Kevin's Watch

This is no misogynistic rant. I'm just hacked off because last night I talked to the fourth gorgeous female friend in a month to admit to having self image problems. And apparently, they are the norm. I heard the other day that only 1% of women think they are beautiful. Now, I happen to think that about 90% of women are beautiful in some way. The reamining ten percent are either over- or under-weight, which is my only real turn-off. (And I don't mean naturally big or small. I mean the health-risk kind.) Very few people seem to agree with me on this, but meh.

Anyway, even given my exceptionally inclusive standards, these women could never, ever be at risk of being unattractive. There are degrees of beauty, and they got more than their fair share. For my friend's girlfriend to talk about how it took a long time for her to do things like eat without feeling guilty (she is extremely petit), and like what she saw in the mirror...my jaw dropped. "But...but...you're gorgeous" I protested. If she doesn't consider herself attractive what hope in hell does any other woman have?

What can we do about this? I love these girls. I'd never want them to feel insecure or unhappy. Regardless of my feelings, there's no way they should feel insecure or unhappy, at least about their appearance, in a just world. I may have one idea. My friend, whose girl I so indignantly assured of her physical attractiveness, privately thanked me the other day. "I tell her myself," he said, "but she doesn't really believe me." Apparently, hearing it from me, someone she trusted but had no romantic connection to, made her feel really good. Hearing that they're beautiful from someone not trying to sleep with them seems to reassure women. Doesn't quite make sense to me, because (duh) if they're trying to sleep with you, you're obviously doing something right. But anyway. I think us guys should make an effort to tell all the women in our lives how beautiful they are. By all means tell your girlfriend or your spouse. But also tell your friends, your sisters, your cousins. They seem to need to hear it.

Unlike us guys, who know how damn hot we are already. (discalimer: yes, I am aware guys have self image issues too.)

My daughter idealizes the sickly, emaciated goth look, but she has dark skin and an athletic physique.

I understand this-- I'd love it if I was built like Peter Murphy or Lux Interior, but that ain't gonna happen for either of us.

She should bask in her good looks. She could be competitive in any sport she wants to. I do not really like any sport but fighting.

To my great pleasure, she has found an interest in Kendo.

If she could transpose that to boffer sword fighting, I would be pleased, because I have a great passion for Amtgard and consider myself good at it because I started playing at thirty eight and at forty three am still a middle tier player, competitive with sixteen year olds.

I'm proud of this because I am not a trained fighter. I just naturally know how to use a sword.

When I fight top tier players, they usually kick my ass, but I can still beat them once in a while.

In my sport, Lief and Monkey are the only players I can't beat. I even kicked Deathstalker's ass once.

I never beat Saine (six and a half foot, VERY stocky, Viking of a fighter) in a regular fight, but I killed him twice in battle-games.

A woman's self esteem is largely based on cultural issues. I personally love a meaty woman-- but a "stick girl" always attracts me.

Probably because I'm a little gay and love androgyny.

The one time I had sex with a girl who had shaved her head gave me hours of pleasure!

Yet when I masturbated with a male friend I could not complete the act because I kept thinking "that's a dude!"

I sometimes regret being heterosexual because I fit in so well with gay culture.

Many times it has nothing to do with physical attractiveness, some incident or a series of negative incidents at a much earlier age can lead to negative self-image and lack of confidence. Got to go, but real quick-when I was around 22 people would ask me, "What the hell is wrong with you? You're built like f-ing Superman!" but I took a lot of early high school bullying, jealously and parental absence personally...and, for a while my self image and confidence was pretty dam negative (very easy to ID with TC during that window, as well .)

Cambo, #1 thing to know about women: all those bitches are crazy!

Reminds me of this cracked.com article, which is the rare exception to cracked articles by being neither funny nor useful.

Great article.

That is a good article. And LZ, appropriately I was just listening on the radio to some psychologists who just finished a study of adolescent/teenaged girls. They looked at a lot of things, but one of the things they found was that the most important influence on a young girl's self image is her father. They couldn't give a shit what their mother says, but if they get on with their dad, a compliment from him will give them a warm glow inside. (obviously they put it a little more scientifically than that.)

This thread is useless without pictures.

