Match has released its 2012 Singles in America survey, including 5,500 singles over 21. (H/T: Stuart Schneiderman) It’s definitely legit, with some very big names attached:
Singles in America was funded by Match.com and conducted by MarketTools in association with biological anthropologist, Dr. Helen Fisher; sex and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman; evolutionary biologist with The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, Dr. Justin R. Garcia; and the Institute for Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) at Binghamton University.
Singles in America, 2012
SIA, 2012
SIA, 2012
SIA, 2012
Let’s get to some other fun facts. I’ve highlighted the items of particular interest, either because they’re surprising or frequently discussed here at HUS:
Sex
- 47% of singles reported a “friends with benefits” relationship. And those surveyed last year were more than twice as likely to say it turned into a longterm relationship (44%) compared to 20% the previous year.
- As for one-night stands, the singles survey found that 44% of women and 63% of men had ever had one. Of those, 33% said it had turned into a relationship.
- 1/3 of singles (31%) had a one-night stand last year (2012).
- Almost one-third (28%) say they’ve had sex by the third date; almost half (46%) by the sixth date.
How People Feel About Being Single
- Over 76% of single Americans are happy with their personal life.
- Nearly 85% of singles either actively want or are open to being in a relationship.
- 9/10 of singles are optimistic about marriage.
- Singles’ optimism about marriage has increased over the last 3 years (2012: 90%, 2011: 78%, 2010: 76%).
- 85% of singles have been in love before – no gender difference.
- 84% of singles have been in a committed relationship in the past.
- When asked what the most challenging part about being single is, the most common response – by 44% of men and 30% of women – was not having someone to share my life with.
Relationship Dealbreakers
- 45% of men are turned off by a woman who “doesn’t care about her career.”
- 63% of single men and 71% of single women agree that a disheveled or unclean appearance would be a deal-breaker for a potential partner.
- A majority of men (60%) and women (72%) think being lazy is a deal-breaker.
- A minority of men (13%) and women (15%) actually said that not wanting kids would be a deal-breaker.
- 51% of men and 47% of women said a long-distance relationship was out of the question.
- Nearly half of the heterosexual people (44% of men and 50% of women) surveyed say that bad sex would be a deal-breaker.
- 38% would cancel a date because of something they found while doing Internet research on their date.
- 42% would not date a virgin (33% of men & 51% of women).
- 65% would not date someone with credit card debt greater than $5,000.
- 54% would not date someone with substantial student loan debt.
- 49% would consider getting into a committed relationship with someone who lived at home with parents.
- 71% of women are not likely to date someone shorter than them.
- 77% of women would not date someone who was secretive with their texts vs. 53% of men.
- Digital offenses most women won’t put up with – a person who wouldn’t allow their date to use their phone (74% vs. 48%) password protected their phone (42% vs. 29% of men), was secretive with emails (76% vs. 53% of men), answered calls discretely (69% vs. 47%) or limited their Facebook profile (58% vs. 37% of men).
Relationship Requirements
- 93% of singles say a partner who treats them with respect is a must have or very important in a potential relationship.
- Over 80% “must have” a partner who has a sense of humor and is comfortable communicating his or her wants and needs.
- 73% of both sexes want a partner who is physically attractive to them.
- 36% of women (and 13% of men) in this Singles in America study report that they “must have” a partner who makes as much money as they do.
Some Surprising Findings
- 33% of men and 43% of women have fallen in love with someone they didn’t initially find attractive.
- Only 3% of men would like to ‘just date a lot of women.’
- 30% of men say they have fallen in love at first sight, while only 21% of women report the same.
- Over 25% of men will commit to women whom they don’t feel romantically attracted to, provided she has everything else they are looking for in a partner. (If they see all of their buddies getting hitched and having kids, they will feel a desire to follow suit, especially if their partner is pressuring them down the aisle.)
- Women enjoy having their own careers and they no longer expect or desire financial stability from a mate. Men seem to enjoy this new setup as well, and they like having a partner who has her own life and her own interests.
How about you? What surprises you most?
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It is amazing to me that with so many “big names” publishing the survey results, they ignored the fact that people don’t accurately report their own preferences. I guarantee you that if they did a study (which of course would take more time, funding and effort…) to investigate what men and women actually RESPOND to (that is, act on) in the opposite sex, the results would be wildly different.
There is a big difference between what matters and what people think should matter – the latter of which dictates what they SAY matters.
In fairness, though, I do commend them on surveying non-online daters. I hate when the researchers from these websites (I primarily have OKCupid’s blog in mind) make the huge assumption that their users accurately represent the whole demographic, but do nothing whatsoever to substantiate that assumption.
So at least surveying non-site users is a step in the right direction. Let’s see what they improve in 2013.
… And here we thought female virginity had more of a stigma.
Not much of this is surprising to me, except for the idea that *that* many people think that love at first sight exists.
Trusting a person’s self-report on sexual preference is like trusting a person’s self report on his or her sanity. If we did that – we would have to open up all the asylums, as everyone in there believes they are perfectly sane.
I am not saying that people are liars (some are but this is largely irrelevant)
I am saying people do not get themselves, because they have not spent as much time studying science about themselves as proper researchers did.
There is nothing wrong with the idea that an average person has less knowledge about his or her sexuality than an external professional researcher would after proper analysis and studies.
It’s ok.
It’s the way human society works. As we get smarter about the world around us and about ourselves, the complexity of our knowledge on a particular subject increases and at one point it bursts outside the scope of common wisdom. And next generation becomes oblivious to that subject altogether, preferring to relegate its management to professionals.
In other words, women are pickier than men in everything.
We have to be.
Did we? We have some female commenters (including myself) that are vocal about it here on HUS, but I thought it was a given that male virginity had more of a stigma, especially in light of “all men want is sex.”
Anyone else notice weight was conspicuously absent on the ‘ten things judge’ list?
Self reporting is meaningless, especially today when being PC is the standard.
I doubt the veracity of a lot of this. What people want, and SAY they want usually are different.
Not to mention as Vicomte said weight is absent. I would say one of the first things men judge for either sex or a relationship is 1) how fat the women is 2) does she have any physical defects.
Once those two big things are passed then we can move on to the other qualifications.
@Saywhaat
Huh. I thought it was you that suggested the opposite.
Know what’s funny?
I read Stuart’s blog all the time and my eyes kind of glazed over when I saw the blog post referencing this survey, whereas I read his “Are Republicans Too Polite for Politics” much more carefully.
I suppose this makes sense since I’m not actually looking to find a date, being that I already have a wife.
@SayWhaat:
“We have some female commenters (including myself) that are vocal about it here on HUS, but I thought it was a given that male virginity had more of a stigma, especially in light of “all men want is sex.””"
All I know is that I stayed a virgin much longer than OTC, being that “not having sex” was one of my (perfectionistic) moral goals.
Winning!
Yeah!
Yeah!
(I note that my goal appears to be the opposite of Cooper’s goal)
@Coop, Saywhaat
Female virginity at worst induces an eww factor because its emotionally entangling.
Male virginity is a sign of great failure. The response would be closer to visceral repulsion/outright avoidance.
The most important thing in a mate is that he/she respects me and allows me to confide in him/her.
As this is an exceptionally rare attribute in people, I will filter people out on the basis of their teeth.
Sorry, bit of a touchy topic. Mother dearest, in her infinite blue-pill wisdom, decided to sit me down when I was a defenseless, impressionable 13 year old, and tell me that my smile didn’t matter.
Now, at the age of 26, I never smile. Ever. I instantly repel people when I open my lips.
Thanks, Blue Pill Mom.
I guess cosmetic dentistry is a wise investment then.
Granted, I also think general cosmetic surgery, used judiciously, is a boon for men and women alike.
INTJ: Yeah seriously. Look at the “Must Haves” list and the things they judge most about the opposite sex. All the charts for women are higher.
@Lokland:
“Male virginity is a sign of great failure. The response would be closer to visceral repulsion/outright avoidance.”
This assumes that you were actually trying to have sex with your girlfriends.
I was always more proud of the fact that I was a virgin.
Bully,
You are indeed correct, but Blue Pill Disney Wonderland said that such things were superficial.
Bah.
I am in a bad mood lately and this survey really doesn’t help things. I’ll be back later.
In other news, Boston is now the Hate Crime Capital of the U.S.
“Boston is among the most educated cities in the United States. It’s also among the most liberal; the city has hosted some of the country’s most contentious debates over progressive ideas and policies in recent memory, having most recently served as ground zero for the nation’s first legal ruling by a state in favor of gay marriage.
So it was with some surprise that, given its social-policy leanings, Boston ranked second among all U.S. cities in the number of hate crimes reported in 2011. The city’s 206 reported hate crimes for the year were 21 percent more than third-place Los Angeles (170) and nearly double third-place Phoenix (123). New York led all U.S. cities in reported hate crimes with 240 incidents in 2011, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation crime statistics.
One could even say Boston is the hate crime capital of the country, at least on a per capita basis. The city’s population of around 625,000 residents is but a fraction of New York’s 8.2 million residents and Los Angeles’ 3.8 million residents, giving it the distinction as the most likely city for a resident to report a hate crime.”
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/bbj_research_alert/2012/12/boston-ranks-2nd-in-us-for-reported.html?page=all
@ADBG:
“I am in a bad mood lately and this survey really doesn’t help things. I’ll be back later.”
Your mood would be worse if you worked as a Big 4 accountant.
One of my friends just bailed and went in-house as that partnership carrot kept being pulled further and further away.
And those are some killer hours.
@Andrew
This is a common claim, or dismissal, but I don’t really understand it. Perhaps because I know that when I take an online survey, I am honest about my preferences, and I’m in touch with what they actually are. Looking at this survey, I am struck by how honest people appear to have been in revealing their sexual activity – why do you assume they don’t know what they want, or if they do, don’t want to say so on an anonymous survey?
