Dr. NerdLove examines the notion that you have to look like Brad Pitt for women to like you.
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In Playboy‘s 60th anniversary issue, Gilbert Gottfried penned an essay entitled “Women Say They Want A Guy With A Sense of Humor. They Don’t“.1 This lengthy screed goes on about the apparently pernicious myth that women want a sense of humor, how being funny never got him laid and gets interspersed with complaints about the apparent cultural message that women only care about a good personality – which is frankly news to me. And, I suspect the majority of my readers.
From the article:
Guys are constantly being told that a good personality is the only thing that matters to women. “If you can make her smile, it doesn’t matter what you look like.” I know this girl who prides herself on being attracted to nerdy guys. But still she has slept only with a veritable who’s who of handsome rock stars. She’s a model (of course), and she worked for a day on some movie with George Clooney. She told me, “I wasn’t impressed with his stardom, and I didn’t think his looks were all that great. But he was genuinely funny.” Horseshit! If he wasn’t good-looking or famous, nobody would notice his sense of humor.
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It’s astounding, astounding I say, that said model seems to prefer George Clooney over Gilbert Gottfried. After all, we all know there’s no bigger panty-dropper than bitterness and resentment…
He continues:
It’s like those women who claim they have crushes on Woody Allen or Larry David. If you’re looking for a Larry David type, they’re everywhere. You want a bald Jew with glasses and an acerbic sense of humor, I could fix you up no problem. But they’re making $7.25 an hour bagging groceries at Whole Foods
We’ll ignore the fact that this is basically a compositional fallacy and focus on the underlying issues: how much do looks actually matter?
Now let’s dispense with the obvious: good looks are important. But that’s not the end-all and be-all of attraction. In fact, the issue of how much looks matter to women – and what is considered “attractive” in the first place – is actually far more complicated than we think.
The Looks Double-Standard
Unlike Gottfried, I – and most of my peers – didn’t grow up with the idea that looks didn’t matter to women. We got the “just be yourself” line instead. But I’m not terribly surprised that the idea was floated out there. There’s a lot of social pressure for women to “not be shallow” and to at least lie about how much looks do or don’t matter. It’s not terribly surprising, when you think about it. The idea of marrying for love – as opposed to what amounted to sealing a business contract or a transfer of property – is barely over 200 years old and dating, rather than arranged marriages, is even more recent… and even then, an attractive husband meant someone who promised financial stability and might not beat her to death. Actual interaction between men and women as social equals is barely even 70 years old, and it’s still relatively recent that women were able to actually pursue men that they are interested in rather than waiting for the guys to come to them.
Moreover, we still have the cultural myth that women aren’t as sexual as men, that women aren’t as aroused visually as men are or even that they don’t like sex for sex’s own sake; even womenbuy into this myth, apparently sublimating their own sexual desires to the point of not recognizing their own arousal. The Madonna-Whore dichotomy is still very real, and with it comes pressure for women to pretend that they don’t get the screaming thigh-sweats when Tyson Beckford or Joe Manganiello take their shirts off and start offering to wrestle Alexander Skarsgård in a tub of baby oil.
So it’s not surprising that women feel pressured to pretend – or even convince themselves – that they don’t want what they want. And yes, women want to fuck hot guys.
Shocking, I know.
Let’s be frank: we all want to date someone we consider “hot”. There’s been more ink and pixels spilled over the idea that the only way to date someone hot is to be hot yourself, and just as many people – such as Mr. Gottfried here – complaining about how unfair that all is. In fact, one of the most common selling points to various Pick-Up Artist gurus’ products is the promise that if you follow their secret system, you can attract 9s and 10s without effort, no matter what you look like. Guys who by their own admission aren’t likely to be appearing in the Abercrombie and Fitch catalog – or even Sky Mall, for that matter – want to date women who would be considered “out of their league” and complain bitterly when it’s denied to them.
Here’s the fun part though: the men who complain about how unfair it is when gorgeous women refuse to fuck them are in effect complaining that women believe that they’re entitled to the same thing the men are: to bang a whole bunch of hotties.
But – and you had to realize there’s a but coming – women have a wide range of what they consider “hot”. In fact, it’s considerably wider than what men are allowed to consider “hot”. Women are just as likely to love the skinny nebbish with the black-rimmed glasses as they are the six-foot-five bearded viking. There are women who drool over the swimmers-build, effeminate model types and ones who love – not just tolerate or accept but love – chubby, hairy men. Some women want Chris Hemsworth and just as many want Tom Hiddleston.
