And if you did, did a single girlfriend nod knowingly?
I ask because expressions like ‘She’s a 10’ tend to come up quite a bit in SDMB threads about women’s looks or dating (e.g.) and it always strikes me that I have never, ever heard women use a number system for men (this despite the recent South Park episode in which the girls rank the boys’ looks).
If I told you a guy I met is a 6, or a 10, would you be able to picture him? Would you assume I meant from a physical standpoint only?
I’m not even sure how guys do it – how on earth do you know what your friend is into when he says the woman he’s dating is an 8? What if he’s into zaftig black women and you like petite gingers? Or is calling a woman ‘An 8’ shorthand for ‘What American advertising would have people convinced is in the upper echelons of attractiveness but not stunning,’ but which has little bearing on my own tastes?
It’s been my experience that we women rate men using adjectives like “stud” or “hunk” or “cute” or “handsome”. I can’t even recall the last time a number was used.
Never - and other than the obvious (a “10” is someone she thinks is stunningly goodlooking, a “1” is someone she thinks hideously ugly), it wouldn’t tell me anything about what he looks like. I would assume she meant physical looks - unless the context made it clear otherwise, if we’d been discussing some other characteristic of partners, or something.
Sorry, that’s a bit vague - I can’t quite imagine a real conversation where it would happen, which is hindering me making the above make much sense
No. And when we had mandatory sexual harrassment training at work, the entire room burst out laughing when they showed a video with this scenario (a handful of college-aged women sitting outside and rating all the men who walked by). I can, of course, imagine a group of female students doing this ironically, to make a deliberate point about objectification, but seriously? No.
My best friend and I do this all the time. We know eachother’s types so it is really easy to rate.
A typical ‘dime piece’ would be a perfect 10 that has a great body (strong and fit but not big or bulky with muscles) very dark skin, dread locks, beard, tall enough (not too tall) and a lot of what we call ‘steeze’ which is basically a cool way of walking, standing, licking his lips. Tattoos are a bonus. Smarts and sense of humor is high on the list once you get to know the guy.
But, that’s just the typical dime piece. A 10 can look very different. We know a few lightskinned guys that we call ‘brownings’ that still get the dime piece status.
But being a dime piece is not needed at all for me to appreciate a man. I happen to love men with gaps or chipped teeth, scars (yum!) and all manners of so called flaws. And I have been called a lot of things in my life, but a 10 has ***never ***been one of them, not even at the age of 19, let alone 36! So when I ‘rate’ a guy, it is either in fun, or just a shorthand of communication for me and my best friend.
It is may be that my friend may call me from work with this, “This boy just came to my desk and asked me to dinner. He’s not a dime or nothing…maybe a five. But he’s got something about him, girl. I’m gonna go!”
So yeah. My best friend and I aren’t really very mature. But we have known eachother since we were 12, and it really is a convenient shorthand.
This. My female friends and exes use adjectives like this, along with “rugged”, “angular”, and the like. It’s the female equivalent of “pretty”, “cute”, “Playboy cute”, “hot”, “porno|stripper hot”, “gorgeous”, “skanky”, “beautiful”, and the like.
Never. I’ve never sat around and enthused or dismissed people’s looks. I learned as a child that it’s rude and hurtful. Some of it I learned first hand. It astonishes me that adults would do it.
Honestly? Yes, my friends and I score men on a scale from one to ten. Sometimes we resort to negative scores. We do it for a laugh, in a completely detached way, comfortable with the fact that it’s shallow and meaningless. It has little bearing on whether we’d actually go out with a guy. Someone who scores 5 on looks may be an 8 or 9 as boyfriend potential. And we’d never score someone we actually know and care about. Allocating a score to your own boyfriend would be seen as poor form.
Interestingly, we tend to agree on the highest and lowest scores, but disagree quite a lot in between.
I’m no teenager, and some of my friends are married, middle aged women. We’re all old enough to know better.
No. I am shallow and love discussing other people’s looks, but I think assigning a numerical value to a person’s sexual attractiveness is meaningless. Most men I’ve found devastatingly attractive, my friends find ‘meh’ or even unattractive, even though I only like conventionally good-looking men (not skinny or fat, well-proportioned, ‘perfect’ teeth and good skin, a handsome face). I know what I like and it’s pretty dang specific but I could never come up with a solid criteria for what a ‘6’ or a ‘10’ meant to me personally.
