A fascinating photoset, but why do we imagine that if only one is beautiful enough -- or sufficiently more beautiful than the other -- the other won't cheat? I can think of at least 5 reasons why the opposite would be true:
1. The terribly beautiful partner's beauty may have had a bad effect on her (or his) personality, since people lavish attention on a beautiful person without expecting reciprocal warmth, so the less beautiful one strays into the arms of someone kinder, more interesting, or more sexually energetic.
2. The less beautiful one may feel less beautiful and inferior, undeserving of the prize, and need to go elsewhere to feel more comfortable and less pressured.
3. A person who marries a terribly beautiful person has demonstrated his attraction to terribly beautiful individuals, so why wouldn't he (or she) feel captivated by other beautiful women? That Billy Bob Thorton had Laura Dern didn't keep him from seeing and loving Angelina Jolie.
4. A less-good-looking person who has won admiration for his (or her) ability to stand next to someone very beautiful may want his ego stroked a second (or third) time by getting another beautiful person to do the same. The first one might seem like a fluke, but if he can get another, it will prove there is something truly amazing about him.
5. A person who marries someone very beautiful may be a very shallow person, attracted to surfaces and thus less likely to form the kind of bond to the soul of another that will be needed to keep the couple together when the novelty and heat of passion wear out, as they almost surely will.
September 7, 2008
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I saw the headline and initially thought you were reporting on a new Palin rumor.
All women look ridiculous naked.
The guy wants the woman to show she's satisfied with him. That's all.
If he doesn't get that, he's then likely to go elsewhere.
As the old saying goes "You show me the most beautiful woman in the world and I can find the guy who's tired of f***ing her"
Ann said: why do we imagine that if only one is beautiful enough -- or sufficiently more beautiful than the other -- the other won't cheat?
Not everyone does imagine it. I surely don't. Beauty (you might have heard this one before) is only skin deep. How tiresome some "beauties" are once you see below the surface.
Throughout human history, when has romantic love ever not yielded suffering?
"Love is not love"
(BTW, RHHardin is exactly wrong about all women naked.)
I see that article as terribly sexist. I expected to see a bunch of pictures of workaddaddy lard asses who had accidentally married the homecoming queen.
Brad Pitt and P. Diddy? Are you serious? Please.
That article should have been titled: How come these overly skinny women can't hold on to their man?
How come Narcissus couldn't hear Echo?
P.S. -- Yeah, Rh, that's a little silly. Do you have any idea what the porn industry rakes in each year?
"All women look ridiculous naked."
By contrast, one occasionally encounters a naked man who does not make you laugh.
Apparently David Duchovny didn't actually cheat on Tea Leoni but was/is addicted to internet pr0n. Tea got tired of buying a new keyboard every 3 days and made him get counseling.
I looked through and noticed that some of the men claimed sex addiction and were receiving treatment.
How does one suffer from sex addiction? What are the symptoms? What are the withdrawal symptoms? How does one get hooked? Is sex paraphernalia involved? What is the treatment(s)? Do they go to meetings; “Hi, I’m Bill. I’m a sex addict. I like to diddle interns. I have been celibate for eight years.” Group- “Hi Bill!!”.
Who invented this scam anyway? Lawyers? Psychologists? A combination of the two? Talk about turning an excuse into a money making machine. I have to do this. Find some bad excuse for behavior and turn it into a disease, syndrome, or addiction. Kaching!
Sometimes even the Vice President of the United States must have to stand naked and the rest of us must try not to ridicule her.
Just so Althouse can get some hits, I want to add these words to this thread: ridiculous-looking nude women.
That Billy Bob Thorton had Laura Dern didn't keep him from seeing and loving Angelina Jolie.
Wow, can you believe that Laura Dern, a "woman" who makes Nicole Kidman look like Sophia Loren, couldn't keep Billy Bob away from that skank ANGELINA JOLIE!!
The more amazing thing is how Billy Bob Thorton is able to get any women at all.
rhhardin said...All women I have some how managed to get naked look ridiculous.
^ I fixed it for you.
As a guy who has "dated up" myself, I can share a couple of observations. First, a guy who is seen with a beautiful woman on his arm becomes the object of other women's interest regardless of his own looks. Second, after a few months the magic of a beautiful woman's looks wears off and you're left with the person inside and sometimes that isn't the right person to be with.
