I’m rooting for women to show me different. Would that it were so. I haven’t seen this much derailment since Burt Lancaster starred in THE TRAIN. I think that was 1965.
Pretty much every woman in this thread said that they agreed that initially looks matter, but that creepy is creepy when the man won’t take no for an answer, no matter his looks. What’s wrong with that answer?
What’s wrong with the answer? It’s not the answer prr wanted. It doesn’t validate his persecution complex or allow him to feel better than us. So, clearly, like the rest of us, you have misunderstood the simple terms he’s used or you have difficulty telling the truth. Because, after all, prr couldn’t possibly be wrong.
And, pseudotriton ruber ruber? Here’s your Pit thread. Enjoy!
Heh. Interesting that you should bring this up. My husband and I were discussing subtle ways that men and women are treated differently in public, and I asked him if anyone had ever come up to him in public and told him to smile. He was completely floored that this had ever happened to me, especially numerous times, and I think it really surprised him that women’s treatment by some men hasn’t come as far toward being equal as he thought.
This thread seems to exemplify the sense of entitlement some men seem to have about their interactions with women they don’t know.
Totally obnoxious. Someone comes up to you and asks you to smile, you should pull up your skirt, bend over and show the red asterisk to him. See how he likes looking at the big red Cyclops.
(This may seem like I’m being sarcastic, but I’m not. I agree that being told to smile is obnoxious as get out.)
I think that sums it up pretty well, and I think it’s a good point. Women have a tendency to view men’s behavior through the lens of how attractive they find the guy. More specifically, if a woman decides that a man is someone she would pretty much never consider as a romantic partner, then repeated advances by him are much more likely to be seen as creepy and offensive.
Of course men are biased too. Here’s a hypothetical for guys: Suppose you are at the mall and you wander into a Sharper Image store. You are looking at those cheesy hand held fans which spray water. All of a sudden, a woman who is there alone picks up a fan, playfully sprays water at your face, and giggles. Would you be more annoyed and offended if (1) she was fat, unattractive, and 45 years old; or (2) if she was a hottie?
That’s hot. Are you busy Saturday?
Regards,
Shodan
<<somebody else made the same point earlier>>
A woman in a business suit commands respect, too. She also has the chance of people thinking her uptight, just like the guy in a business suit. There’s also just the plain fact that on average, men are more aggressive than women (women would be the same way if they received constant testosterone injections).
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
OK, prr, I’ll take another swing at it.
If the question is, do looks matter, the answer is yes. In Dateline’s hidden camera investigation and other things I’ve seen, it has been shown again and again that looks matter. Period. In everything. From romance to jobs to service in a bank. People who are better-looking get more opportunities. That’s on a global level over a wide range of people.
On an individual level, individual preferences are overlaid on the general theme that looks matter. So people have different preferences for looks and different emphasis is placed on them, potentially varying in the same individual at different times. Here’s a quiz to see how much they matter individually.
As to your use of the word, “creeped out”, I suspect you’re using the informal definition here:
and I’ll further assume you mean disgust, but I’ll leave open the possibility of fear, discussed below.
And that’s where you have me at a disconnect. If someone does something (in this case, ask me out) repeatedly and doesn’t stop despite my constant communication, after a while, I’d assume either that I wasn’t communicating effectively or this person has problems that I couldn’t solve. So while I might be frustrated at the issue, I wouldn’t be disgusted. If I was fearful, that’s another scenario. I would get others in positions of authority to help me solve the problem.
I’ve already answered this. I think it’s female bragging. And considering the lengths to which most people try to attract attention, I’m a little skeptical when people are complaining about it. Of course, again if there’s danger, that’s a different scenario.
It’s my contention that complaints about creepy come-ons have little to do with the other person at all.
All that said, there are several posts that I don’t understand. Here’s one:
I don’t get this at all. I don’t get the anger.
A while ago, a manager two levels above me, who could fire me faster than he could blink, asked me to “Smile.” I simply said, “You first.”
And I only did if he did first from then on.
Not only did I not feel the anger, it didn’t even occur to me. What’s the anger about?
