I honestly think concentrating on sex and sexuality is in many ways a red herring in American feminism. Back in the 70s folks really got into the notion that porn is 'oppressive' of women... there's absolutely no evidence there. If anything, countries in which porn is more widely available generally show lower rates of violence against women in terms of rapes, etc. Obviously we could speculate that maybe in more porn-oriented cultures women are trained to accept being raped and so don't report it, but somehow I just don't happen to think that about most of Europe. Nor does it seem like women in South Africa would be particularly trained to report being raped, even though porn was completely illegal under the apartheid regime and now they have one of the world's highest rates of rape, period.
So whatever the deal is with porn and images of women's bodies and blahblah blah, I ultimately think it doesn't matter. One woman may feel more comfortable, more herself, more 'empowered' wearing something skimpy which she thinks makes herself look attractive, while another woman may feel the exact opposite way in the same outfit and prefer to wear a burka. I tend to get pissed off when people start talking about what women should or shouldn't wear. If a woman wants to go around naked, let her go around naked. If she wants to wear a burka, let her wear a burka. I don't give a crap.
If some women get off on being in porn or on webcams, I also don't give a crap. It doesn't change how they're treated in society, it doesn't change whether men respect traditionally female activities, it doesn't affect how much violence women receive, it doesn't change pay inbalances, it doesn't change crap.
And honestly, a publicist telling his client that she is competing with people like Nicole Richie doesn't mean anything. It means that his client is some sort of socialite. If I were a socialite, then I'd be competing with Nicole Richie. I'm not, so I'm not. She's utterly irrelevant to me other than occasionally feeling sorry for her when I see her picture. What she does or says changes nothing about my life and how people treat me when I state my profession as 'mother'.
Hi little e, hope you're well, and congrats on the wee one. :-)
I agree, size makes a difference. Ultimately, there's always going to be some response to basic physical attributes whatever they may be. But at the same time this can pretty easily turn into a shield or an excuse for what can be straight up discrimination. I would think a good manager or leader would know when to bypass their superficial judgements.
I agree with your libertarian stance. As far as I'm concerned, the only thing that matters is what an employee is capable of, not what they look like or what gender/race/religion they are.
I also agree that whether a woman draws power from manipulating men, it no longer has much effect on social opinions of women. (After all, isn't that the oldest form of feminine power maneuvers anyway?) But I don't know about your statistic for incidence of porn and incidence of violence towards women. If you mean a more liberal sexual cultural attitude correlates with lower rates of violence, then I will agree.
As for Nicole Richie... I guess it would mean more if I mentioned the publicist was talking to an actress from the UK. Of course it would be irrelevant to you.
Good managers are, sadly, hard to come by. Often people get promoted for merely looking more competent than those around them... even if really they're just sabotaging their coworkers. If you get ahead by sabotaging some folks, why would you hesitate to sabotage others?
Are you familiar with the works of Dworkin and MacKinnon? I don't want to ramble at length about something you already know. Their basic theory, which underlined a lot of radical feminism in the 70s (which ultimately turned off a lot of people from feminism and thus I think accounts for the current stagnation of the movement, at least in the US,) was that there exists a 'rape culture' and that porn is some sort of violent photographic rape. It promotes rape, it teaches people how to rape, it objectifies women and turns them into nothing but sex objects, etc. Thus porn=rape culture=more rape.
This is... just not true. If there's any correlation between porn and rape, it's that countries with extremely restrictive laws on porn also have more violence against women, period, while countries with more liberal laws on porn also have less violence against women. Does that mean that producing more porn will make women's lives better, or that more equal pay in the work force will cause more porn? Probably not.
But I think getting sidetracked talking about 'rape culture' and porn as 'oppressing' and 'objectifying' women gave feminism a lot of bad press on an issue which basically didn't matter. But I guess it's easier to complain about porn than to think about whether microfinance loans for starting home businesses will help women in the third world.
I hadn't heard of that. I'd heard of the theory, but I always thought it was a joke. (They mention this at length in the movie PCU.)
