The Rawness

I’ve been going through my old posts, looking for ideas for new ones and theories to expand on, and I’ve come to a realization.

I can’t front. My shit is brilliant. I am the shit.

That’s all.

P.S. I predict next Monday’s post is going to cause a lot of controversy. I encourage you to weigh in on it when it goes up.

Sometime in 2010 I plan to do a “Game for Women” month. But in the meantime this mini-linkblogging post should whet your appetites.

The accompanying article.

Also, an article from the Daily Mail in the UK. “The ego epidemic: How more and more of us women have an inflated sense of our own fabulousness.” Same dilemma across the pond.

A related article from the Atlantic, “In Search of Mr. Right.”

A common complaint from women today is how society, primarily through the media, promotes all these unrealistic expectations of women. Thanks to celebrity plastic surgery and airbrushing and photoshop in magazines and posters, a lot of men have delusions about what constitutes the average female body shape and typical cellulite levels. Plus feminists for the past few decades have been promoting this idea of the superwoman who can “have it all,” from the high powered career to the Prince Charming husband to the 3 kids to the Martha Stewart homemaking proficiency, all without missing a beat.  For these reasons, I agree with these female complaints to a degree, but they nonetheless become tiresome to me.  I’ll explain why.

One of the big problems I’ve complained about in this blog for a while is how much I hate the modern images of men we receive in the media, of the slacker slobs that often pass for protaganists in Apatow movies or the death of credible action heroes in today’s cinema. In the latter case, as I’ve pointed out in the past, how many (1) American (2) white men (3) under 35 outside of Channing Tatum can pass as credible action heroes? It’s for this reason I believe so many action heroes of yesteryear have been able to make credible comebacks: because Hollywood has yet to find any worthy successors. Despite being past their prime, we’ve seen recent successful action comebacks for Arnold Schwarzenegger (Terminator 3), Sylvester Stallone (Rocky Balboa and John Rambo), Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skulls) and Bruce Willis (Live Free or Die Hard). Notice in these movies there was usually a man from the next generation as a sidekick who was either unconvincingly (I can’t stress that word enough) being groomed as the next action hero (like Shia LeBeouf in Indy) or blatantly being shown as not being cut out of the same rugged cloth as the tough guy cloth as the older mentor (Rocky’s son in Rocky Balboa, Hipster Mac Commercial Douche in Live Free or Die Hard). So it seemed like either way, the modern generation of 18-35 year olds was getting reminded of its inadequacies. We either had movies where we were the protaganists and reveling in our underachieving slacker slob status, or we had action movies with the male archetypes of yesteryear reminding us of our inadequacies, either explicitly by outright stating it or implicitly just by a comparison of respective actions shown on the screen. Also, look at a trailer for what’s being touted as the hottest coming action movie of 2010 and see what you notice:

I think a big reason people long for these old school types of movies is because they’ve long become bored with how politically correct and lowest common denominator movies have become.  Every non-kid movie is targeted to immature 18-34 year old beta males with ADD or to narcissistic, empowered feminist Sex and the City fans.  I myself have made a conscious effort in recent years to watch old movies, either through cable programming on AMC, Turner Classics and Fox Movie Channel or through DVDs, and it’s been a mostly rewarding experience, but not totally.  Because as a result of immersing myself in this old entertainment, I’ve realized a different set of problems arising from the ones I had when watching modern entertainment; problems that made me identify with yet at the same time have less sympathy for the “unrealistic standards for females” debate I mentioned earlier.

One weekend I was having a movie watching marathon. I watched some westerns like High Noon with Gary Cooper, My Darling Clementine with Henry Fonda and Pale Rider with Clint Eastwood along with other classic movies. These were wonderful, inspiring movies but I noticed at the end of the day that I was feeling a little down and inadequate and felt existential angst building.

It took me a while but eventually I made the connection between my mood and the movies I watched earlier. I was feeling inadequate because I was doubting whether I was capable of doing the great acts of heroism and bravery these men onscreen were making look as natural as breathing. There were scenes where guys could easily have escaped to safety and taken the easy way out, but they decide to stick around and face down four guys singlehandedly in a gunfight. Or routinely walk into the heart of danger, outnumbers and outgunned, and win the encounter without even doing any violence, solely through masculine presence and badass intimidation. Walking through rooms of cutthroats and hired killers, right up to the boss of the crew, to tell him not to threaten women and children anymore or he’d have to answer to the hero. And no one raises a finger against him in the whole room, because he’s just that badass. Or on the flipside the guy who chooses practical self-preservation over commiting a suicide mission to preserve his honor and ends up getting shamed by his woman or by children into stepping up and doing the right thing, despite how impractical and suicidal it is. There were numerous times during these movies I found myself asking “Would I do that? Could I do that?” It’s hard to know exactly what you’d do in a crisis until you’re actually in it. You’d always like to believe the best about yourself, but you never actually know how you’ll perform until the moment of truth.