15% of guys only would balk at the no-kid thing?
That surprises me. Though it shouldn’t – I know a lot of folks who are proudly on the extinction plan.
@Cooper
Frankly I was stunned to learn that a full third of males don’t want to date a virgin. Why is that? These same males are not avoiding relationships, so it’s not the “she bleeds, she’s needy” thing.
@Deli
And yet there are very interesting parallels between the sexes. Also, these findings are very much in keeping with other surveys readers here have been quick to dismiss, e.g. the annual AskMen survey.
For example, we now have numerous sources where males explicitly state they prefer women with careers who bring home the bacon. At what point do you accept that a majority of males feel a certain way?
How about you? What surprises you most?
That they put a bow in the female symbol. Is the female symbol and she is pink the bow seems overkill don’t you think?
Personally, I view the opportunity to have my say on a survey, without regard to political correctness, extremely gratifying. No one is watching me answer, I can truly speak my mind.
Not to put too fine a point in it, but these are the dumbest fucking categories I’ve ever seen.
I have not found this to be the case. Why is this such an active meme? I think it rests squarely on the assumption that women like assholes but say they like nice guys. In my experience, women who love douchebags will admit that fairly readily, and women who don’t are eager to make that clear as well.
This is not to say that any man can’t have his own standards and pet peeves – weight being among them. But in a survey of 5,500 singles with no one looking over anyone else’s shoulder, weight did not come up much.
I think the weight thing is overblown. I’ve been on numerous college campuses and have observed zero obese women. Yes, I’ve seen some women who are overweight, but to be honest, I was far more aware of women who were disturbingly thin.
47% of singles reported a “friends with benefits” relationship. And those surveyed last year were more than twice as likely to say it turned into a longterm relationship (44%) compared to 20% the previous year.
As for one-night stands, the singles survey found that 44% of women and 63% of men had ever had one. Of those, 33% said it had turned into a relationship.
_____________________
So according to THIS survey, almost half of singles think in a similar manner to the way I think. Almost half think some casual sex is OK. A one night stand for about a third of singles results in a relationship.. (but I thought the VAST majority of men would “never” have a relationship with a woman who gave it up on the first night)… How little some of you know about life. You are stuck in your little narrow cocoon, thinking all men think like you.
Great article Susan, bravo
This is an interesting survey. And quite on the mark too. But when you say Match.com, errrrm, I don’t know….
It’s a little hard to get all that excited about a survey that reports that “Teeth” are the number one thing that we care about.
I have a feeling that this survey was constructed in a way where, suddenly, something like “Teeth” becomes very important, like:
Please tell us which you prefer and how important it is to you:
1. Good Teeth or Bad Teeth [Suddenly you get an image of some toothless wonder with some random gold shining in her mouth.]
And you answer: Good Teeth, GOOD TEETH!!!!
And how important is that to you on a scale of 1-10? 17 million!!!!
Same deal with grammar. And on down the list. So, instead of having some ideal girl-next-door in your mind, you start focusing on NOT dating some girl that looks like Jaws from Moonraker and talks like she majored in Ebonics.
What, you are asking me if I care more about whether or not she has an iPad then if she has a full mouth or relatively straight teeth? Come on.
Yes, it is because girls at their hottest (18-24) tend to be really disconnected between what they say they want and what their actions have shown to be the case.
Traditionally, very, very few girls said out loud that they like douchebags. They will complain, after the fact, that they have dated assholes, with their role as victim firmly in place.
However, I have found that it seems that girls are becoming more honest than they seemed to be back in the day. It is hard for me to compare since I was not dating in the good old days, but girls seem to fairly upfront, now, about things like looks and physique.
It seems that the idea of the Nice Guy not being that attractive to girls is a fairly new idea that we see in pop culture. Again, as far as I can tell, we did not see that much of that (Nice Guys being unattractive to girls) in the 80′s.
However, it is also possible that as girls have become more honest about what they want in their man, they may also be having bigger problems with Projection (i.e. advertising to the men-folk those things that they, as girls, would want to see ["Kylee, make sure that you post pictures of yourself in exotic places having a great time."]).
Susan, Yes or No:
We are fatter now than we have ever been?
One, it absolutely depends on the college. And, two, is it just possible, that for the average girl, eating the bad diet that she is likely to have and living in the suburbs (the grand majority of post collegiate, and collegiate, girls live not in cosmopolitan cities, but in suburbs), that she is likely to consistently gain weight throughout her 20s (I am not saying that she becomes obese) and that by the time she ha children (late 20s) that getting back to fighting weight is really unlikely?
Also, I have said this many, many times, but, the issue of obesity is way overblown. It is almost a strawman.
If we focus on obesity, then, anyone who is NOT obese can then think, “Yeah, I am doing OK”. But, for a blog like this, where attracting a mate is basically priority number one (assuming that things like, you know, walking and breathing have already been mastered), focusing on obesity is ridiculous.
It would be like asking about a guys social skills and if he is charming, and he responds, “Well, I have never killed anyone nor have I ever raped a girl.”. Wow, really? Well, then, you should do just fine in attracting that someone special.
Now, with all of that said, I will most definitely grant you this: in the land of UMC college campuses, you are unlikely to find that many overweight girls, and that is very good.
But, by the time they get serious about getting married, from what I have seen, lots and lots of girls get the kind of midsection and thighs that come along with a diet of pasta, bagels, wine and cocktails.
Wine? Wine?! Wine does not make you gain weight!
Right, a SINGLE glass of wine will not make you gain weight. But, as well all know, that is not how girls drink today.
But Susan, please reflect on your sentence that I quoted and the contrasting question that preceded it. Surely you must see some sort of disconnect, even if, in Lake Wobegon, you do not see that many overweight girls.
@Susan
re: Answers that aren’t 100% honest…
I don’t it’s an example of trying to give the right answer to the survey organizers as much as it’s an example of trying to give the right answer to themselves.
A lot of people like to think they’re smarter, less shallow, more interesting, more cultured, etc. than they actually are, and in many cases will lie to themselves and actually believe it. I know I certainly have in the past, including on surveys.
Ramble also illustrated the issue of the survey format itself with the point about good teeth.
Now I’m not saying that means those surveys are useless… but it definitely makes me view them with a more skeptical eye.
@Ramble
Americans have very good teeth. Very good. Having crooked teeth, or heaven forbid discolored teeth, can be ruinous to one’s appearance. When I traveled through Ireland in my 20s, people stopped me to admire my teeth. It was the strangest experience – they marveled at them. I mean, they’re OK – they’re straight and strong and not too far from white. But in Ireland, my teeth were in the top 0.1%.
One frustrating thing about this survey is that there is no tidy PDF somewhere that I can comb through. The stats in this post come from a dozen different articles and press releases on Match. They do not publish their primary source. So I can’t actually see how the questions were asked.
@Susan:
“Frankly I was stunned to learn that a full third of males don’t want to date a virgin. Why is that? These same males are not avoiding relationships, so it’s not the “she bleeds, she’s needy” thing.”
They don’t want to be the “starter relationship”?
@Susan:
“Americans have very good teeth. Very good. Having crooked teeth, or heaven forbid discolored teeth, can be ruinous to one’s appearance.”
Having stayed up until well past midnight working on teeth whitening patent litigation, I will agree that Americans are really into their teeth.
I think that I’ve read all of the dental whitening patents known to mankind and a lot of the associated dental patents.
I probably spent six months on just dental technology in my career.
@Ramble
Hmmm. I’m thinking of my focus groups, and it’s odd – at least in this case the groups have split out into two distinct subgroups. One is, as you say, putting on the pounds, even if gradually. Working long hours, eating out, etc. all take their toll. The other group is the opposite – these girls look better than I’ve ever seen them. They work out regularly, run, bring healthy lunches to work in bento boxes, limit their alcohol, etc. I’m not sure what separates these two groups.
@Jimmy
That’s fair. I found some of it odd myself. Grammar is a priority for both sexes? How surprising! And yet I know that I have judged potential suitors to my own kids harshly on that exact attribute. Girls have showed me texts with poor grammar, wearing a “yikes” expression. IOW, grammar is a proxy for intelligence, and it is not surprising people would select for that.
Good teeth probably serve as a proxy for good health, possibly an affluent background, as well as an indicator of one’s self-care. It may well be that by paying attention to teeth and grammar, we could make good better mating choices, IDK.
They do not publish their primary source. So I can’t actually see how the questions were asked.
Right, that was my point.
Alright, now we are cooking with gas. This is consistent with what I have seen, however, with the added Middle Class that has significantly fewer of the slimmer girls and many more of the “could have lost a few pounds in college and things did not get any better afterwards” set.
I almost went “aww” when I read how most men really want someone who respects them and that they can trust.
But like others above have said, some of the figures seem off. Guys are visual, so why isn’t that represented more strongly? And there wouldn’t be such a fuss over “evil slut-shaming” if there weren’t so many sluts to shame, or men willing to shame them, so why would so many men have a problem with virgins? (Just how much blood IS there? All I have to go by are cheesy romance novels and bad fanfiction.)
Frankly I was stunned to learn that a full third of males don’t want to date a virgin.
I assume that the issue is not wanting to be responsible for someone’s first experience or deal with their emotions.
Teeth are definitely a proxy for health and background. Working class and poorer people don’t get braces and all that professional whitening as often as middle, upper middle, and upper class folk.
Of course this survey isn’t honest or accurate enough.
Guys would just say “hot/pretty” and “not a ball breaker”
Women would start with ALPHA, HOT, TALL, and WEALTHY… And then attach 20-30 additional “must haves”
I’m surprised at how similar the lists are for males and females. Sure some of the items flip positions in the lists, but the most and least important items are pretty much the same.