Any women want to chime in on this, or just us horn-dogs?

I'll chime in. I know I am adorably cute. Big hazel eyes, pale skin, currently sporting black hair which I wear in toddler style ponytails wrapped with bright neon colors on top of my head as my secret rebellion at work, even when I was heavier I still had a lot of self confidence and that is usually what attracts guys the most. I'm also silly, flirty, slightly evil, and devilishly charming. Yes, some people, particularly other women, find this annoying but it's generally because they wish they were as self confidant as me. I still have some body parts I occasionally wish were different but not so much that it bugs me all that much. I also have days that I feel fat. Please keep in mind guys that women have serious hormone fluctuations and body changes each and every month of the year so we seriously can wake up in the morning five pounds heavier than when we went to bed and if a person weighs 125 pounds that makes a huge difference, literally about an extra half inch all over the body, meaning if the waist was 26 inches, it becomes 27, so pants are tight and uncomfortable, causing body issues, hormones are raging, causing emotional issues and we are usually in pain to a degree and simply just feel gross. Plus our bodies are being leached of large quantities of vitamins and minerals so we are weakened at that time. Not that it's excusing anything, just trying to explain. We are also inundated with body images for the ideal woman from the moment we can comprehend what we are looking at. The majority of my female friends have body issues, even the ones I think are shockingly gorgeous. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it's a societal conditioning that we females are forced to bear since early prepubescent days. Women are held to much more rigid standards for physical looks than men are because for so long in our society women have been objectified relentlessly by burlesque/strip/every form of advertising media in existence and almost every culture around the world is based in patriarchy. I have just been lucky enough to realize early on that as long as I know I am beautiful, others will agree. Best piece of advice I can give you guys is this, If a girl is fishing for compliments NO MATTER HER REASONS, REAL LACK OF CONFIDENCE OR ACTUAL FISHING, look at her and say, "Stop fishing for compliments because I know you must know you are a hottie or some such version of this in your own words, (might wanna run your own words by me first) and act like she's being ridiculous. If she's fishing you have played her game, if she's genuine you have made her day. Win/Win. Got it? GOT IT? Good.

Lord Zombiac wrote: I sometimes regret being heterosexual because I fit in so well with gay culture.

Ha ha! I know exactly of what you spake.

Me too--except I adore women and football and not that big a fan of Streisand and musicals... I particularly like the Black Hole Sun video where they melt the Barbies-that dam Barbie!

How do you guys feel about Cher? I hear that's a pretty good litmus test....

I second what Jenn said. A lot of it's cultural. Another chunk of it is hormones. Mens' bodies change during adolescence, and then pretty much stay frozen, other than aging issues, throughout their lives. But women's bodies change every month, from the onset of puberty until age 50 or so -- unless we're pregnant, when things *really* go wacko.

And then you hit menopause and the hormones go crazy again, with hot flashes and night sweats and another round of acne (oh yeah!) and general crankiness. This lasts *years* for some women. The hormones *finally* settle down eventually -- but then society sees you as a dried-up prune. So whatever.

Leaving aside the bio-chemistry, which is obviously more tumultuous for females:

The importance of the father is partly because a good father cares/bonds/appreciates before reflections/images/broader social groups take the dominant place...so they have a firmer identity foundation.

It also seems to me [anecdotally, just from peeps I've known] that the body-image wars/judgements are far more complicated than simple history of patriarchy...at least in part, it is the women themselves enforcing the judgements...and men are just the thing they use to keep score.

I wrote this blog post about my self-image problems.

I was also sexually abused as a child by a male (not my father). I can't tell you that is the main reason, but there are subconscious things in my mind that rebel whenever I look at my body, no matter how hard I try to love myself.

I've always been told I was beautiful. Even as a child. As an adult, I'm of the opinion that it really is a disservice to girls. Even the most gorgeous woman does not feel gorgeous all the time. I think by telling women and girls they are beautiful can have the opposite effect. I think it holds them to an unobtainable standard; as if they must strive to feel beautiful all the time.

I'm not advocating men to never tell women they are beautiful. It can be a confidence booster. But there is such an emphasis on beauty these days, surely there are more redeeming qualities women have that can be complimented on.

