Link to the piece here. WARNING: NSFW, and I don't really recommend reading.

Wtf? Is this how the world is? Sometimes it is so mind-bogglingly different and jarring to learn about how the average person lives, compared to the niche communities I'm in.

Some notes:

  • Survey methodology was not very robust. Re: what men prefer in a woman (sexual behaviors and etc.), I don't necessarily doubt some of the results / they match my intuitions, but I think there is something to be said here about representative sample bias. I don't know enough about the author to be fully confident in this claim, but if I had to guess, the people responding to his Twitter / X surveys are probably overlapping with the "manosphere." And, to elaborate on why I think this:
  • Holy misogynistic. The author claims this is all about "female empowerment." I understand that argument to some degree, and yes I agree that the media industry is often not actually promoting the most "sexy" images of women. But a few notes here:
    • In a follow up / separate essay about how to manipulate your partner to become more attractive, the author repeatedly denigrates women as unintelligent, and suggests that if manipulation tactics don't work, you should just dump her. Wtf? If you're currently dating someone, and she won't wear makeup or a choker, the solution is to give up on her attractiveness and break up? I guess my thought here is something like, if it wasn't a dealbreaker for you to start dating her in the first place, I don't see how it should be a dealbreaker now. Is this how blindsiding happens?
      • Hypothetical situation:
        • A guy says he likes you, and you start dating.
        • That same guy then thinks to himself, hmmm, I don't think she's pretty enough. I should try to do subtle things to get her to wear the stuff I want her to wear.
        • You don't understand what's going on and why he wants you to wear cat ears all of a sudden.
        • He breaks up with you.
        • Wtf.
      • Anyway, that's just me crashing out, because this follow up piece was vile. It gave me a very strong sense of "ick" to read.
    • On the fashion industry not choosing to use the most attractive-to-men models, this might be a chicken-and-egg question. Did the media make women disprefer this kind of style, or did women always not have preferences that matched men's, and the media industry adapted to see what sold best?
      • Using the examples of gay designers and hypothesizing that these people choose more male-like models does make intuitive sense, sure, but:
        • I'm usually of the belief that commercial incentives override most other things in the long run, so I don't know if I can reasonably dismiss the possibility of the latter. Especially since it kind of makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint: women find male traits more attractive, or something.
          • But then, it's not like male clothing brands use women models lol. Quite the opposite. Perhaps this is downstream of the complicated stuff that's gone on with masculinity / male identity?
        • Also, I'd need to see more evidence of this to be fully convinced: how much of a role do the designers actually play in choosing models, who else is factored into that decision making, what about the non-gay fashion designers, etc? Do lesbian fashion designers select for more pronounced female traits in their models? Straight men?
  • Tbh, to his credit, a lot this guy says about attractiveness matches what I'd expect from evolutionary instinct — what are the signs of fertility? Long hair, etc etc. Really, if you wanted to derive beauty preferences from first principles, you'd probably have a lot of convergence with many of these empirical results.
  • Also, the survey presentation was not as strong as it could have been; author should have calculated percentages to exclude the "I'm female / show me results" option from the breakdown for maximum effect.
    • But I understand why he may not have wanted to — it's a lot of work, and I guess it doesn't really make that much of a difference in the overall results anyway. A nice-to-have more than a need-to-have.
  • I find it interesting that most women prioritize very different traits (in a partner) than me. In hindsight, I should have internalized this long ago, judging by the unenthusiastic reactions of all of my friends when I told them about my crushes — but I typical mind fallacy-ed hard. Here are some quotes from my friends, for your enjoyment:

    "he's like conventionally attractive but not rly my type" —me

    "oh yeah, cause conventionally attractive is definitely not your type" —jack

    "i'm not gonna say your taste in men is bad… i at least appreciate that you choose men with a good resume" —astrid

    "☠️☠️☠️" —me

  • When I think about my ideal person, I'd want them to be someone who:
    • Is very sweet, kind, and caring
    • Smiles a lot
    • Is highly intelligent; this might be the most important one, in that I really want to find someone whose inner world fascinates me. It's as they say in the book Anxious People:

      You marry the person you don't understand, and then you spend the rest of your life trying.

      Anxious People, Fredrik Backman
  • Some other notes:
    • I value "cuteness" much much more than "hotness" — my celebrity crush, for the longest time, was Tom Holland. I also really liked Harry Potter lol.
    • It's possible these things will change in the years to come, but this has held constant from ever since I had my first crush in 3rd grade to now. My first crush was a boy I competed with for Accelerated Reader points. What can I say? I find cute, sweet nerds very attractive. Gym bros are just... not really my thing. I grew up surrounded by surfer boys — also not my thing.

Overall, I think reading this was a waste of time and I wish I'd stopped earlier. I can see how it might be useful for specific people within specific communities, but I don't think these observations apply as strongly to the atypical niche communities I find myself in + from what I've heard, the SF / Bay Area dating market is already fairly easy to arbitrage without having to optimize very much (lol) + I'm literally in a relationship atm + I just do not want to put in the time. Maybe if I was head over heels for someone and desperate to win them over, I'd have read this more receptively or something, but wow I did not like this piece. The follow up piece about manipulation was such rage bait.

Anyway, you should read my tips on how to become sexier instead, which are objectively better. Don't be a wall: drink water!