This would explain a lot of American attitudes about porn.
As far as the looking more competent thing, there's a book called "the Rules of Work" which talks about that very thing. But that's a whole different discussion. Maybe I'll spark that up for a new entry.
It's a real theory, and I think they actually did get a few laws passed under it. (Now uniting for the first time, conservative Republicans and radical feminists!) Unfortunately, when people today think of 'feminism', they tend to think of second-wave radical feminists like Dworkin and MacKinnon, and want to shy away from that. Which is why I think you get so many people who say, essentially, "I believe in women's rights, but I'm not a feminist." If the modern feminist movement wants to actually be effective and work for women's rights, then I think it needs to take a cold hard look at its own past, evaluate which ideas are actually good for women and which ones aren't, and then distance itself from people and ideas which provide more negative than good.
Unfortunately, feminism is a largely academic exercise in America, and hell, folks are still throwing around Marxist theory without even bothering to take off the name 'Marx' without seeming to realize that in so doing they are basically guaranteeing that no one in the American mainstream will ever take them seriously. Much of academia seems to have no aspirations higher than an intellectual circle-jerk, (otherwise known as 'getting published in academic journals',) and thus there is little push towards making feminism a relevant and respectable force in life/politics.
This would explain the dissolution of feminism, and even give the term "feminazi" some historical context. It's a shame, really. When you get so caught up in your own dogma you forget the whole thing has to have an appealing human face in order to garner any popular support at all. This I suspect was the downfall of American socialism as well.
Alas, what you say about feminism can be used to describe the lion's share of critical theory circulating at universities. It's gone so deconstructionist, it's eaten itself.
My comments on academic feminism were by no means at all meant to imply that only feminism suffers from academic wankery. It's just the aspect of academia I happen to be talking about at the moment. :P
Post Modernism had a few some good points, but they've run out.
All political movements must on some level deal with expanding and convincing others to join if they're to survive. But people don't like that. It feels like cheating, giving up on what you believe...
I respectfully disagree. My issues with the main-streaming of porn (and music videos, etc.) is that it suggests that objectification of women is ok. Young men see and are told time and time again that women are sexual objects to provide for their pleasure. Young girls buy into it as well: they buy the tiny clothes and imitate the dance moves seen on music videos. They call it empowerment but again they are reinforcing the idea that they are merely sex objects. There will be no true equality until we stop prefacing CEO or executive with "female". Markedly, the derogatory terms of "ho" and "bitch" need no gender qualifier. That is where Don Imus gets the message that it's funny to call accomplished female athletes Hos. This is why young guys think it's ok to commit sexual assault or that a woman asked for it when she's raped. Still, you do reference an excellent point. No woman is responsible for the violent or sexist behavior of some men. A woman should be able to walk alone after dark in whatever she pleases. I'm not sure what has to happen to make that a reality though.
"Objectification" is a meaningless term. If it meant something, then Saudi Arabia and Iran would be the best countries on the planet to be female, because of the extensive measures they've undertaken to prevent it. Gods forbid you should see a female elbow or ankle, and then start thinking about her in a sexual manner--women have to cover up completely, because otherwise men will not be able to think of them as people.
We poor 1st world saps, by contrast, we're constantly objectifying folks. If I go to the coffee shop and I just want a goddamn cup of coffee and don't care how the barrista is doing, I just want them to make the coffee, then I am objectifying them. If I go to the bank and don't care about the teller as a person, I just want to deposit my cheque, I'm objectifying the teller. If I am an employer, and I do not care about my employees' personal lives, only their capabilities as employees, I am objectifying them.
And that's why our society suffers from mass violence against barristas, bank tellers, and employees--because people only see them as objects, not as real people.
And oh yes, objectifying material in the media causes people to rape. That's why folks suddenly started raping men after Michelangelo produced The Dying Slave. They took one look at that and said "shit, men are sexy".