Above all, women, even beautiful ones, just want to feel human. I think once we break that barrier, we will be on the road to helping self-image issues.

That's a wonderful blog, JazFusion. Thank you for sharing.

And thanks for reminding me that the world is always, always, more complex than I think:

I've always been told I was beautiful. Even as a child. As an adult, I'm of the opinion that it really is a disservice to girls. Even the most gorgeous woman does not feel gorgeous all the time. I think by telling women and girls they are beautiful can have the opposite effect. I think it holds them to an unobtainable standard; as if they must strive to feel beautiful all the time.

At times I have a very simplistic mind. This is the problem, this is the solution. Women I love don't feel they are beautiful. Solution: tell them they are beautiful. It's wishful thinking to make the world that easy, but it's the idealist in me.

Above all, women, even beautiful ones, just want to feel human. I think once we break that barrier, we will be on the road to helping self-image issues.

Completely agreed. For a long time I saw myself as ugly. Inside and out. There wasn't a thing I liked about myself. It wasn't until after I realised people could genuinely enjoy my company, that there was anything at all of worth in me, that my (now rampant) self confidence began to recover. Basically I stopped caring about my appearance for a while. I still thought I was ugly, but hey, I was liked, so what did it matter? A while after that, a girl came along and taught me that I was physically attractive.

So being human, in your own eyes and the eyes of others, is of course essential. I would argue that beauty (in all senses) is an inherent part of being human. But that's just the idealist in me.

I'm with Brinn on this one

Well, Jaz, I guess I owe you an apology for giving you positive comments on a couple of your pictures. I'm not saying you're not smokin' hot, I'm just not gonna tell you you are anymore.



It's not just these days, though. It's always been happening. Men have always looked at women, always wanted to look at women they think are hot, and always commented on it. Not sure what can be done about it.

Fist and Faith wrote:Well, Jaz, I guess I owe you an apology for giving you positive comments on a couple of your pictures. I'm not saying you're not smokin' hot, I'm just not gonna tell you you are anymore.



It's not just these days, though. It's always been happening. Men have always looked at women, always wanted to look at women they think are hot, and always commented on it. Not sure what can be done about it.

hahahahaha! Let me try to clarify myself.

I do not take it the wrong way when a man stops to tell me I am beautiful. I do not advocate men to outright stop telling women they are beautiful. It's just been my observation throughout my life that my beauty seems to be some sort of brick wall.

Yes, I am beautiful. I know this. And I never asked to be. I never said to my genes in the womb, "Hey guys, I don't think you should sequence yourselves in such a way as to make me beautiful". It's just something I was born with.

I really do not wish to sound conceited; I'm not. I have a long host of mental issues with depression, anorexia, self-mutilation, etc. Most of it arises from the expectations people have put upon myself. I've felt my beauty has been a leverage to relationships with people. With ex-boyfriends I strove to stay a size 7, wear perfect make-up all the time, buy the nicest clothes, buy their favorite perfumes, etc. Expecting them to stay because I was beautiful, dammit. Beautiful people always live happily ever after, right?

I never had many female friends. Even to this day, I get along better with men than women. Most women see me as competition. Most men see it as a confidence booster to be friends with an attractive woman, I guess.

I wrote an entire paper on the beauty myth and the halo effect way back my first time in college for my sociology class. I wish I still had it, but it basically touched on the myth that there is a perfect woman: 36-24-36, blond hair, blue eyes, clear skin, etc. And the halo effect in regards to beauty, which is to mean beautiful people are viewed as more intelligent, warm, caring and possessing a good personality, whether or not these traits are true.

I'm not saying this should make sense, or this isn't complicated. Lord knows women are complicated. I will be the first to tell you that. I just know, many times in my life, I have wished people - both men and women - to view me as human. To see me as myself, and not just my looks. And I have no idea what it means to be on the other side of the fence. I feel like I should apologize for feeling that way.

Anyway, my whole point is I think we as a society should focus on "what's inside" versus "what's outside". Trite, I'm sure, but that is the idealist talking in me.

JazFusion wrote:I never had many female friends. Even to this day, I get along better with men than women. Most women see me as competition. Most men see it as a confidence booster to be friends with an attractive woman, I guess.

Guess again.