at a time when I did not expect to be in a position to make a relationship really work long-term, I just began asking men point blank what they liked about me. The answers were surprisingly varied and completely destroyed a lot of preconceived notions I had about what made me "attractive." It was very eye-opening and life-changing for me. It also made me enormously skeptical of a lot of "standard wisdom" related to such topics.
  - mattcwilson 6y ago
    Your experience, described this way, makes me wonder: to what extent are fashion and notions of sex appeal mostly unrealistic competitions, trapped in their own inertia, unhinged from actual human desire, just like those in the article.

SuoDuanDao 6y ago

On a tangentially related note, I've noticed that many heterosexual men imagine the comedian Felix Kjellberg (AKA Pewdiepie) must be the height of attractiveness for women, while few heterosexual women find him particularly attractive. I found this very confusing, but after a few discussions with heterosexual female friends of mine we've come to the conclusion that the kind of playfulness and disinhibition this persona consists of is looks like vivaciousness in a woman but immaturity in a man. I imagine some similar dynamics must be in play there.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
If you are heterosexual, "opposites attract." What is attractive for a woman will almost by definition not be attractive to a woman.
graeme 6y ago
Do you mean personality wise? Physically, I just googled and found he won a most beautiful faces award this year and consistently ranked on the same list. Never heard of TC Candler but their youtube lists have millions of views. I doubt he’s actually objectively #1 but clearly they don’t think he’s unattractive. There’s a lot of variance in female taste, so you frequently see comments along the lines of “[Objectively attractive celebrity X] is not attractive AT ALL”. And the comment is true, for that woman. But it’s very risky to generalize based on a small sample, especially if it’s all from your personal bubble. I guarantee that if Pewdiepie wasn’t famous and you put his photos on Tinder they would do well. He’s lean, young, 5’10”, has good skin and a reasonable fashion sense, and there’s nothing obviously wrong with his face. That alone more or less puts him in the 90% percentile. https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/pewdiepie-most-handsome-2020-trending/ https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/pewdiepie-most-handsome-20...
- SuoDuanDao 6y ago
  >He’s lean, young, 5’10”, has good skin and a reasonable fashion sense, and there’s nothing obviously wrong with his face. That alone more or less puts him in the 90% percentile. Well yes, not to mention that he's a completely self-made multimillionaire with a charming accent. He's certainly what I imagine going for were I attracted to men. Having anyone who is into men say they're not interested is noteworthy, such a large percentage of even a fairly small sample size was definitely pointing to something unusual.
  - graeme 6y ago
    Have you talked to women about attraction? It’s extremely common to hear them say “ugh celebrity x is not at all attractive”. No woman universally finds all celebrities attractive. Okcupid had an excellent blog series on attractiveness ratings by gender. When rating women, men used more or less a normal distribution. Whereas the default female rating was “unattractive”, and only a tiny fraction are rated extremely attractive. And from my own experience the variance is high: different women find different types of men attractive. Check out okcupid’s graphs here, see the chart female messaging and male attractiveness: https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/yourlooksandyourinbox.html https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/yourlooksandyo... I don’t follow pewdiepie and I certainly wouldn’t claim he’s the most attractive man in the world or anything. I’m pushing back against the idea that he’s unattractive or against the idea that some women saying he’s unattractive means he doesn’t also have a ton of women who find him attractive.
    - SuoDuanDao 6y ago
      My point wasn't really about absolute numbers so much as how consistently men overestimate his attractiveness to women. I'm not saying he's the only one or would be considered more unattractive than the average man, just that it's surprising how poorly we understand what the opposite gender finds attractive. If you doubt that is an objective observation, it would be quite easy to test and I'd certainly be interested in the results. One possible protocol would be to select several celebrities, make pairs of them at random, and ask your friends both which of the pair they find more attractive and which of a different set of pairs they imagine the other gender would find more attractive.
randycupertino 6y ago
As a heterosexual female, Matt Bomer is the height of peak male attractiveness. I'd say Charlize Theron would be tops for females. Pewdiepie - ha. I actually find him repulsive, but you are right it's the personality - too loud, too awkward, too ... zany. I think I'd find that offputting in a female as well.
- SuoDuanDao 6y ago
  Interesting, Theron is certainly an example of someone whose attractiveness I've mostly heard affirmed by people not sexually attracted to women - there seem to be a fair number of people who possess what we might call beauty without much in the way of sex appeal. What's strange is how unconsciously we'll imagine that someone is highly desired without ever encountering a reality check.
  - kridsdale1 6y ago
    Agree. She has all the metrics (symmetry, blonde, tall, in shape) and yet she does nothing for me at all. She activates the sense in me of "That is like my mom: Female but not a sex object". As I get older the more I come to terms with the most attractive women being those who Hollywood never tried to push on me: slightly thick, introverted, and grumpy.
    - randycupertino 6y ago
      ha! I think we're a love match but sorry not on the market :)
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
I dunno, if he wasn't such a prick I'm sure he'd be considered attractive enough. Not everyone's cup of tea, but then, who is?

b0rsuk 6y ago

You'd be surprised. Male attractiveness is simply NOT TALKED ABOUT much, especially around older people. But my mother, who is quite reserved, once blurted out that in his early years father looked 'like a young god'. And yeah, I've seen a black&white photo. He looked pretty much like Clark Kent. Square jaw, glasses, swole from muscles... except he wore a linen shirt instead of a suit. He always enjoyed labor. I wouldn't get this description if I just asked about him. Many women don't feel comfortable openly saying they find some men attractive. That doesn't mean they don't care about it a lot.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
Women having sexual preferences and predilections is not at all the same thing as men getting a ton of social pressure from all quarters to look and act a certain way. A very attractive female actress once said "I dress for women. I undress for men." For that and other reasons, I'm not convinced that male sexual preferences really drive the female tendency to try hard to look good and dress well, even though that's the supposed justification. Society gives women a lot of silly ideas about what men want and I think most women don't really bother to ask men if any of that actually holds water or not. When I was relatively young and married I bought a new coat and got all mad when my husband failed to notice my new coat at all and, thus, failed to compliment me on it. I have to wonder how much women go around demanding that men tell them they like and approve of X, Y and Z rather than checking to find out if he even really, truly cares about X, Y or Z at all. During my long, drawn out divorce at a time when I did not expect to be in a position to make a relationship really work long-term, I just began asking men point blank what they liked about me. The answers were surprisingly varied and completely destroyed a lot of preconceived notions I had about what made me "attractive." It was very eye-opening and life-changing for me. It also made me enormously skeptical of a lot of "standard wisdom" related to such topics.
- mattcwilson 6y ago
  Your experience, described this way, makes me wonder: to what extent are fashion and notions of sex appeal mostly unrealistic competitions, trapped in their own inertia, unhinged from actual human desire, just like those in the article.