Sex, with someone you're not attracted to at all, or when you wish you weren't there to start with..

but this thread isnt intended to focus on any systemic social issues, or prostitution. more so for a recounting of personal experiences and sticky situations you've gotten yourself into, that you wish you never had

If you didn't understand that, I don't know if you've been there? I was talking more out of the context of emotional manpulation I suppose...sometimes people wind up or agree to having sex with others only to avoid hurting feelings. But there are other instances.

i'd quite like to share the details because they're actually quite funny, but ... it's a small world, and i'd hate her to read this. (stranger things have happened, believe me.)

as for what i did about it ... well, the next time, i pretended to be asleep. the time after that i used the powers of my imagination. and the time after that ... well, there wasn't a time after that because i decided it was time to deal with it and say, look, this isn't gonna work, there's no spark at all.

unsurprisingly, she agreed. most amicable break-up (after, what, a week?) ever. end of story, hurrah.

Alba, you're going to hell for that.

http://www.x-mencharacters.com/images/WilliePiotr.gif

drilling out blocked-up holes?

xpost

i thought that said "nipples or the arsehole" for a second, i honestly did.

Why you koala taco eater you.

-- hstencil (hstenc!...), May 31st, 2005 11:09 PM. (hstencil)

why did you go back for seconds? you love the hairy-nipple dontcha? come on.

HELL YES. In fact, if I hadn't been informed that waxing my chest would be the ultimate turn-off for my wife, I would be completely hairless by now.

I'm with Di and Gem here: patriarchal society causing women to do painful things in order to appeal to men, or making them feel ugly if they don't - not good! I always find it sad when friends of mine tell me they "have to" shave and wax and pluck in order to "look good".

Anyway, yeah, I've had the not-that-interested-but-you're-throwing-yourself-at-me-so-what-the-hell sex, and I've ALWAYS felt awful about it the next day.

(BTW, Tuomas, mocked doesn't require a preposition)

However, different people, regardless of gender or ideology, have different tastes and different desires and people, rather unsurprisingly make fun of that which is different or not to their personal taste. If you get mocked for shaving or not shaving, big deal!

Well, let's call it the category of "irritating-and-would-be-useless-it-weren't-for-the-current-beauty-standards". At least you'll have to admit it has everything to do with gender expectations and the gender system.

a lot of dudes get rid of their body hair, and not just their beards, too.

This counter-argument would work only if the percentage of guys who shave versus girls who save was 50-50, but it's more like 90-10, or more.

I think people have the right to conform too, and be repulsed by this. I mean, yes in alot of cases a guy wouldn't get flak for having hairy nipples, but that is probably because men (in whatever ideal world our preconceptions live in) actually have hairy chests, and chests which are different from women.

Michael is otm.

x-post, Tuomas, of course it has to do with gender expectations, in case you haven't noticed there are physical differences between the male and female body.

gah.

guys with bare chests are all you see on tv these days.

I'm not sure what you mean by this... Sure, men usually have more body hair, but almost all women have it too, and yet aren't expected to let it show.

xpost - well tuomas why the fuck do you assume that i'm talking about the norm in my experience?!?!?! that's really fucking condescending and quite rude, and i find it a little bit weird that of the 100+ posts to this thread, the majority of them are in response to an off-hand remark of mine.

Sorry, I didn't mean to attack you personally, but the response you got, from men mostly, was kinda suspect. If it had been your post alone I wouldn't have probably said that much.

...but if I put it bluntly, when you're a bit drunk and her hand is in your pants, it is rather hard to find someone *completely* unattractive. Damn male hormones.

seems way more sexist and chauvinistic than anything i wrote.

So if there's something's that's irritating at the least, harmful at worst, you suggest that you shouldn't try to change it, just ignore it? I'd say the two options aren't mutually exclusive.

I'm not saying this particular case is as clearcut as that, but I do think that the concept of double standards as applied to one persons sexual experience with another is kind of tenuous.

(sorry, thot i'd come back just to get that dig in. no worries, i'm out now)

I want to interrupt this unnecessary argument to pay homage to the best sentence ever written.

For chrissakes, you never my target, just the general societal attitudes. What I was trying to say is that in my last post is that not every regrettable sexual act is necessarily related to gender oppression. Women can sleep with the wrong person just as easily as men.

Yes, only 19 year olds are stupid enough to believe such a thing as gender inequality exists.

