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[Lady Duke]

Well it really depends how badly you were eating before.

[Mongrel]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D99n9f3vU4

[Rico]

Freddie doesn't have his moustache in that video, therefore you do not get an approving emoticon.

[Büge]

I'm not eating my hat over this.

First of all, it's a 'reality show' on FOX. Second, it's about a fat guy looking to date fat girls, not an average guy looking to date women regardless of size, so it seems like they're assuming fat people can only date fat people. And third, look at all the frickin' coy language they use. "Plus-sized." "Husky." "Full-figured."

fy;gj

[Thad]

God damn, this thread EXPLODED.  I've skimmed the last few pages and here's what I've come up with:

I was just pissed at the implication that was floating around that we should be accepting of an unhealthy body state for the sake of people's self-esteem.

That's fair to a certain extent.  Some people are overweight simply due to lazy and unhealthy lifestyles.  Some, however, do everything right and STILL can't lose weight.  And, since you bring evolution into it, no, that's not exactly a gene you want to pass on, but on the other hand the popular media have made an entire industry out of promoting women who are cesspools of genes you don't want to pass on.

When I talk about a healthy range, I mean the one that exists (existed?) for the 99% of our species' lifetime during which we were NOT constantly bombarded by disastrously skewed images.

How'bout the Renaissance?  Today's "fat" is the seventeenth century's "Rubenesque".

- In this chicken-and-egg-scenario, what came first? A skewed view that was merely latent among a significant minority (or even majority), or a media barrage that made the views of an extreme minority into a majority viewpoint?

It's a cyclical thing that happens by degrees, IMO.

Insecure people will find anything to be neurotic about, I suppose.

But it disproportionately affects women.

Anecdote: I took a sociology of sex class my last year of college.  One day, the prof asked us all to raise our hands to give a letter-grade for our comfort with our bodies.  I put my hand up for "A", and the woman next to me put her hand up for "B".

Now, it just so happens that that October, she and I spent a significant amount of time onstage together in our underwear.  And I can state without hesitation that she should be more comfortable with her body than I should be with mine.

Now, I don't know exactly what was going through her head.  Could be she was just being modest.  Could be her "B" is equivalent to my "A" (my thought process being, hey, I know there's room for improvement, but I'm damned comfy in my own skin).  But the larger point is, I'm sure each and every one of us can think of an example where a girl complained about her body despite it being a pretty damned great body, and I don't think you get that kind of flawed self-image nearly as often from dudes.  Again, that's anecdotal and I'm not citing data here, but...is there anybody who'd disagree?

[Spaco]

Well sure, because dudes aren't judged as harshly by society with regard to body image. I seriously think the standard is perpetuated now by women themselves, as it seems women dress up for each other more than for guys. Guys don't tend to compete with each other over looks as much, in my experience.

[Lady Duke]

Guys barely have to compete and girls do feel the need to compete with each other for guys, especially when they all wanna go after the same sorts of guys.  Guys also have more flexibility of weight in being attractive to women--women think they need to be thin and dressed sexy (I dunno why they need to go to extreme and just dress like whores quite often, but) to get a guy, but guys can just dress in jeans and a shirt and look however and they don't have to feel insecure about their weights.

Example: my friend and I have started swimming daily and she takes it upon herself to tell me how I should be eating so that I don't get fat (I hate it really, let me eat my god damn lean pocket and not have to feel bad), so there isn't always some sort of competition.  Girls want other girls to look good too if they're friends.

Now here's a question I pose just out of curiosity: do guys change in front of each other in locker rooms or go into stalls?  Because I find it really funny when I go swimming that when I'm changing in the locker room, all the girls go change in the bathroom or shower stalls.  And the fuckers are thin.

[Doom]

Guys have as many self-esteem hang-ups as girls, it's just not Summer Blockbuster Movie funny to make fun of them for it.

[Thad]

Guys barely have to compete and girls do feel the need to compete with each other for guys, especially when they all wanna go after the same sorts of guys.  Guys also have more flexibility of weight in being attractive to women--women think they need to be thin and dressed sexy (I dunno why they need to go to extreme and just dress like whores quite often, but) to get a guy, but guys can just dress in jeans and a shirt and look however and they don't have to feel insecure about their weights.