Or how about the suave guy who has a snappy retort for every verbal challenge  thrown at him by a male rival or a female target who is testing him and resisting his wooing?  Who never lets himself get flustered by anything?  Who bursts into the boardroom and delivers the crunchtime presentation that saves the company and gets him the promotion?  The guy who beats all the enemies, solves all the crises and always gets the girl in the end?

Basically, when did we get this idea that women have a monopoly on receiving impossible standards to meet from the media and society?  Men have been dealing with unrealistic standards and expectations from society and the media for as long as media and society have existed!  A lot of what women complain about with body image and superwoman pressures from media and society is not that different than the pressures men get in regards to being both hypermasculine, suave, yet also sensitive to women’s needs. In some ways it’s even worse because while we’ve reached a point where thanks to public sympathy the term “real women” now means America Ferrera or average, slightly chunky women in a Dove ad, while on the flip side the term “real men” still conjurs the image of the hypermasculine, perfect ideal from these old movies, even among people who consider themselves progressive, modern and liberal. And it’s also worse for men in that living up to that male ideal is much more likely to lead to bodily harm and death than what a woman faces living up to the feminine ideal.  I realize now that a lot of this beta male media glorification is probably for men a backlash to media pressure in the same way this “real woman” let’s-let-ourselves-get-fat-without-guilt movement is for women.

I’m conflicted about all this.  On one hand, I agree with the idea that delusionally unrealistic standards do need to be exposed.  For example it’s ridiculous when both men and women think a woman with just a little cellulite, so little cellulite that she still has less cellulite than 3/4 of the adult female population, is bashed for being fat because the average guy has no idea how common cellulite actually is on women thanks to rampant photoshopping of models and celebrities.  But likewise when single decent men feel inadequate if they aren’t perfection squared (have to be macho like Eastwood, stoic and unemotional like Robert Mitchum, suave like Cary Grant, yet sensitive and big-hearted like Jimmy Stewart, all with an Ivy League degree and six figure salary before 30), someone has to be the voice of reason in that case too.  So far, so good, right?

Where I draw the line though is that there seems to be a growing movement among both genders to respond to delusional standards by going too far to the the opposite extremes and celebrating mediocrity and averageness.  We keep downgrading expectations and lowering the standards for average and above average to the point where people are actually suffering from too much self esteem for no good reason.  And at the same time, people’s standards for people of the opposite sex remain higher than ever.  They’re only lowering expectations for themselves.  So now you have chunky or fat chicks or underemployed airheads who can’t cook or clean and only know how to spend money expecting to land Prince Charming.  And you have videogame playing, Maxim reading, flabby manchildren expecting to land Katherine Heigl caliber chicks like Seth Rogen did in Knocked Up.  Unwarranted narcissism along with entitlement are out of control.

My take on it is, as bad as delusionally high levels of role models can be for one’s self esteem, the overly relatable and pitifully average role model is immeasurably worse.  At the end of the day, even if you scale them back some from dangerously delusional levels, our role models still need to be at a healthy level of unattainability in order to keep us aspirational.  We should only accept breaking even after trying and failing to win the big jackpot.  We shouldn’t set out aiming to break even as our ultimate goal from the very beginning.  If you’re a young girl, hit the gym and try to look like a supermodel not America Ferrera.  Try to be Martha Stewart.  If you’re a young guy, work on your game and aim to be as smooth as James Bond; don’t aim to be adorably nerdy like Michael Cera.  If you don’t succeed in the long run, so be it.  Sometimes things don’t work out.  It’s not the end of the world, don’t beat yourself up, don’t kill yourself over it.  As you get older and wiser, scale back your goals and your expectations accordingly.

Most posts on this blog get several comments right after I post them, but occasionally there will be a post that continues to get comments for months and months after I originally post it. One of these posts is an early one titled “Why Women Are Called Sluts When They Sleep Around, But Men Aren’t.”