I’m nopt at all surprised by the importance of teeth; it’s a proxy for health. Besides, who wants to kiss someone with a dirty mouth?
“I’m nopt at all surprised by the importance of teeth; it’s a proxy for health.”
In Egypt I saw some really good looking, tall, masculine men 20-40.. attractive by anyone’s standards, looked healthy and everything. Just sometimes they’d open their mouths and their teeth were brown (bottom row and top row). I’ve not seen that even among extremely poor people in the U.S. I can definitely understand off-white, even yellow.. but brown?
People lie on survey’s to make ridiculous graphs more realistic sounding. News @ 11.
Somewhere down in the non graphic explanations we learn a bit more of ‘the truthy’ stuff, but this is pretty faintly silly. Good teeth, grammar, clothes hair and nails & accents as most important things women judge men on & vice versa? Jimmy cricket this is profoundly silly. It easily negates most of the folks walking around in the population of almost any age, right? On the grammar alone, we’d be at Zero Population growth like yesterday!
And please people, we’ve got a name for those ’63% of single men and 71% of single women [who] agree that a disheveled or unclean appearance would be a deal-breaker for a potential partner’. Once they become ‘people of a certain age?’ Most are Moms & dads in my neck of the woods. Many married too. We’ve got mostly disheveled folks, look around!
Specifically: on “Relationship Dealbreakers”:
45% of men are turned off by a woman who “doesn’t care about her career.”
[Read that as not having the right Kind of 'career'. Most women today, perhaps won't qualify here, owning to the fact that most do want kids eventually!]
A majority of men (60%) and women (72%) think being lazy is a deal-breaker.
[Umm, definitions please for the 'slacker' generations. Note Plural here!]
A minority of men (13%) and women (15%) actually said that not wanting kids would be a deal-breaker.
[Very silly, most women Do want kids, and this is a very common 'deal breaker' for those of child bearing age].
51% of men and 47% of women said a long-distance relationship was out of the
question. [Yet strangely enough they're increasing every year and leading to many more transcontinental and transnational marriages than ever before!]
Nearly half of the heterosexual people (44% of men and 50% of women) surveyed say that bad sex would be a deal-breaker. [Likely a bit higher still...]
38% would cancel a date because of something they found while doing Internet research on their date. [Or: "How stupid do you appear on the net"?]
42% would not date a virgin (33% of men & 51% of women).
[The well known bias against the 'stranger' male virgin asserts itself, and the supposed age old bias in favor of female virgins is here pretty weak tea].
65% would not date someone with credit card debt greater than $5,000.
[Yet this is pretty common. You'd do it for the great sex/body/car/hair, right?]
54% would not date someone with substantial student loan debt.
[Perhaps the biggest lie here. Average student debt load from college? $26K+ Is that bigger than a bread box? It's larger than your granddad's mortgage perhaps!]
49% would consider getting into a committed relationship with someone who lived at home with parents.
[And yet this is incredibly common for many guys, and was common for gals up until the 1970's. Why prejudice such things for someone in their 20's?]
71% of women are not likely to date someone shorter than them.
[True enough, and the numbers and marriage stats reflect this reality.]
On “Relationship Requirements”
93% of singles say a partner who treats them with respect is a must have or very important in a potential relationship. [Geez it's nice to know that abusive relationships have now become the overwhelming, fractional and disappearing minority in the country!Again a truly nice ideal that's less met in practice and reality, unfortunately.]
Over 80% “must have” a partner who has a sense of humor and is comfortable communicating his or her wants and needs. [Works on some dates at least. YMMV, restrictions apply in your particular regions and given situation!]
73% of both sexes want a partner who is physically attractive to them.
[Finally, right? Where was this on the graphs? In the grammar & hair & grooming?]
36% of women (and 13% of men) in this Singles in America study report that they “must have” a partner who makes as much money as they do.
[Yes, on any given day, men are much more relaxed about you matching his income than vice versa. And a good thing too, traditionally it was not possible with most.]
But yet given the surveyed responses, somehow mates get sorted for/in ‘positive assortment’, and the higher educated & richer ones wind up mostly married to & mating with those of like kind. How does this happen if everyone denies that education level or income or other ‘real’ status markers are not being sought or selected for here? The mind boggles. The ‘ideals’ may be laudable, but reality as they say ‘bites’. Hypergamy is not repealed, perhaps just ‘altered’ just a little bit. Sorry for the length. Cheers, ‘VJ’
51% of woman would not date a virgin?
How disturbing.
And ‘Someguy’ posts:
Women would start with ALPHA, HOT, TALL, and WEALTHY… And then attach 20-30 additional “must haves”
This is confusing.
I’m both + the additional 20-30 ‘must-haves’ (including rock hard body) minus the virginity part.
Do you think woman will over look the virginity part?
Maybe I should work on becoming famous, that is the only thing I’m missing.
I’m 34 and don’t want to die a virgin, but I don’t want to hire a prostitute or ask any of my female friends who already volunteered.
Any suggestions?
“Self reporting is meaningless, especially today when being PC is the standard.”
A survey done in the Soviet Union in the 1980′s about whether Communism was a successful political-economy would have everyone reply a resounding “yes!”, while they go home to ferret away some money for the blackmarket.
The times we live in are no different.
Also, I clearly need to go have a one night stand before I begin dating. I doubt I’d be able to fake not being a virgin.
@ Susan
Then your standards of what is overweight and what is disturbingly thin need readjustment to fall in line with what is actually healthy.
It obviously varies from campus to campus, but Susan’s observations match what I’ve seen at most of the schools I’ve been to. Obesity isn’t nearly as much of a problem at colleges as it is for the rest of the country, at least based on my observations.
After spending a good bit of time in college towns, it was pretty alarming to me how many fat people there were when I visited big cities. It’s still usually the first thing I notice.
//Also, these findings are very much in keeping with other surveys readers here have been quick to dismiss, e.g. the annual AskMen survey.
It proves that American people are in sync with American culture. (Thank you, Captain Obvious) It says nothing about universal human attractors, which would require – GASP! – cross-cultural study.
//For example, we now have numerous sources where males explicitly state they prefer women with careers who bring home the bacon. At what point do you accept that a majority of males feel a certain way?
At the point when this preference will be correctly stated to me?
Two things.
Firstly – the only mention of the female career in the survey you published was that NOT having it was a deal breaker for 50% of men.
Now spot the difference:
1) NOT having something is a bad thing.
2) Having something is a good thing.
Logically 1) != 2) .
1) Means that if a woman has a career a man is either positive or indifferent, but if she does not have a career a man is negative.
Which A lot of men would agree with. Not having any work experience is an indicator of a spoiled brat and a strong red flag.
It is anything BUT a preference for “career women”.
Secondly – just as the above mentioned statement by men “I don’t want a spoiled daddy’s little princess” was misinterpreted as “I want a breadwinner!” by researchers, men misinterpret themselves a lot, because we assume things that should not be assumed.
It was widely discussed here, that the reason why a lot of women explicitly state huge preference to caring and nurturing traits in a man is because they assume that the attraction to this man ALREADY exists.
Which makes sense – once the attraction has been established, that’s when the beta traits shine. But attraction is not a GIVEN! You can’t assume it!
So, I claim the same with men when they state personality traits as important predictors.
Sure, in a group of pretty women I would filter for personality traits – maturity, intellect, etc. But I would only do that AFTER I have already made a prefiltering by looks!
A girl, that is a perfect personality fit for me will never even get on the radar, if she does not pass the filter.
And I would rather take my chance with adapting to an unpleasant personality trait, that willingly scale down resolution on my “bang-ability” radar.
And that is why I claim that self-reporting studies are not studies “how people think”, but studies of “how people think they think”.
IMHO, it sound like a lots of BS to me.
Examples:
- men judge women on teeth and grammar – o really? How about old-fashioned approach aka “ass and tits”
- only 1/3 of women wont date a guy with lower income. Yeah – right… If he’s trained PUA.
Right. Teenagers tend to have pretty good metabolisms, but the process towards gaining weight starts soon after. And this is especially bad for the (once) middle class and not so bad for the UMC and UC who are getting smarter and smarter at playing the game (i.e. parroting the accepted narrative while living according to fairly un-pc standards)
I have not found this to be the case. Why is this such an active meme? I think it rests squarely on the assumption that women like assholes but say they like nice guys.
Because, in the experience of the average man, women almost never tell them the truth about anything. We get lied to about what she wants, why she’s not interested in us, and what she is going to do. We see her lie to others, telling people that she hates, hates, hates us even though she was eagerly going down on us a few hours before. We hear her say that she’d only date men over 6’0″ before being excited about a date with a 5’8″ guy. We follow her advice and get blown out, we listen to evil bad men like Roissy and Vox and discover that everything we ever heard from our mothers and female teachers was untrue.
We catch them out in lies and see they are totally shameless and unrepentant about lying. If I were to attempt to list the lies I have been told by women, it would take more than a thousand pages. So, yes, I am very, very dubious about anything that rests about a foundation of women telling the truth about sensitive matters. And on the more scientific sense, I note that merely the belief that their answers would be confirmed via lie detector was enough to significantly alter female responses.
I should probably mention that I am almost as dubious about men’s ability to accurately report their own preferences, but that was not directly relevant to the question.
The emotional hazards are twofold. First, if the guy just wants someone to hang with and have sex with, and isn’t commitment minded, there’s the danger that the virgin woman will totally imprint on him and follow him around like a baby duck forever. And it’s real hard to tell that baby duck that things are over and its time to move on.