On the other hand, in my observation it's a lot easier for an average-looking woman to get a date than an average-looking man.

Now here's a question I pose just out of curiosity: do guys change in front of each other in locker rooms or go into stalls?  Because I find it really funny when I go swimming that when I'm changing in the locker room, all the girls go change in the bathroom or shower stalls.  And the fuckers are thin.

I don't find myself in a lot of locker rooms, but in general I change in stalls if any are available.  If not I don't sweat changing in front of other dudes.

Guys have as many self-esteem hang-ups as girls, it's just not Summer Blockbuster Movie funny to make fun of them for it.

Well, I mean, you FREQUENTLY get movies about schlubby guys with deadend jobs being down on themselves and eventually getting the girl anyway.  It's just that you don't get the reverse.  I mean, not really.  There are plenty of Pretty Ugly Girl movies where the girl THINKS she's average-looking but then takes off her glasses and lets down her hair and she's actually hot, but I can't think of any movies starring a female equivalent to Seth Rogen.

[Spaco]

Guys barely have to compete and girls do feel the need to compete with each other for guys, especially when they all wanna go after the same sorts of guys.  Guys also have more flexibility of weight in being attractive to women--women think they need to be thin and dressed sexy (I dunno why they need to go to extreme and just dress like whores quite often, but) to get a guy, but guys can just dress in jeans and a shirt and look however and they don't have to feel insecure about their weights.

On the other hand, in my observation it's a lot easier for an average-looking woman to get a date than an average-looking man.

True, but I think that's more due to dating mechanics than anything. Men throw themselves at women more than women throw themselves at men, so women hold the power of when and whom they want to date. Therefore, men don't get dates by just waiting for hot ladies to ask them out, but women get harassed constantly even when they aren't looking for a relationship.

Theoretically, it could also be because men are less picky than women in who they date, but I'm not sure about this one.

[Alex]

That seems pretty accurate.  Dudes generally aren't in the market for the perfect woman at every given moment while the ladies are dead set on scoring Mr. Right immediately.

[Lady Duke]

Theoretically, it could also be because men are less picky than women in who they date, but I'm not sure about this one.

Well of course that's true, generally speaking.  Evolutionary-wise, that's exactly how men and women are.  Men want to spread their seed and girls have to worry and be picky about just whose genes they're willing to raise.  Men are the exploitive sex with the least amount of investment, and women are the nurturing sex that has to carry that pregnancy and give the most nutrients and time into raising whatever child comes of said pregnancy.

[Spram]

And if you really don't think popular media portrayals contribute to unrealistic standards of beauty, I invite you to read any post Spram has ever written.

They're not unrealistic. I've SEEN THEM. I've seen RIDICULOUSLY HOT WOMEN. They're not some myth or something.

And most women are ugly even when they're skinny. Humans are just ugly.

[Kashan]

And if you really don't think popular media portrayals contribute to unrealistic standards of beauty, I invite you to read any post Spram has ever written.

They're not unrealistic. I've SEEN THEM. I've seen RIDICULOUSLY HOT WOMEN. They're not some myth or something.

And most women are ugly even when they're skinny. Humans are just ugly.

It's unrealistic when every single human being in every single show that isn't specifically noted as being ugly is at the absolute peek of human attractiveness.

And I don't really buy the Men spread their seed while women want the best genes possible argument. There are very few genetic traits that are cross-culturally agreed upon as being ugly, and our closest genetic relatives among the primates have almost zero discrimination on sexual practices. There are enough human cultures that don't function off the same sexual partner determination system that we do that I don't think you can reasonably say it's an evolutionary thing. Unless you mean cultural evolution, and in that sense what LD says is true only in that we keep reinforcing it.