Men do not need to be told that women are sexual objects and provide pleasure for them. Our species reproduces primarily through heterosexual intercourse, and therefore the males and females are highly attracted to each other and sex feels good. Even males who've never seen a TV set or a single piece of porn still report the attitude that women exist for the purpose of fucking and making babies.
They call it empowerment but again they are reinforcing the idea that they are merely sex objects. Because apparently we are nothing but walking clothes racks, and a human can't be both visually appealing and intelligent at the same time? Excuse me while I go find my burka.
Considering that chimpanzees rape each other, I don't think people get the idea from the word 'ho' or people saying 'female CEO'. I think they get the idea from, oh, the same place they get the idea to beat the crap out of each other--a biologically based urge to dominate and control other people. Which would explain why rape tends to correlate with other violent crimes, rather than, say, pornography.
I've walked around topless outside after dark with no problems. (Actually passed someone in a burka on my way. Got a good giggle out of that juxtaposition.)
To sum: objectification is a meaningless term. People in countries where women dress specifically to not be objectified do not treat women any better than people in countries where women dress to be objectified. You judging people for what they wear is just as bad as anyone else doing it, and humans will want to have sex with each other and view each other as avenues to sex no matter what you do, because sexual reproduction is the whole point of having two sexes.
Frankly, when I see people buying princess sparkle shit for little girls and science kits for little boys (I used to work in a toy store and saw this all the time), they're not thinking "Let's train my daughter for her role as a walking vagina." They're thinking, "Girls like pink crap, boys like bugs and dinosaurs." Then later they sit around wondering, "why aren't there more girls in science and math?" When a woman gets passed over for a promotion because she consistently clocked out earlier than male colleagues because she has to pick up her kids from daycare, her pay isn't being affected because her boss thinks she's just walking pussy. It's being affected because the corporate structure was designed by and for people who are not the primary caretakers of children.
Porn doesn't change any of that. It doesn't change how women are treated in Pakistan, it doesn't change hiring practices, it doesn't change *anything*. And if someone reports feeling better about themselves as a person because of porn, I'm not going to contradict them, because I'm not them and I don't know how their psychology works.
Objectification can be defined as the lack of desire to know any more about a person other than their surface characteristics, and this is very much human nature.
But I will say that while it is true that a woman/man can be attractive and intelligent at the same time, it's neither normal nor natural.
Sexual rejection is one of the biggest driving forces for personal improvement. And conversely, sexual affirmation encourages individuals to stay where they are.
This is the reason why there are so many beautiful women and men who are so undeveloped internally. Only people who were sexually unappealing at an earlier point in their life bother to put the time in to develop themselves.
I think your logic is flawed here. Sexual rejection may inspire people to make themselves more sexually appealing, but it's not as likely to carry over into intelligent pursuits.
If I see a highly attractive person at MIT or Harvard (which is to say, much of the population,) it's quite obvious that being attractive has not stopped them from learning math or physics or whatever. Conversely, I've met many unattractive stupid people--sexual rejection has not inspired them to go learn math, although it may inspire them to spend more time on their hair and clothes.
I suspect that there are just as many boring ugly people out there as boring pretty people. It's just that no one bothers to interview boring ugly people about their opinions.
If there are boring ugly people, it doesn't have any bearing on boring pretty people. This can be accounted for by people who simply give up on themselves.
Making oneself more interesting manifests itself in a number of ways, including devoting years to a PhD, or choosing to pursue a career to make oneself great. What other reasons for doing this are there besides vanity (Freud's "Desire to be great") or a desire to make oneself a better catch?
My argument is the converse of this-- if a person is getting all the sexual attention they want and then some, there isn't much incentive to change anything about their life, especially if the attention has started coming while the person is too young to know what they want to do with their life.
This is why there are so many internally underdeveloped pretty girls and boys.
People can't necessarily control how intelligent/interesting they are. Not everyone is physically capable of pursuing a PhD or meaningful career, even if they wanted to, because they simply weren't blessed with the faculties at birth. Not everyone is boring/uninteresting/unintelligent because they gave up.
