For women, it's better to be average-looking than exceptionally beautiful

Thank you for your comments, Zaradi. What an impressive and slightly intimidating debating record you have! Ninety-seven victories! You couldn't have put together a record like that if you couldn't read resolutions properly. I can only imagine why so much of what you wrote is off topic. I will make some remarks about your “arguments” and then return to my original points, the debate proper. Unattractive, attractive, average and beautiful: Zaradi’s arguments 1-3 Zaradi, “average-looking” is not a euphemism for “ugly”. It means normal. Normal women are attractive. Average (adjective): of the usual or ordinary standard, level, or quantity; having qualities that are seen as typical of a particular person or thing (1) Attractive (adjective): (of a person) appealing to look at; sexually alluring (2) If you imagine a normal curve where the x-axis is attractiveness. The large ‘nose’ of the curve includes average-looking women, at least 80-90%, and all are attractive. Down one end is the tiny proportion of exceptionally beautiful women and down the other are the unattractive ones. It is a sign of your compassion that you wanted to drag the tiny proportion of unattractive women into the debate when they weren’t mentioned in the resolution. Most unattractive women have painful and debilitating health problems, of course. After all, some men will have sex with livestock when women aren’t around (hearsay), so a woman has to be pretty repellant to be unattractive to all men. We’re talking open, weeping sores, foul odors, crusted-up rashes, or really vile habits. For these unfortunate women, being unattractive to men is the least of their problems. It’s no surprise that they have trouble with employment, promotion, teachers, that nobody will help them in the street and so on. Therefore, any study that includes these women (even as a small proportion of a sample) will show that attractiveness correlates to all those things you mentioned. For example, the Hamermesh study which informed your “argument 1” claims about greater income for attractive people, didn’t include average-looking women at all. It compared the top third of women (31% “good looking” and only 3% “strikingly beautiful”) with the bottom 15% (2% “homely” and 13% “quite plain”). The middle 50% were excluded entirely. Most importantly, perhaps, the results for the “strikingly beautiful” 3% were not analyzed separately, but included in with the “good-looking” group.(3) In argument 2 you wrote “women who were attractive get more fuss from mothers when they are babies” Hilarious. Surely the study actually showed that more attractive babies get more fuss from mothers? And what makes a baby attractive? A smiling baby is more attractive than a crying one; a healthy baby is more attractive than a sick one. It seems more likely that the causal relationship goes the other way: babies who get more attention from their mothers are healthier and happier and therefore more “attractive” than other babies. None of the studies that informed your sources examined the difference between average-looking and exceptionally beautiful women. Most included unattractive people, and none are relevant. For women, it's better to be average-looking than exceptionally beautiful Point 1 You say that attractive women don’t all draw in jerks. I agree. Many attractive women do like to be approached by men. We can agree there too. Lots of GREAT guys date attractive women. Yes, Zaradi, life is good for ordinarily attractive women. It’s a different story for exceptionally beautiful women, though. It’s often hard to get sympathy from men on this, because men imagine being continually harassed by sexually-interested women and they honestly can’t see a down side to it. Maybe instead try instead imagining being mobbed by a bunch of rude and desperate men and you’ll get more of a feeling for it (unless you’re gay in which case go back to imagining women). Because these rude, harassing men are not men that the beautiful woman is attracted to. You said, “We men may be pretty stupid sometimes, but we can pick up fairly obvious hints, like a woman yelling "Get the f*ck away from me!” Well exactly. You would get the message, and you are exactly the sort of man a beautiful woman would like to meet: intelligent and courteous. Unfortunately, other men don’t behave as well, and these lesser men are the men that women want to avoid but can't. You want sources? Here’s one. Please note that I am referencing a recent study in an academic journal and not, ahem, a “survey” sponsored by Elle (your reference 1) or a 1999 book review (your reference 2) or whatever your reference 3 was (it didn’t open and I couldn’t locate it by other means). Perilloux, Easton & Buss (2011) found that women tend underestimate men’s sexual interest, but men tend to overestimate the interest women show in them and that “the magnitude of men’s overperception of women’s sexual interest was predicted by the women’s physical attractiveness.” (4) In other words, men are always erroneously believing that extremely beautiful women are sexually attracted to them. Which is why they can be such “pricks” (your word). Point 2 In Israel, military service is mandatory for everyone over the age of 18. Men do three years and women do two years and then it’s a month a year until you’re 35. In those first few years when they’re out of school, people are very susceptible and whatever they learn in those years, including habits of mind, tends to stay with them. This is why (and again, it’s my own observation, so sorry) in Israel people will always respond to problems with military solutions. Because the whole population has been trained to think that way. It’s the same with exceptionally beautiful women. From the age of, say, 16, they learn that they have immense power and that this power comes from their personal attractiveness. In theory, they don’t need to internalize this in any way. They don’t need to value it. In reality, they can’t avoid being psychologically affected. Nor can the Israelis as a general rule, no matter how tough and smart they may be as individuals. This is why exceptionally beautiful women tend to obsess over appearance and value themselves only in relationship to it. Segal-Caspi, Roccas & Sagiv (2012) found that, when compared with average-looking women, “the beautiful strive for conformity rather than independence and for self-promotion rather than tolerance.” (5) Which was exactly my point about famous women in the previous post. In terms of men not liking resources and power being taken from them, no matter how beautiful the snatchee, you responded with arguments relating to sexual relationships. Zaradi. There’s a big difference between sexual relationships and work relationships. You really can’t compare them in any way. Yes, men and women are happy with sexual domination and submission, and both men and women will make various economic agreements with their life partners. This has nothing to do with power dynamics at work. At work, a man will help a beautiful woman in order to get her gratitude or to have her closer around the office. He will never help her to be in a position where she can compete properly or get ahead of him, and if it seems like she will by other means then he will find a way to use her sex against her. This is the way that competitive men are. You just need to look at the rate of women as CEOs and politicians and in any desirable position of power to see that women are underrepresented, and those that are there are far from being mere ornaments. To get ahead, women have to go up against men and not simply bask in their approval. 1. http://oxforddictionaries.com... 2. http://oxforddictionaries.com... 3. https://webspace.utexas.edu... 4. http://pss.sagepub.com... 5. http://pss.sagepub.com...