From "Finding Love in a Hopeless Place/In-person dating is back, and it’s seemingly more awkward than ever" by Lizzie Widdicombe (The New Yorker).
ADDED: "[S]he’d found that height is something that men tend to obscure online. She said that she doesn’t want to seem shallow...." Shallowness is something we tend to obscure online. But really is it shallow to admit that you are an animal, a body responding instinctively, whatever excuses and explanations you layer on top?
Posts
25 comments:
This could be the weirdest age ever to be young and single, trying to find a partner. I'm glad I don't have to do it.
This could be the weirdest age ever to be young and single, trying to find a partner. I'm glad I don't have to do it.
I've given up. Granted, at almost forty I'm no longer "young" but at this point finding someone is basically impossible.
"But really is it shallow to admit that you are an animal, a body responding instinctively, whatever excuses and explanations you layer on top?"
No. So why do (some) women not want to admit it?
Gavin deBecker, in "The Gift of Fear" makes the case that we gather information unconsciously, process it unconsciously and that the result comes bubbling up as a "vibe", a "hunch" a "feeling".
Sort of like doing a math problem in the eighth grade without showing your work. The teacher can't tell how you got to be wrong. Or, for that matter, right.
One should always, deBecker says, analyze a vibe or a hunch and not dismiss it because the worksheet is missing. Not follow it thoughtlessly, but think about it.
This is one of the best reasons to "get to know" somebody before a date, which by definition means some time, long or short, alone with the other person.
Temujin said...
This could be the weirdest age ever to be young and single, trying to find a partner.
Depends where you live!
Looks like courtship has gotten MUCH MORE straightforward, for most Afghan women
I echo Temujin. My second son just married at 38. He said one of the happiest days of his life was in November 2019, when he decided she was probably the one and he could delete all his dating apps. It sounded demoralising.
As for being shallow, one at least does not want to give off the suggestion of it at first meeting. There will be time later to discuss appearances versus realities of shallowness. So we pretend that things are not important to us because they aren't supposed to be.
No. So why do (some) women not want to admit it?
Appearance matters. It says a lot about your physical health, your mental state, your view of the world, etc. There's nothing wrong with making a judgement about a person's appearance.
Now, women don't want to admit it because most of them look like crap. Pudgy, frumpy, no fashion sense, horrible makeup, etc. They want the 6'3" stud with the six-pack, but don't want to do the work to earn him.
Oh, boo hoo blee blah, online dating is so HARD. I guarantee that you can have way more reach online than you could ever have in real life. When I first discovered Tinder, it was like starting crack. I'm extremely lucky I made it out.
So the women sat in one spot and the men rotated. Fits natural protocol.
This social dislocation is intended. The corporatists have found many ways to drive wedges into our society.
COVID fear was by far their most successful and divisive action. We still have a fair number of gullible fools who think they will die if they aren't wearing a face diaper.
Turns out that leg to body ratios are also a key component. Women are keyed to look for men with slightly longer legs than average. Not excessively longer, just a bit above average.
Having silver white hair and single digit body fat works. But only on women who are 2-6 inches shorter than you are.
Something about looking up at a man's eyes for women, but not putting a crick in the neck. Men are obviously less picky.
Men have trouble looking at women's eyes. The ability to do so is clearly attractive to women.
I think that a man being taller masks sliding eyes. Taller women are even eye level with me and they notice that my eyes don't slide down. It is interesting to watch changing body language during a conversation.
Women are often pretty open about their height preferences for men--tall please!
But if a guy is stupid enough to admit that he would rather date a woman who isn't fat, he's an asshole.
"It was nice being able to see how tall people actually were—she’d found that height is something that men tend to obscure online."
Maybe they should have included a mug shot to show their height...some women like bad boys : )
"Taller women are even eye level with me and they notice that my eyes don't slide down."
How the hell do you know what they notice is NOT happening?
"Now, women don't want to admit it because most of them look like crap. Pudgy, frumpy, no fashion sense, horrible makeup, etc."
I was at a baseball game recently...a pretty mixed crowd demographically.
Overall, about half the men were obese and about 80% of women the same. At least 50% had very bad tattoos...
The 5% hotties really stood out.
Even in the age of Covid, all the fatties were grabbing the filthy railing of the stairs to haul themselves up to get that one more hot dog or beer.
How the hell do you know what they notice is NOT happening?”
That made me laugh.
Because I’m a good listener, or eavesdropper, I learned from an relatively early age to focus on the bridge of the nose when talking to women. Admittedly, there have been times when that’s been a feat of concentration and perhaps there are more subtle signals at work here because I’ve noticed that many women still tend to cross their arms when I’m conversing with them. Maybe it’s not me. Maybe they’ve been conditioned to automatically do that by long experience with less thoughtful males.
I'd presume women expect eyes to slide down. When they don't, it's an anomaly and anomalies get attention.
I always thought that lying about your height while online dating was the silliest thing: you're found out as soon as you meet in person. My wife and I laughed about that on our very first date (met through online dating). You can easily stretch the truth about your love of golf or how much your read or other things you think will be attractive to the others online. But if you claim to be six-foot tall and you're actually five-foot-nine? Nice try.