Men, on the other hand, are far more restricted in what we’re allowed to admit we’re attracted to. If she doesn’t resemble a Victoria’s Secret model or Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover, then he’s likely to take shit from his friends and peers. A man who openly admits he loves fat women gets called a “chubby chaser” and mocked for having such low standards; “going hogging” is only for when you’re so drunk you don’t know better and is supposed to be hidden at all costs. If he doesn’t lust after Kate Upton then there’s just something wrong with him because comeon, those tits. Dat ass.
Which actually brings us to my next point:
“Good Looks” Are a Cultural Construct
The idea of what makes somebody “hot” not only isn’t ubiquitous, it’s not even vaguelyconstant. Desirable body types, facial features, breast size, hips and waist ratios, penis size and musculature are all products of culture, not nature. Aside from basic signs of physical health – facial symmetry, clear skin, etc – there are no inherent, universal standard of “good looking”. In fact, what we consider to be “attractive” is dependent on cultural transmission.
Consider the recent trend of hating on redheads.
Well fuck you very much too…
It sounds like a joke at first… right up until you start reading British papers; ginger-hate has actually led to physical assaults and literally has driven people to suicide. In the US, this is absurd to the point of sounding like bad comedy2 right up until the episode of South Park that focused on gingers. Suddenly “gingers don’t have souls” and the rest becomes a meme and Buzzfeed is doing articles that says “No guys, redheads are hot, really!”
Geeks, on the other hand, love redheads. Take a moment and consider the sheer number of redheads in science fiction and fantasy: Ariel, Amy Pond, Barbara Gordon, Poison Ivy, Jean Grey, Rachel Summers, Mary-Jane Watson, Rose and Thorn, Saffron, Red Sonja, Caitlin Fairchild, Dawn, Natasha Romanov, Willow, Dana Scully… the list goes on and on. Scratch a geek and you’re going to find somebody who’s obsessed with redheads.
Again: cultural transmission.
You see this time and time again when it comes to what features we consider to be “hot”. Right now, for example, the facial features most that are most commonly considered attractive are Northern European – wider eyes, high cheekbones, smaller chins, smaller noses – and there is a great deal of pressure for women of color to conform to them. This has less to do with any sort of racial or geolocational superiority and far more to do with cultural hegemony and class structures.
European colonization of India and Asia brought European aesthetics along with their culture, while the American slave trade and subsequent oppression of African-Americans directly affected what would be considered “beautiful”. Over time, indigenous standards of beauty would start to conform to the western ideal, while more “ethnic” features were considered to be “bad”. Chris Rock’s documentary “Good Hair”, for example, spends a great deal of time examining how much effort many African-American women devote to trying to give their hair European and Asian characteristics – and the cultural statement inherent in a woman having an afro or dreadlocks. Similarly, skin-lightening creams are incredibly popular across India, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines – having lighter, whiter skin is considered to be more attractive – while plastic surgery minimizing the epicanthic eye-fold is all the rage in Korea.
Obviously, colonization isn’t the sole cause; the European colonies are a thing of the past3. However, the effects linger and are amplified by mass-communication. America’s greatest export is its culture in the forms of movies, television and magazines. We tell the world over and over again that these features are what are considered “hot” and desirable, that this is what they must aspire to.
Physical attractiveness is often a matter of class signifiers as well. Tanned skin was once the mark of a physical laborer, someone of a lower class background, while pale skin was a mark that you didn’t have to work. Over time – and with the changes in industrialization and business – tanning is a mark of someone who has the time to go luxuriate out in the sun, while pale, pasty skin is the mark of somebody trapped in the office all day under florescent lights. Similarly, weight used to be a mark of prosperity – someone who was chubby had the money for food and didn’t have to perform manual labor. Now, thinness and athleticism are signifiers of someone who has the time to spend in the gym and the money to spend on organic everything rather than the cubicle worker whose paycheck makes McDonald’s a luxury and food deserts mean that often their only acceptable choices are processed foods full of sodium and sugar.
And this is without even getting into the fact that thanks to Photoshop, the standards of beauty for women – and increasingly, men – are often literally impossible.