That said, most of the guys on that slideshow are at least as good-looking as their female partners.
rhhhardin: All men look ridiculous in their quest to get a woman naked....Incidentally I thought your comments about the difference between beauty contests and porn in another thread were quite acute and interesting.....If I had the moves to marry Christine Brinkley, I would also have the moves to seduce a cute retail assistant. It would be easy because the retail assistant could flatter herself that she was more desirable than Christine Brinkley. Is the purpose of sex to bond and raise healthy children or to sleep with as many good looking women as possible before death or prostrate enlargement? If I was a dead ringer for Brad Pitt, I would opt for the second. If I looked like Mike Huckabee, I would choose the first. Alternatives exclude, and then we die.
Prince Charles.
Thereness.
Even though you have a steak and a nice bottle of Cabernet at home, sometimes you just have a taste for a greasy cheeseburger and a PBR.
is it seeking a nubile mother-figure?
I think it's because there's a 19 year old in the house who's been signaling her willingness since she got there.
Attention actresses: Get a Mary Poppins-type nanny. Or Molly Goldberg.
I'd dump Jennifer Aniston, if I could nail Christie Brinkley. Todd Palin won't dump Sarah, because she knows how to shoot.
Hardin says
"All women look ridiculous naked.
"The guy wants the woman to show she's satisfied with him. That's all.
"If he doesn't get that, he's then likely to go elsewhere."
Probably true, but some guys go elsewhere no matter how satisfied the current woman seems to be.
And rh, all women do not look ridiculous naked. Though some naked women can make men look ridiculous.
Where have I seen those photos before?
Oh yeah, at this site.
A great many horny persons do not believe in the possibility of an afterlife of eternal damnation.
I looked at the photoset, which leads me to another observation.
In nearly all cases (maybe Brad Pitt is the exception) the woman in these couples is better looking than the man. (Yes, I know, I'm a man and thus my prism.) But most of these guys have taken a step up in class. (No disrespect to Jennifer Anniston, who is very fetching, but Brad Pitt, my goodness.)
I have no idea what conclusion to draw from this but it's an interesting fact.
Is there an argument that can be mustered by modern liberalism for the desirability of loyalty in a relationship?
What exactly is wrong with cheating, from the left's perspective?
What a weird picture of Jude Law. His head looks photoshopped on.
All women look ridiculous naked
Having been in many "nudist camps" in my lifetime I can attest that all people look ridiculous naked.
I opt for answer number one. The beautiful person is actually shallow and self absorbed and drives the less attractive and eclipsed partner into the arms of another.
"The typical American female is sure that she has genius as a couturiére, as an interior decorator, as a gourmet cook, and, always, as a courtesan. Usually she is wrong on four counts."
Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road
And even if she had all four attributes, men would still stray. It's the nature of the male animal to do so.
former law student said...
Even though you have a steak and a nice bottle of Cabernet at home, sometimes you just have a taste for a greasy cheeseburger and a PBR.
That is very good. Great laugh.
Wealth of any material sort is no guarantee of happiness or fidelity.
P.S. -- Yeah, Rh, that's a little silly. Do you have any idea what the porn industry rakes in each year?
Porn is for getting rid of an obsession. Which it does. And afterwards the women look ridiculous instead of sexually available. I don't know the physiology, but all the aesthetics disappear in an ending that surprises itself.
That itch is wired in so that the species survives; it's not there to men's benefit.
Paglia put it that the man in the dirty book store staring at porn is looking for an answer, not gratification. He's trying to make sense of something that makes no sense. He's wired to try to make sense of things, and this is not making sense.
When the ``hey this is interesting'' output channel somewhere stops firing in his brain, he can go back to contemplating football.
For women who are not presenting themselves as sexually available, eg. DBQ's nudist camps for example, they're ridiculous from start to finish.
Cavell got himself into the proper abstract contemplative mood once, in _The Claim of Reason_
I do not think, whenever I look upon, or think of, the naked human body, ``How right it is that the parts and features of the body are all just where they are!'' I may of course from time to time be struck by this fact. I may also from time to time be struck not by the rightness but by the dumb fortune, or irony, of certain placements of the parts and features of the body. as Yeats was, for example, by love's having pitched its mansion in the place of excrement. This anatomical fact is something Freud found a natural, incorrigible limitation upon the purity or satisfaction of desire. Certainly any changes I can dream of in the arrangement strike me as quite insane. It is so human a fortune. Not the fact of it is human; the fact is shared by other animals. What is so human is that we share the fact with other animals, that animals are also our others. That we are animals. Being struck bu this is somehting one might call ``seeing us as human.'' p.411
Meade said...
"Sometimes even the Vice President of the United States must have to stand naked and the rest of us must try not to ridicule her."
