Statistics of the No-Sex Class Paradigm Using Google Keyword Tallys
"Results ... about 120,000 for attractive-woman."
"Results ... about 42,900 for attractive-man."
Roughly 3 to 1 ratio of references to attractive women vs attractive men
"Results ... about 586,000 for beautiful-woman."
"Results ... about 74,600 for beautiful-man."
Roughly 8 to 1 ratio of references to beautiful women vs beautiful men
"Results ... about 25,800 for worthy-man."
"Results ... about 5,720 for worthy-woman."
Roughly 4.5 to 1 ratio of references to worthy man vs. worthy women.
Fair at all? No. Comparable at all? Not really. Coincidence, though? Not that either.
I mostly got the brainstorm while wondering about the word "attractive" after spotting a woman in what back in the 1970s would have been considered a full-on Colorado Girl look -- long sun-blond hair, tasteful but dark eyeliner, slender build, white down vest, almost knee-high sheepskin boots -- cranking out architectural drawings. Anyway, I thought it must be inconvenient to attract so much attention, and then wondered what it would be like if I could attract that kind of corner-of-the-eye attention, and then I started thinking about the old "men first initiate, women then decide" courtship convention and wondering about how that creates a perhaps unnecessary imposition on women to attract attention (since they weren't allowed to simply ask for phone numbers), and then I started thinking about how often the word "attractive" gets applied to men vs. women... and by that time I was home from the coffee shop and I thought I'd Google to see what the (unofficial) Zeitgeist had to say about it. Then for good luck I tried it with a couple of related sorts of keywords.
Do you know what's even more fun? Searching the word "peach" on your blog.
[Oh you found those did you? :-) Yeah, when I first started this blog I had an elaborate screen design that involved, among other things, a huge painting called peaches and fig leaves. So when I tried my hand at writing erotic fiction I circumspectly used "Peach" as a cover-name for... entirely made up partners. Go figure. Thanks, Mag. --fl]
wow - this just made something click in my head in regards to passing & privilege that I've been writing about lately, about how femininity is seen as an invitation. I'm going to have to think on this further ... anyway, thank you!
[Hey Sinclair! It's kind of funny -- growing up male it's unspoken but totally obvious that women are about attracting us; meanwhile we grow up blind to the also-unspoken molding to be worthy. The climax of the Sleeping Beauty fable says it all: she's not only beautiful but *in a coma!* He needs his shining armor to reach her through the thorn-overgrown castle. His kiss awakens her. I love the perspective you're able to bring to this by the way. --fl]
The cruddy part (well, one of them) is that worthiness can be earned over time, but a woman who's not considered beautiful at 18 is probably never going to be. No wonder we get things like articles advising women to settle for anyone around once they hit their thirties--unlike men their "value" can only go down over time.
That, and a man who's genuinely attracted to an ugly woman is going to be considered unsuccessful--never mind compatibility or love, there are people out there who are going to look at her and as "was that the best he could get?"
The whole idea of pricing people is messed up anyway. You don't love the highest-value woman in your price range, you love who you love, dammit. I have to believe that.
[I *know,* Holly! To repurpose the political cliché it's like we're taught that the solution to the problem of all hat and no cattle is a bigger hat. And yeah, dead right on the cruelty and waste of potential behind the beauty-rewards-worthiness ideology. --fl]
And furthermore, think about the implications further than the whole 'who gets to initiate' - which is a concept addressed so frequently in women centered discourse (ie: in women's magazines, tv shows etc are all saying 'hey girls, why not ask HIM out?' now anyway). But if attractive, beautiful etc is applied to women 500-700% times more than it is applied to men then think about the pressure there is on women to BE those things - and thus the implications on dating (for women and men) from that perspective. Women who are not TOLD they are attractive (whether they are or not) perhaps feel less worthy of any dating, let alone doing the initiating! We're (both men and women) are fundamentally locked into this horrible perception of women having to be attractive. If we're not we don't deserve dates, if the women isn't attractive then the man is sometimes judged on his DATE accordingly. Horrid stuff.
[And what's shocking to me anyway is that the whole edifice is built to support an obsolete conceit about "proper" gender roles. It's worth mentioning that for all it's insubstantiality can't be taken apart if why-not-ask-him-out just becomes one more quality of the beauty imperative or if wax-your-back becomes just one more requirement for worthiness. (You could see how on Sex and the City the actresses would rationalize being turned down as having been insufficiently exfoliated or insufficiently styled.) Thanks, M! --fl]
Interesting. I wonder if the "Colorado Girl" look was accurate for that time period. I mean, did girls in Colorado typically dress that way?
I live in Colorado, and to me the Colorado Girl look is lean and muscular, no makeup, skin tanned and also deeply lined from a lot of time in the sun, trail shoes, worn jeans or hiking pants, and a shirt that was borrowed from her ski clothes. There's likely a carabiner attached to some part of her clothing. To complete the picture, there should be an Outback wagon sprinkled with outdoor gear, and probably a dog.
People from Colorado seem to underdress for the weather, too -- I've seen very few native Coloradans in warm boots. More likely to wear a tee shirt and jeans in forty degree weather.
Okay, sorry, I know that wasn't your point at all.
[Hey Monique. Imagine a somewhat citified version of your description and you're pretty close. For East Coasters back in the 1970s that and its male counterpart were mythic and much emulated without necessarily being understood. (For instance 3.2 Coors, which wasn't sold east of the Mississippi was imagined to be the best beer in the world!) Anyway, when I finally went to Colorado visiting friends and family the "look" seems like an entirely pragmatic, and still-cool, adaptation to the conditions there. --fl]
Hey, don't be sad:
148 000 for handsome-man
11 800 for handsome-woman
15 400 for cute-man
9 720 for cute-woman
226 000 for good-looking-man
21 200 for good-looking-woman
And, finally:
226 000 for good-looking-man
235 000 for beautiful-woman
Not such a big difference, is it?
(I then proceeded to do some searches in different languages and got similar results, but those probably aren't so interesting.)
Men are attractive too; it may be said less often than men would deserve, but part of it is that it's just said in different words.
[Agreed. And my original query, that "attractive" as in "to attract an inquiry" was used more often for women than men -- while definitely lopsided -- wasn't as lopsided as I'd expected. Thanks, Larus. --fl]