Second, there’s danger if the guy is commitment minded, and he falls for the girl and thinks she’s the one, but she starts wondering about all the fun she’s been missing not sleeping around and decides to dump him so she can broaden her horizons.
Been there and done that for both.
So 64% of women will at least entertain the idea of dating someone who makes less money than they do.
I see this as a positive thing. The male gender roles of protector and provider are just not sustainable in today’s society. Both sexes need to let go of their expectations on men performing these roles.
@Mr. WaveVector:
“I see this as a positive thing. The male gender roles of protector and provider are just not sustainable in today’s society. Both sexes need to let go of their expectations on men performing these roles.”
The average man can completely shred the average woman, physically.
And last I checked, the houses around me in suburbia were still getting broken into on a regular basis.
One of the law partners I used to work with was held up at gunpoint in his own garage.
So, no the model of “protector” is not going away anytime soon.
@Mr. WaveVector:
“Second, there’s danger if the guy is commitment minded, and he falls for the girl and thinks she’s the one, but she starts wondering about all the fun she’s been missing not sleeping around and decides to dump him so she can broaden her horizons.
Been there and done that for both.”
In the first example, the guy is not going to commit.
In the second example, she may come back later.
@VD:
“I should probably mention that I am almost as dubious about men’s ability to accurately report their own preferences, but that was not directly relevant to the question.”
That’s because telling the truth will generally tear your entire social network to shreds.
So, you lie because it’s less devastating.
Remember, the truth is catastrophic.
As in catastrophe theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophe_theory
Yeah, I thought that was interesting too. I think it lends credibility to the survey. If people were just making up answers, or don’t understand what they find attractive, the answers should be all over the place. Yet the patterns hold intrasexually, intersexually, and FYI, across numerous surveys.
People are free to dismiss whatever results they don’t like, for whatever reason, but I feel quite confident there is much good material here.
I doubt it, unless it’s because people believed their answers were not really anonymous and the KGB was tracking them. I recall long lines of openly disgruntled Soviets waiting for toilet paper in the 80s. The black market for American blue jeans was enormous.
This is correct, obesity is rarely seen on college campuses, but remember that you are dealing with 18-23yo with high metabolisms, and once out of college the bad habits continue and the guys and girls start packing on the lbs. I see that a ton in the 24-29yo crowd.
The more prevalent observation on campuses, for both guys and girls, is the doughy skinny-fat look, resulting from adequate calorie consumption but in the form of alcohol, taco bell and processed carbs. Even in college, it is very commonplace to see a comradery between the guys who are always at the gym busting their asses. We may have not been best friends, but when you see the same 15-20 guys 4-5x a week for years, casual conversation and a mutual understanding just happens.
@INTJ
Excuse me? Might I suggest that your thoughts would carry more weight if your tone was less arrogant?
I know exactly what anorexia looks like, and how many female college students have it. It’s epidemic on campuses.
I’ll grant you that you’ll find individual cases of poor fitness among both sexes on campus – I saw as many overweight males as females, though truly not many of either sex.
I’ve only been on a couple of dozen campuses in total, perhaps UT Austin and Berkeley select for cellulite.
@Deli
Culture has an enormous impact on attraction cues. Universal human attractors may be helpful to know about, but if you’re living somewhere where men prefer a WHR .8 (as they no doubt do in certain areas of Manhattan) then women need to know that. Lose the curves. Preferred breast size is another variable trigger. Universally, men prefer larger breasts, but you’ll find plenty of men in certain sub-populations preferring the A or B cup breast.
You won’t find more than a passing mention of teeth in the evo psych literature (though it is in there), but it’s obviously important to the 5,500 Americans who took this study. And I believe it – it’s rare to see an American 20-something today without straightened, healthy teeth.
Eh, you’re parsing the language here. The word used was “career.” I don’t think you can assume most men would translate that to “work experience” or make the association to “career woman,” which implies a woman who will prioritize career over family.
We’ve seen across several surveys now an indication that men selecte spouses based in part on intelligence and earning power. It’s important to American men, that is very clear.
See the above weighted formula for attraction. LTR traits, which you may consider beta, are part of the spark of attraction. Note the number of people who said they had fallen in love with someone they initially found physically unattractive.
Right, and that is why you can’t understand that we operate differently. You’re projecting.
@JP
Very true. She did in my case. She discovered those tall dark handsome jocks were jerks. What a surprise. But she didn’t want kids, which was a deal breaker for me. So the second time around, I dumped her.
I actually got called last night by a survey taker about marriage/relationship attitudes among the 18-29 demographic. The questions were different though.
Re: teeth. My husband and I both had braces. He also got some kind of staining from when he was very little. I suspect my mother-in-law feels guilty about that, but I never cared about how teeth looked.
Re: “skinny fat.” It is definitely common for people to not have a lot of muscle and to not eat a healthy, homecooked diet, but still remain looking good in late teens to early 20s. After that, some of those effects start becoming visible. That’s when the working out and healthy foods are needed.
And what did the law partner do? Go Bruce Lee on the mugger, kick his ass and shove his gun down his throat? Or meekly hand over his wallet?
When faced with a gun, the average man is as powerless as the average woman. The paradigm of “protector” is merely symbolic. It may still serve as a psychological benefit, despite having little practical significance.
@VD
Let’s accept that women lie to men. That is not the same as women lying on anonymous surveys, where they have no incentive to be dishonest. I think it’s very clear from this survey that women were frank about their sexual experiences – the number of ONSs and FWBs is very much in line with what I would actually expect, for both sexes.
Furthermore, re the oft-quote lie detector study, here’s the research I did on accuracy in self-reporting:
Statistical Inaccuracies By Gender
There’s also the persistent problem that men, especially in the general population, report more sexual intercourse partners than women do. It is logically impossible for men to have a different total number of sex partners than women in a closed heterosexual population. Obviously, this discrepancy is more meaningful and problematic when discussing countrywide statistics.
Several factors have been shown to influence self-reported sexual activity by gender:
1. National sampling typically excludes female sex workers. Adding in visits to prostitutes evens the score.
2. Women report more sexual partners when they are assured anonymity, reducing their fear of a sexual double standard.
Additional factors apply to college settings:
3. Nationwide the sex ratio of 60% females to 40% males.
4. Changing gender norms for sexual behaviors is reducing the discrepancy between male and female reporting. The oft-cited “lie detector study” did not rise to statistical significance. According to its authors:
Several recent sexuality surveys have found no sex differences in self-reported sexual behavior (Browning, Kessler, Hatfield, & Choo, 1999), incidence of casual sexual interactions (Maticka-Tyndale, Herold, & Mewhinney, 1998; Paul, McManus, & Hayes, 2000), number of sexual partners in the past year (Brown & Sinclair, 1999), or desired number of lifetime sexual partners (Pedersen et al., 2002). The lack of sex differences in these studies and in our analysis may reflect currently shifting gender roles and their subsequent impact on normative expectations and expressions of sexual behavior.
5. Some studies have found that men admit to greater dishonesty than women, as they tend to round up to larger numbers when recalling the number of past sexual partners. (Their numbers tend to end in 0 or 5.) In one study, removing the men who acknowledged exaggerating eliminated all gender discrepancy in the number of reported partners.
According to researcher and sociology professor Lisa Wade, a recent online survey notes that 60% of older teenage men lie about their sexual activities.
If anything men lie more.
I do not think there is a correlation between what women tell men and what they tell themselves or each other. I agree those are often different, but that just means women have incentives to lie to men, not that they lack self-awareness. (Though I’m sure many do, just as many men do.)
@mr. wavevector
I don’t know if you saw it, but a recent post highlighted the degree of hypergamy in marriage (based on education). The net effect for those with a HS diploma or less was quite large, but the effect for the college educated was negative. There are more hypogamous marriages than hypergamous marriages. That data is from 2000 – and I’m sure those numbers are larger now. It appears there is considerable flexibility here on the part of females. I agree with you that this is a good thing.
@ Susan, Ramble, INTJ, Jimmy Hendrix, etc.
I doubt the accuracy of the self-reported preferences because I recognize my own inability to “self-report” and therefore doubt others’ as well – especially in light of the ridiculousness of the results (e.g. teeth mattering more than fitness or confidence). I don’t think this is specific to men or women, as some commenters have suggested.
So why do we feel inclined to say that something matters when it doesn’t? Because of pride: it is MY idea, I recognized it, and I know what other people don’t about what makes us “tick.”
One day they were looking a hot guy or hot girl and thought “damn she/he has nice teeth… imagine what she/he would look like with bad teeth…” (See the comment above from Ramble @ 9:06 pm) “Wow, teeth really make a big difference in attractiveness!”
Then the next time that person sees someone hot, they remember their epiphany about teeth from last time, and look at the hot person’s teeth to verify their theory; and again, the hot person’s teeth are perfectly straight, white, etc. (which incidentally is not at all uncommon in the U.S.). THEIR theory is confirmed! THEY know something other people don’t: teeth matter a LOT.
What they don’t recognize is that they never looked at the fat girl with short hair, or the ugly short bald guy, to see if they had great teeth. The recognition of the importance of teeth (or grammar, or anything else on the list) is only something that we verify on people who are ALREADY HOT FOR FAR MORE IMPORTANT FACTORS – like fitness or hair (for women), confidence or height (for men) or facial symmetry.
An example:
In generating the data for the post I made about the various aspects of female beauty on my blog, The Rules Revisited, I essentially sat down and thought “what do I find attractive in a woman?” then tried to describe and quantify the various factors. I had to revise the data several times. In doing so, I became keenly aware of how difficult it is to accurately understand what mattered to me and what didn’t. I constantly found myself wanting to rank small things (like jewelry or high heels) extremely high on the list of important factors in a woman’s beauty. But when I started to see how little room that allowed for the things that I knew from past experience actually mattered, like fitness and hair, I was forced to reduce their importance.