I think this is a double standard based on gender. Example: a couple guys in my common room started making fun of one of the girls in their physics class because she doesn't shave her legs. "It was SO GROSS!" "It looks exactly the same as YOUR unshaven legs...." "But she's a girl! It's just the standard that girls should shave." Do women really have to shave just to make the guys feel like they're not being subjected to the cruelty of seeing someone else's body hair that looks exactly like their own? We're not even talking about in bed. We're talking about in a physics lecture! I'm bringing up this random irrelevant thing because I think it shows that this kind of view is not really uncommon, and it is CLEARLY a gender-based double standard.

Guess into which bucket most of the people arguing with you are placing your position on this thread, Tuomas?

Would you like to elaborate on this, then? How does my argument that the norm of modifying body hair is an reflection of inequal gender expectations "impede achieving enlightment"?

I'm not talking to you people anymore until you figure out this magical word called "context" and how it modifies the importance/vehemence of the stance a person takes on an issue.

One man's fish is another man's poisson.

Not if it causes self-hatred etc. As I said, it's a reflection of a bigger thing, but these things are all connected. Body issues are a huge part of gender inequality. And, just because it's a "lesser" evil doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention to it. It doesn't take too much of my time to post these things on message board, even if try to do more "important" things as well.

Shakey, I'll fess up to being coerced by the gynocracy into plucking my increasingly abundant nose hair. *Sobs with self-loathing*

Maria, you're right about stupid mockery.

Also, it's not just men doing it to women. Women do it to other women just as much.

Mountains out of molehills here, people.

(also: I cry when I pluck my nose hairs. that shit is PAINFUL)

However, expecting everyone else to approve/appreciate those specific aesthetic choices is completely unreasonable.

I sympathise but we all have to make an effort. At the risk of being very cliched, many of the 'pretty people' I know have to make a serious effort at empathy and other personality traits even if they don't spend a lot of time shaving. We all have our cross to bear and btw, I have been with women of various hair types and, as I've said elsewhere, that is not the first thing that attracts or repulses me.

let's get back to the sordid personal sex details please.

How does Shakey get so OTM?

We all have things which we don't like about out bodies, and it's a case of learning to live with it/love it/do something to change it for ourselves - no?

When I slide a razor over my legs, I do it because I happen to like them feeling all silky smoove. Not because I'm bothered what anyone else thinks of them.

Shakey, you can *trim* nosehair, you know. Not permanent, but less painful.

Because I personally prefer the smooth feeling. I like smooth legs, I prefer hairless underarms, and I prefer waxed nether regions. It's all about aesthetics for me, silky skin is a turn on. Especially when it's my own. Like I said, I do it because I like it on me... anyone else can do whatever they like.

Sure, if the preferences would be just "personal", but as I said I the idea of female "beauty" that excludes body hair is something bigger than just personal preference. Do you disagree?

CJ - I shave because I've grown used to it and I like it at this point, too, but here's why it sometimes doesn't feel like a personal choice. I started shaving when I was in elementary school because some stupid blond girl who didn't shave started yelling "EWWW!" when I wore shorts. In that case, the personal choice was to shave or get made fun of, and at that age I didn't have the confidence to say anything back. The thing is, that's not just a preteen reaction, that's how sometimes supposedly grown-up people react to others' bodies. And sometimes, if you're told you're ugly, you believe it.

Quite frankly, as someone who is very obviously a different color from the ruling majority and as such has been subject to racial epithets, unfair denigration and denial of things granted to others because of it even though I have by and large excelled at things measured by a strict meritocratic model, I have pretty much zero sympathy for logged loggedy outedy. In order for you to level the playing field and get more unilateral respect for your appearance, you have to undergo at worst an hour of annoying hair removal. In order for me to level the playing field and get more unilateral respect for anything, I have to be five times better than everyone else at what I do while retaining a link to an ethnic identity that a vagary of location didn't really give me access to in my formative years.

If being hairy is the worst thing you have to worry about in terms of acceptance in the United States, you are starting from a position better than 34.9% of the country. My heart bleeds for you.

I agree that personal choices and actions matter a lot. As for the institutional level, politicians, other public actors, social scientists, feminist and other organizations, etc can work there. For example, in Finland and Sweden some ads have been banned because they've been thought to impose too high body/beauty standards, especially on young people.

bo

This is (a) beside the point and (b) contemptible. Is he supposed to be embarassed to be Finnish? WTF?

I'm not relegating anything to any status. I'm merely pointing out that saying "yeah, but group/person X has it even worse" is not always a good argument. For example, when I speak of gender inequality in Finland, someone often points out: "Yeah, but if you compare the situation to (for example) the Arabic countries, we have it pretty well here, don't we?". Well, it may indeed be so, but that doesn't mean Finland has no problems at all, nor that trying to change things in both of these places are two mutually exclusive efforts.

