Image via TalkingPointsMemo.

Part 1: Massachusetts Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren stupidly declared that unlike her opponent, incumbent Sen. Scott Brown, she didn't pay for college by posing naked (for Cosmopolitan back when the magazine published monthly nude male pinups.)

Part 2: When asked by a talk-show host whether he had "officially responded to Elizabeth Warren’s comment about how she didn’t take her clothes off?" Brown stupidly laughed and said “Thank God!"

What. Ever.

A couple things here. First of all, if Elizabeth Warren used as many cosmetics as Scott Brown she'd be as conventionally attractive. This isn't a knock on Brown, but it's not a knock on Warren either. Cosmetics are a choice. They can have a profound effect on our appearance even though they make no difference in our abilities to function.* Brown has generally chosen one way, Warren another. Both are petty to have brought it up.

Second, fuck Warren for trying to slut-shame Brown!

Third, fuck Brown for slamming Warren's potential sex appeal!

Since both present entirely within generally-accepted parameters for life in contemporary culture it's none of one's businesses either how the other chooses to present nor is it anyone's business how the rest of the general public ought to interpret their choices.

Oh, and fourth, the role reversals -- Elizabeth Warren playing the "dismissive male" with her disapproval of frivolity and Scott Brown playing the "compromised but prideful ingénue" with his arch riposte is just too precious for words.

And finally? Fifthly? Good for Brown for posing naked for beefcake photos in a national magazine at a time when there was tremendous pressure on men to gaze rather than be gazed upon. And for similar reasons good for Warren for putting accomplishment ahead of appearance. Each played then, and to a certain extent could play now, an important role in breaking through centuries of gendered expectations... but by now fishtailing past each other like Boston drivers in snow they're not helping anybody.

Note: Image and all quotes taken from TalkingPointsMemo.com.

* Well, technically it can make a difference in terms our our ability to "psyche" ourselves. For instance an always-meticulous editor I used to work with (not as a writer) always wore a precisely tailored suit, tie, and polished shoes on the days he did his final edits. His argument was that dressing extra carefully helped him work extra carefully. But I digress...

While reflecting on a male friend's persistent questions about whether another acquaintance's breasts were "real" or "artificial," Brunettes Blog blogger Ginny comes up with a much more plausible... and mundane... explanation for beauty standards (which are remarkably plastic over time and culture) than simple "evolutionary fitness signaling:" scarcity. (Emphasis mine.)

Another possibility ... is that exacting standards of beauty are not primarily about evolutionarily-coded fitness signals, as we’re so often told these days. Instead, they’re about status and acquisition. Women with lovely faces and perfect bodies are rare, especially as today’s “perfect body” is tiny with large breasts, not a common naturally occuring combination. Anything rare can be assigned a high value, and gaining possession of a rare valuable grants status to the possessor… especially when competition comes into play, as it seems to do with partner-choice. If a naturally-perfect body is a diamond to shine on the arm of a victorious male, then a surgically-enhanced perfect body is cubic zirconia: just as lovely, but easier to come by and therefore less valuable.

Source: The Brunettes Blog

You know what? Even if the stwatistical correlations of hip/waist ratios and ovulation detection were true it still wouldn't explain the much, much larger (but usually very much more critical to local cultures and times) distinctions of skinniness in women when food is abundant, corpulence when food is scarce, flabbiness in women when physical labor is obligatory, buffness when most work is done at desks, pale skin when most women laborers do field work, tans when most labor is factory or office work, and, especially, blonde women when blondes are scare or "exotic Asian women" in those parts of the world where... there are nearly two billion other Asian people. Oh, and women with clear, flawless skin when insects, acne, and sunburn was prevalent, and women with lots of tattoos, brandings, and piercings once sunblock, benzoyl peroxide, and sunblock become de rigueur.

Feel free to point out that evolution might have biased humans to equate that which is scarce with that which is beautiful. We're certainly evolved creatures (as opposed to what? Spontaneous generation?) But a preference for that which is rare is a very different matter than straight up sexual selection.

In a single blow (no pun intended) CokeTalk of Dear Coke Talk addresses several… misperceptions about male beauty standards.

Q: I’m a 30 y/o guy who despite beating the family average is finally losing his hair. Problem is, I have one of those ungainly scalps that is not suited to straight-up shaving it.

I swore I’d never be beholden to my hair and have no interest in forking over cash and dignity to pharm companies or miracle cures.

I just can’t find a style that allows me to bald gracefully. Suggestions?

A: No interest in forking over cash and dignity? Fuck your dignity.

Do you have any idea how much money we [women] spend and pain we endure chasing unattainable standards of beauty?

We’re over here nipping, tucking, lasering, injecting, dying, tanning, waxing and whitening every square inch of our bodies. The least you lazy bastards could do is show a little effort when you start losing your hair.

She said it here.

Actually I guess she can’t have said it there because, as we all know, women are never “visual” creatures so how could they care? And for that matter he never could have asked her either because, as we also know, when it comes to their own appearances men are “natural” creatures who never once worry about how they look.

Or, more technically, if we didn’t believe that kind of crap we’d surely notice how much time and effort men put into almost everything about their appearances, from sucking in their guts at the beach to hair plugs to Bruce Springsteen’s lyric “I combed my hair till it was just right / and commanded the night brigade,” to heel lifts, to gym memberships, to $200,000 for a sports car we can look good in. And lately, manscaping pubises, laser hair removal of torsos front and back, lasering and/or waxing monobrows

Oh yeah, and (according to an internal AmazonAssociates tool) exactly four hundred and three products for nose hair removal!

Extra credit? The bogus Two Rules of Desire, since it really is intolerable and inconceivable either for a woman to have desire or a man to be desired, all that invisible time, money, and effort men put into their appearance? Well, if women don’t care, and men aren’t interested, then it’s all got to be done out of pure, unadulterated narcissism.

Right?

Well, of course wrong! But that’s not as interesting as the further effort we put into maintaining the belief that it mustn’t be wrong.

Holly of The Pervocracy on the problem with beauty standards. You should read the whole thing. Here’s a snippet.

Individual preference isn’t the only problem with standards. The other problem is that it’s really unhealthy to create the idea of the perfect mate in your head and then try to find humans who match. I didn’t know that short blond men were sexy to me until I met Tommy. In fact I still don’t know that they are—I just know that Tommy is, and I think a tall dark Tommy would appeal to me more than a short blond random guy. We don’t live in a world of types but people.

So “standards” suck, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to find everyone equally attractive. That’s silly and it’s not going to happen. Plus it leads to creepers going “you can’t find me unattractive, that’s discrimination!” This also doesn’t mean that “everyone’s got someone”; the vast majority of people do but I can’t make you promises. What it really means is that sexiness is the chemistry between individuals. “Society” isn’t going to date me no matter how thin and busty I am; the intersection of one person’s unique appearance and one person’s unique and malleable preferences is all that ever matters.

Asking if I’m “sexy” is, ultimately, like asking if I’m “a friend.” The answer isn’t yes, no, or even “depends by what standards”; it’s “to whom?”
She said it here.

This is a great example of the practical application of metaphysics and “just semantics” to sex. Oh and while it sounds like it ought to be a pun, if Holly covers the metaphysics of sex here, Geoffrey K. Pullam covers the metaphysics of violins at Language Log.