Originally Posted by
IMPress Polly
Statistically speaking, women as a sex have typically found themselves at a significant material disadvantage relative to men as a sex throughout recorded history. Being at such a disadvantage does tend to impact one's "strategizing" when it comes to mating. You need to survive and traditionally "marrying up" has been the only plausible means of social and economic advancement that women have had as an option. These realities of patriarchy distort the nature of relationships and make them substantially about economics, at least for women. Men have traditionally found themselves at a material advantage, by contrast, and thus it isn't surprising to find that they don't as readily understand why anyone might weigh factors like affluence when considering romantic partnership. It kind of reminds me of how some rich people say that money can't buy happiness. The people who say that should try going without it for a while and see how happy they are! Wealth may not be all there is to life and fulfillment, but you definitely need some to feel basically secure, I assure you!
The importance of "hot" is growing for women, however, as a result of the decreasing nature of their economic disadvantage in this country and in the First World more broadly. Slowly but surely women are starting to think of sex and relationships more like men do. Sweden has the world's smallest gender gap in terms of wealth distribution. Swedish women's reported top sexual fantasies differ markedly from those of American women in that they're more assertive ones. Swedish women, like American men, find ideas like casual sex and younger partners to be among the biggest turn-ons. That is the trajectory things go along as gender-wealth grows more equal overall: people think increasingly alike when it comes to romantic and sexual interests. Men increasingly rival women in terms of "golddigger" status and women start valuing "hotness" (often of an exploitative nature) almost as much as men.
I would love to say that eventually we'll reach a point where everyone is primarily valued for substantive reasons like the content of their character, but I doubt that will ever happen. We're animals and, for the most part, we're going to act like it forever I suspect. That said, I do believe that our culture places far too much stress on external perfection and that we most certainly CAN AND SHOULD do something about that. Some positive things are already happening in that connection this year, with Vogue (the standard-bearer for the fashion industry) finally turning away from its use of underweight models, for example. I think the growing nature of the contradiction between our weight as a society and that of our models that we see all the time (we're getting fatter over time while our models are getting thinner) has rendered unhealthy, unplausible beauty standards more controversial then ever, as well they should be.
As to the whole Petraeus sex scandal nonsense, admittedly I've hardly bothered keeping myself informed on it. It's an issue I'm sure, but it's just not a priority for me. I'm a lot more concerned about the fiscal cliff dialogues and the war we're fighting in Afghanistan that hasn't gotten even 10% as much press attention as this silly sex scandal that apparently didn't even endanger national security in any way.