It's both, depending on what level you choose to view it. I can't consciously change what I find attractive, and like wise I don't think society as a whole can consciously change what it deems attractive.
It's getting to be that the ideal of male beauty is a hairless chest. What are hairy-chested men to do about this? Demand that ads feature more hair chests? Call for hairy-chested models to not be discriminated against? That still won't change what women prefer (assuming here that they do prefer hairless chests). Societal tastes do change, but it happens gradually and naturally.

I really can't get with the logic of this. Who decides what constitutes a portrayal of "beauty"? I would be more sympathetic if the law just banned advertising altogether - but the gov't enforcing aesthetic standards = super duper double trouble in my book.

Okay, my wording was bad here... For example, in here they banned an ad aimed for kids, where a little girl holds a lollipop and says, "Look mom! Chupa Chups lollipops taste good and have zero percent fat.". It was thought that children of that change shouldn't be made to think about fat and weight issues, so the ad was banned.

It's well known that attractive people tend to do better socially and whether this is fair or not is not my concern here, nor, really whether women are urged to spend more time or money conforming to some societal norm, but I tend to feel that women are expected to be more sexy when they dress well then men. Perhaps it's simply that I rarely find men sexy.

On the other hand, recent women of high political office are hardly what I would call sex objects.

(x-post)

I'll still take the dangers of free speech over a nanny telling me what to think. If you can't convince a culture with a campaign of reason, you resort to censorhip. Eventually, Tuomas, your argument is that people aren't smart enough to be make their own choices and that doesn't smack of empowering women, only condescending to make the 'right' choices for them.

ah yes, the perfect world - where all ads portray hirsute gluttons as the ideal.

(x-post)

For what it's worth, I like my men and my women hairless and skinny. And I'm sure that that isn't an attitude that I came up with one my own, any more than it would be if the opposite were true.

but yr fixating on the details - the particulars of the ideal - rather than why there's an ideal at all, and why women often spend so much time obsessing over how they measure up to it (men do too, but yes to a lesser extent). Dare I say it, there are genetic, and memetic, reasons for this gender-specific behavior, and it is ancient and implacable. Good luck talking and legislating your way out of it. Maintaining a critical eye on media images and being aware of how they impact your behavior is super-important, I completely agree. These dialogues about what's being portrayed and how are useful and interesting. But if your endgoal is to stop women from fixating on their appearance in order to attract mates - well, I suggest you take up genetic engineering.

x-post

I'd say it's a rather elite group who comes up with these images, not the whole populace. Anyway, beauty standards have changed throughout the centuries, but I think never before has the standard been so far from what most people's reality is. Whatever the source, something should be done about it.

ahahahahaha - Chinese foot-binding, Mayan nose flattening, etc. to thread...

Hmmm, I wouldn't say so. If genetics ruled, men would prefer round women with wide hips, because they're better at giving birth.

xpost

honestly Tuomas, yr well-meaning hand-wringing is very patronizing. its a widely perceived failing of the left, this mothering "I know whats best" instinct.

"women with wide hips, because they're better at giving birth"

this is a popular myth with no statistical basis in fact. Also, how would men get this idea that wide hips = better at birth? That isn't something that would just randomly occur to the entire male populace - that idea in itself is a total construct.

I don't know about that. Have you seen ancient paragons of beauty? Not only are many of them unrealistic, but physically impossible.

Actually in the West, more people can strive to be beautiful than ever before and that's one reason, perhaps, that the esthetics, if anything, are more imperious than ever. Even a hundred years ago, the capacity for most men and women to emulate the Courts and Palaces of power was almost nil.

I think never before has the standard been so far from what most people's reality is.

Again, I wouldn't have brought this up to a 14th century peasant.

(x-post)

which is one reason why porn >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "women's" magazines (which are pornographic in their own way)

Playboy centerfolds and Miss America winners from 1923-1990 have gotten measurably leaner over the decades yet their waist-hip ratios have stayed within the narrow range of .68-.72.

They don't?!

You are not seriously suggesting that they had no idea whatsoever what constituted a well put together lady, are you? Madame la Comtess de Mesdeux still went to the local chapel from time to time and let the little peons see what a great lady wore and how she carried herself.

how is telling women they should be fat any less oppressive than telling women should be skinny? The extremes of either aesthetic are unhealthy, largely unattainable, and (to me) insanely unattractive. Again, you are fixating on the specifics of the ideal, and not the more pertinent question - which is why there is an ideal at all, and why it has always historically been the special province of women to fixate upon.

