Strangeness in proportion

[zenkatsuo]

We went to see Gravity, and afterwards, walking through a mall, I stopped to stare at Jeff Bridges glaring from a big window poster. "There he is", I said. I asked why men get so much sexier as they get older and Maikeru just made a face. Jeff Bridges is 63. Robert Downey Jr. is 48. Neither did anything for me when they were younger. I didn't even

Comments

[army_kitten]

I enjoy the affirmation when I post pix of myself and people like them. But I'm not always entirely sure of my own motivations. Sometimes, when I take pictures of myself, if they are more self-portraits than "selfies", where I'm trying to communicate something instead. Some kind of emotion that can't be put into words, whatever it is I'm feeling at the time. Sadness, longing, desire, etc. You're right, it is a more complex issue than most people would like to believe. I still don't give a shit if people think I'm a narcissist, though. Most of my friends are in FB and not in the real world.

[zenkatsuo]

Dude, I don't know the motivations behind half the things I do.

I don't think selfies have all that much to do with narcissism (sp?), even the borderline pornographic ones. Also, even if they did, I wouldn't think it was a bad thing. Actually, I suppose I think the most narcissistic (...) selfie is the one to be celebrated if we were to celebrate them. You know, the one where you make the decision not to take a picture of the Monty Python live gig (so sold out) or Eiffel tower or something awesome, but to take a picture of yourself at the Monty Python live gig or in front of Eiffel tower or whatever instead. I wouldn't even call it narcissism (*cough*), but I guess a lot of people would.

The Jezebel article is written in that irritating love-it-or-hate-it-you're-gonna-share-it clickbait style, and it's shitty in a lot of ways, so I understand the hate, but reading the Slate article that it's in reaction to it strangely doesn't even feel that angry

[chrysa]

I read a post, once, that put it this way: the desire to document our personal human existence is not uncommon nor anything new since the beginning of time. I'm not sure how a desire to feel "special" and continually document your continued existence is different when it comes to format... that is, are people more hypercritical (and by people I mean the women of Jezebel) because it's other women who are doing this [to excess]. How is this different than the astounding number of autobiographies people put out about themselves -- mostly written by men, by the way -- but the reason people don't find that noteworthy is because men make up the majority, as if they should by default

[zenkatsuo]

I happened to read this article when it was published, and while it's jumbled and made me rather angry, I've found myself thinking about it a lot since, especially in the context of selfies. It's a crap article, but today I've been reading one of the studies cited in it, Cultural suppression of female sexuality, and it's making a pretty compelling case in favor of it being primarily women who police women's sexuality. There's documented positive correlation between indexes of greater male power and suppression of female sexuality found across 186 cultures that shows that the greater the power imbalance in favor of males, the more female sexuality was suppressed. This, and the Darwinian incentive (though it would only make sense in discouraging infidelity in relationships) would point to men being the ones controlling female sexuality. However, social exchange theory assumes that sex is a female-controlled resource desired by men, and because sex is one of the few bargaining chips women have when men possess most of the power in

[chrysa]

“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
― Oscar Wilde

LOL, Unfortunately I actually can't comment that much in terms of sex and power just because I'm trying not to think about it. I guess it's pretty much because I've recently come to see myself as ~mostly asexual~ (and emphasis on mostly rather than asexual which is why it took me that long to get to that point, and I really loathe talking about it not out of shame but mostly because just "asexual" doesn't feel right and explaining more specifically is too much a hassle) and since I have a lot more pressing personal matters to worry about sooooo. I mean I joked about it with my friend a few weeks ago, but it's just like... no, not up to feeling oppressed about this." In the same way, it's probably how my sister feels about a lot of the things I am deeply affronted by in terms of sexism and racism -- just because you're not up for caring about it doesn't mean it doesn't affect you. But wrapping back up to what you were saying about sex as a currency for