Now at this point you’re probably wondering why I bring all of this up. This is because…
We Like Who We Think We’re Supposed To Like
Let’s circle back around to what I said earlier about the acceptable ranges of what men and women consider “hot”. These standards don’t just materialize out of thin air. As much as we all like to think that we’re icons of pure original thought, immune to outside influence, a lot of what we consider to be “hot” is based on what culture dictates – especially with respect to gender roles. Returning to a previous example, there are lots of men out there who love large women. Not just “curvy” or “chubby” but big, beautiful women. And not because they think that fat women have lower self-esteem and will let them get away with more; they are legitimately attracted to fat women.
The tricky part though is that when they’re younger and less secure, they’re far less likely to actually own their attraction. They’ll either try to force themselves to like the more conventional beauties or will date a larger woman on the side and hope to Christ their friends never find out.
Why though? Because men are taught over and over again that their masculinity is fragile; part of their manhood is derived from their sexual prowess and the best way to display that is to sleep with the women that other men wish they could fuck. When you’re attracted to somebody that society tells you that you shouldn’t be, you’re risking having your man card taken away. Either you’re not man enough to get the hotties or you’ve lowered your standards so far that you’ve essentially “given up”. Guys will police other men for violations of masculinity because it’s a way of reaffirming their manliness. It’s how the system gets maintained. If somebody refuses to take part – such as when men are sufficiently confident in their own skins to buck what society says they should want and just own their attraction – then the whole system starts to crumble.
Women aren’t immune to this pressure either. Take the common complaint that women “only want tall guys”. Obviously this isn’t true, otherwise only NBA players would be getting laid. In fact, men and women tend to prefer people who are pretty much the same height as they are. But there is a stated preference amongst women to date men who are taller than they are. Much of the reason for this comes back down to gender roles – specifically, the power differential between men and women. Taller men are seen as being more masculine; being with a man who is taller than she is reinforces her femininity. To be taller than a man, especially a man she’s dating, means that she’s violating her assigned social role and is starting to venture into masculine territory. A tall woman – especially one who is taller than average – who dates a shorter man is bucking the system, and society is quick to try to reinforce the rules through social stigma and pressure.
This is the same pressure that women face to be “nice”. Part of that being nice often manifests as an attempt to seem open-minded and less shallow – being open to giving guys she’s not physically attracted to a chance for example. That pressure to be open to guys she doesn’t actually like is the vestigial remains of civilized history where women have been the acted upon, not the actors, when it comes to mating; until very recently, women had little say.
The problem however, is that the genitals want what the genitals want, and that frequently comes in conflict with what we tell ourselves we should want. The model that Gottfried complains about may be saying that she likes nerdy guys – notice how he phrases it: “prides herself” in liking nerdy guys – but when it comes to pure attraction, she’s into George Clooney. That instinctive reaction you feel to this – the “that shallow bitch” response – is exactly the reason why women will try to force themselves to be into guys they don’t actually want. Because wanting to fuck a conventionally hot guy “isn’t nice”. It’s the manifestation of trying to punish her for violating the social order. There’s nothing inherently wrong with her lusting after who she lusts after; our anger is equal parts feeling as though we’ve been lied to and resenting the fact that we’re not in the pool of men she prefers.
What Is Attractive?
So do looks help? Well, yes. Obviously. Beauty privilege is real; people who match social standards of beauty are seen in society as being better people in general. Conventional good looks definitely help when it comes to short-term attraction. And they’re not the only thing.
Attraction isn’t about one aspect of a person, whether it be looks, a sense of humor or a singing voice so low that it registers on the Richter scale. It’s about many qualities coming together to form a critical mass of sexiness. Looks certainly help, but fun helps just as much in the short term and even more in the long term. It is all about what you bring to the table.
Yes, women like a sense of humor… but you need to have other things going for you besides just being funny. You can’t just joke your way into her pants, and humor doesn’t overcome other unattractive aspects. Funny + shithead doesn’t magically equal sexy.
Similarly, no amount of hotness compensates for “asshole”.
Good looks are as much about presentation as they are about facial features, and you can make yourself look much better in five simple steps. All “hot” means, ultimately, is that they want to fuck you; it may be because you have the body of a Greek god with a penis that ejaculates chocolate mint creme or it may be because you’re a giant cuddly teddy-bear of a man and that’s what flips her switch.