Because we live in a society where, if you don't give an effort to look "cool" or "presentable", you easily get ignored?

x-post: Shakey, not that anybody should be telling anybody what they should be, but I think the difference is that telling women they should be skinny usually means telling them they need to deny themselves something, like delicious crabmeat and creamcheese pizza.

I'm not saying they should be fat. I'm saying they shouldn't think they're fat when they're of normal weight. I know several girls who think this way. Historically, there have been several ideals; the current one just happens to be more unhealthy than many of those in the past (ever seen a Ruebens painting?). That's all I'm saying.

Sure, but if you're letting someone else dictate what's cool, how cool are you. If you feel 'cool' and sexy in your bf's workpants, I bet I'd find you cooler and sexier than if your wore what fashion prescribed for you.

No, but I can understand why many girls, no matter how critical of beauty standards they are, still want to appear "cool". Not many people want to be ignored, even if it may cost them.

???

"the current one just happens to be more unhealthy than many of those in the past (ever seen a Ruebens painting?)."

this is patently false. if yr a starving peasant, you know how "easy" it would be to gain those few extra pounds, and what kind of unhealthy behavior that would potentially encourage? have you ever seen pictures of the aforementioned Chinese footbinding, or the Mayan children with clay bricks strapped to their foreheads for days on end in order to flatten their noses...?

normal - shit that's the last thing I want to be.

I'm not saying the human brain can be changed, but just because human brain reacts to visual stimuli doesn't mean society doesn't have a big say with what sort of stimuli is deemed desirable. And that can changed, or at least the variety of desirabality made looser.

and like many people on this thread have said, including me - changing the stimuli doesn't really matter. IT does not change the essential power/psychology dynamics in effect. An oppressive fat image operates the same as an oppressive skinny image. Any manufactured ideal will, by its nature, be unobtainable by large portions of the populace. That's why their called "ideals".

this is a popular myth with no statistical basis in fact. Also, how would men get this idea that wide hips = better at birth? That isn't something that would just randomly occur to the entire male populace - that idea in itself is a total construct.

Shakey, your other recent posts are OTM so I'm thinking that I may have misunderstood you here -- because this statement is completely false.

Of course it wouldn't "randomly occur" -- the same way that it wouldn't randomly occur to a heterosexual male to be attracted to women instead of men.

It has also been *generally* true that men prefer women with curves and full breasts. This is because a woman with a round ass and large breasts must be healthy and cannot possibly be infected with parasites, making them potentially attractive partners. Nobody reasons it out in their minds this way but that is the biological justification for such things.

Besides, as Michael W. said upthread, men aren't hardwired to be attracted to a particular hip size, but they are hardwired into persuing the "ideal" 0.70 waist-to-hip ratio. This has been confirmed in many cultures, no matter how "fat" or "skinny" the general populace may be.

Yes and no ... society can add to the existing stimuli but it generally cannot overrule. For instance, the Victorians might have gone bonkers over ankles, but this didn't eliminate the attraction and fixation on breats. Lots of peoples have stimuli that are specific to their culture -- for instance, the long-necked women of Burma -- but stimuli like the 0.7 waist to hip ratio remain unchanged over time.

I don't think this conflicts with what you're saying about men's tastes in general.

xpost

It is usually about now that I wish more people of color posted here because a) I've been in far too many situations where I feel backed into speaking for the downtrodden masses and I'm really sick of feeling that way, regardless of whether I am in that position or not; b) having to deal with more people of color on this forum might get white people thinking about issues faced by people of color beyond the background "Oh, there's that thing with minorities, but that's better now so we don't really have to worry about it" vibe that 60% of the posters give off.

x-post

Where does that convention come from, then? Is it the idea that women with wide hips are able to better/more comfortably carry a baby to term?

Absolutely!

thank you - this is all I was getting at. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble recalling where I even came across this subject before (I think it might have been Blackmore's "Meme Machine" for some reason, but I don't think that's right)

we now return you to your regularly scheduled mercy-fuck discussion.

x-post

And Dan, as I said, the conversation had gone far beyond hairy nipples, that was just the starting point. And of course I'm not saying women with hairy nipples have it just as bad as black people in the US. However, I don't find pointing out groups that have it even worse a constructive counter-argument. There's always someone who has it even worse. Just because someone has it worse doesn't mean those who have "lighter" problems should just forget them and be thankful for their good fate. And just because you want to tackle gender inequality doesn't mean you're at the same time ignoring racism.

That's exactly what I was saying.

and that there's nothing we can do about it?

No, we can do something about it -- to an extent (see my 2nd post upthread).

Resolved: The Modern Woman Of Today has the right to cultivate any look she chooses, up to and including the Broccoli Farmer, and feel beautiful.

