(Maureen wrote:)
>> PS just knew you were gonna get pounched on for that "women's better sense"
>> comment!
>
>I didn't understand at all. I still don't. Are you guys disputing the
>fact that men will dismiss women from consideration for being 20 pounds
>overweight more quickly than women will dismiss men for the same offense?
>And that this is why men in singles bars are 20 pounds overweight more
>often than women -- because they can get away with it? And that this is
>why women suffer more over how thin or fat they are than men do?
>
>I don't dispute for a moment that it comes from history and society rather
>than from nature. Like all gender categories.
The point was that describing structural inequalities between men and women (i.e., that women's positions have been too materially precarious to allow questions of desirability to play much role in their choice of mates) as related to women's "better sense" seemed misguided. It also seemed like trojan-horse generosity, uncomfortably close to some sort of difference feminism (virtuous women/superficial men) whose status-quo reinforcing tendancies are probably well known to you.
(And BTW I completely did not follow whoever suggested that gloriA was suggesting some evolutionary (?!!) argument. At any rate, for most of history marriage choices have been made by families, therefore restricting the individual choices of both men and women.)
But also like all gender
>categories -- like all social categories -- it doesn't change immediately
>with changing social conditions; there's a lag. And the clearest evidence
>of this, to my mind, is that gay men are *on average* 20 pounds lighter
>than straight men. Because they are competing for the (socially
>conditioned) eyes of men, they have to suffer through diets. And
>similarly, a gathering of lesbians will be 20 pounds heavier *on average*
>than a similar gathering of het women and proud of it: they shout from the
>rooftops how happy they are freed from the eyes of men and all the bondage
>it entails. (Excepting those as are into the bondage, of course.)
>
>Naturally these things are changing, and they are changing most among the
>overpaid and the overeducated, the latter of whom are overrepresented on
>this list, me among them.
I wouldn't doubt that what goes on in gay budy-building subculture is mediated by the heterosexual male gaze. As for lesbian communities, I've never noticed such a generalizable difference in weight, though I've no doubt that the various aesthetic ideals in lesbian communities is mediated by, among other things, conscious repudiations of the male gaze. What I have noticed, in contrast to your data, is that appearance-pressure is as strong or stronger as elsewhere among professional, "overeducated" women. (This of course overlaps with class issues, since people with non-professional body forms and dress are routinely discriminated against.) And this isn't just about the corporate world. Check out the next MLA conference (i.e., a predominently heterosexual, staunchly feminist, overeducated population), and then check out some local fundamentalist church group. Now that's where you will find women who are comfortably 20 lbs. heavier than their MLA sisters. Of course that down-home corpulence and relative lack of adornment is related to women being valued for their motherly, nurturing roles rather than how they hold up in a little black dress, etc.
...Clearly all sorts of class, gender, racial, and commodity-culture issues are involved in these kinds of appearance questions. But even after all the political revolutions have been achieved and we're all living in egalitarian communities, I doubt we're going to be more "sensible" about how we signify and eroticize bodies, if by that you mean that bodies will just be ignored for some deeper and suddenly transparent appreciation for people's character. But I would expect there to be a far wider range of aesthetic/erotic types, for everyone.
Sorry I counselled you to get to the gym. That wasn't a nice way to argue at all. I was probably inflicting my (presumptuous, I know) sympathy for Mrs. Hitchens onto you.
Maureen