It amazes me how this one post continues to strike a nerve with readers so long after I posted it. It’s my first actual substantive post on this whole blog, not including my introduction post. A lot of women vehemently took issue with that post and continue to do so, and it surprises me because I don’t think I really said anything all that controversial (although I have changed my view on on aspect of the original article, but that’s a story for another post). Most of it seemed common sense, especially the part where I said getting lots of sex (quality is a different issue of course) is easy for women and not a challenge, but for men it is a big challenge, hence the different treatments for both genders when they score a lot, but even that premise angers quite a few commenters.

So last week I thought, why not do a thought experiment with a different gender double standard that touches on a few of the same issues involved in the “male/female slut double standard” but without saying so and see what answers pop up. I wanted to see what directions the discussion would go in and see if I got any answers that changed my original conclusions and also see if women would be willing to admit my original conclusions had merit when I don’t set off the “slut shaming” alarm.

Thus, last week’s thought experiment. A decent idea in theory, but there was one problem: my readers are too smart. I expected the comments to go all over the place before someone touched on the same issues I touched on in my male/female slut double standard post.

Instead Liz pops in and hits the bullseye in the very first comment!

Because it is widely assumed, and in most cases true, that a woman CAN get sex whenever she wants, just by lowering her standards a bit. That being said, a woman using a sex toy is seen as a voluntary action. She’s doing it because she wants to. A man using them is seen as doing it because he HAS to. He can’t find ayone willing to have sex with him. True or not, that, I think, is the crux of the discrepancy.

And if that wasn’t enough, Maake swooped in a few comments later and even got the tie-in I was going for:

Liz is right and that is the reason whu woman with many sexual relationships is a whore but man a hero.

It did confirm something I suspect though, and that is that sometimes no matter how much people agree with your reasoning and premises deep down, if it leads to a conclusion they find personally discomforting they’ll still fight you tooth and nail the whole way.

Kay S. Hymowitz from City Journal (a great magazine put out by the New York based conservative think tank Manhattan Institute) discusses the problems feminists are having reconciling their ideology with findings in evolutionary psychology.

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Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa discusses the surprising factors that may determine whether your child is a boy or girl, such as your beauty, brains, money and level of sexual promiscuity.

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Hara Estroff Marano at Psychology Today discusses what jealousy teaches us about ourselves.

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Adam Sachs at GQ discusses the “sweet spot,” the perfect dating age range for men:

Somewhere between puberty and Cialis is that perfect moment in a single man’s life when he can date the broadest age group, when he can sleep with 23-year-olds—and their mothers—without being called a creep. He just has to know the rules

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The Italian Mama’s Boy problem.

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The title of this Evolutionary Psychology Journal article says it all, “Attractive Women Want it All: Good Genes, Economic Investment, Parenting Proclivities, and Emotional Commitment.” Yeah, I know: duh. But still, not a bad piece. Some key excerpts:

Much empirical work has documented how mate preferences shift according to context. Women pursuing short-term mating compared to long-term mating, for example, increase the importance they place on a man’s physical attractiveness, sex appeal, muscularity, and extravagant and immediate resource displays…Women pursuing long-term mating, in contrast, place greater importance on resource acquisition potential, such as “has a promising career” and “has good financial prospects”…

So if your goal is a one-night stand, focus on making yourself look as good as you can rather than bragging about your job. And vice versa is what you’re looking for is a wife.

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Psychology Today discusses what kissing means to men vs. what kissing means to women.

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You know how your parents and Hollywood always tell you that it’s okay to be a nerd when you’re younger? Because when you’ll grow up you’ll be successful and the popular kids will be working at the gas station? Turns out it’s a lie. According to a paper called “Popularity” by the Institute for Social & Economic Research, men who had been popular as high school seniors were making more money 35 years later than their less popular peers, even after controlling for family background and intelligence:

One additional friendship nomination in high school is associated with a 2 percent higher
wage 35 years later. This is roughly equivalent to almost half the gain from an extra year of
education. Shifting somebody from the bottom fifth to the top fifth of the school popularity
distribution – in other words, turning a social reject into a star – would be predicted to yield
him a 10 percent wage advantage. This work emphasizes the critical importance of the early
development of social skills alongside cognitive and productive skills as a basis for economic
success in adult life.

So to all those who say social intelligence isn’t as important in the long run as book smarts, think again.

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The difference between male desperation and female desperation, as described by Nando Pelusi, Ph.D. in Psychology Today:

Men and women are needy in different ways. Men get obsessed before they land a partner; women get obsessed after they find one. Men and women alike become desperate for a guarantee of love, but that desperation kicks in, roughly speaking, at different points in the relationship.

