Ok, this was a hard thread to title, sorry if it’s misleading. I’m also not sure if it’s GD-worthy or whatever.
Last night, I was watching the UK “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?” show. They were doing a Valentine’s Day show, with a different format than usual.
There were five men and five women, presumably all single (they were really playing up the ‘romance’ angle) and wanting to meet Mr/Ms Right.
In the first qualifying round, they all answered the questions and the person who had the correct answer in the least amount of time won (as usual). In this case, however, the person who won was a man, and he had to choose one of the five women to be his partner. They were told to they’d have to answer each question together, decide together on lifelines and split the money they win in half.
So, the first contestant, let’s call him John, comes up to the host to choose his partner. Now, let me briefly describe John. He’s your standard handsome guy. Nice jawbone, bright blue eyes, lovely smile. So, he’s standing there with the host, ready to pick his partner and the host feels it’s necessary to say, “Now, don’t just choose the woman you fancy the most, choose a girl who you think will help you win the money.” You can see the guy feeling very pressured to decide, as all the women smile and bat their eyelids at him.
Let me describe the four female contestants. Four of them were dressed quite skimpily, the usual London fashion of dressing like it’s mid-summer in the dead of winter. I would say most of them were between 25 and 35, roughly. There was one woman, Susan, who just looked different to the rest of them. She was a bit older, dressed much more conservatively, and overweight (not by my standards, mind you, but just compared to the standards of society). She had a lovely beautiful face, was very smiley and seemed to be a lot of fun. She definately looked like someone I’d enjoy going out for drinks with, but didn’t fit the modern standards of beauty.
Anyway, John picked her. Now, my first thought, (being the sour pessimist that I am) is that he picked her because she was dressed more conservatively, not flashy and probably would be cleverer than the others. I don’t know why, but the first thing that popped into my mind was this:
thin, stylish, very made up = ditzy, air-headed
overweight, dressed more conservatively = smarter, better chance of knowing the answers
Now, the host asks John, “Why did you pick Susan?” and you can see John was really uncomfortable. He didn’t answer, he sort of just said, “Umm…” and smiled a lot. He didn’t compliment her (I picked her because she has a lovely smile, or I picked her because she is from the same town as me) or say why he selected her and not the other women, who, by most of the standards of the day, would be considered ‘more attractive.’ I would love to be able to ask him if he picked her because she was most attractive, or she looked the most intelligent, and would therefore help him to win a lot of money.
It just bugged me that I couldn’t think, "Oh, he chose her because to him, she’s more attractive than the others.’ I really am annoyed at myself for this stereotyping of men. I know there are men out there that prefer women who are larger sizes, but this stupid idea of mine that all men want thin, gorgeous women still sticks with me.
(One of the groovy chicks and her partner were up next. They couldn’t answer the 100pound question - the first one - which was “An Eye for an eye, a ______ for a _______.” Both of them said they’d never heard of that saying. YIKES!")