Actually being handsome/beautiful is correlated with health.
Things like symmetry, clear skin and so on indicate a body that has developed healthily and is functioning properly. It’s not just packaging, the outside of the body comes from the same origins as the inside. “Superiority” is a more loaded term than I’d use, though.
If it gets you laid more (thus giving more opportunity to pass on your genetic traits), then by definition it’s genetically superior.
I don’t know if “fat” was ever really in style. Unless you mean “fat” like Kate Winslet in Titanic, which is to say, “normal”.
Remember women used to wear corsets, so at the very least, they wanted to look thin.
Then again, they used to also wear those big hoop dresses. So maybe they liked a big ole ass back in the day too.
Will weight loss drugs change beauty standards? I don’t think so. I mean such as there are “standards” outside of the arbitrary ones set by Hollywood and Madison Avenue.
I guess maybe what you might see is more and more cosmetic surgery to adhere to an ever increasingly unrealistic standard. You see that now with women getting all sorts of implants in their boobs, butt, lips and whatnot. Plus with all the media filters on top of it.
Ten years from now, everyone will look like Pixar characters.
Why would a shorter span of age difference be disgusting?
Consider Couple X:
Man - age 18 years, 10 days
Woman - age 18 years, 9 days
Is that more “disgusting” than Couple Y:
Man - age 67 years, 10 days
Woman - age 18 years, 9 days
?
That seems odd to me.
I’m not @Exapno_Mapcase but I went back and re-read that whole post. I agree that sentence is awkward. But I believe the meaning is clear enough in the full context. Namely (IMO)
There is a range of age differences that is acceptable. Differences outside that range are disgusting and always have been. In recent years the societally acceptable range is shrinking, so the number of deemed-disgusting relationships is growing.
My own addendum to that being: Largely due to women now having some / more say in what constitutes “societal norms”.
LSLGuy reads it correctly, but to clarify.
Different societies have had different standards for what age differences were acceptable. We live in a modern world in which “love” matches are supposed to dominate over matches for procreation, inheritance, status, or money, all of which dominated in various past eras.
Younger woman/older man “love” matches have been acceptable in American society for at least the last century. Two young kids could marry one another right out of school, but woman were often taught to wait for a “provider,” since the expectation was that they wouldn’t work themselves. This was followed more in middle class couples than in working class couples, since a much higher percentage of working class women worked. Even so, many business through WWII (and some later) had policies that women had to quit if they got married.
As LSLGuy also said, women have been successfully fighting the expectation that they are mere baby-making housewives for a half century. A new expectation emerged - again probably more in the middle class, although that’s more than half the country - that the couples would marry later and both would work and that both would be roughly the same age. Even so, a “safe” minimum age for men to date was half their age plus seven.
That “rule” is no longer allowable. “Roughly the same age” can have different definitions. In the age of social media, the slightest flaw or deviation from the expectations of the loudest can being down condemnation. A difference of just a few years - if the man is older - can set those voices screaming. Of course, much of the outrage is aimed at the lingering ability of rich men or movie stars or the powerful to cast off their first wives and marry much younger “trophy wives,” but some comments I’ve seen indicate that even men who are none of the above who date or marry women not much younger than they are can be the targets. Women have power and they are using it.
Is there an actual proper age difference for couples? I’d say no, but we’re in an era of cultural transition and no one knows where that will settle.
I think the issue with the rule is that there are a lot of situations where “half his age plus seven” doesn’t work out to “roughly the same age”. For example, 47 isn’t roughly the same age as 80 - that rule works a lot better when is 22 and 30. I haven’t seen any screaming about men who are a few years older than the women they date or marry. Of course, to me “a few years” would probably be 10 or fewer.
I agree that the span of “acceptable” age differences has a narrowed - but I actually wonder how acceptable the larger differences really ever were. If people look at a relationship and think it’s transactional , I don’t think that’s seeing the age difference as acceptable and I’m pretty sure there has never been a poor 60 year old man with a pretty, 30 year old wife. I know I’ve never seen it.
I would say that we are also more sensitive to (and adverse to) differences in power, and more likely to see them as inherently exploitative. Age gaps tend to be associated with an imbalance of power.
