<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Re: lbo-talk-digest V1 #7167</title></head><body> <div>At 9:44 PM -0500 31/12/02, W. Kiernan wrote:</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Maybe you're getting it backwards.  It's not so cool for either men or<br> women to get completely blown off at first glance because they are</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>somewhat less than gorgeous, that's what dd is whinging about.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>I suppose. Though I think Yoshie's explanation that it is about youth, rather than beauty per se, makes sense. All young people look comparatively attractive. Youth is wasted on the young of course, but there's nothing we can do about that.</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite>  I think.  (Notice that English English "whinging," that's a tip of the hat</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>to y'all Brits.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>"Y'all Brits"? Are you having a go at me?</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite>  I have no idea how one pronounces "whinging" either, is</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>that a variant spelling of "whining" or what?)</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>No, its a distinct word, a variation of the meaning of whining. "Whinge" rhymes with singe, whingeing rymes with singeing. (At least it does here, I can't be sure how you pronounce singe.)</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite>But it happens anyway.  So I've been told, women get rejected on account<br> of sub-glamorous physical appearance considerably more than men do.  The<br> pettiest non-conformance to the current local canon of personal beauty</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>will sometimes do it.  "James Tiptree," that's a psuedonym used by a</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>woman writer, once wrote an science-fiction fantasy about this entitled</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>"The Women Men Don't See."  On the other hand a lot of women disdain to</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>associate with a man who obviously doesn't have a lot of money.  Oh</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>well!</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>Women seem to like power in men (money being merely one form of power, but you don't need money since every woman seems to have a different notion of what represents power), men seem to go for body shape (although once again there's no uniform perception of what a perfect body shape actually is). Hard to say which of these weaknesses is to be pitied the most, we just have to live with it.</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Concerning Ms. Furuhashi, I get the impression from her emails that she<br> may be especially photogenic or she may be not, but none of her r.l.<br> friends (i.e., not us on mailing lists but people who meet her in<br> person) give a damn either way, being too dazzled by the force of her</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>personality and intellect to care all that much what she looks like.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>Yeah, but I'm none the wiser about what this notion of "ideologically terrifying" is supposed to mean. Is it just some kind of gender prejudice you think? An unconscious reference to the fact that "force of personality" etc is terrifying<u> in a woman</u>? Personally I suspect it is, but it looks as if DD isn't going to elaborate on the remark.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Anyhow, how does this force of personality and intellect supposedly manifest itself?</div> <div><br></div> <div>Bill Bartlett</div> <div>Bracknell Tas</div> </body> </html>