I've never met anyone who pursued a PhD in order to get laid. People seem to pursue higher academics and the like because they find the work *interesting* and fulfilling. Now, I've met people who went to lawschool to get laid...
But even people who get lots of sexual attention don't spend all of their time fucking. There's quite a bit to the rest of their lives, and they'll at least want to fill that time with something of interest to them. And, frankly, while most people I know might go on a first date with someone based on that person's appearance, if that person doesn't have anything interesting beyond that, there won't be a second date. Being sexy is all well and good, but sexy and boring/stupid isn't going to get you very far, at least not among the people I know.
Maybe if I were naturally stupid, I would be content to be around people who were also stupid but at least attractive. But since I'm constantly around people who're both intelligent and attractive, I see no reason to waste time on someone boring. (And I'd rather be around someone who's unattractive and interesting than attractive and boring.)
Hmmm... I guess there isn't necessarily correlation between ambition and sexual attention, although the two definitely interact.
I will still say, however, that an abundance of sexual attention can easily lead to complacency. But perhaps that has as much to do with the individual in question as it does with the environment.
Just to argue the other side a bit, I think it would be safe to say that the set of extremely highly intelligent people and the set of extremely highly attractive people doesn't overlap much. There are of course obvious statistical explanations for this, so that even if they were completely uncorrelated, getting much overlap in such small sample sizes would be improbable.
I would not be surprised, however, if fabulously beautiful people are so rich and beautiful and beloved by everyone around them that they do neglect to improve their minds. Likewise, it may be that the set of Nobel prize winners was not a highly attractive bunch in highschool--in fact, they may be even less attractive than statistics would lead us to assume. But those are both extreme cases. I think it's hard to extrapolate, well, most anything from the lives of movie stars or Nobel laureates to the lives of 99.9% of people.
So I guess I'm saying I could see a correlation at the edges, extreme cases where beauty or smarts could be so overwhelming that for various reasons and in various ways, other things get pushed out. But for most people, the folks in the middle who are only middling attractive or middling smart, it seems much less likely.
Or to draw a contentious example, it could be that an extremely tiny variation between 'male' and 'female' brains could make the likelihood of a male who's particularly good at math an extremely tiny bit more likely, but when averaged over a population the size of the US, this would result in a disproportionate percentage of the absolute top math people in the US being male. The same variation in brains could also make it a tiny bit more likely that a male brain would be particularly bad at math (that is, more 'spread' in the distribution of math abilities in males,) which when averaged over the country would mean that a disproportionately high number of the people with the *least* ability in math would be male. But when it comes to your average student, these effects would be basically meaningless.
Making oneself more interesting manifests itself in a number of ways, including devoting years to a PhD, or choosing to pursue a career to make oneself great. What other reasons for doing this are there besides vanity (Freud's "Desire to be great") or a desire to make oneself a better catch?
Sometimes becoming more interesting is just a bi-product, but not necessarily the goal. It isn't always about vanity... In fact, for some people, that never even enters their mind...
if a person is getting all the sexual attention they want and then some, there isn't much incentive to change anything about their life, especially if the attention has started coming while the person is too young to know what they want to do with their life.
But what if sexual attention isn't something they are interested in? What if they don't really want the sexual attention? What if they would much rather be appreciated for other aspects? I mean, how many times have you heard of the scenario where an attractive man/woman will feel resentful over the fact that they are seen as just another pretty face and that people will assume they lack intelligence or depth just because they are beautiful/athletic?
So whatever the deal is with porn and images of women's bodies and blahblah blah, I ultimately think it doesn't matter. One woman may feel more comfortable, more herself, more 'empowered' wearing something skimpy which she thinks makes herself look attractive, while another woman may feel the exact opposite way in the same outfit and prefer to wear a burka. I tend to get pissed off when people start talking about what women should or shouldn't wear. If a woman wants to go around naked, let her go around naked. If she wants to wear a burka, let her wear a burka. I don't give a crap.
If some women get off on being in porn or on webcams, I also don't give a crap. It doesn't change how they're treated in society, it doesn't change whether men respect traditionally female activities, it doesn't affect how much violence women receive, it doesn't change pay inbalances, it doesn't change crap.