That said, I do agree that like, a 30 year old dating a 45 year old is unlikely to be an imbalance of power. But I think its the kids on tok tok that are really weird about all age gaps being bad, and they are pretty limited in their life experience.
Okee-doke. I re-read your entire post several times before I responded and it’s still hard for stupid old me to parse that section, but between your later post and my biggest fan and admirer LSLGuy’s post it has been well-explained. Thanks!
In the case of a rich older man marrying a trophy wife, where is the imbalance of power? In fact there really often isn’t one. It may even be in favor of the trophy wife. The trophy wife is using an asset of hers, her looks, to gain her own wealth and power. The people critical of this are in favor of taking freedoms away from others for no good purpose.
At the end of the day, if one person can leave without disrupting their lives and the other one cannot, there is an imbalance of power. So if she needs him to maintain her lifestyle and he doesnt need her, there is an imbalance of power.
Im not saying relationships can’t have an imbalance of power. I have one in my marriage, because my husband is disabled. I’d certainly disagree wirh anyone saying that say, disabled people cant be in relationships. I am saying that when an imbalance of power exists, it provides an additional path for exploitation that is easily accessible to the person with the power, and people are more aware of that than they used to be. Thats not a bad thing.
There are several imbalances. Besides @MandaJo’s, there is the reality that trophy wives are often replaced by other women. Rupert Murdoch first married in 1956, when he was 25. (Don’t know the wife’s age, but probably about his age.) They divorced in 1967 and 46 year old Rupert married 30 year old Anna. They divorced in 1999 and he married 30 year old Wendi. They divorced in 2013 and Rupert waited three whole years before at 85 he married the 59 year old Jerri. They divorced in 2022 and the next year 92 year old Rupert proposed to 67 year old Ann. Somehow it didn’t work out, so the next year 93 year old Rupert married 67 year old Elena.
Although the later wives were older, they remained decades younger than Rupert. They were easily disposable. I suppose some credit is due him for not being Johnny Depp, who is internet famous for never dating anyone over 25. (Not true. One was 28.) He is now 61. He has become increasingly condemned for the age of his companions but continues the pattern. The pattern is extremely common in powerful men; much less so in powerful women.
And that’s another power imbalance. Until very recently women - and not just in Hollywood - complained bitterly that they were important until aging took away their youthful beauty, even though men could grow handsomer with age. All of society was tilted that way. Although older women have had great success in the last decade, youth and beauty remain factors that are bankable. Being a trophy wife may be an example of this. So is prostitution. One can hardly legitimize one and not the other. Maybe both are legitimate: a goodly number of people argue that prostitutes are making the proper economic assessment and so the oldest profession should be a legal choice available to women.
Men can also make this choice. Historically, many have. But the societal image of a prostitute is not male. Nor are there many trophy husbands. Sugar daddies have sugar babies. Websites for them abound. Sugar mommies and gigolos are not as common. The imbalance pervades western society, and I presume eastern society as well.
As long as youth and beauty are considered a woman’s primary attributes, there will be a significant power imbalance. (It’s also why the asshole men’s rights people say that women have all the power in society. Well, if that’s the one power that’s allotted to people, people will certainly wield it. Doesn’t mean that they have all the power, however.)
That’s why I think that since thinness is usually a major part of youth and beauty, and drugs are now available to achieve thinness, these drugs will fortify current beauty standards more than change them.
Uh, so what.
The trophy wives can be married from 32-35 to Murdoch or whoever. Or they can not marry these guys and be three years older all the same. It is worth it to them, the time spent, whatever they do with each other, a partner to go to parties with, and whatever they get out of it in the end, whatever is in the pre-nup. It might last shorter or longer, but it’s worth it to them to try. Same as someone working for Trump or whoever. It’s worth it, I assume, a short term or long term deal. People have a right to seek their fortune, to make these deals.
It is dead wrong for anyone to care about these marriages. Certainly in a world where people don’t need to be married at all, can have multiple simultaneous partners, partners of the same gender, people are allowed to switch genders, whatever. Caring about the age of people we don’t even know, no you don’t get to weigh in on that. You’re wrong. You’re intolerant.
I will maintain that these relationships are fully consensual on both ends and that both sides are gaining from the partnership, temporary or permanent.
