>And just so the guys don't think I'm totally kissing up with my talk about
>how men lack a sense of commitment and responsibility, here's a movie review
>from The Evening Standard. (sorry, I couldn't resist)
tell me yoshie, can you imagine any white person on this list feeling compelled to qualify their anti-racist typings in the above way in order to forestall criticisms or judgement from other whites because they've taken the "anti racist white" position in a debate and buttressed points made by blacks speaking to the issue of racism?
that's what i mean: the dynamics *are* different. you collect anti racist street cred by positioning yourself in debates over race that you don't accrue to nearly the same degree as you do by positioning yourself as a "feminist guy" again, i'm not positing some hierarchy of one being worse than the other, but i think the differences ought to be acknowledged.
>Peter "feminist guy" K.
sorry to single you ought peter but this post did strike me as a particularly good example of how un-cool it is be a feminist sometimes. it is, no doubt, especially uncool for men to negotiate that terrain.
as for this:
>> and supermodel propaganda that when Ms Russo (45) comes along, or
>Catherine
>> Deneuve (55) knocks everyone for a loop in Place VendTMme, there's a
>sudden
but of course, the real shocker is that they don't *look* 45 or 55. how often do you hear anyone say, but sly doesn't look 50+ isn't that great? you hear that far more regarding woment than men.
in relation to a point i made earlier about women supposedly having naturally beautiful bodies and men not, this is tied in with the above: women are held responsible for not maintaining that supposedly natural beauty. letting themselves go is defiling the temple as it were. men don't have that sort of standard held up to them --at least they haven't had it systematically held up to them thus far, tho that may be changing.
>> The strange thing is that here we have an open secret, about sex, which is
>> actually known to more men than it is to women. Conversations among the
>male
>> trade union will turn up as many yearning or enviable observations about
>> merry widows and mature divorcees as it will boastful remarks about
>> cradle-snatching or jailbait (well, almost as many). And yet huge numbers
>of
>> women refuse to believe this, and can't credit the fact that men often
>like
>> someone with a bit of mileage on her. Better company, for one thing. And
>it
>> can help to have been round the block a few times. Stop me before I say
>that
>> there's no substitute for experience.
this isn't a shocker to me at all. i know from experience and having lots of very good male friends that men's desire isn't determined in any straigtforward way by media, social customs, etc. maybe this is for the too much info file, but here goes. when i was a kid, my mother would smack me on the bottom and register delight that i had such a 'rock hard' bottom from all the exercise. i was convinced then that this was a desirable trait in general. lo and behold i grew up to learn that i knew far more men who like jiggly bottoms and breasts than those who don't. now, why this happens is not easy to explain. but, this heterogeneity wrt desire does not cancel out the effects of the media and the men who control the ways in which women are reperesented. it is, it seems to me, one of the ways in which women are regulated, it's a puzzle to me as to why media folks would want to represent a limited range of body types when, in their own experience, they must recognize much more diversity than they are willing to register in the media products they create. i suspect that so much of it has to do with the research--focus groups and the like
kelley [who notes that there are advantages younger men accrue to dating/marrying older women. 1. if the woman is not wealthy, then the men are seen as very cool for putting intellect and character above beauty. iow, men are given bonus points for being exceptions [just as, arlie hochschild points out in the _ second shift_, men who do more than the avg man are treated as living gods that must be praised for what they do [[even when they don't do half of the housework, but simply more than the avg man]] 2. if insecure, younger men derive the benefit of feeling that the older woman they're with will feel profoundly grateful for his attentions and, thereby, do all that she can to keep it together. 3. as those relationships age and she starts to sag and wrinkle far more than before, that is held against her --he can do so and she can do so--prosecute her for aging and letting herself go--on behalf of the gender ideologies swirling about her.]