And honestly, a publicist telling his client that she is competing with people like Nicole Richie doesn't mean anything. It means that his client is some sort of socialite. If I were a socialite, then I'd be competing with Nicole Richie. I'm not, so I'm not. She's utterly irrelevant to me other than occasionally feeling sorry for her when I see her picture. What she does or says changes nothing about my life and how people treat me when I state my profession as 'mother'.
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I agree, size makes a difference. Ultimately, there's always going to be some response to basic physical attributes whatever they may be. But at the same time this can pretty easily turn into a shield or an excuse for what can be straight up discrimination. I would think a good manager or leader would know when to bypass their superficial judgements.
I agree with your libertarian stance. As far as I'm concerned, the only thing that matters is what an employee is capable of, not what they look like or what gender/race/religion they are.
I also agree that whether a woman draws power from manipulating men, it no longer has much effect on social opinions of women. (After all, isn't that the oldest form of feminine power maneuvers anyway?) But I don't know about your statistic for incidence of porn and incidence of violence towards women. If you mean a more liberal sexual cultural attitude correlates with lower rates of violence, then I will agree.
As for Nicole Richie... I guess it would mean more if I mentioned the publicist was talking to an actress from the UK. Of course it would be irrelevant to you.
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Good managers are, sadly, hard to come by. Often people get promoted for merely looking more competent than those around them... even if really they're just sabotaging their coworkers. If you get ahead by sabotaging some folks, why would you hesitate to sabotage others?
As for porn, basically, yes.
http://books.google.com/books?id=dCDbL3WyjFMC&pg=PA174&lpg=PA174&dq=statistical+correlation+pornography+violence+against+women&source=web&ots=i8v6eb3jCD&sig=fiRQMcU3YaXAfXwSinRVu9WwNmU
Are you familiar with the works of Dworkin and MacKinnon? I don't want to ramble at length about something you already know. Their basic theory, which underlined a lot of radical feminism in the 70s (which ultimately turned off a lot of people from feminism and thus I think accounts for the current stagnation of the movement, at least in the US,) was that there exists a 'rape culture' and that porn is some sort of violent photographic rape. It promotes rape, it teaches people how to rape, it objectifies women and turns them into nothing but sex objects, etc. Thus porn=rape culture=more rape.
This is... just not true. If there's any correlation between porn and rape, it's that countries with extremely restrictive laws on porn also have more violence against women, period, while countries with more liberal laws on porn also have less violence against women. Does that mean that producing more porn will make women's lives better, or that more equal pay in the work force will cause more porn? Probably not.
But I think getting sidetracked talking about 'rape culture' and porn as 'oppressing' and 'objectifying' women gave feminism a lot of bad press on an issue which basically didn't matter. But I guess it's easier to complain about porn than to think about whether microfinance loans for starting home businesses will help women in the third world.
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This would explain a lot of American attitudes about porn.
As far as the looking more competent thing, there's a book called "the Rules of Work" which talks about that very thing. But that's a whole different discussion. Maybe I'll spark that up for a new entry.
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Unfortunately, feminism is a largely academic exercise in America, and hell, folks are still throwing around Marxist theory without even bothering to take off the name 'Marx' without seeming to realize that in so doing they are basically guaranteeing that no one in the American mainstream will ever take them seriously. Much of academia seems to have no aspirations higher than an intellectual circle-jerk, (otherwise known as 'getting published in academic journals',) and thus there is little push towards making feminism a relevant and respectable force in life/politics.
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Alas, what you say about feminism can be used to describe the lion's share of critical theory circulating at universities. It's gone so deconstructionist, it's eaten itself.
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My comments on academic feminism were by no means at all meant to imply that only feminism suffers from academic wankery. It's just the aspect of academia I happen to be talking about at the moment. :P
Post Modernism had a few some good points, but they've run out.
All political movements must on some level deal with expanding and convincing others to join if they're to survive. But people don't like that. It feels like cheating, giving up on what you believe...