Corollary I: I am under no obligation to dig what I don't dig.
Corollary II: hstencil has the right to be turned off by whatever turns him off.

Why is it that we can discuss without controversy what turns us on, and right-minded folks seem generally to be able to agree that any kink is a-okay as long as it's mutually agreeable between consenting adults, but mentioning what turns us off sets off (a very civil and respectful version of) flameaggedon? Just wondering...

Can we now talk about the impossible pressure society and media place on men to achieve success, even at the expense of their health and longevity?

Or better yet, per Shakey Mo, return to the mercyfuck discussion? (btw, this != fucking ugly people)

Sure she does, if she's willing to take lots of bullshit for it, and capable of overcoming the feeling alienation and guilt that comes from differing the norm. That's what we're discussing here, not about the right to look how feel, which everyone obviusly has.

Can we now talk about the impossible pressure society and media place on men to achieve success, even at the expense of their health and longevity?

If I'd get a penny for every time I hear this comment... Actually, I do agree with you. Gender expectations can put a huge pressure on men too. But trying to solve the issues women face doesn't mean you're at the same time ignoring men's problems (see my comment above), and also, pointing out the pressures men face shouldn't obscure the fact that women still have it a lot worse (referring to men's problems is often used as a counter-argument by anti-feminists [I'm not claiming you're one though]).

Reminds me of people saying "how can we build a new school here when a man is starving to death 3000 miles away" or something.

It's kind of reductive, ultimately leading to how can you have an independent thought in your head when the world is such a horrible place?

Okay, my wording was bad here... For example, in here they banned an ad aimed for kids, where a little girl holds a lollipop and says, "Look mom! Chupa Chups lollipops taste good and have zero percent fat.". It was thought that children of that change shouldn't be made to think about fat and weight issues, so the ad was banned.

what?? this is fucking insane. here our government are being pressed to help the schools offer and promote healthier diets and there are places where ads get banned for advertising the product being fat-free???!??!

(x-post)

i was thinking about this the other day ath the levis store (which i might egg later in protest). levis are evil. in my mid-20s glory days when i was a 27-28 waist in every other brand, i was somehow a 31 in levis. and don't get me started on the low-waistedness..

(x-post)

Because we live in a society where, if you don't give an effort to look "cool" or "presentable", you easily get ignored?

now, i don't understand this. surely making an effort is the important idea here? i like it when people make an effort to, not necessarily look, but be presentable in ways (other examples, smell, hygene, manners) to me. And those who do have a much higher chance to be getting jiggy with me.

I'm guessing a lot of people are the same, and why do people follow trends? Because those who appeal to the most (not just by looks, but see things like interests, personal hygene policies) will (obv) get accepted by the most people and probably get easier sex and have more friends!

You don't have to choose to follow these trends, obviously (except for problems like lack of clothes choices etc.), but you can't suddenly then shout to those who like those trends to stop liking what they like!

and, uh, oh yeah, she had hair on her nipples. ugh.
-- hstencil (hstenc!...), May 31st, 2005 11:09 PM. (hstencil)

which makes it sound as though to stence, having hair on the nipples is a much bigger issue than being a psycho/sociopath! now there's nothing wrong with that, but you can't blame people for despising stence for it. much like he despised the girl for her hairy nipples. and stence can't say "but you're not allowed to not like me for it!"

THEN, imagine if instead of that, he said
and, uh, oh yeah, she was black. ugh.
-- hstencil (hstenc!...), May 31st, 2005 11:09 PM. (hstencil)

he'd have had a brick thrown through his window! which brings back dan's point about the fact that hairy nipples seems very trivial than a lot of other possible discrimination, at least you can shave/pluck out the hair! etc. you can't change the colour of your skin (michael jackson excepted)

this is probably just a result of the unthoughtful mass-production and economy of scale though (making things that fit the "average man" etc).

no tuomas my point is exactly that they ARE the same thing, and hstencil was a dick. but it is interesting what is and isn't accepted as much in society and where people draw their lines of what things you can laugh at and what you can't.

(x-post)

My line of argument is "I'm fucking tired of bait-and-switch rhetoric, particularly when it's used to undermine and diminish causes I think are important." This is exactly what's happend with this entire "disliking nipple hair leads to anorexia" clusterfuck. It's idiotic, uncritical thinking and if you're going to represent yourself as a feminist (particularly as a man), you need to do a hell of a lot better than that.

PEACE.

Who said this? At what point? Di and Gem made a couple of critical comments on Hstencil's initial post, and then the conversation pretty soon turned into body hair and body image in general. No one has called anyone chauvinist or anything. However, as I've said several times, I do think the nipple hair comments have something to do with the bigger issue, and should be viewed critically, but that isn't the same as claiming they drive anyone to anorexia.

um, xpost

So what youre saying is that either,

a) it is impossible to loosen our beauty standards, or

b) loosening our beauty standards makes things worse?

