I guess this still supports your larger point, but not the “particular look” part in your earlier message.
This is an immensely useful quote. Thank you. Can I borrow it?
I think it does.
The difference is that when it comes to attractiveness there is already a tendency to think one body type is more attractive than the other, and societal influence makes this tendency into a near-universal consensus. You don’t have that initial tendency when it comes to clothing.
As an example, if under normal circumstances 60% of men would think thin women are more attractive, 30% would be ambivalent, and 10% would prefer overweight women (these are made-up numbers, intended to be illustrative of the concept), the women held up as models of feminine attractiveness will invariably be thin women, and those derided as unattractive will tend to be overweight women. And since there is so much focus on which women are or are not attractive, this has the impact of making public opinion on what’s attractive in a woman converge, to a greater extent than opinion on what’s attractive in a man, IOW the 60%/30%/10% split will become an 85%/10%/5% split in the case of women, while for (women’s preferences in) men it will stay at 60%/30%/10%.
But when it comes to clothing there’s not really any one favored style to begin with, so there’s nothing to converge to. Within the range of several acceptable types of dress, it will be important for women to have variation so as to stand out, as above.
That doesn’t really jive with observed facts. One important fact is that people (men, women, children) have been getting a lot heavier. I would agree that the beauty ideal espoused in many places has been pushing towards a uniform thin, but the difference between that ideal and reality has been getting larger. And when men are asked about women’s body types they like, they don’t subscribe to the magazine beanpole ideal at all.
But size is only one aspect. The fashion people are always looking for unusual models. Although that seems less true with regard to actresses in Hollywood.
All these overweight women want to be thinner. They are falling short of their own ideal appearance; they don’t consider something else ideal.
You’re saying they don’t want extremely thin women. That doesn’t mean they don’t prefer thin women.
Actually it does.
I’m going to point out that the real problem here is an extremely selective view of the data, because I’ve seen this a lot. Odds are the Nice Guy doesn’t actually get rejected very often because he doesn’t put himself out there often, he just views his occasional rejections as a major catastrophe. Meanwhile the ‘jerk’ actually gets repeatedly, routinely, resoundingly rejected, but the nice guy either doesn’t see that or just tunes it out, and the ‘jerk’ doesn’t get upset about it because it’s all part of the dating game. This is compounded by the Nice Guy tendency to obsess over some woman he hardly knows before bothering to ask her out, which makes each rejection a big deal instead of a passing annoyance.
I know a guy who generally maintains ‘one for every day of the week’ - and he estimates that he gets turned down by 90% of the women he approaches. If you ask him for dating advice, he won’t give some wishy-washy ‘just be yourself’, he will explain his process and that it’s very much a numbers game. Another guy I knew was known for his crazy n-way exploits, but was also known for hitting on pretty much every woman he met (and a good chunk of the guys). To maintain their studly success story, both of those guys spent a lot of time on dating sites and a lot of time going to various bars and social events where they would meet a ton of new people. Either one of them would get rejected more times in a single month than the typical Nice Guy does in a life time, they just don’t think it’s a big deal.
The Nice Guy thing is complicated because I’m sure some of them started and ended as nasty guys, and some of them fell into the trap of “I did this so I should get this, according to every story the media ever fed me, I don’t understand”, and then there’s the last group where the reality of the world ground them down into bitter jerks. And I feel like part of the reason the last type of Nice Guy (and maybe the middle Nice Guy) doesn’t want to operate dating like a numbers game is, he has an ideal about dating. He probably thought that the world would be a much nicer place if women and men didn’t have to hit on or be hit on all the time, and they could bond with each other emotionally and have fulfilling sex lives as a result. He probably thought the “hit on everyone” game was simply too crass and shallow. After all, it means that the guy doesn’t even care about the woman for anything more than sex anyway, if one is just replacable with another, and another, and another, week after week. I can definitely see why many people would want to avoid playing the dating game this way. It just seems so mechanical and calculated, and opposite of what a real nice guy would actually be about.
It’s true that there’s an emotional fragility to many of those who are unsuccessful with women that is a turn-off. Getting used to some rejection would likely help with that. But the opposite extreme, throwing legions of women aside until one agrees to fuck you based on a pickup line, doesn’t sound endearing either.