I think it would be more accurate to say that humans enjoy sex, but historically women were punished more for having sex outside of marriage because it fucked up property rights in a male dominated society if a man didn't know whether or not his wife's children were his. I mean early Christians were pretty much the first people ever who practiced monogamy where the man, as well as the woman, was expected to sleep with only the person they were married to, and that was probably due to an egalitarian approach to gender that fell out of the church later.  So if you take the cultural memes of men being allowed to sleep with their wife and any unmarried woman, add in a contradictory meme about men only being allowed to sleep with their wife, take away most of the inheritence issues, take away then add back the more equal views on gender, completely change the way the culture deals with marriage, and add in adolescence, and you get the schizophrenic approach sexuality of our culture.

[Bongo Bill]

There is a very definite genetic factor to human sex habits. Sex is far costlier for women than for men. Bereft of modern medicine, a man loses his ability to spread his genes for a brief period; a woman, her ability to reproduce for thirty-eight weeks, with an increasing impairment during that time, and at the end, a significant risk of death, to say nothing of the far lesser ability to avoid raising a child. A psychological tendency for women to be pickier than men is a natural evolutionary compensation for the higher risk.

The particular criteria for that pickiness developed culturally, but that's just a matter of the wildly disparate solutions to a very open-ended problem.

[Kashan]

There is a very definite genetic factor to human sex habits. Sex is far costlier for women than for men. Bereft of modern medicine, a man loses his ability to spread his genes for a brief period; a woman, her ability to reproduce for thirty-eight weeks, with an increasing impairment during that time, and at the end, a significant risk of death, to say nothing of the far lesser ability to avoid raising a child. A psychological tendency for women to be pickier than men is a natural evolutionary compensation for the higher risk.

The particular criteria for that pickiness developed culturally, but that's just a matter of the wildly disparate solutions to a very open-ended problem.

Except that for 99+% of the time humans have been on this planet they haven't had the same approach to costs in relation to sex that you just described. Humans have an instinctive drive to make love, but they don't have an instinctual understanding of passing on their genes, or even the relationship between sex and birth. The risk of death from pregnancy really isn't that high in relation to all the other risks of random death that have been around for most of humanities time on the earth. In terms of the evolutionary goals, as you're talking about them, a better argument could be made for women trying to be pregnant at every possible opportunity, rather than being ultra-selective and not having kids until they're well established financially. Women could be going octo-mom all over the place but they aren't. As for avoiding raising your kids or the cost of raising kids, those are very recent cultural creations. It's was basically not possible until humans moved away from hunter gatherer societies, and that's <1% of the time humans have been around. We attribute a lot of things to genetics that are societal, and a lot of things to society that are probably genetic.

[Bongo Bill]

Reproduction is costlier and riskier for women than it is for men. This is a biological fact, and it holds true for most mammals. If nothing else, men can be involved in making a lot more babies in a year, so simple economic principles would show the cost is higher for women. Women who do not possess some instinct to mitigate that cost, by whatever means, have been selected against naturally.

Since a woman has so few chances to reproduce, relative to a man, the best thing she can do for her genes is to make sure that her offspring have the greatest possible chance for success. The costs of reproduction are so great that this approach yields better* results for the woman than merely attempting to spread her genes as far and as often as possible. The successful strategy - the one that has been selected most strongly - includes attempting to predict in advance whether the mate will help to bear some of these costs.

The indicators of whether the mate will help bear the costs, as well as the specific means whereby he would do so, are largely particular to cultures, spreading memetically more than genetically. However, there are strong genetic factors that will cause the development of the instinct to be picky.

*"better" when judged by the criterion of how far her genes continue to spread after an indefinite period, which is the only criterion that matters in this analysis

[Brentai]

Pretty sure humans have an instinctual understanding of genetics, considering that the earliest sorts of communal organization tended to be along the lines of "follow the kids of whoever was the last guy running shit."

[Thad]

Okay, elephant-in-the-room time:

Bongo, your "women are picky because of genetics" approach ignores the fact that, for the vast majority of the history of human civilization and in fact in probably the majority of the world today, women have no fucking say at all in who has sex with them.

What you and I see as basic human rights are something of a luxury of living in modern, First World nations.  And it's not like those rights aren't routinely violated here, either.