I wouldn't agree with either of those.

they don't call it the bush administration for nuffink etc.

do rich white women have it worse than poor white men?

These are good questions, and to some extent the answer to both is no. Obviously I was making a generalization. Still, as I've said many times, just because some group has bigger problems doesn't mean other groups can't have problems too, nor that the those problems are totally irrelevant. Is it so hard to grasp?

As I pointed out above high fashion serves us images of hard to obtain looks. Thses are used by the upper echelons of society as criteria in their mating choices. If the current fetish is thin and you can afford to be thin, spend fortunes on your hair, your face, and on distictive clothing that the cognoscenti will recognize as 'in style' and 'really fuckin' expensive', you are advertising yourself as top shelf and therefore prime mating material. You could turn the world into the greyest and blandest of leveller/egalitarian regimes and people would still find ways to compete for the best mates.

Why not simply encourage people to recognize fashion for the commerce that it is, to appreciate the art and craft that goes into it, from design to photography to styling, and give it less importance in their daily lives. If it's sad to see people striving to be thinner than they ought and generally living in fear and contempt of getting old, despite the inevitablity of our mortality, it is because people should know better.

Having said that, I think that advertising has made significant changes over the last 30 years in recognizing and targetting niches that were previously ignored. I'm not claiming there isn't room for improvement, but ethnic minorities, older women, and people with a dizzying array of medical problems, not limited now to good ole dry vadge or erectile dysfuntion now have plenty of attention paid to them, whereas, once upon a time, this was not the case.

xposts

You're speaking as if "standard of beauty" is an ahistorical, ageographical phenomenon. It isn't. And "forcibly changing out" that standard is exactly what the beauty industry does, so why can't others do it as well?

As if the 'beauty industry' just imposes its will on a passive population. People buy into that stuff and they do 'cause they want to be 'cool' and 'attractive'. Instead of trying to change the industry, just encourage people to change their attitudes to it and the industry will follow.

xpost the specifics of what constitutes, say, a professional basketball player changes and is wide enough to allow massive amounts of variation, still 99.9% of the population is just not good enough to become one.

Actually, I think we should get rid off professional sports and support sports for ordinary people for the sake of fun and exercise, not for competition. That's the way I like my sports, at least.

xpost the specifics of what constitutes, say, a professional basketball player changes and is wide enough to allow massive amounts of variation, still 99.9% of the population is just not good enough to become one.

I don't get your point... Only a small minority of people wants to be professional basketballers, but almost everyone wants to be loved and respected.

Oh but Taye Diggs is such a hottie.

xxxpost again

Wow! Writing those absurd sentences was the greatest pleasure I've experienced in days!

rogermexico:
Resolved: The Modern Woman Of Today has the right to cultivate any look she chooses, up to and including the Broccoli Farmer, and feel beautiful.

Tuomas:
Sure she does, if she's willing to take lots of bullshit for it, and capable of overcoming the feeling alienation and guilt that comes from differing the norm. That's what we're discussing here, not about the right to look how feel, which everyone obviusly has.

Hence my emphasis on choice, and on acknowledging and accepting that everyone will not be attracted to everyone. Being an adult = making choices and living with them. E.g., I have not yet chosen to get inked, and as a result I have a harder time pulling a certain type of rocker chick.

I frankly take issue with your assumption throughout this thread that deviation from norms = alienation and guilt. Conscious deviation from norms = sense of identity, self-worth, empowerment... knowing who the fuck you are as opposed to waiting for The Media/State Apparatus/Good Father to tell you. The notion of having these standards imposed by a committee of right-minded bureaucrats is much more chilling than anything we're dealing with today.

Well, it happens.

Yeah why would the way someone looks affect whether or not you find them attractive???

haha

I think people who think that way are probably better off accepting that they are literally discriminating on racial grounds i.e. being racist, just in a rather more passive way. I mean you can dress it up however you want but it amounts to saying 'I'm not turned on by X people because I don't like Y features which the vast majority of them seem to share' which you're entitled to do but just accept that this is racism in effect and move on! You don't even need to feel THAT bad about it. Racism doesn't necess. equate 'inferiority' or contempt i.e. it's not like you hate 'them'. More people are susceptible to this than would admit, and I'm not excluding myself from that either - obv. everyone has turn-offs re physical attributes. I dunno, perhaps I have this wrong.

haha

it was just.. funny

Rogermexico:
Can we now talk about the impossible pressure society and media place on men to achieve success, even at the expense of their health and longevity?