In point of fact, all Vice-Presidents are naked from the waist down during the State of the Union address. If you watch closely, you'll see that they never participate in standing ovations for this reason. This is a tradition going back to Wilson's decision to discharge his state of the union obligations with a speech rather than a letter, resurrecting the early practice that had lain dormant since Jefferson rose to speak, broke wind, turned tail, fled in embarasment, and never came back. At any rate, Wilson couldn't stand Vice President Tom Marshall and thought it would be a clever prank to apologize to Marshall for the inconvenience, but they would be returning to all the pre-Jeffersonian traditions associated with the State of the Union, including, alas, the naked veep rule. Now, what Wilson didn't know was that Marshall actually had a long-standing bet with Brian Lamb over whether he could show his ding dong on C-SPAN, so Marshall won the bet, and veeps ever since have felt obligated. The only exception was Spiro Agnew in '73 who objected on the grounds that if he wasn't wearing any pants, how could he be caught with them around his ankles?
Vice President Cheney continues the tradition today, and it would be unconservative for Palin to change this. Cheney also attends all cabinet meetings in the nude mode, but that's just personal preference.
I'm pretty sure that it's well established that opportunity is the key factor in cheating, for men or for women, famous or otherwise.
Actors tend to go on 2-3 month business trips where they're paired with some of the best looking people on the planet, and where their job requires them to feign intimacy both physical and emotional.
It's amazing any of them stay together.
But I think the stats show it's not just a guy thing. Get women to the office place and, sure enough, they'll find partners. (And before that, the milkman and the mailman.)
Meade: Sonnet 116 was one of our wedding readings! Good choice.
Simon. I think there's another reason Cheney has stuck with tradition.
"Sometimes even the Vice President of the United States must have to stand naked and the rest of us must try not to ridicule her."
Meade nudges the Dylan fans.
For women who are not presenting themselves as sexually available, eg. DBQ's nudist camps for example, they're ridiculous from start to finish.
Same goes for men in the ridiculous category. The three piece set is just funny unless there is some personal sexual interest going on.
There is nothing more ridiculous and offputting than to be in a restaurant full of nude people eating food. Fat people, old wrinkly people, even studly and sexy good looking people. Why are they using a napkin in their laps for God's sake. You aren't wearing clothes. There is no point. Just go hose off!! Seriously stupid looking. Plus.....who wants to sit in the chair next after they have been sitting there with their bare butts. Gross. WE dressed for meals even if only in shorts and t-shirts.
My parent's were 'bohemian' types so I went to family style nudist colonies with them from childhood through teenage years. Seriously. Naked people as a group, walking around, playing vollyball, reading in chaise lounges, swimming, shopping for groceries in the resort cantina are really just not that attractive or much of a turn on unless you are some sort of fetishist or pervert. I must admit swimming nude is the only way to go though. :-)
I think you're all wrong.
(Well, I'll admit to not reading the last third of the comments, so maybe not everyone was wrong.)
Cheating isn't about looks or even personality. See... if you figure out you're with someone you really don't like, you can break-up with that person. If you're married and your sense of morality allows it, you can get divorced.
Cheating is something else.
Our culture tells us that being "in love" does certain things... we don't notice other women or other men, we don't *desire* other women or other men, because we are satisfied with the one we've got.
Human nature isn't that way at all and being "in love" isn't something that binds us against our will and volition to be faithful to another person.
Tea Leoni has never grabbed me.
Figuratively or literally.
www.forgotten-ny.com
Human nature isn't that way at all and being "in love" isn't something that binds us against our will and volition to be faithful to another person.
Not against our will, but some people most certainly have a switch that, when flipped there's no inclination or interest in cheating, while for others it's a daily struggle.
Same goes for men in the ridiculous category. The three piece set is just funny unless there is some personal sexual interest going on.
Probably true. The thing is just ignored in men's phys ed, looking neither ridiculous nor not ridiculous.
Anyway the reason that attractive women are cheated on is that attractive simply doesn't matter, and this happens very quickly. It's just your gf wandering around the house with no clothes on, no matter what she looks like.
The feminine operation is concealing that nothing is being concealed, for which you need clothes.
Mallarme here , and also:
One of them divulges his intuition, theoretically and, it may well be, vacuously, as of this date: he knows that such suggestions, touching on literary art, ought to proclaim themselves firmly. The hesitation, however, to uncover everything abruptly of what does not yet exist, weaves, for modesty's sake, out of the general state of surprise, a veil.
Let us ascribe to daydreams, before the start of the reading, in an audience, the attention solicited by some fluttering white butterfly, at once everywhere, nowhere -- it vanishes; yet not without leaving a bit of sharp, ingenuous nothing, to which I just reduced the subject, which has passed and re-passed, insistently, before the general astonishment.
Sex addiction? HAHAHAHA!
I guess rehab is the modern equivalent of being banished to the sofa.
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