Curiously, I was screening a movie for consideration in the Film Noir course I’m trying to develop for next year, and today’s movie was “Against All Odds,” which turns out (I hadn’t seen it in a while) to feature an archetypal scene of the sort I’m thinking of. I can’t find a youtube clip, but for those of you who know it, a very hot-looking Jeff Bridges tries to strike up a conversation with an even hotter (to me) but unfriendly Rachel Ward. Basically, he tries to pick her up at a fruit stand, and she thoroughly and scathingly rejects him. Ten film minutes later they’re humping in some Mayan ruins.
It’s all made up, of course, but I don’t remember hordes of women protesting Bridges’ creepiness, despite his ardent pursuit of her after he’s been given the firm impression that she finds him less attractive than something she scrapes off her sandals. The woman I saw it with, in the 1980s, kept telling me afterward how goddamned attractive Bridges was. She didnt touch on his criminal assault of Ward at all, as I recall.
So your theory is that they secretly like being pestered for a date and brag about it to their friends in the guise of complaining, because that makes more sense to you than believing that they simply vent about their shared experiences of a source of irritation to each other? If you happened across a pair of women complaining how bad their menstrual cramps get, would you assume they were trying to brag about it, or that they were one-upping each other, or would you think they were just relating to each other about something unpleasant that affects them both?
Have you ever complained about something unpleasant without feeling a secret sense of pride that the unpleasant thing happened to you?
A stranger has no busy telling me to do anything unless I’m doing something harmful to them or I’m abusing a small child or animal. For all they know, my mom just died in a horrible accident. To tell me to smile is to tell me I have no right to my own emotions or facial expressions. Apparently I’m not fit to be seen in public without looking like I’m high on something.
It’s one of those rude things that people do without realizing how rude they’re being. They probably think they’re being cute in a “look at me, being a positive ray of sunshine in the world!” kind of way. But to me, all they’re being is obnoxious. If they truly cared about the happiness of someone else, they’d actually do something to induce someone to smile. Like slip on a banana peel.
Last year I started a Pit thread in which I complained about the exact same social phenomenon we’re talking about. Do you really think it sounded like I was bragging about this?
This. I don’t get why it’s so incomprehensible that women enjoy empathising with each other about irritating things that happen to them. (Men too, in many cases.)
Talking about being hit on in a scary, persistent way is not something I’d brag about, anymore than I’d brag about being rung up by telesales people. I have no illusions that they think I’m special. It’s mainly due to their own personality and possibly a perception that I’m vulnerable.
While I realize that the OP was supposed to be just a “philosophical” excerise, (to what point I am not sure), what strikes me about the opening scenario is one key missing element:
HOW did the women in question turn down each type of guy?
There are ways to turn down a request for a date that are open ended and ways that are final. If the guys who were later accepted had been turned down without the element of finality, then the women could be expressing their irritation that the guys considered creeps were so clueless as to miss what they considered to be specific “Do not bother me” instructions that had never been given to the guys who were later accepted.
Tom, surely you grasp that in a hypothetical, all elements are identical other the ones that are specified not to be. If you (or Debb, actually) would shoot down Brad Pitt by saying “Piss off, ugly twerp” then you may assume that you’d say the same thing to me, and Brad or I would follow up in the same exact manner, etc. What the OP posits is that the main (or sole) variable is the outward appearance of the man, then maybe the ladies would like to dial back the outrage a little bit, and apply the standards of outrage they would apply to their ideal male behaving the same exact way. I’d suggest the same with the genders reversed, though that’s far less common. Imagine a guy sitting at a bar being approached by a beautiful woman whom he’s not interested in (let’s suppose his jealous wife is in the ladies room, and he’s terrified of her reaction). I’m trying to suggest that whatever his manner of dissuading the strange but beautiful lady, it should be in line with his emotional response if the lady were considerably less lovely. If he has a neutral response to her “Buy me a drink, mister?” (like, “Not interested, Miss. Sorry. Could you please leave me alone?”) why is so hard to apply the same level of outrage to the homely woman who does the same exact thing, instead “You ugly whore, get the fuck away from me, I’ll call the cops. How dare you! Bartender, what kind of place is this, anyway?” etc. etc.?
BTW, ladies, I’ve posted a photo of me (my old college ID photo) for those of you claiming I must be copping the attitude you assume I am here because of my repulsiveness. This was taken at my peak of bachelorhood–I’ve lost some hair, and gained some weight and wrinkles in the 30 years since, but I’ve also been married or in a happy LTR since then for the most part, so, as Robert Wilson says, “You wouldn’t like to drop my beauty as a topic, would you?” (that’s from ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber’ by Hemingway, whom I’m told I resemble somewhat these days.)