Dealing With The Shallow
There will always be people who only want rock-jawed, chiseled-ab-sporting movie stars, who will insist that they deserve the hottest of the hot or only want whatever value of “high status” man you can come up with that doesn’t include you. Deal with it.
Getting angry about it doesn’t help; nobody has ever argued their way into somebody’s pants or convinced her to change their standards by being really pissed that she wouldn’t date him. Yeah, it’s irritating when they’re smug about it; you want to grab them by the shoulders and scream “you’re not better than me” at them. But, much like the impulse to want to take the hot bitchy girls down a peg, not only are you not going to change her mind, you’re making yourself look like an idiot by getting heated up over somebody who doesn’t care about your opinion. At best, all you’re doing is reaffirming that she’s so hot that people go apeshit over whether they have a chance with her.
At worst, you’re being another guy flinging shit at women because the universe stubbornly refuses to give him the hot chick he thinks he deserves. And that’s just sad.
Let the shallow want what they want. By being shallow, they’ve self-selected out of your potential dating pool and you should be thanking them for doing you a favor. Because as much as we all want to fuck someone hot, we want that person to think we’re hot too. If they’re not into you, then all that they’ve done is freed you up to go find someone else. Someone better and, critically, someone who actually digs what you have to offer.
You can be bitter about someone shallow who doesn’t want you, or you can be happy with somebody awesome who does.
The choice is yours.
Originally appeared at Paging Dr. NerdLove
- A tip of the hat to Amanda Marcotte for sharing this with me and the response over at Jezebel. [↩]
- …Starscream. [↩]
- Although it’s worth pointing out that the British Empire only truly ended in 1997 with the handover of Hong Kong to China. [↩
I agree that there’s no set vertical scale of attractiveness. However, if 100 people rated the looks of 10 men, I suspect that 2-3 men would appear near the top of many or most lists, and likewise 2-3 men would appear low on the lists. That doesn’t etch anything in stone for either the high or low listees, but I suspect, like I suspect that morning sun on fresh snow is really fucking bright, that the dating lives of the the men who top multiple lists are, let’s say less difficult, than the dating lives of men who hold up… Read more »
@ Adrian, “The one fairly certain consequence for a person lacking much of that currency is that he or she won’t likely find a partner with much currency either.” Yes, but the great equalizer for some men is $$$$. I don’t see that currency going out of circulation any time soon for many women. “While most of us figure out early on that our choices are at least somewhat limited and cope with that pretty seamlessly….” Yes, I can agree with you here. I know guys who are probably a 6 or 7 but think they are entitled to a… Read more »
@ Penny, ” I have a type, of course, we all do–but what my *type* is when I drool over a random guy on the street and who I choose to date seriously are so polar opposite it’s hilarious.” Actually I have discovered this to be quite normal with most women. The men whom they like to have sex with are totally different than the men they want to have LTRs or marry. If your man is NOT sexually attractive, then the LTR or marriage is destined to fail. I think this is why marriage offers very little to men.… Read more »
“I think this is why marriage offers very little to men. There is just no compelling reason (beyond religious) for a man to get married.” I think my husband would argue this point with you quite vehemently. “Men value permanence more so than women. Women just seem to always need to lovers and men to make them happy. One man simply cannot do it fro a sustained period of time.” A secure woman (and yes, we DO exist) does not “need lovers and men” to make her happy. And I have not met too many men who valued permanence more… Read more »
Attraction is so weird. Of course I find Robert Downey Jr (Iron Man) attractive–but in *real* life it would more likely be Tom Hiddleston (Loki) in his gingery, slender, wry humor who I would drop trou for (and no, I’m not into casual sex, although I LOVE sex, frequently). I have a type, of course, we all do–but what my *type* is when I drool over a random guy on the street and who I choose to date seriously are so polar opposite it’s hilarious. I have always had a physical reaction to those tall, athletic, almost teddy-bear type of… Read more »
In high school I learned to say “yes” to boys who asked to date me. If I didn’t I was a “little bitch.” Constantly being told that you are a bitch (for simply not liking a guy, or not trusting his intentions) really invalidates a person. This led me to believe I was indeed a stuck up bitch and I would date jerks and I would get hurt. Lowering her standards isn’t the answer. If you don’t cut it, don’t be a dick. She probably has good reasons (as an adult) to listen to her gut. You might be a… Read more »
Looks matter. All women have an ideal of a handsome guy with a great personality. Women love sex as much as men do. Some love it maybe more. The problem is, that it;’s very hard to find good looking men who have great personalities. Most are jerks cause they know every woman thinks he might be the one guy who has both the looks and the personality. I guess by personality I mean… a person who can be sweet, caring, loyal and who isn’t afraid to give his all. I have dated some ridiculously good looking men, all of which… Read more »
Here’s the fun part though: the men who complain about how unfair it is when gorgeous women refuse to fuck them are in effect complaining that women believe that they’re entitled to the same thing the men are: to bang a whole bunch of hotties.
