I was talking to a potential partner about ageing. I’m 35, he’s 46. I said women in France, culturally, seem to be comfortable being/dressing sexy for a lot longer than our culture, the French don’t worship youth the same way we do.
He said yes, but when a girl enters puberty, the male brain goes ‘ding’, because in cave man days she would be ready to be mated. I was taken aback, and later rang him to clarify. He said, "I was just saying that seeing girls, in puberty, can be a little bit tantalising.’
Is this the case? What does he mean? Is it harmless or should I dump him? He doesn’t seem like a pervert, and says he’s never dated with such a large age gap. Now I’m just freaking out thinking all men/him are turned on by pubescent girls and I don’t know how to take it. Please help explain this to me, decent kind men out there!
Pubescent means one who, in the language of my mother’s generation, “has made the change”. One who isn’t a child any more physically, even if she is one legally.
Does every man find every teenaged girl attractive? No. Do most men find certain adolescents attractive? Yes. And you just found this out? Where have you been living since you were 15?
I wonder if male Dopers will come rushing into this thread to deny that they or their friends would EVER think this way. You know, like how they stampeded to their own defense in the “Women’s Groping Stories” thread. If not, I wonder why not?
Shrug, the only way I know which pictures of me are of 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 or 19 is by looking at other people, the clothes I’m wearing or where they were taken. I went from “skinny little kid” to “definitely not a kid” in the last three months of being 12yo, didn’t really change features again (and that was mainly on the face) until I was counting down to 20. The picture in my 19yo student ID still has facial babyfat, the one at 20 doesn’t.
The OP’s friend said he finds pubescent women tantalizing. There’s some disagreement upthread on the meaning of the word, which officially is “relating to or denoting a person at or approaching the age of puberty.” That’s a little bit fuzzy. If we’re talking about girls who are still approaching the age, then yikes, they’re still kids; someone who is attracted to them is, by definition, a pedophile. OTOH, if we’re talking about minors who have gone through (or mostly gone through) puberty, then physiologically, they’re adults.
And “think” is the wrong word to use here. It’s not a think, it’s a biological response. If a man is physically attracted to adult women, and a minor-age female exhibits all the visual features of an adult woman, then it stands to reason that he would find her physically attractive, even if years of good upbringing have conditioned him to cognitively label her off-limits (because she’s legally a minor and mentally still a child) and steer clear of her.
Excuse me if I prefer an actual dictionary to “whatever Google coughed up”. M-w:
Simple Definition of pubescent
: beginning to physically develop into an adult : having reached puberty
Full Definition of pubescent
1
a : arriving at or having reached puberty
b : of or relating to puberty
2
: covered with fine soft short hairs — compare villous
Digital C. If only he could have just said that instead of "pubescent girls can be a little bit tantalising’ then I would have understood! He was trying to make a good impression I guess, and he’s a British vet who works with a lot of breeders. Enough said I guess.
There would be no point in denying - it is practically self-evident. Men find post-pubescent women sexually interesting. The creepy attitude is finding pre-pubescent girls sexually interesting.
This is a very old thread, but it is about the same sort of thing. Noticing that a thirteen year old has nice boobs is different from being a child molester or a pervert.
I can see freaking out at the idea that your boyfriend would get the hots for an 11yo, but that’s not the case.