My inclination to place more importance on small things like heels is just like the survey respondents’ inclination to indicate that teeth were the most important thing for them. They were things that I had noticed, was proud of noticing, and verified on women who were already hot for other reasons.
It doesn’t surprise me that mixed in with the false results are true ones (hair, clothes). Some people answered accurately. These were probably people educated or experienced in self-perception. And it doesn’t surprise me that Susan and others – who have that kind of education and experience – give the survey results more credit than I think they deserve. This is due to projection (as is my skepticism of the results).
@Mr. WaveVector:
“And what did the law partner do? Go Bruce Lee on the mugger, kick his ass and shove his gun down his throat? Or meekly hand over his wallet?”
He wasn’t armed because he was a gentle, liberal type.
Most partners I’ve worked with had licenses to carry concealed and keep guns in ankle holsters, so in those cases, the mugger would have probably turned around and then been shot in the back.
One more time with proper spaces added… (feel free to delete the previous on Susan)
@ Susan, Ramble, INTJ, Jimmy Hendrix, etc.
I doubt the accuracy of the self-reported preferences because I recognize my own inability to “self-report” and therefore doubt others’ as well – especially in light of the ridiculousness of the results (e.g. teeth mattering more than fitness or confidence). I don’t think this is specific to men or women, as some commenters have suggested.
So why do we feel inclined to say that something matters when it doesn’t? Because of pride: it is MY idea, I recognized it, and I know what other people don’t about what makes us “tick.”
One day the typical survey respondent was looking a hot guy or hot girl and thought “damn she/he has nice teeth… imagine what she/he would look like with bad teeth…” (See the comment above from Ramble @ 9:06 pm) “Wow, teeth really make a big difference in attractiveness!”
Then the next time that person sees someone hot, they remember their epiphany about teeth from last time, and look at the hot person’s teeth to verify their theory; and again, the hot person’s teeth are perfectly straight, white, etc. (which incidentally is not at all uncommon in the U.S.). THEIR theory is confirmed! THEY know something other people don’t: teeth matter a LOT.
What they don’t recognize is that they never looked at the fat girl with short hair, or the ugly short bald guy, to see if they had great teeth. The recognition of the importance of teeth (or grammar, or anything else on the list) is only something that we verify on people who are ALREADY HOT FOR FAR MORE IMPORTANT FACTORS – like fitness or hair (for women), confidence or height (for men) or facial symmetry.
An example:
In generating the data for the post I made about the various aspects of female beauty on my blog, The Rules Revisited, I essentially sat down and thought “what do I find attractive in a woman?” then tried to describe and quantify the various factors. I had to revise the data several times. In doing so, I became keenly aware of how difficult it is to accurately understand what mattered to me and what didn’t. I constantly found myself wanting to rank small things (like jewelry or high heels) extremely high on the list of important factors in a woman’s beauty. But when I started to see how little room that allowed for the things that I knew from past experience actually mattered, like fitness and hair, I was forced to reduce their importance.
My inclination to place more importance on small things like heels is just like the survey respondents’ inclination to indicate that teeth were the most important thing for them. They were things that I had noticed, was proud of noticing, and verified on women who were already hot for other reasons.
It doesn’t surprise me that mixed in with the false results are true ones (hair, clothes). Some people answered accurately. These were probably people educated or experienced in self-perception. And it doesn’t surprise me that Susan and others – who have that kind of education and experience – give the survey results more credit than I think they deserve. This is due to projection (as is my skepticism of the results).
@ Susan, VD
“The oft-cited ‘lie detector study’ did not rise to statistical significance.”
It wouldn’t if the respondents were convinced of the accuracy of their answers, as I suggest above.
@ Sai:
In my experience, not a lot. I peed after sex and when I wiped, there just happened to be blood. My periods are worse.
Which is kind of ironic, because you’ll have guys boast about earning their “red wings”, but then completely dismiss virgins “because they bleed”. There’s way more blood involved in the former, Casanova. *rolls eyes*
@Andrew
But what are the odds that enough survey respondents had this exact same experience, to the extent that they cited it as a key attraction feature? You’re describing a sort of psychological fluke, which would extremely unlikely to be repeated across the population to this degree, no?
And how could such a large survey deliver bogus results across both sexes?
I get what you’re saying, but I don’t see how that alone explains the survey results. Which didn’t surprise the relationship science folks, btw.
@Mr. WaveVector:
There’s also a difference between thugs and actually trained soldiers.
With thugs, there is little formal training and they are notoriously bad shots. They don’t understand the gun as a weapon and are really only really likely to hit you at close range. Usually undisciplined and uncontrolled with respect to tactics.
The two partners I’m thinking of shot guns on a very regular basis, and were hunters, and pretty good shots.
Now, if you have someone with actual military or paramilitary training, you would be insane to try to fire back because they will kill you before you can even get to your gun.
I expect that this situation is different in blue state areas, but this was my red state experience.
One guy, whose brother I knew, lay in wait for a burglar (who he personally knew was likely to break in) to break in and then killed him.
You never know who is going to be armed in red states.
Even my assistant just got her licence to carry concealed.
Well it measured the difference between men and women. A common claim around these parts is that women lie on surveys and men don’t. In fact, both sexes lie a bit. However, the Match survey sex answers indicate, to me at least, that people appear to have reported accurately.
“As for one-night stands, the singles survey found that 44% of women and 63% of men had ever had one. ”
Meaning that there are go-to women for that as they are serving multiple men
The hymen is just some pinkish tissue, a bit ruffled in shape, that NARROWS the vaginal opening, but does not close it off altogether. As a matter of fact, in some girls the hymen may be stretched or torn during childhood from activities such as ballet, bicycle riding, or gymnastics; and therefore, virginity and the hymen aren’t necessarily related. In the vast majority of girls, the opening of the hymen will allow easy insertion of a tampon.
The first time a girl or woman has sexual intercourse the tissue of the hymen will either stretch or it may tear a bit in one or two places. Often there is NO BLEEDING and little or no pain.
http://www.beinggirl.com/article/virginity-and-the-hymen/
I did not bleed at all the first time I had sex. I assume it is because I had already ruptured my hymen via sports.
“So according to THIS survey, almost half of singles think in a similar manner to the way I think”
Um, no. No man states anywhere they are good to go with the uber multi-penised.
“Almost half think some casual sex is OK.”
The word “casual” is mentioned nowhere in the survey. Having a FWB with the woman you are with means that she is your woman and if it turns into something more then you liked her more later. No man is stating that he thinks casual sex is OK beyond what he is having with her.
“A one night stand for about a third of singles results in a relationship”
The ONS is with him. There is no other man. If he wants to know more about her past he will ask regardless of how their “relationship” started.
“I thought the VAST majority of men would “never” have a relationship with a woman who gave it up on the first night”
To other men. You’re correct. Its not that they would not, but its certainly a stumbling block and women avoid them for that very reason.
“How little some of you know about life. You are stuck in your little narrow cocoon, thinking all men think like you.”
Most do. “Most men will be in the normal range, so they have to ask about “N”, and sensible women will therefore need to lie about it.” — JediWonk
“Great article Susan, bravo”
bravo indeed.
.
Let’s accept that women lie to men. That is not the same as women lying on anonymous surveys, where they have no incentive to be dishonest. I think it’s very clear from this survey that women were frank about their sexual experiences – the number of ONSs and FWBs is very much in line with what I would actually expect, for both sexes.
True, but I was answering your question concerning why men believe women lie on anonymous surveys. To be blunt, we think women lie ALL THE FREAKING TIME. Think about the couples where the woman is gritting her teeth, white with fury, only to gush cheerfully all over the first person she talks to who isn’t her boyfriend. What do you think that does to the boyfriend’s perception of her honesty?
How many lies can you observe women tell before you simply stop believing they have any interest in the truth whatsoever. Now, obviously men lie too. But for the most part, when a man catches another man in a lie, the liar will admit it. When you catch a woman in a lie, you’re in for a long soliloquy I tend to think of is “It wasn’t really a lie if you look at it in an imaginary context and anyhow even if it was everyone does it and that’s why it doesn’t count and it was a long time ago and so therefore you’re a bad person for noticing it now what is wrong with you?”
Anyhow, I think it would be very easy to determine how reliable the sexes are on anonymous surveys. You would think that would be the very first thing to test if you’re going to be trading in the business of anonymous surveys. What is the standard margin of dishonesty on such surveys or are social scientists so idiotic that none of them have ever bothered to see about setting some sort of reasonable metric in this regard?
For example: do you have an STD? Then test everyone. How much credit card debt do you owe? Then check. Do this ten different ways and you’ll have a pretty good idea how reliable people’s answers are.
@ Susan
I think the odds are very good, for the following reasons:
(a) I’ve felt the difficulty of being self-perceiving accurately myself; and as I described above, it was significant. While I would be open to the idea that I might struggle more than the average Joe when it comes to self-perception, I would have to see a lot of hard evidence before believing I am an outlier in this regard. Until then, I believe that cautious projection reasonably indicates what the general population would do. Though I doubt you have the time it would take, I challenge you to sit down and try to enumeration and quantify the components of male attractiveness (to you). I think you will feel for yourself how tough it is. You’ve said before how important a man’s eyes are. Try to fit that into the list and then as you fill in the other factors, watch how you are forced to move it up or down accordingly. There are simply so many “important” or even “critical” factors that you will be forced to down-grade some.
(b) I used to have a subscription to Men’s Health, where they post survey results like this all the time, and I regularly questioned them as being inaccurate, for the same reasons I question these ones. (They’d have things in there saying that men said they care most about women being ambitious, or that her eyes were her most important body feature.) In other words, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen the phenomenon I am suggesting.