There really does not appear to be any point, that I can see, to your philosophical exercise, then.
If you are going to say that all other things are identical, and that your declaration has successfully controlled for all real variables, then you are describing an unreal world that sheds no light on the real one. You are the one who claims to have been prompted to perform this little mind game based on your interpretation of the actions and words of two other persons. After all the hostility in this thread, I just offered a possible explanation for the phenomenon you believed you witnessed that would have resolved your original puzzlement based on a separate piece of missed information.
If your sole intent is to hammer on your “hypothertical” until you get some number of women to simply give in to your persistence and exclaim, “Yes. I’m shallow and I look at appearances,” then have at it. I thought you might have actually been interested in a possible explanation of the trigger event.
::: shrug :::
Is this my spelling or yours?
Let’s suppose the two women who have the rare pleasure of working under my close personal supervision have a conversation, in which the younger one, (Let’s call her Maggie, and the older one we’ll call Rachel, which aren’t their real names but close enough that I’ll remember whom I’m speaking of) breezes in one day and says, “Wow, Rach and Doctor Ruber, did I just have something funny happen to me! This totally hot guy, looked kinda Brad Pitt-Matthew McConaghey-ish, said to me just outside the entrance of the school, ‘Excuse me, Miss, I’m new in town and I was wondering if you could tell me how to get to the Statue of Liberty?’ and I said ‘No, sorry, can’t help you,’ even though I know exactly how to get there, but I thought maybe this was a scam of some sort, and he said, ‘What a lovely voice you have, I’d love to hear just a little more,’ and I laughed and walked inside the building. I could kick myself–he was SOOOOO totally scrumptious!–but I felt a little uncomfortable. Damnit, I’ll probably never meet a guy so good-looking with such a sweet smile and so totally charming again, but I don’t respond well on my feet, I guess,” and we’d all go “Wow, Maggie, you go, girl” and laugh and have a good time.
Okay? Now, a few weeks later, Rachel bops into the office and says to me and Maggie “Wow, Mag and Doctor Ruber, did I just have something infuriating happen to me! This creepy little fuckface just said to me outside the entrance of the school, ‘Excuse me, Miss, I’m new in town and I was wondering if you could tell me how to get to the Statue of Liberty?’ and I said ‘yeah, asshole, she’s up in Central Park, taking a leak. If you hurry, you can catch the supper show.’ Then this little jerk persists, and he says, ‘What a lovely voice you have, I’d love to hear just a little more,’ and I looked around for a cop but there weren’t any so I walked inside the building. God, I hate it when these presumptuous little twerps come up and start talking to you like they have any right even to look at me. Grrrrr, this sucks, this blows, I hate it, I’m so angry and belittled and insulted and and and andandand…” and we’d all give her sympathy and consolation and support.
Then I’d come in here, rather than personally engage these women who I like and choose to get along with, and wonder about why two such different responses to identical circumstances presented themselves, and then I’d get my questions answered by my fellow posters, and I’d ride off on my brand-new pony.
So… woman who is propositioned by a guy she finds attractive is friendly toward him which prompts him to continue flirting. Meanwhile another woman is propositioned by a guy she doesn’t find attractive and is rude and abrupt towards him which prompts him to continue flirting.
Can you see how these aren’t identical circumstances?
The second guy is creepy because he doesn’t get that she doesn’t want to keep talking to him even though she’s given him nothing but negativity from the start. You can’t ever know if she would have called him a creepy little fuckface based on his looks alone because by the time you hear the story he’s gone and annoyed her by persisting after his initial advance was given the cold shoulder.
Here’s the honest truth: I do not find all people automatically attractive, nor do I consider every person I meet to have potential as a romantic interest in my life. If I find someone unattractive, I will be less responsive to his advances than I would to someone I find attractive. If I am less responsive to his advances and he persists, we will quickly reach a point where he makes me uncomfortable and I begin to find him creepy. This doesn’t mean ugly guys hitting on me are automatically creepy or that I’d automatically complain about them to everyone (or even anyone), but if I gave an answer like Rachel’s and then he tried to keep me talking, I’d be wondering how he could possibly believe I wanted the conversation to continue.