Tuomas:
If I'd get a penny for every time I hear this comment... Actually, I do agree with you. Gender expectations can put a huge pressure on men too. But trying to solve the issues women face doesn't mean you're at the same time ignoring men's problems (see my comment above), and also, pointing out the pressures men face shouldn't obscure the fact that women still have it a lot worse (referring to men's problems is often used as a counter-argument by anti-feminists [I'm not claiming you're one though]).

Respect, yo, and I appreciate your care in not making assumptions about where I stand in the Grand Scheme.

Nonetheless, to the degree that I feel compelled to acknowledge complexity and complicity, and to the extent that I perceive a single-gender lens as unnecessarily reductive, I may in fact look very much like an "anti-feminist."

What we're discussing is indeed a gender issue, and one where isolating the discussion to a single gender misses the point entirely. Ditto quibbling over who has it "worse."

::we now return you to the witty banter previously in progress::

oops, of course it does but if you're looking at what the reason is for you (not YOU) finding someone unattractive physically, it would seem very weird for someone to choose skin colour. And if it's large facial features that's the problem, well this isn't limited to a particular racial group so using that as the prefix is just asking for trouble! Saying 'I'm not attracted to people with broad noses, thick lips or whatever' wouldn't raise half as many eyebrows I'm thinking.

But more than that, it's just how it is. Why don't I fancy, say, Tyra Banks? I dunno, I just don't. I'm not sure I could or should have to explain why.

So I guess you could qualify this, in a pedantically and unhelpfully "literal" way, as racist, as long as you're also able to qualify that with the fact there is no conscious prejudice AT ALL involved.

Seriously though, I'm a good progressive, but maybe more typically "American" than I knew. The whole Scandotopia thing has me a little freaked out.

I am failing to see how I gave you the impression that I was not aware of this.

i just had to look up contempt on the dictionary.

Fair dos but I think they're intertwined really. As for lovely Tyra, well maybe it's worth thinking deeply about why/why not?

That doesn't make sense. If I say I don't like pizza, because I don't like tomato sauce, baked bread, and cheese, would you ask "well why didn't you just say you don't like tomato sauce, baked bread and cheese? these things aren't limited to just pizza!"

Oh my naive friend.

Shakey we seem to be working with different definitions of what racism is. 'enforcing an unequal distribution of power based upon ethnicity' seems a bit too rigid for me, considering how frequently the word flies around ILX/society and in how many situations.

It was this:
You don't even need to feel THAT bad about it. Racism doesn't necess. equate 'inferiority' or contempt i.e. it's not like you hate 'them'.

People do not want to label themselves racist when a)it has an extremely negative connotation and b)it's not clear cut that their thinking and/or behavior is in fact racist.

the solution is not to not recognise racists, but to not be racistists about them.

As for Tyra, I think she has a bit of a pinched, nasty face, she's always over-plucked, teased and made up, and her persona turns me off. How's that?

it sounds so crass to say I'm not attracted to "broad noses, thick lips" (in the context of all racial types)

convoluted maybe, but hardly as crass as saying 'don't like black women'!

'Cause she comes across as a fame-addled, self-important bitch? I can think of a legion of sexier black women.

uh, if you want to debate this definition (which is entirely fine with me), that's gonna be a whole other thread. I do not think you can separate racism from power, however, so I find Ken Cs suggested definition even *more* restrictive than mine (insofar as it circumscribes a much narrower range of behavior).

(as for Tyra - there's plenty of black women I find attractive, but she ain't one of 'em. too skinny, too wiry)

Well I cringed my ass off at your original remark so I guess we're even.

Yes, she's the ANTM host. She certainly has T&A, which qualifies as hourglass in my book!

I wish we COULD use "racist" more to describe particular attitudes and behaviors without people flying off the handle and yelling "I don't dress up in white sheets and lynch black people!" It's really hard to talk about racism at all when people are too busy being freaked out by the implication that if they buy into some kind of racist social assumption, they must hate people of other races. That's definitely one of the problems with talking about racial stuff at my college: people saying they're not racist so there must not be a problem and everyone who thinks there is must therefore be making a big deal out of nothing.

I'm putting that on all party invites from now on.

but this whole debate only started not because whether there was any harm done but because of this comment that came out all guns blazing..

"I'm not sexually attracted to black men and I'll be damned if that makes me racist"

when phrased that way, is kind of actually racist (under the steve/maria's definition)!