Another example would be some sports star who fathers children out of wedlock. The mothers of these children damn well know what they are doing. It’s that or get older anyway, it’s that or have a kid with a father who can provide less. Both people have every right to make these consensual exchanges. Now some of the athletes are married. Then they have their wives to deal with. But even the wives typically aren’t going to regret marrying the pro athlete in the first place, even if there’s a divorce it’s going to be better than what they could have done as a single person, still aging as do the rest of us.
I’m going to agree in part and disagree in part with your assertations, especially based on the line above.
First, the agreement. If (the niggle!) the relationships are fully consensual (pretty much a given) it isn’t any of our business, assuming all parties are of sound mind and legal age. I think the problem is that they do not enter into the relationship with any degree of equality in most of the “rich old man, young attractive women” tropes. The man is paying what the market will bear for a bit of eye candy, and presumably sex.
The female in this (yeah, there’s the possibility of it being gender reversed but it’s extremely rare IRL) is not normally going to be able to afford the high priced lawyers, the detailed reviews, and isn’t arguing from a position of strength in the first place unless they’re wealthy/famous/etc in their own right.
So there’s a major power inequality in the relationship and bargaining positions. Now, again, back to the agree, most of us who would argue that legally protected and regulated prostitution should be legal (a not insubstantial number) should equally support a more formal version of the situation, which this scenario is in the most cynical sense. But the same concerns exist for prostitutes being in positions of unequal power and protection under the law, as the police and courts tend to favor those with power and influence.
Lots of maybes, situational issues, and the rare misunderstood love matches, but again, I feel that beyond the romanticists among us feeling it’s “wrong” on some level, most are concerned that it’s nigh impossible for there to be a truly “fair” consensual and contractual relationship. Note - fair can and probably should work the other direction as well, where if some 70ish multi-billionaire falls for a 20 something and marries her in a fit of passion without a pre-nup, expecting them to receive 50% of their estate after three years if there was no contribution to said estate. Nor should his heirs be able to say she deserves nothing either.
But, going full weasel, in my heart of heart, I do mostly agree that if all parties are sound of mind and body, and the compensation is reasonable and protected, that I don’t find that I have any right to “tut-tut” even the most mercenary of relationships.
The point you’re not getting is that these marriages are merely the most public and extreme examples of a continuum of inbalances that women are still subject to. As @ParallelLines also noted, trophy wives are in many cases the legal and societally accepted versions of prostitution. Without a set of rules that are subject to actual legal ongoing protection, prostitution, however consensual, is a brutal profession. We would not allow another profession that subjects workers to beatings, robberies, assault, and rape at the frequency even high-end courtesans suffer.
Power inbalances are rife within our society. Women feel them and men somehow fail to acknowledge their existence no matter how open women are. We just elected a president whose followers literally say “your body, our choice.” Do you or anyone believe this and the million other choice phrases out there could be said about men, at least the straight white men who want the country to become a literal Christian theocracy that treats women as baby-making machines?
Beauty standards are fairly low on the list of double standards that women push through daily, but they still hurt when applied. Let’s concentrate on the stuff that hurts rather than hand-wave it away.
Excellent two responses just above to @Jay_Z. I’ll take a slightly different tack. Let’s examine the macro and micro of this.
It is nobody’s business what any two people decide to do (assuming competence). It is everybody’s business how our society works.
A society dedicated to the creation and maintenance of power imbalances is a very different place than one dedicated to power equality. We each have, or should have, a say in where our society falls.
How each of us makes the best of our personal situation within whatever power imbalances exist in the part of the world accessible to us is our personal problem to have and our personal decision to make. But we as members of a society, not just atomistic economic utility maximizing units, should (and IMO do) have a strong interest in what problems are common and what solutions are available or forbidden.
If 5 women chose to pick up and then dump Rupert, it seems like he was more disposable than them. They had the power (to get rich quick), and chose to use it.
Interesting. Tell us what you know about their personal lives to think they all dropped him.
If thin Twiggy models become the standard (which it sems to be already), because of weight loss drugs… What tends to happen is that the opposite becomes the reaction to the thin and skeletal, and rather migrate towards the curvy, even chubby after a while. So nothing changes forever… Maybe there will come curvy drugs for models after a while of Twiggys…
Those anti-Twiggy drugs are called “Twinkies”. A steady diet of them will build you right up to corpulent. 