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My issues with the main-streaming of porn (and music videos, etc.) is that it suggests that objectification of women is ok. Young men see and are told time and time again that women are sexual objects to provide for their pleasure. Young girls buy into it as well: they buy the tiny clothes and imitate the dance moves seen on music videos. They call it empowerment but again they are reinforcing the idea that they are merely sex objects.
There will be no true equality until we stop prefacing CEO or executive with "female". Markedly, the derogatory terms of "ho" and "bitch" need no gender qualifier.
That is where Don Imus gets the message that it's funny to call accomplished female athletes Hos. This is why young guys think it's ok to commit sexual assault or that a woman asked for it when she's raped.
Still, you do reference an excellent point. No woman is responsible for the violent or sexist behavior of some men. A woman should be able to walk alone after dark in whatever she pleases. I'm not sure what has to happen to make that a reality though.
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We poor 1st world saps, by contrast, we're constantly objectifying folks. If I go to the coffee shop and I just want a goddamn cup of coffee and don't care how the barrista is doing, I just want them to make the coffee, then I am objectifying them. If I go to the bank and don't care about the teller as a person, I just want to deposit my cheque, I'm objectifying the teller. If I am an employer, and I do not care about my employees' personal lives, only their capabilities as employees, I am objectifying them.
And that's why our society suffers from mass violence against barristas, bank tellers, and employees--because people only see them as objects, not as real people.
And oh yes, objectifying material in the media causes people to rape. That's why folks suddenly started raping men after Michelangelo produced The Dying Slave. They took one look at that and said "shit, men are sexy".
Men do not need to be told that women are sexual objects and provide pleasure for them. Our species reproduces primarily through heterosexual intercourse, and therefore the males and females are highly attracted to each other and sex feels good. Even males who've never seen a TV set or a single piece of porn still report the attitude that women exist for the purpose of fucking and making babies.
They call it empowerment but again they are reinforcing the idea that they are merely sex objects. Because apparently we are nothing but walking clothes racks, and a human can't be both visually appealing and intelligent at the same time? Excuse me while I go find my burka.
Considering that chimpanzees rape each other, I don't think people get the idea from the word 'ho' or people saying 'female CEO'. I think they get the idea from, oh, the same place they get the idea to beat the crap out of each other--a biologically based urge to dominate and control other people. Which would explain why rape tends to correlate with other violent crimes, rather than, say, pornography.
I've walked around topless outside after dark with no problems. (Actually passed someone in a burka on my way. Got a good giggle out of that juxtaposition.)
To sum: objectification is a meaningless term. People in countries where women dress specifically to not be objectified do not treat women any better than people in countries where women dress to be objectified. You judging people for what they wear is just as bad as anyone else doing it, and humans will want to have sex with each other and view each other as avenues to sex no matter what you do, because sexual reproduction is the whole point of having two sexes.
Frankly, when I see people buying princess sparkle shit for little girls and science kits for little boys (I used to work in a toy store and saw this all the time), they're not thinking "Let's train my daughter for her role as a walking vagina." They're thinking, "Girls like pink crap, boys like bugs and dinosaurs." Then later they sit around wondering, "why aren't there more girls in science and math?" When a woman gets passed over for a promotion because she consistently clocked out earlier than male colleagues because she has to pick up her kids from daycare, her pay isn't being affected because her boss thinks she's just walking pussy. It's being affected because the corporate structure was designed by and for people who are not the primary caretakers of children.
Porn doesn't change any of that. It doesn't change how women are treated in Pakistan, it doesn't change hiring practices, it doesn't change *anything*. And if someone reports feeling better about themselves as a person because of porn, I'm not going to contradict them, because I'm not them and I don't know how their psychology works.
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Objectification can be defined as the lack of desire to know any more about a person other than their surface characteristics, and this is very much human nature.
But I will say that while it is true that a woman/man can be attractive and intelligent at the same time, it's neither normal nor natural.