(c) Teeth are an easy thing to latch on to. If my theory is correct, teeth is an obvious candidate for the top of the list.
(d) That girls think they care about a man’s grammar as much as the survey indicates is perhaps the most telling, because I see girls saying this ALL the time on dating profiles that are themselves rife with grammatical errors. Granted, they are only saying they care about it in a man, not in themselves, but it seems pretty clear to me that if you value grammar, you’d pay attention to you own, which they clearly don’t. (Again. grammar is an easy one to latch on to, for reasons of pride: by saying I care a lot about good grammar, I demonstrate to others how intelligent I am. Not at all surprised to see it on the list.)
Also, VD, regarding women “lying” more than men: I think there is some truth to this, but I also think it is unfair to call it “lying.” I think the deeper fact is that women care much more about the emotional truth in a situation than they care about the literal truth, which men tend to pay more attention to.
To say “women lie all the time” or “women lie more than men” misrepresents the situation to the detriment of women. There is a huge value in maintaining the emotional truth in a situation, and without women to guard it, men would live in a painful world.
Maybe I should clarify that by emotional truth, I mean honesty in emotions. So a woman might be fine about telling (what she considers) a “white lie” in order to convey an emotion that is accurate.
@ VD
“For example: do you have an STD? Then test everyone. How much credit card debt do you owe? Then check. Do this ten different ways and you’ll have a pretty good idea how reliable people’s answers are.”
I don’t think this is the same type of thing we are dealing with here. The examples you give don’t involve self-perception of personal influences. I think you you have to do a test where you took the respondents of the Match.com survey, then followed them around to see who they dated, approached, talked to their friends about, looked at pictures of, etc. THESE are the people they are genuinely interested in, not the people they claim to be interested in.
Actions speak louder than words.
@Susan,
Yes, in fact I posted several links to papers on that topic a month or two back. Those hypogamous women must be learning to value other attributes in their men other than provisioning.
I think the roles of protector and provider are actually the main source of discrimination against men today. Man as protector cannot be considered a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or sexual harassment perpetrated by those defenseless women – despite the facts that women commit many of these offenses at similar or higher rates than men do.
For example , among the student set, women commit unilateral violence against their partners at twice the rate men do:
But all the discussion in schools on violence directed at men is how they should respect and protect women, despite the fact they are more likely to be the victims, not the perpetrators. Message about respecting and protecting men are rarely directed at women.
The same goes for the provider role. In family court, the father is treated largely as an economic resource to be exploited, while his value as a caregiver is discounted.
So it’s encouraging to see that more women are willing to step up in the provisioning, and that men are becoming less dependent on the provide and protect roles for their self worth.
Let’s talk about shoes. 18% of men judge women on their shoes? Really? And what are they looking for in shoes, may I ask?
I mostly notice shoes when some girl is wobbling around on heels that are much too high. It looks ridiculous, and I think less of her for it. I count it as attention-mongering, like showing too much T&A.
“But all the discussion in schools on violence directed at men is how they should respect and protect women, despite the fact they are more likely to be the victims, not the perpetrators. Message about respecting and protecting men are rarely directed at women.”
Men are generally physically stronger than women.
The average deconditioned man can basically squish the average woman.
I really don’t know why we are supposed to focus on this “attraction growing over time” statistic.
Less than half of women have ever experienced attraction growing over time into love. And that doesn’t mean those half of women experience it a lot: It could mean one time. Out of all the thousands of men they have ever met.
I don’t know, but IIRC VD commented once that smart women have the best shoes, or something along those lines.
I remembered that because it struck me as an unusual correlation.
True but irrelevant. Male violence against females is so heavily sanctioned that even self defense is not considered adequate justification for a man to hit a woman. This gives women a free pass to commit violence against men, as they rarely suffer consequences for doing so.
Is it smarts or sexuality? I think shoes are a display of her sexuality (restricted or unrestricted). That’s why they call them “fuck me pumps”, right?
I’m restricted, so when I see those FMP’s , I think “trouble”.
On shoes.
A woman who wears shitty shoes/clothes around is inherently unattractive because taking care of ones appearance is inherently feminine.
So a woman in grungy sweats and dirty runners, yeah what fun that will be to have around the house.
On another note, my wife tried to start wearing sweats around the house. I politely but firmly said no.
Same with a sweater her mother recently bought her, its designed for 90year old women. No.
Looking hot, both in public and in private, is part of her job as my wife.
@Andrew,
off topic.. but your blog’s amazing! I’ve been reading it for a long time now. Your post on Feminine Beauty is my favorite. And I always fall back to it when I need new ideas on what to improve on
*grammar edit: “your blog is amazing!”
Thanks. Glad you like it.
Oh this conversation again. Fun!
I own very few pairs of shoes and don’t glam it up. No makeup and no special hairdos. My husband happens to love my down-to-earth and natural look.
I wear sweats and pajamas around the house, too. Oh the humanity!
He has never minded. He also wears t-shirts and casual stuff. We aren’t dressy people.
Maybe it’s a Utah thing, too. I have a female coworker who said that as she was waiting for a flight back here, she could recognize who was from here. She said they had a more “wholesome look.”
Too “sexy” gets a girl branded as “trashy” here. It’s the heavily Mormon influence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Young_University_Honor_Code
“Any suggestions?”
Maybe Susan has something she can bold, for us. *snickers*
@ Susan
That could definitely be the case. UT doesn’t select for cellulite, but Texas has a whole lot, and some manage to get through. The majority of UT students are fit, but the minority that is overweight is certainly larger than the minority that is anorexic. Berkeley, on the other hand, definitely selects for cellulite (and mostly in women).
In general though, I’ve never actually been anywhere (including Northeastern campuses), where the proportion of anorexic females has been larger than say 5%.
This is anorexic: http://www.medicalsymptomsguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Symptoms-Of-Anorexia-240×300.jpg
What percent of girls on the college campuses you’ve been to would you say actually look like that?
@ Hope,
I also live in a very outdoorsy and non-fashion conscious location, more hippy than hipster. When I travel to a major city I’m struck by the display the women put on. All that makeup! Those revealing clothes! Those ridiculous shoes! And they dress like that for work?
I’m happy to get back home to wholesome hippy-ville.
@Andrew
My thoughts 100%.
But that still wouldn’t address how to measure attitudes and preferences. Do you like blonde women or brunette? Are you a breast man, or do you prefer legs or ass? To claim surveys that measure preferences are bogus, you really do have to assume that people have no idea what they like. IMO, that’s a stretch.
FTR, I do think that surveys asking for hypothetical behavioral decisions, e.g. “What would you do in this situation?,” are bogus.
@Andrew
That implies hypocrisy and a double standard, both of which I think are quite common. I don’t know if you saw that joke a while back, where two women put together a horrendous profile on OKCupid, but included a cute pic. Most of the men couldn’t get enough of this chick no matter what she said. So a guy may mention grammar then try and seduce the neo-Nazi with horrendous grammar the next day. It’s very funny if you haven’t already seen it:
http://www.mandatory.com/2012/11/13/ok-cupid-an-exploration-into-just-how-low-some-guys-will-go/
It also occurs to me that standards will vary for STRs vs. LTRs. Because so few men in this survey were looking to be players (3%), I’ll assume most of the responses reflected preferences for relationships.
The problem is, when forced to make a choice, the guy might think “Well, I guess I like blondes better”, when in reality he’s simply attracted to the hottest girl in front of him, regardless of her hair color.
I think survey format often leads people to fabricate preferences in their own mind when they actually don’t have them in reality.
@Susan
This is good news. I’ve always worried about feeling a lot of pain while doing it. But I used to be a major tomboy when I was younger so I’m pretty sure that my hymen must be very thin if not already broken
@wavevector
This is depressing! I can definitely see myself acting like a baby duck :/
@ Susan
Well the “she bleeds” thing occurs regardless of whether one is having an STR or LTR with the girl in question.
Also, I see the part about the girl getting “imprinted” and following me around like a baby duck to be a good thing, but most guys would differ on that.
“Most of the men couldn’t get enough of this chick no matter what she said. So a guy may mention grammar then try and seduce the neo-Nazi with horrendous grammar the next day. It’s very funny if you haven’t already seen it:”
It reminded me of this SNL Ski Retreat skit:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/119800
@Susan
Also re: grammar…
When the respondents said they’d judge potential dates for bad grammar, they were probably thinking that they’d prefer not to date someone similar to that fake profile. That’s a far cry from strictly observing if their date uses “whom” correctly, correctly distinguishes between “good” and “well”, etc.
I’m someone who would probably answer that I value grammar. I value someone who doesn’t use ghetto ebonics or text lingo every sentence. But I’m also attracted to certain accents and dialects that feature grammar that’s less than perfect, and truth be told, I’d probably be a little turned off by a girl who used 100% proper Queen’s English all the time.
But my survey answer isn’t measuring that. There’s a lot of nuance missing in the middle.
No, that’s not what is says. It says that “33% of men and 43% of women have fallen in love with someone they didn’t initially find attractive.”
Essentially, that’s the number of people who fell in love after first thinking, “ew.” I wouldn’t recommend relying on that as a strategy though. If a woman tells you she is not attracted, believe her. Still, it’s well proved that familiarity breeds attraction. It’s not at all uncommon.
Someone might have mentioned this above so I apologize if it is a duplicate but- many people on this discussion seem to believe that teeth is the highest priority item. That is not what the survey says. It says the most people judge others based on teeth vs the other items. It doesn’t mean it’s a very important item. It just means it is a common item for judgement. It doesn’t even say anything about what people want. It says what they judge on.