I’ve seen neediness arise even when men and women do not particularly care for the person they’re needy about.

Also:

Men and women have different unconscious reproductive motives. In casual relationships, more women than men want to know where the relationship is going and obsess about the long-term potential, because women have a lot more at stake reproductively. Women may take longer to get emotionally involved, but once they pass the threshold, they’re in. Female vigilance is evident in a woman’s tendency to test her partner at a relationship’s start—acting coy or simply being wary of his intentions—and then get obsessive once committed.

Men, by contrast, usually start out at peak emotional investment because they have a lot to gain from immediate coupling. Twenty minutes of intense pleasure does not compare to the years spent raising children. A man’s neediness stems from falling in love at first sight. Men are much more likely to agonize over how to get a woman than how to keep her…

This behavior qualifies as needy when the guy suspects the relationship is going nowhere but can’t put the brakes on. The needy approach may work, but at great emotional cost. Ironically, such behavior subverts a man’s goal, because women generally lose interest in guys who get clingy and act more like a butler than a boyfriend.

The article also makes a great distinction between strong desire and neediness:

Desire and neediness are not on the same continuum; wanting someone or something with all your heart does not by definition mean that you’re needy. You can want something passionately without turning it into an absolute necessity. A desire says, “I’d like to make this work because I really like and love this person—and I hope we click.” A need says, “This relationship must work out, or else I’m a loser and I’ll be single forever.”

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Stephen Benedict-Mason discusses “The Monogamy Hoax.” My favorite part is the subheading: “Marriage…the root cause of divorce.” Ha.

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In an article that rubbed many online commentators the wrong way, Sandra Tsing Loh in The Atlantic, while going through her own divorce, reevaluates the whole institution of marriage and finds it comes up lacking in today’s world.

Although a lot of people railed against this article and dismissed it entirely as feminist crap, I think that too many people threw out the baby with the bathwater on this one. Regardless on how you feel about her ultimate conclusion or whether you feel her tone was needlessly callous, she does make some good observations about Americans and marriage:

I sense you picking up the first stone to hurl, even if you yourself may be twice or even three times divorced. Such a contradiction turns out to be uniquely American. Just because marriage didn’t work for us doesn’t mean we don’t believe in the institution. Just because our own marital track records are mixed doesn’t mean our hearts don’t lift at the sight of our daughters’ Tiffany-blue wedding invitations. After all, we can easily arrange to sit far from our exes, across the flower-bedecked aisle, so as not to roil the festive day. Just because we know that nearly half of U.S. marriages end in divorce—including perhaps even those of our own parents (my dearest childhood wish was not just that my parents would divorce, but also that my raging father would burst into flames)—doesn’t mean we aren’t confident ours is the one that will beat the odds. At least that is the attitudinal yin/yang described by Andrew J. Cherlin in his scrupulously argued Marriage-Go-Round: compared with our western European counterparts, Americans are far more credulous about marriage. In World Values Surveys taken at the turn of the millennium, fewer Americans agreed with the statement “Marriage is an outdated institution” than citizens of any other Western country surveyed (compare the U.S.’s tiny 10 percent with France’s 36 percent). We are also more religious—more Americans (60 percent) say they attend religious services once a month than do the Vatican-centric Italians (54 percent) or, no surprise, the laissez-faire French (12 percent). At the same time, Americans endure the highest divorce rate in the Western world. In short, although we say we love religion and marriage, Cherlin notes, “religious Americans are more likely to divorce than secular Swedes.”

Cherlin believes the reason for this paradox is that Americans hold two values at once: a culture of marriage and a culture of individualism. Or is it an American spirit of optimism wedded, if you will, to a Tocquevillian spirit of restlessness that inspires three out of four Americans to say they believe marriage is for life, while only one in four agreed with the notion that even if a marriage is unhappy, one should stay put for the sake of the children. If America is a “divorce culture,” it may be partly because we are a “marriage culture,” since we both divorce and marry (a projected 90 percent of us) at some of the highest rates anywhere on the globe. Hence Cherlin’s cautionary advice consists of two words—“Slow down”

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New York magazine’s Sex Diaries project is a fascinating documentation of the current dating scene for today’s young urbanites. Like a train wreck you can’t look away. You can read them all here.

The magazine also did a piece about their own project and highlighted some of the best of the lot.