Unless i'm misunderstood, that's what this whole thing is all about, right? alfred said something dumb by mistake? anyway hometime.

man, I totally forgot Kim Catrall was in that (and I think as an "asian", no less... *sigh*)

Suggestions:
- Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
- Try different keywords.
- Try more general keywords.
- Try fewer keywords.

and then I tried searching 'hair pie'. Oh my.

this is my third favorite movie of all time

It's one of those films I regret not having seen until fairly recently. Given my Buckaroo Banzai love I should have been all over Big Trouble when it came out.

Hott green-eyed damsel-in-distress Miaio Yin is played by January 1981 Penthouse Pet Of The Month Suzee Pai.

I could not have made her name up if I tried.

What we're discussing is indeed a gender issue, and one where isolating the discussion to a single gender misses the point entirely. Ditto quibbling over who has it "worse."

Okay, I'm sorry I was so snappy. I don't normally want to look things through a single-gender lens either, but at the point I made my comment to you, people were actually saying that body issues are merely a matter of individual choice and have nothing to with gender stereotypes and gender expectations, and I was being on the defense and trying to say, "No, it has everything to do with women, with gender, with how those who fail the gender expectations are treated!". So I'm sorry if I was being dismissive to you. I'm very much concerned with how gender expectations put pressures on men as well (being a man who differs from the norm quite a lot I have to deal with the issue personally). It's just that I thought in this particular question I felt I needed to defend the women's point of view, because the discussion was steering towards "We're all just individuals with different tastes, this has nothing to with gender inequality".

Also, I do believe that mixing up, blurring and loosening gender expectations and stereotypes would be beneficial to all people (men, women, and all the other categories people are put in - and those who don't want to belong to any), because it would relieve the pressures of trying to be a "real man" or a "real woman".

I don't think anyone said that specifically. I, for one, was mostly reacting to the overuse of the 'personal is the political' meme and defending nipple hair loathers from the specious accusation that they're necessarily chauvinists.

ps Onimo I've brought this up before. It is ok to denigrate anyone besides females on ILX. ANYONE AT ALL.

Er, what about black people (there are a zillion threads on ILE where someone who doesn't like, say, gangsta rap, is called racist), hancicapped people, homosexuals & transgendered people, homeless, mentally ill? You don't see them much denigrated here either, and there's a perfectly sensible reason for that. These groups, as well as women, are on the shorter end of the stick when it comes to the power relations in the society. To mock and denigrate them will usually just reinforce the inequal power balance, whether or not that is you intention. I know that sensibility towards these issues can go too far; for example, it can be difficult to criticize the values of hardcore rap without being called a racist. But to mock someone for something that for them is "normal" (like body hair), and what is only considered offensive because the unequally balanced beauty norms say so, is frankly quite stupid. What it boils down to is this: because the unequal power relationship, it is not the same to denigrate men than to denigrate women. Obviously I'm not all for mocking men either (though sensible criticism is often useful), but I do realize there's a difference between calling someone a "chauvinist pig" than a "feminist bitch". Only in a wholly equal society it wouldn't be so.

Can't you see how extremely silly and stupid this is getting? Chauvinists are almost seeming more tolerable than the PC-brigade on this thread. At least most so-called "chauvinists" have a sense of humor.

I sometimes enjoy having candle wax dripped onto my nipples, at least from a suitable height (tip for anyone thinking of trying wax play: the higher up the candle is, the cooler the wax when it hits you). Candle wax doesn't do much for hair removal though - it's not sticky enough to take hair with it when you pull it off.

i'd like to leave you all with one final thought:

where would we be without drugs and saturday nights?

It wasn't just that one complaint, it was the reaction it got ("Ewww! Hairy nipples! Learn how to shave!"), and from there one we moved to bigger íssues of body image and how women "should" look. Don't you really think women needing to modify their body from it's natural state to look "like a woman should" (and being mocked by men if they don't, like Maria pointed out), has nothin to do with gender inequality. Hairy nipples may seem funny and trivial, and compared to some other things they may indeed be so, but they're part of the bigger picture which includes things like bulimia and anorexia - and that isn't funny at all.

i second jody, i mean holy shit, i can barely look at my own hairy nips w/out vomiting.

No offense, but I find it kinda sad you can't look at your own body without getting sick.

yeah and what's with the hair brushing thing? or getting a flattering hair cut for that matter? everybody let's just get thumb our nose at societal conventions by grooving on some righteous tunes and munching on this bitchin' granola my yoga teacher made.

this is kind of strange because i've always imagined females have it easier when it comes to attracting mates. (as tuomas has said upthread re: hands down pants)

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/39/2009/07/504x_coverlies-glam.jpg

Boobs, boobs, boobs! Unwanted nipple hair? Tweeze that shit!