So did I at that age.
Another problem that a lot of Nice Guys have is that they create false dichotomies, then say that they’re nice for following one end instead of the other, when there is actually a ton of middle ground. For example, neither of the guys I talked about above use ‘toss out a pickup line until someone bites it’ as a technique, but you’re clearly implying that’s what they do. Treating dating realistically (as a numbers game) does not mean that you don’t care about women for anything other than sex, or that one is just replaceable with another, but you’re describing it as though the choices are adhere to a silly ‘ideal’ or treat women badly. You’re leaving out middle ground like ‘meet a good pool of people, ask ones that seem interesting out, see if you’re compatible without investing a lot emotionally early on’.
If your Nice Guy arbitrarily decides that his only two options are to do something that clearly doesn’t work or something that is really repugnant to him (and that incidentally also doesn’t work very well), then he can talk about the fact that he’s not using the second option like it’s a virtue, and keep himself somewhat happy in his non-dating bubble by pretending that the only reason he’s not getting laid is that he’s showing good qualities. The problem with this is that A. He probably wants to get laid (even if he won’t admit it), and definitely wants to get companionship, so won’t be very happy in the lonely bubble and B. It’s a patently obvious false dichotomy if you actually talk to real people about how they date or even just think about it very hard.
The unwillingness to live in reality while trying to paint people who do as bad people is part of why Nice Guys get a bad rap. (Some other unlikeable points are the slut shaming and sex negativity, insulting guys who do successfully date, and denying the validity of women’s dating preferences).
I suggest we just sticky this post as the All-Knowing Truth and refer all future questions to this post.
Thread over.
If movies and TV have taught me anything, its that women love it when a guy relentlessly chases after them, never gives up, follows them to their school, work, hobby, etc. Failing that, always make a big public romantic gesture, preferably some place she would be too embarrassed to reject you like on the jumbotron of a sports game or a flash mob in front of her work. Bug her friends and relatives to help you decide the best way to attract her. If she likes bald men, shave your hair off, if she likes pets, pretend you’re a vet, if she likes black guys take up rapping.
Eventually, through sheer exhaustion, she will relent and go out with you one time. That one time will be magical and spark the desire that will grow in her until you guys get married
I’ve wondered why there hasn’t been even more of a backlash by women against this trope yet.
It can be a fun fantasy. It’s very popular in women’s media, with a bit of modification; the twist being that the guy is stunningly gorgeous (or adorably dorky), utterly charming (or adorably dorky), and absolutely perfect for you in every way, and on top of that is so devoted to you that he’ll follow you until the ends of the earth while you make up your mind. Of course, women tend to be slightly more aware than men seem to be that this type of behavior, in real life dudes, is a negative rather than positive sign.
This. Almost every woman has grown up with this trope.
Yep. Fairy tale tropes are one thing. Seeing it play out IRL is downright creepy. I was the victim of such an incident back in college where the guy wouldn’t take me for my word when I broke it off. The kicker was that he stopped when he met (and eventually married) a freshman who looked somewhat like me.
Sounds like kiz’s clueless man had a “type” he really went for.
I’m NOT trying to launch a gender war here, but here’s an example of where the difference between acceptable and not is one of degree rather than kind.
The boys get a slightly different story fed to them. The hero gets the girl. The girl might not even be present for most of the story or film, but she falls for him because he did the awesome stuff.
When in real life this doesn’t work some guys get confused and frightened and presume there is something wrong with the girls they meet.
This leads to another issue: Not only is what people say they want quite different from what they actually want, but sometimes what they want is contradictory.
Many woman probably like (in theory) the idea of being pursued by an attractive suitor, but numerous dating-advice websites and books state that it is men who are attractive and do *not *show interest in women, who are more likely to have women’s interest.
Also, I’ve noticed that, at least on the Internet, men and women tend to complain about different things:
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Men complain about their inability to get a girlfriend, but not so much about problems in the relationship afterwards, should they actually get a girlfriend.
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Women complain about their boyfriend’s behavior, or about problems in the relationship (but, already have landed a boyfriend.)