And getting caught in a lie on the very first date? Often before "hello"? Talk about a total turnoff.
"I'd presume women expect eyes to slide down. When they don't, it's an anomaly and anomalies get attention."
Or they're members of the IBTC. NTTAWWT.
Spanx..
Makeup...
Ann Althouse said...
"Taller women are even eye level with me and they notice that my eyes don't slide down."
How the hell do you know what they notice is NOT happening?
You notice a lot of things about what people are thinking and saying when you pay attention to them.
Approach every person as if they are going to teach you something. Listen to what they say and treat it as the most important thing happening right now. The way a person's body moves while they are talking is vitally important.
Train for interrogation. Watch videos on how to play poker. Train for crowd observation intelligence work. Watch Psycotherapists discuss how to listen. NOT Psycologists.
Timing is very important. You have to notice which words they react to. If you really want to get to it watch Fortune Tellers.
Almost all people are quite unconscious of how much information they communicate without saying a word.
walter said...
Spanx..
8/22/21, 1:55 PM
My wife and I have had a couple discussions about Yoga pants.
"But they cover everything!"
"No. No they don't."
Yeah, when Larry David shows up instead of a 6 foot 4 inch former Marine, it is going to destroy any chances of the date succeeding- you aren't even going to give her the chance to find out about that 8 inch cock you claimed to have.
"I'd presume women expect eyes to slide down. When they don't, it's an anomaly and anomalies get attention."
Of course, sometimes they are wrong.
Back, nearing a quarter century ago, as a patent attorney for a major electronics company, I was accused of sexual harassment by two women. What were the specifics? I asked my female boss. She responded that women know these things. So, I want to my secretary to dig it out. She obliged (one of the reasons it really pays to take care of the people who work for you). She reported back that it was two other secretaries. One spent her days walking around and talking to the male attorneys, so that she didn’t have to do the secretarial work she was supposed to be doing. I knew about that, and refused to oblige, because my secretary was having to do extra work to cover for her. I wouldn’t make eye contact with her, which meant I looked down. The one secretary claimed that I was staring at her chest. She was the queen bee, and the other was a wannabe. I didn’t talk to her more often than every couple months. Both were married and a bit overweight. And neither had a college education. Absolutely no interest whatsoever on my part - I went for thin attorneys at the time, including my GF, my boss (from a far) and a coworker I worked with a lot, who was married to the guy with the office next door. Not my type. With that information, I was able to go back to my boss, and essentially threaten to claim retaliatory sexual harassment on the part of those two women, with the rest of the secretaries willing to testify on my behalf. Whoops. Not what our office manager and VP wanted, as he politicked for the top patent job in the company He was in for getting rid of me, because I did things my own way, but had the best numbers for patents in the country. (He also tried when someone complained about my late night commenting in a listserve group - except that it was always late night and never any attribution of my employment).
So, no, women don’t always know when you are looking at their chests.
"It was nice being able to see how tall people actually were—she’d found that height is something that men tend to obscure online. She said that she doesn’t want to seem shallow"
But she is shallow, which is why she requires "her man" to be taller than her
"It was nice being able to see how tall people actually were—she’d found that height is something that men tend to obscure online. She said that she doesn’t want to seem shallow"
Why do women prefer taller men? For a couple of related reasons. First, they are more likely to be alpha males, which means better able to provide for them and their kids. Moreover, tallness, like symmetry, indicates health and healthy genes, which again advantages her kids with him. Similarly, men prefer well proportioned (3-2-3 ratio) symmetric females, because they are more likely to provide healthy kids. This isn’t usually something intentional or conscious, but rather is instinctual.
Why do men fake this? Same reason that women very often provide unrepresentative photos themselves. Very often they show the women as younger, thinner, and better proportioned (with push up or padded bras, fake tits, girdles of sorts, etc). Guys wear lifts, just as gals wear padded or push up bras. My partner the other day mentioned guys putting socks in their pants, to suggest larger genitalia. I responded that women did the same with their bras to suggest bigger tits. Many of both sexes chat a bit. Just the nature of things.
Interestingly though, different races look for different things. Orientals have more neoteny (female retention of juvenile features) and greater sexual dimorphism, while Negroids have less, with Caucasians in the middle. This suggests that Blacks prefer larger, full figured women, while the height difference is most important to NE Asians. These preferences can probably be traced to surviving and flourishing for tens of thousands of years in different climates, with different requirements.
About a quarter of a century ago, fresh from a divorce, I engaged in video dating. One picture of me was in a tux. Another was in pressed jeans, boots, and a sport coat. (I was in Austin at the time). I was trying to say a couple things. One was that I owned my own tux (I did), and that meant that I enjoyed doing things that required a tux. That’s not something that I would have advertised in CO, but urban TX is different there. Urban Texans love their formals, and esp the women, who dressed up in their long dresses and glittered. It actually worked, as a number of the women I met that way commented on the tux. None though clicked, maybe because I was looking for brains, as indicated by at least one doctorate degree. The funny part was that the woman I ended up with while living there was another attorney, whom I met at a pre party for one of the formals.
Post a Comment