So I'm with Kashan -- I can totally buy this as an "evolutionary" concept in the cultural sense, but the notion that men can't just take whoever they want is a pretty damned new one in terms of human history.

[Kashan]

Reproduction is costlier and riskier for women than it is for men. This is a biological fact, and it holds true for most mammals. If nothing else, men can be involved in making a lot more babies in a year, so simple economic principles would show the cost is higher for women. Women who do not possess some instinct to mitigate that cost, by whatever means, have been selected against naturally.

Since a woman has so few chances to reproduce, relative to a man, the best thing she can do for her genes is to make sure that her offspring have the greatest possible chance for success. The costs of reproduction are so great that this approach yields better* results for the woman than merely attempting to spread her genes as far and as often as possible. The successful strategy - the one that has been selected most strongly - includes attempting to predict in advance whether the mate will help to bear some of these costs.

The indicators of whether the mate will help bear the costs, as well as the specific means whereby he would do so, are largely particular to cultures, spreading memetically more than genetically. However, there are strong genetic factors that will cause the development of the instinct to be picky.

*"better" when judged by the criterion of how far her genes continue to spread after an indefinite period, which is the only criterion that matters in this analysis

It really depends on how you look at it whether you determine a woman as having fewer chances than a man to reproduce. The number of pregnancies in a society in a year divided by the number of sexually active member of each gender is the real opportunity I'd say. A man might have more children than another man, but so might a woman. I'd wager there are very few men out there that actually have more children among various women they might have slept with, than they could have reasonably produced over one long relationship with a single woman. It can be hard to see in our society because there are so many people, but in a hunter/gatherer tribe with 100 or so people it becomes a lot easier. So you've got 100 people in the tribe, and half of them are women so 50. Now of those women only those over 20 will have built up enough body fat so let's be generous and say 40 left. Now of those 40, only those who have aren't breast feeding will be ovulating, and tribes like that only ween their children after 4 years or so, so only a quarter of those women will be ovulating. So in a tribe of 100 people, 40 men (knocking off 10 for underage) have access to 10 opportunities a year to pass on their genes. Now one of those men could maybe get 1 or 2 more offspring in his lifetime by either cheating with another man's wife, but really that's only a marginal increase. As the society gets bigger there's more room for variance, but it's still true that the total number of woman who are interested in, or can be coerced into, reproducing in any given year is roughly the same, and that's the same pool of reproduction that men have access to.

Another things that gets brought up in theses arguments a lot is that women have to be more discriminating because they're stuck raising the child and the man isn't, and the genetics of the man will determine the success of the child. There are a number of problems with this in terms of human genetics. First off in the above described 100 person tribe, a man basically couldn't be an absentee father. It's really a very recent phenomena that men can get a woman pregnant and walk away. I mean yes technically a man could in a small tribal society, but they wouldn't be able to find a place in another tribe, and the survival skills the man would have would have been based around participation in a tribe. Another thing is it vastly overestimates the value of slight genetic benefits. A woman certainly doesn't want to have a child that has disabilities, but having a child that is slightly stronger or smarter basically doesn't matter at all in a small interdependent society like that. Compare to today where a child that is slightly smarter has tremendous advantages, but the kind of culture where that kind of thing really matters has been around for, at best, 10,000 years, and that's not a lot of time to develop of genetic predisposition towards a particular instinct.

Pretty sure humans have an instinctual understanding of genetics, considering that the earliest sorts of communal organization tended to be along the lines of "follow the kids of whoever was the last guy running shit."

Not true. Hunter gatherer tribes don't have leaders with practical authority, except where more recent cultures have interacted with them and encouraged the idea, and often not even then. I mean the idea of lineage existed, but that's really pretty separate from genetics. I mean in most tribal cultures an adopted child is considered a child in every meaningful sense. I mean you can get some pretty extreme example, such as some pastoral cultures in which polygany is practiced and inheritance is passed to male heirs allowing older women who are infertile to act as a man in marrying a younger woman, who is this allowed to sleep with another man, often the older woman's husband's brother, to bear a child in place of the older woman. The child is considered the son of the Older woman and her husband even though it's actually the product of the younger woman and the brother.