Re: News Flash! Middle Class White Guys Not Sole Arbiters of Attractiveness!
...I can't believe this never got posted. :( I can't figure out why it's not up, and now I have to rewrite it...
Link.
This essay's premise is that it's rude and downright misogynistic of men to try and reassure fat women who consider their fat ugly by pointing out the fact that they happen to find fat attractive.
I mean, I don't usually bust out with the feminist polemics but when men try to offer that reassurance - or try to insist that fat is unattractive because of hip-to-waist ratio and that means it is unhealthy and socially unacceptable (while inviting reasoned arguments to the contrary - yes, spammed comment, I am looking at you) - it really grosses me out.
That sort of thing makes too many assumptions. Assumptions like, oh, I don't know, the value of women being determined by their fuckability. And not their fuckability in general - their perceived fuckability by white, middle class, mainstream guys.
Leaving aside the assumption that anyone who points out their own attraction to fat must be a white, middle-class, mainstream guy (I'm a biracial, queer, female foster child, and I often find fat women attractive...), The Rotund's entire post depends on the idea that if you try to reassure someone who's insecure about their looks by telling them they're attractive, you must believe that their entire worth as a person depends on their attractiveness.
You guys see the logical gap there? Beauty and attractiveness do matter to most people, regardless of whether or not they should, and when a woman's insecure about her looks, you can be sure they matter to her. I'd guess that they probably do matter to The Rotund, too. The problem I see with today's beauty standard is that it's stupidly narrow and not even truthful- how many people do YOU know that only find Scarlett Johanssen lookalikes who are Photoshopped to hell and back attractive? (They do nothing for me, personally...) None of this means that the only value a woman has is in her beauty. Even if you do believe that beauty has value, so do things like personality and competence. When someone reassures someone else that they are, indeed, attractive, that doesn't mean that they think that the other person will be worthless if they're not attractive. Some of them might, but given the number of people who say things like this, I think it's highly inaccurate to generalize it to all of them.
Link.
This essay's premise is that it's rude and downright misogynistic of men to try and reassure fat women who consider their fat ugly by pointing out the fact that they happen to find fat attractive.
I mean, I don't usually bust out with the feminist polemics but when men try to offer that reassurance - or try to insist that fat is unattractive because of hip-to-waist ratio and that means it is unhealthy and socially unacceptable (while inviting reasoned arguments to the contrary - yes, spammed comment, I am looking at you) - it really grosses me out.
That sort of thing makes too many assumptions. Assumptions like, oh, I don't know, the value of women being determined by their fuckability. And not their fuckability in general - their perceived fuckability by white, middle class, mainstream guys.
Leaving aside the assumption that anyone who points out their own attraction to fat must be a white, middle-class, mainstream guy (I'm a biracial, queer, female foster child, and I often find fat women attractive...), The Rotund's entire post depends on the idea that if you try to reassure someone who's insecure about their looks by telling them they're attractive, you must believe that their entire worth as a person depends on their attractiveness.
You guys see the logical gap there? Beauty and attractiveness do matter to most people, regardless of whether or not they should, and when a woman's insecure about her looks, you can be sure they matter to her. I'd guess that they probably do matter to The Rotund, too. The problem I see with today's beauty standard is that it's stupidly narrow and not even truthful- how many people do YOU know that only find Scarlett Johanssen lookalikes who are Photoshopped to hell and back attractive? (They do nothing for me, personally...) None of this means that the only value a woman has is in her beauty. Even if you do believe that beauty has value, so do things like personality and competence. When someone reassures someone else that they are, indeed, attractive, that doesn't mean that they think that the other person will be worthless if they're not attractive. Some of them might, but given the number of people who say things like this, I think it's highly inaccurate to generalize it to all of them.