It actually makes sense that most people would answer yes to teeth once it was mentioned. Teeth are noticeable. Once the survey mentions teeth just about anyone would imagine really gross teeth and answer yes. Even if this section was free text response, I still think teeth are, in the extreme, really easy and obvious to judge so lots of people say yes. It doesn’t indicate a widespread tooth fetish
This is a very interesting peek into the restricted male’s mind. You don’t think CFM and then surpress it, you think “trouble.”
@Lokland
Haha, you are very particular about clothes! You must have a strong aesthetic sense. I recall your nixing peach colored lingerie and demanding teal instead.
@INTJ
That’s a very extreme case of anorexia, possibly near death.
Anorexia is an emotional disorder that is an obsession about losing weight. Women can actually be anorexic and look normal to someone else – you have no idea where her weight started, and what kinds of behavior she has adopted, e.g. eating nothing but romaine with dijon mustard on it, or eating soaked cotton balls for lunch to achieve fullness.
Many physicians use the halting of menses as a measure, though my daughter stopped menstruating in high school because she was a competitive runner.
In any case, most runway models are anorexic. Here are more pics of anorexic women:
Sadly, I know a handful of girls with serious eating disorder problems, and they are size 0-2. Men find them extremely attractive, they get hit on all the time. That’s one of the reasons the cycle is so hard to break – rexies get a lot of positive reinforcement.
Jason: “This is correct, obesity is rarely seen on college campuses, but remember that you are dealing with 18-23yo with high metabolisms, and once out of college the bad habits continue and the guys and girls start packing on the lbs. I see that a ton in the 24-29yo crowd.”
This may correlate with more class, than age. I remember not just one, but TWO “fat girl” sororities at my undergrad state college… and that’s excluding the LARP/freak crowd! There is no way in hell obesity is zero or even rare. There were obese women in every class, every party, every bar, every dorm hall, that I can remember. (I mean technical obesity, which isn’t hard to find, not morbid obesity.)
@Erik
+1 Thanks for clarifying.
@Jimmy
I agree. My guess is that when people hear “bad grammar” they think the worst.
I just finished a novel with one character who eliminated all contractions from her speech. “I cannot do that this afternoon, but I would be willing to do that tomorrow if that is allright with you.” It was really odd, and made her sound about 90.
The third picture, while definitely on the lower end of the weight spectrum, is not really that unhealthy.
@INTJ
She looks OK to you, but it’s a picture of a woman diagnosed with anorexia. Remember, it is an emotional disorder. You have no idea of her health prognosis by looking at her.
In any case, I have seen many girls on college campuses thin enough to make me doubt whether they are menstruating. I’m also very familiar with the culture where college girls either fast, eat non-calorie meals, or pretend to eat when they are being watched. I know from my own daughter’s college experience how rampant this was in the dorms, and then later in her sorority.
BTW, those extremely skinny girls were very high status. One was dating a high status male, and took him to her holiday formal. During dinner, she reached over to the bread basket to remove a roll. He placed a hand on her arm to stop her, looked at her and quietly said, “Restraint.” As you can imagine, that story made the rounds very quickly.
I think Susan is right about a lot, but I disagree with her about survey data. To me, surveys are almost always suspect. It is very difficult to design a meaningful, relevant survey and even harder to design one that is predictive of behavior other than answering survey questions. What people say in response to a survey is merely a verbal act in response to a question in a certain context. It does not, in itself, represent what they actually will do in a non-survey environment. It might, but you should be careful in automatically assuming that it does.
In the context of preference surveys, people are incredibly poor predictors of their own choices. I remember looking at a study referenced in Dan Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness, in which people couldn’t even predict what they would eat for lunch later or what food they would buy at the grocery store. Considering people eat multiple times a day for their entire life, it seems unlikely that people cannot tell you what they would like. But the research tells you they can’t. Dan Kahneman has made an entire career as an experimental psychologist by showing, under a variety of circumstances that 1) people do not behave logically or consistently and 2) people don’t know fundamental things about themselves.
Generally, our mental processes are not transparent to us, and we are largely unaware of that fact. The brain uses various methods to conceal the inferences and methodology of its decision making. See Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness and Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, both are very readible and in line with gobs of psychological research on the subject. (As an aside, the self-deceptive nature of the brain’s workings are why I think the Manosphere types that attribute maliciousness to people giving advice like “be nice” have it wrong. Many people giving that kind of advice probably believe it and are unaware that they choose mates in a manner inconsistent with that advice.)
Add to it that it’s match.com (meaning I subjectively doubt they spent the time, effort, and money necessary to design a proper survey), and I would note, perhaps, it tells us what people consider socially acceptable … perhaps. I would not believe it bears much relationship to what people actually do, unless there was some method of objective confirmation.
@ Susan, Re: 63: Why did you find the convergence of answers between men and women lead you to believe the survey had more credibility? Given that men and women have differing mating strategies and different concerns when choosing a mate, I would suggest that the convergence, more likely, demonstrates that something other than actual preference is dictating the answers, such as either the survey format or societal expectations. Just hoping to rough out your position on that point because, to me, it seems to point in the opposite direction.
I can’t put too much stock in the provider issue because
1.) like mr. wavevector said, bullets don’t care what’s between your legs
2.) like JP said, most men are stronger -but I’ll still have to go out alone at some point, unless I make him give up everything else to tail me 24/7
“True but irrelevant. Male violence against females is so heavily sanctioned that even self defense is not considered adequate justification for a man to hit a woman. This gives women a free pass to commit violence against men, as they rarely suffer consequences for doing so.”
—
+1
My uncle’s ex-girlfriend tried to pull a knife on him. They were both bashed up, so the cops took HIM away. Apparently that hündin has had similar problems with other ATMs -sorry, lovers, but she got off scot-free and my uncle went to jail and has to pay damages. My dad refuses to tell me her name or address, even though I promised him I wouldn’t attack her. My motives are innocent. Like an angel. http://reilly2040.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/blink.jpg
TLDR -the point is, women wanted equality, so we should respect men, and expect to pay for it if we go on the attack.
@SayWhaat, Susan
Thanks!
(I should have known the badfic was exaggerating.)
@Andrew
Bless you for your honest site.
That’s because they were jerking off to the Victoria’s Secret catalog when they were 13. Skinny women are imprinted on their brain.
I grew up deprived. No Playboy, no Penthouse, not even a Victoria’s Secret catalog. But I had lots of books with pictures that you would recognize. That chick in the lower right still does it for me
I don’t think she’s a size 0.
From what’s been said from the Kiera Knightly camp, she’s not anorexic and never have been. They were pretty adamant about it. She’s just that small, and from some pictures I’ve seen, while she’s thin, it’s pretty much muscle.
But of course, I could be wrong.
Mr. Wavevector, thank you for that, and I agree. Many of these bad “symptoms” of SMP/MMP people talk about seem to proliferate the most in big cities.
Susan, I remember that story from your earlier retelling of it. Women’s bodies are designed to have some fat reserves so they can support life in pregnancy. At that kind of low weight, they risk their own lives.
@ Sai,
Didn’t you get the memo? No hündin-shaming!
@Bells,
I hope you wait for a commitment minded man then. Failing that, at least a kind one.
Only forty percent of men think a woman must be physically attractive for a relationship? Wow. I know I’m not the average guy, but that is not what I expected.
I think I’m being fairly up-front when I say that, sorry, if I don’t think you’re hot then there isn’t any chance of a romantic relationship. (To add to that I’d be quite disappointed if my woman weren’t aroused by my looks and physique. Neutrality isn’t close to acceptable. Such a fragile ego I have!)
The obsession with ‘treats me with respect’ is a little strange to me. Of course I want to be treated with respect, but to me it’s something that’s earned and I wouldn’t put up with anything less. I suppose I consider it so obvious that I wouldn’t have even listed it. To me it seems like a whiff of touchiness or defensiveness to list this so prominently. (Are you consorting with people who don’t treat you with respect? Why would that be?) That’s just speculation though.
Regarding women having their own lives and careers – it’s true that I would want a woman who pursues a career she is skilled in and passionate about, but I also have a strong instinct to take care of and support her, so for me it’s more about her fulfillment than her bringing home the bacon. I’m maybe a little old-fashioned in that regard. I’d be perfectly happy to be the breadwinner, but I wouldn’t want her feeling all cooped up in the house if she felt the need to spread her wings.
As for the anorexic women, I just don’t find them attractive. I have a strong affinity for curves. That’s not a euphemism for fat, just that I am very attracted to a feminine physique with fat in the right places – breasts and butt, with a slim waist. I’ve already mentioned Marilyn Monroe around here – that’s about as good as it gets.
I didn’t like that bread roll story. I’d rather she had five pounds too much than not enough, because I think that’s probably healthier physically and less stressful psychologically.
Hilarious – 84% of women want “someone who treats me with respect”. LOL.
Of course, that ISN’T what they want at all – we can all SEE what they want, by who they go out with. No shortage of dates for criminals and thugs.
No dates for men who are capable of love.
Why didn’t 99% of women say “I want someone who LOVES me”…
Because you’re terrified of intimacy. You treat affection from a man as ‘rejection’ from a man – if he doesn’t try to jump on you on the first date, you run away – because you know you have nothing to offer, apart from your body. My god – he might want to know who YOU are – how will you cope? If you haven’t got the guts to approach men, forget about finding love, you will never find it.
Why should men waste our time going up to women who have given us NO clue that they like us? Do you think it’s fun?
Oh wait – Susan Walsh is going to delete my comment because it’s a ‘thought crime’ – LOL – it made her THINK, and she doesn’t like that. Like the little tyrant that she is, her arguments can’t stand up to rational, open debate…
@ Sai
OMG you just got major nerd cred right there!