Sexual rejection is one of the biggest driving forces for personal improvement. And conversely, sexual affirmation encourages individuals to stay where they are.
This is the reason why there are so many beautiful women and men who are so undeveloped internally. Only people who were sexually unappealing at an earlier point in their life bother to put the time in to develop themselves.
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If I see a highly attractive person at MIT or Harvard (which is to say, much of the population,) it's quite obvious that being attractive has not stopped them from learning math or physics or whatever. Conversely, I've met many unattractive stupid people--sexual rejection has not inspired them to go learn math, although it may inspire them to spend more time on their hair and clothes.
I suspect that there are just as many boring ugly people out there as boring pretty people. It's just that no one bothers to interview boring ugly people about their opinions.
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Making oneself more interesting manifests itself in a number of ways, including devoting years to a PhD, or choosing to pursue a career to make oneself great. What other reasons for doing this are there besides vanity (Freud's "Desire to be great") or a desire to make oneself a better catch?
My argument is the converse of this-- if a person is getting all the sexual attention they want and then some, there isn't much incentive to change anything about their life, especially if the attention has started coming while the person is too young to know what they want to do with their life.
This is why there are so many internally underdeveloped pretty girls and boys.
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I've never met anyone who pursued a PhD in order to get laid. People seem to pursue higher academics and the like because they find the work *interesting* and fulfilling. Now, I've met people who went to lawschool to get laid...
But even people who get lots of sexual attention don't spend all of their time fucking. There's quite a bit to the rest of their lives, and they'll at least want to fill that time with something of interest to them. And, frankly, while most people I know might go on a first date with someone based on that person's appearance, if that person doesn't have anything interesting beyond that, there won't be a second date. Being sexy is all well and good, but sexy and boring/stupid isn't going to get you very far, at least not among the people I know.
Maybe if I were naturally stupid, I would be content to be around people who were also stupid but at least attractive. But since I'm constantly around people who're both intelligent and attractive, I see no reason to waste time on someone boring. (And I'd rather be around someone who's unattractive and interesting than attractive and boring.)
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I will still say, however, that an abundance of sexual attention can easily lead to complacency. But perhaps that has as much to do with the individual in question as it does with the environment.
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I would not be surprised, however, if fabulously beautiful people are so rich and beautiful and beloved by everyone around them that they do neglect to improve their minds. Likewise, it may be that the set of Nobel prize winners was not a highly attractive bunch in highschool--in fact, they may be even less attractive than statistics would lead us to assume. But those are both extreme cases. I think it's hard to extrapolate, well, most anything from the lives of movie stars or Nobel laureates to the lives of 99.9% of people.
So I guess I'm saying I could see a correlation at the edges, extreme cases where beauty or smarts could be so overwhelming that for various reasons and in various ways, other things get pushed out. But for most people, the folks in the middle who are only middling attractive or middling smart, it seems much less likely.
Or to draw a contentious example, it could be that an extremely tiny variation between 'male' and 'female' brains could make the likelihood of a male who's particularly good at math an extremely tiny bit more likely, but when averaged over a population the size of the US, this would result in a disproportionate percentage of the absolute top math people in the US being male. The same variation in brains could also make it a tiny bit more likely that a male brain would be particularly bad at math (that is, more 'spread' in the distribution of math abilities in males,) which when averaged over the country would mean that a disproportionately high number of the people with the *least* ability in math would be male. But when it comes to your average student, these effects would be basically meaningless.
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Sometimes becoming more interesting is just a bi-product, but not necessarily the goal. It isn't always about vanity... In fact, for some people, that never even enters their mind...
if a person is getting all the sexual attention they want and then some, there isn't much incentive to change anything about their life, especially if the attention has started coming while the person is too young to know what they want to do with their life.
But what if sexual attention isn't something they are interested in? What if they don't really want the sexual attention? What if they would much rather be appreciated for other aspects? I mean, how many times have you heard of the scenario where an attractive man/woman will feel resentful over the fact that they are seen as just another pretty face and that people will assume they lack intelligence or depth just because they are beautiful/athletic?
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