If you think about it, there is a strong rationale self interest between feminism and the increase of female obesity. If feminism is to be defined as increasing the societal power of women, then it would serve them well for their to be more obese women. The desirability of a women to a man is far more objective then subjective. If women were to be, across the board, more attractive, if all women became, at minimum, 6s, men who ended up marrying 6s, the men who would be the lowest in male desirability in such a society, wouldn’t nearly be as unhappy as men who end up marrying 1s in our society. The logical result of that, is that in such a beautiful society, ironically, the value of female beauty would become far less valuable, and beauty would be far less desired.
That is exactly right. You see this in EE. Beauty is so common that it’s much less valued than in America. Basic market forces at work. Feminists go on about the importance of “inner beauty”, but ironically, the social trends that are in their own interests to encourage achieve the exact opposite – preoccupation with physical beauty (because it is rare).
If there isn’t a chance that one might end up with a landwhale, I suspect that most men would hardly bother with stuff like game and the like.
Of course. There are millions of things more valuable than game. It’s like gambling, or financial speculation: Good for those who are good at it, socially worthless.
I would imagine that such a society would experience little sexual discrimination, but at the same time, be very anti-female, in the sense that women who are competitive with men in economically productive fields would be quite successful, but at the same time, “feminine virtues”, a females capacity attracting men, the only area in which women surpass men, would be far less valued.
Yes, ironically, there is little sexual discrimination in such societies. Female salaries as a percentage of male salaries are higher in Russia than in the US or the UK. There are far more self-made female billionaires in China than in the Anglo world. It is true that the women there can’t “attract men” as well as in societies without gender feminism, but why on earth would you want them to? There is a name for women who are really good at this: Sluts.
There is a upper cap on female attractiveness, which are the feminine ideals hardwired into us by evolution, but there is no downward cap. This is in direct contrast to male attractiveness, because male attractiveness is strongly based with ability, and strong relativistic. ie: A man can always become more powerful, more wealthy, more physically capable. In this fashion, feminism is intrinsically a downward trend because the only thing a beautiful women can do to that makes herself more desired in a society, is to reduce the amount of beauty in that society.
This is why your typical Third Wave feminist or rape activist is fat, has a manjaw, or is otherwise unattractive.
If you are ugly, devaluing beauty is not bad evolutionary strategy.
The prevalence of female obesity in the middle east can also be explained in this fashion. If increasing the amount of non-obese women in a society is a form of sexual egalitarianism, because it increases the amount of sexual contentment across the board, then what society is less sexually egalitarian then Islam?
I have been meaning to write about the links between radical Islam and gender feminism for quite some time. Suffice to say for now that, contrary to what one may think, they make for excellent bedfellows.
Of course, none of this is to say that female obesity is a feminist conspiracy, that would be quite absurd. Like you said, dystopian societal trends.
Indeed.
I think obesity has more to do with being American, than being feminist.
Your comments on islam and feminism are not altogether without reason. Some radical feminists seem worse than the taliban. To cite an example there is a so called woman’s rights group in the UK which wants to do a public book burning of ’50 shades of grey’, just like moslems burned Rushdie’s Satanic Verses.
You could go on to say that feminists are jealous that all the religious prophets were men, but they want their say now, even more than the prophets.
Agreed regarding your first sentence. I recall seeing a map that indicated the popularity of feminism within different nations by the number of women’s studies departments per capita, and while feminism is just as popular in Scandinavia and continental western Europe as in the U.S., obesity rates are far lower than in the U.S. Also, from my visits to western Europe, my subjective impression is that Western European women don’t behave in nearly as unfeminine of a manner as American women routinely do.
I’m skeptical regarding the notion that ideology or religion has a causal role to play in human behavior. Sometimes ideology appears to shape behavior, but only when the political and cultural incentive structure within a society encourages people to act in accordance with said ideology. Most people routinely and hypocritically violate the principles of the ideologies they either pretend to or genuinely believe in, mainly because acting according to principle is a low priority for those who aren’t autistic. Most people care primarily about status, security, entertainment, etc, and only follow prevailing ideologies insofar as is necessary to achieve their goals.
In Poland, for example, I spoke to girls who believed in gender feminism but still dressed and behaved in a very feminine manner themselves, probably because they still have very good incentives to do so within Poland. In Eastern and Southern Europe, female participation rates within the workforce are very low, as women are still expected to stop working after having children. In such a culture, it’s highly advantageous for women to be as physically attractive as possible. In France, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, female participation rates in the workforce are much higher, but incentives are still very different than that of the U.S. Income taxes are much higher and achieving status through conspicuous consumption is less possible. The kind of aggressive masculine ambition that is so characteristic of careerist women in the U.S. isn’t as advantageous in a social democracy. Both Eastern and Western Europe also lack our obesity problem. The abominable American diet with enormous portion sizes, food subsidies, HFCS, growth hormones, over-dependence upon the automobile, etc, creates a shortage of slender women, thus making them “special” instead of normal. Western European men don’t have to deal with this problem. Swedish feminists may have succeeded in making a lot of really stupid ideas far more mainstream in Sweden than in the U.S., but I still think Swedish men have it better than we do given the lack of extreme fatitude in Sweden.
I think i speak for all women here when i say, you’re an idiot.
Banned. Run along now, your gf’s waiting waiting for you.
“You see this in EE. Beauty is so common that it’s much less valued than in America.”
this sounds great, but is it true? what if beauty is so common because it is more valued? i don’t know the EE culture very well, but i know that for example, in venezuela and colombia, femininity is highly prized, and that there are lots of attractive women in these cultures they all put a lot of effort into looking as beautiful as possible.