And since I’ve been passing along short, pithy quotes (sometimes with too much extra commentary) I ought to mention Blue Gal’s brilliant insight into the problem with “trophy wives” and other forms of turning real live partners into commodities:

There are men who think they need arm candy in order to impress other men. They are actually engaging in homoerotic dating, pleasing other men rather than themselves.

Read that and more here.

I’m not quite sure “homoerotic” is exactly right but her point that while beauty is all well and good (really, it’s well and it’s good) when beauty stops being whatever it is in its own right, becomes a proxy for some other form of competition between others of one’s gender then yeah, not so healthy.