ptgatsby
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- Apr 24, 2007
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- ISTP
Women are always picky.
Women dominate mate selection. The bell curve of available mates must change in accordance with any specific social need... so you can expect preferences to shift.
(I've always thought that it's possible men dominate society as a way to prevent female mate selection to become the defacto standard of social superiority... but anyway)
But their taste of men have never changed. No matter how rich they are, they still want the dominating, aggressive, and adventurous men with an attitude. Casanova, Lord Byron, and Hemingway are examples of such men.
Perhaps in the wild. However, it has also been shown that certain traits - agreeableness (ie: F-ish), openness (N) and conscientiousness (J) are all predictors of both mate selection and relationship happiness ("FNJ" being positive and "TSP" being negative, roughly in that order - men put more emphasis on conscientiousness).
It's akin to saying that men like sleeping with a lot of women. The animal instinct remains, but the socialized impact differs significantly in the modern world. Preferences shift.
Women want a bread winner only when they need stability, for themselves or their children. That's why women above 30 always try to get married, or dream of marriage. They know they will not be attractive anymore in a few years time and they need to get married to ensure their financial stability.
In asia, "30" use to be 25 or 20, depending on where you are talking about. This is entirely cultural in nature. Women tend to like money and power, all other things being equal. There is certainly no lack of young women looking to land the 'big fish'... they aren't looking for a typical "bread winner" either.
It's pretty hard to generalize "what women want". Different types want different things in different measurements. While biologically they do want certain gene traits, women are dominated by mental connections far far more than men. That results in other traits being important, if not more important than certain previous gene traits.
Jennifer said:Getting back to the OP, hmmm, I don't know. I see value in what Toonia AND Gatsby say and can't quite make sense of which is closer to the truth. What's interesting to me, though, is that if you take Toonia's tact that the standards are meant in some way to restrain women, it also means that women are complicit in their own enslavement. I have found women more uptight about their weight and appearance than men demand from them explicitly. Perhaps there is a cultural ideal that is being assimilated, but on the personal level, many men seem much more forgiving of women -- they're not required to play the skin-and-bones role of the Fifth Horseman.
In absolute terms, what I can say is;
1) Most of these norms are not imposed by men but by social standards and by women.
2) Men are almost universally more forgiving of 'errant' things than women.
However, I think Toonia is also correct in that certain things (feet binding, etc) are also a result of social conventions, typically male dominated. However, it is also true that men have been put through the same things... it's only civilization that has removed a lot of it. Metrosexual is here now though, so I can't say that it won't be back... only that you get it in tribal societies a whole lot more.
It hurts to watch -- my daughter, who is slim and slight like most Asian women, and probably always will be no matter what she eats, already comments negatively about her weight... and I think she's already too skinny. I constantly reassure her that she's skinnier than many women and most would be happy to look just like her... but she persists in this thinking. I just don't understand. No one at home is talking about "being fat" -- not about her, not about anyone.
I don't know how old she is... but the cause isn't that mysterious.
1 - Beauty is measured along a bell curve (which is very ^ shaped - very little tail towards (un)attractive).
2 - We intuitively measure ourselves along a bell curve
3 - Our own bell curve model is based upon biased sampling - what we see
4 - Mass media produces over 50% of our representation of human beauty
Hence, the bell curve is vastly shoved towards "beautiful" with the norm being vastly out of whack with reality. The end result is that nearly every women is insecure with their looks regardless of where they actually fit on the curve (with increasing amounts of exceptions based upon the individual