The real fun is that while people trip over themselves to call out men and their sense of entitlement women are free to be picky. Well its not called picky its called “freedom to choose”.
I think the difference is this: Anybody — men and women alike — have the right to be as picky as they wish. In the end being picky comes down to nothing more than saying no when a person does not meet your criteria; and there is nothing contemptible in saying no. You have every right to refuse every woman who is not Halle Berry (for example) — but if you do so, you have no right to complain and moan and rage and cry conspiracy when Halle Berry does not care about you. Those men who are called out… Read more »
Those men who are called out for their sense of entitlement are doing just that. The problem is no that is not always the case. Yes there are some guys out there that do think they should have the freedom to pick women as they will but then get upset when women do the same. And those guys should be called out. If a woman insisted on Tom Hiddleston with the money of Warren Buffet and then complained that “all the good men are gone”, I would reply with “Boohoo, cry me a river!” That’s the problem women don’t get… Read more »
@Theorema Egregium
Those men who are called out for their sense of entitlement are doing just that: Complaining how it is not fair, and that they are robbed of what they think is their due.
In my experience. most men don’t have to had ever turned any woman down, or be picky about women in general, to be called out as having a sense of entitlement.
Gottfried’s article was hysterically funny in that it is an honest opinion from his particular viewpoint. Women aren’t necessarily rejecting him only because of his looks. I think it’s his whole dweeb persona that turns off a lot of women. True, not-so-good-looking guys can get laid a lot, depending upon whether he has the right qualities that appeal to women. And yes, women are crazy about sex too, but no, in general their drive is not equal to that of a man, so you stop with the myth-spreading. In my heyday, I could have sex everyday like many men, and… Read more »
Gottfried’s article is written with his sense of humor (which I love). If you don’t get his humor (as the author of this article clearly doesn’t seem too), it can come across as petulance. All genders would prefer attractive people, that’s part of the humor. 🙂
It’s interesting that you penned this gigantic diatribe of an article ridiculing why someone like Gilbert Gottfried said “women care about looks foremost” and then proceeded to say “Women are supposed to be attracted to hot men!” You missed the entire point of his humorous article (especially by the ad hominem attack you perpetrated on him by calling him bitter and resentful). Somehow, you claim you’d never heard the line of women liking men with a sense of humor when you grew up. That doesn’t make it any less valid–and the point was eloquently made when Gottfried (talking about Clooney)… Read more »
Maybe they should take a tip from Buddhism. One of it’s tenets is that suffering is caused by
desire, whether it’s for money, power, fame or even other people. If you free yourself from desire
you free yourself from suffering. The “grass eating” men in Japan are a good example of this. They
have no interest in dating, and Japanese women are wondering what is “wrong” with them.
Wow, this was excellent. I’ve come to the conclusion that there are different layers to sexual attraction. For example, a woman might like tall, dark and handsome when it comes to movie stars, but in real life, gravitates towards blond men closer to her own height (hint: it’s easier to kiss a guy whose mouth is within close reach…). Or a man might legitimately be attracted to photos of Megan Fox, but when he dates, he goes for the athletic tom-boy type who could, if she decided to dress in drag, successfully pass for a guy. And a person might… Read more »
This is another article from The Good Men Project that assumes that everyone is heterosexual, once again somewhat weakening The Good Men Project’s tagline of “The conversation no one else is having”. Have you ever considered the fact that some of the oppressive standards of beauty and the hostilities between heterosexual men and women that are discussed in this article (and discussed regularly on this website in general) are the result of heteronormativity? And by assuming that all people are heterosexual, articles like this and The Good Men Project itself, though well-intentioned, are complicit in this and therefore part of… Read more »
Good point. So how would including all the other forms of sexuality change this however?