@ Sai, Bells:
I wouldn’t worry about pain during first-time sex. I was concerned about it too, but I only ever felt discomfort at most. Pain is the last thing you’ll have during the main event.
I did not bleed at all the first time I had sex. I assume it is because I had already ruptured my hymen via sports.
I bled the first three times I had sex, despite a fall from a horse that also made me bleed. Just lucky I guess.
There’s actually a lot of varience in the size, elasticity and toughness of hymens.
From what’s been said from the Kiera Knightly camp, she’s not anorexic and never have been.
That’s what all the publicists say, usually after the star gets hospitalized for “exhaustion.”
@SW, et al.
Another disturbing thing about the prevalence of anorexia is that it is often associated with having been sexually abused. It’s a way of feeling in control of one’s body again.
I can definitely see myself acting like a baby duck :/
That’s pretty normal. Choose carefully.
@Sai: Apparently that hündin has had similar problems with other ATMs -sorry, lovers…
Me: I would add, that “schweinhund!” Tee hee…
@Susan re. teeth: I think it ties into what some have mentioned, that it is about demonstrating a high level of self-care, ie., regular brushing, flossing, plus dental visits. But there is more, I would add. When a person has good teeth, s/he is more willing to smile. Smiles are seen as friendlier, and fantastic smiles are seen as arresting, very attractive.
@Andrew
Is there a delay for comment on your site?
Regarding smiling, some research as I understand it has shown that men can make themselves less attractive by smiling. (Ignoring the quality of his teeth)
http://brooks.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/expressive-attraction/
Pride was the most attractive male expression. The research may have a point but I think things may be more subtle than they realize. There are different kinds of smiles. The worst one for men, I assume, is precisely the ‘I’m displaying my teeth to show I’m not a threat’ type of smile, which I’d guess makes a man look weak.
I don’t have the whole theory fleshed out but I know there are definitely different kinds of smiles. I am thinking that something more like a grin or slight smirk would be more attractive for a man. Maybe it has to do with the tightness in the upper face and how much the upper lip is raised. I’m not sure.
I have this belief that emotional expressiveness can be attractive in a man, and that this is not mutually exclusive with masculinity and dominance. I just need more details.
@ Susan
I may have phrased myself poorly, but this is what I meant. It’s a poor strategy. A minority of women have ever fallen for a man they initially felt “ewwwww” towards. And just because a woman HAS fallen for a girl she initially felt that way towards, doesn’t mean it is a good strategy. It may happen once in an entire lifetime.
So the winning strategy is to target at girls who are initially attracted to you, and to disqualify ALL girls who are not attracted. Obviously this leaves restricted girls at a disadvantage, because they are unable to expression that males are attractive for…whatever rationale is invented this week, but apparently half of women have been in a one night stand or FWB.
The strategy, then, is to push for physical intimacy somewhat early, at some level, which she must accept, to some degree. I realize that’s a lot of “somes,” but a lot of our threads seem to have restricted women suggest “letting attraction grow over time,” which sounds like not signalling any attraction at all, which is 100% a losing strategy for men.
Okay, I will make some exceptions. Having spent a LOT of time and having had a few girls had e-crushes on me, I can see the Hope route working. I also can see the Ana route working. Those seem like special circumstances to me, though.
@ “womenaregutlesscowards”
Perhaps the reason women won’t date you is because you appear to be a black hole of frothing rage and hatred, who thinks that semicoherent emotional uproars somehow equate to “rational debate.” If I encountered a guy with this attitude, I wouldn’t interpret it as “capable of love.” More like “capable of flying into an irrational rage and screaming at me all the time, while blaming me personally for every bad thing any woman did ever.” Verbally abusive men with poor control of their tempers are extremely unsexy to me and to any woman with common sense. Granted there are plenty of women without, but judging by your fury you don’t seem to have located any of those yet.
How do you interpret something like only 40% of the men state the their partner must be attractive to them?
I’m very skeptical of that.
@David in Dallas
FTR, I don’t think surveys are the be all and end all, but I don’t find them useless either. I think that they can pretty effectively take the temperature on culture, at the very least. As I noted above, I agree with you re asking anyone what they would do in a given situation. Hypothetical “would you?” questions are in fact, useless.
However, when one is given a list of items and asked to rank them in order of preference, it doesn’t strike me as necessarily unreliable. I may not know what I’ll choose at the deli counter at 12:05, but I know it won’t be corned beef. And that I like tuna salad better than chicken salad. I know what I like and what I don’t like. I think most people do.
To me, the graphic charts at the top of the post are the least interesting. Far more informative are the findings about what people reported having actually done. Falling in love with someone you initially found unattractive – now that is interesting, at least to me. Or learning how many people have actually engaged in FWB or had ONSs.
As stated in the OP, it was funded by Match but designed and carried out by an independent market research firm.
Because standards of beauty are well understood in the culture, for both sexes, and there is much overlap. Beautiful teeth are equally appreciated in both sexes, so learning that many men and women selected good teeth as an important feature tells me that if people don’t know their own minds, they’re all ignorant in the same way, which seems unlikely.
I did not bleed at all the first time I had sex. I assume it is because I had already ruptured my hymen via sports.
Did you used pads or tampons? Most girls I know that also did sports bleed but we poor women used pads always. Using tampons is rare in my culture and from about 200 women I had talked about ‘first times’ all of them bleed, including myself.
I wear sweats and pajamas around the house, too. Oh the humanity! He has never minded. He also wears t-shirts and casual stuff. We aren’t dressy people.
Another point for us restricted types. We don’t nitpick that much on superficial items. Hubby make fun of each other when we go down in the scale of groominess around the house so is just another thing to share.
My dad refuses to tell me her name or address, even though I promised him I wouldn’t attack her.
This could be a good business: Does your woman abuses you but you can’t do nothing about because you can go to jail? Hire professional bitch beater. Mean bad women that can fight with another woman. The police will look at each other in confusion “Both are women so both are victims…we cannot arrest them can we?” before they can get a hold of our professionals.
I can see good money there.
PS
Domestic violence is a serious matter if anyone feels offended by this. Sorry I have a dark sense of humor.
From what’s been said from the Kiera Knightly camp, she’s not anorexic and never have been. They were pretty adamant about it. She’s just that small, and from some pictures I’ve seen, while she’s thin, it’s pretty much muscle.
I was going to say this, she has denied it and it seems to be truth. Kiera’s has my body type weak upper body no matter how much you eat. When you see pics of her in other settings you can see that she puts on weight on her thighs when she is less active. But I know for experience that I needed to fill up my tights well in order to get my toothpick arms not looking like you could rip them off with a smile. So yeah she is not anorexic she just looks like one. I was also accused of this a couple of times because I used to eat a lot and still looked like that. Is just nature.
Okay, I will make some exceptions. Having spent a LOT of time and having had a few girls had e-crushes on me, I can see the Hope route working. I also can see the Ana route working. Those seem like special circumstances to me, though.
You discovered me secret identity. I’m a poster by day and Super Special Snowflake by night! Damn it now I have to…talk you out of telling everyone
I’m not sure about Hope but being considered an exception is not as flattery as you might think it is.
But do whatever you think is best for you.
Re. not bleeding upon first-time sex–being physically active can do it, ie., sports, as well as tampon use. Include as well, young women who have had visits to the gyno even though they wre not sexually active. It is recommended that young women have their first gyno exam at around 18, earlier if they are sexually active.
I think I have solved the mystery of why weight was not a significant factor for men choosing woman partners. The question was not asked. It may be that college women would not present many obese examples. But the survey was women over 21. That had to include some 20 something career women. Ever male I have known for the last 40 years considered weight important in judging a female’s attractiveness. Back to the drawing board.
Include as well, young women who have had visits to the gyno even though they wre not sexually active.
Do gynos here don’t care about breaking the hymen? I and all my friends went to the doctor before we started our sexual lives and they were very careful not to break it. They used small swabs for samples. Probably knowing we wouldn’t want them to destroy something that is considered important in my culture.
Now that I think about it they exams back in DR are a lot more friendly. Here that cold thing was a lot more invasive…need to compare notes with female friends back home.
Ana: Do gynos here don’t care about breaking the hymen? I and all my friends went to the doctor before we started our sexual lives and they were very careful not to break it.
Me: I can’t say I know what the prevailing gyno view is, but it seems to me that it is not seen as important whether the hymen is broken in that context. If anything, having it broken, or at least having the opening stretched, might be seen as a positive (prevent discomfort the first time?) or as perfectly natural within American culture–tampon use is prevalent.
I know that when I talked to my mom about menstrual hygiene as a youngster, tampons were seen as a no-no for various reasons, it was seen as more difficult for virginal women, only non-virgins should use them.
I can imagine all kinds of other reasons. Perhaps it was seen as stretching the opening, it encouraged touching “down there,” while a more American attitude might be more in favor of awareness. I imagine the more traditional attitude ties into the perception that if a woman doesn’t bleed, her partner might doubt she is a virgin, which in itself is problematic, as not all women bleed.
I can imagine all kinds of other reasons. Perhaps it was seen as stretching the opening, it encouraged touching “down there,” while a more American attitude might be more in favor of awareness.
I though it was the other way around. Masturbation was never condemned in fact a big part of “wait till you are married” was to tell young that satisfying ourselves was a lot better than being constantly ‘hot and bothered’. I seem to recall that the puritan left over in the church are more anti ‘fun’ than in our culture, YMMV.
Oh I learned something interesting too about gynos back home. In here my doctor told me to get my Pap every two years if I’m only having one sexual partner. Back home the doctors recommend every six months. Me thinks the doctors are very are aware of the cheating problem.
@mr. wavevector
Bless your heart
You’re an example of those universal attraction triggers unsullied by culture.
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