Dunno, Tom. I’ve read that among gay men at least, the pressure to be poster-boy attractive is even more exacting. And the standard of beauty—gym-chiseled, urban-stylish, hung like an alpenhorn—is loftier and more repressive than anything on the straight side.
There has been numerous studies on how stressful it is to be physically attractive; what it comes down to is the more men involved in the equation, the more stressful the need: Lesbians have the least (0 men), Heterosexuals are average (1 Man), and gay men have the most (2 Men–the Men must please not only their mates, but must meet their own unrealistic standards of attractiveness).
Sexy isn’t socially constructed. It gets socially modified to some extent, and can be influenced by personal experience, but the fundamentals are still the same – the person’s reproductive fitness. Ugly men can still do well if they are assertive, confident and self assured. Ugly women can also do well if they are assertive, confident and self assured, though probably not quite as well as ugly men. Women want to fuck hot men, and men want to fuck hot women – but it’s only men who get called sexist for it. But sexual attraction is just the beginning of the… Read more »
@ Adam
“Most partnerships are not based on sexual attraction, and those that are usually fail.”
WRONG!!!!
While people might not marry or embark on a LTR due to sexual attraction, the lack of sexual attraction causes failure of relationships as well. Most sexless marriages are due to one partner (usually the woman) no longer having sexual attraction for the man.
I think sexual attraction is a necessary condition for any sustained LTR. Yes, ‘it MUST also include it.’ However, there must be more to the relationship than sex. Sex IS essential.
Ysh it gets modified but its so modified you might as well call it a social construct. Breast are a perfect example of this. Who we find sexy is largely based on class.
OK so the woman wants sexy men… but sexy is a construct, largely based on class. People will pretend to not be as shallow as they really are so they don’t look bad.
All of this is good and all but one painful truth worth pointing out is that I might have been trained to find breast or a six pack of abs sexy…. but I still own that. I still find them sexy.
If looks didn’t matter we could simply open a can of dog food for dinner.
Indeed.
And?
What they might be responding to is that men are usually condemned for being shallow, while women are as shallow and yet not condemned for it.
I agree that we have a double-standard: when men do it, we call them chauvinist pigs but when women do it, it’s women’s lib. Hmmm. You’re right – that seems dishonest to me. But maybe it’s because women have had to listen to it a lot longer (and we sometimes hear it from an extremely young age… I was a very innocent 13 years old when I first overheard a couple of high school seniors discussing my breasts and what they would like to do with them…it still makes me feel very dirty when I think of it, 22 years… Read more »
That only makes sense if you believe men are some kind of borg-collective hive mind. And “dishing it out” to one man somehow hurts the men who did it to you
Well, that’s the mistake common to a lot of nice guy mindsets as well, but it is a mistake common to both sides.
@Danielle: I realise that it’s not as easy for women to be openly admiring of looks, but that still doesn’t justify the double standard. If what men are doing is some kind of ideal for women to pursue, then why are men still being attacked for expressing their preferences? Ultimately the more honesty in this realm the better, at least that way people know where they stand. Ideally, we should be leaving well alone for everyone when it comes to their personal standard of attractiveness in others, while confronting things like body presentation in the media, which would address a… Read more »
Yes, @OirishM, I agree: it doesn’t justify the double standard. In fact, if you go back and read my post, I actually wrote the words: “I agree” and “you’re right”. If this behaviour is unsavoury when men do it, it is equally unsavoury when women do it.
I was merely trying to understand why the double standard exists and/or why women feel justified in behaving this way. I was pondering “out loud”, as it were.
Wasn’t arguing the point, just expanding on it ^_^
For the record, women are called shallow bitches, dumb bitches, crazy bitches and worse for not dating “nice guys” [as I’m sure you are yourself] and rather pursuing men they’re actually interested in.
Formerly of that mindset, but I’m still somewhat sympathetic to those mired within it. Thanks for the assumption nonetheless. I think that a lot of discourse on the subject (particularly feminist discourse) is one-sided, mean-spirited, and fixes on one specific definition of “nice guy” that not everyone uses. Painting the problem as “well, clearly they’re just misogynist assholes” doesn’t actually explain the problem (such a statement rarely explains much, in fact). Dig a little deeper. As for your observation – yes, and then when they realise that women go for looks too they may respond in the same way they’ve… Read more »