Well, that's a lot of five dollar words to try to prove a point. I can see your audience is struggling a bit. That's generally a good indication that you're being too wordy in an attempt to appear more knowledgeable, but the quality of your writing is suffering as a result. Just a helpful observation.
TL;DR: Man wades into female conversation and is immediately in way over his head. Proceeds to sputter and spit, as his head bobs along, breaking the surface, but never his superior tone. Eventually, we catch his final words, amidst all the gargling and gasping, just before he slips below the silent, black water for good: "Well, actually ...." 😉
I am deliberately challenging the idea that this is a “female conversation.” If I am implicated in the activities and behaviors being discussed, then I can have a view about it.
Bud, you didn't understand the conversation to begin with. You're just out here flapping your dick in the wind for no reason. But I appreciate your desperate need to be the center of attention no matter what. I guess.
I didn't say it wasn't fine. Feel free. But don't expect me or any other woman to coddle your big boy ideas and tell you what a good job you did. Y'all wanna jump in and offer your 'thoughtful critique' and then whine about being kicked out of the conversation when someone points out that you're flapping your gums for no reason. 😂
Sweetness. It's not "a lot" of engagement, period. Bless your heart. But my low quality comment is close to surpassing the likes on your original post, unfortunately. 😪
By the way, in the spirit of the original post, but better (ie, the theme of this comment thread), let me womansplain what I meant for those who are actually interested in writing better quality posts than this dingus.
Being wordy is not the same as using too many five dollar words. You see how the average fifth grader could both spell and define almost every, if not every, word that I used in my comment? Go back and scan the original post for the same quality.
It's fine and great to use big, complicated words when necessary, but it will always, always be better to choose a simpler alternative whenever possible. That way your writing doesn't start falling down beneath its own weight, and your reader doesn't feel like they're slogging through the muck for little payoff.
I think you are missing the larger point. Of course it is okay to want to be hot. The question is why don't we feel hot already? Why do I only "feel" sexy when clean shaven and have a little lipstick on? Its one thing if I want to objectify myself to someone special, but this idea that I should have to objectify myself for my coworkers (or for myself even) to the point where I am doing all of this botox bullshit every day, and that I feel "ugly" if I don't somehow go thru this absurd routine - idk. We all have our struggles, sure, but I think we are allowed to ask what exactly we are struggling for and why its so important - especially because some people don't even get to struggle to "be hot." Some people struggle merely to put food on the table. Not to say that being rich makes you a bad person, but I think having the privilege to obsess over your looks is something that needs to be earnestly reflected on, rather than presented as this perfectly normal activity.
But at the end of the day I do agree that it is a bit silly to make sweeping judgements about people, but I also think that is kind of what the internet is for. The looksmaxxing community deserves to be challenged earnestly - ESPECIALLY in the context of a world that grows increasingly intolerant of trans people. The trans community is routinely mocked for its "obsession" over aesthetics - so why do cis people get a pass for shit like "mewing" and the like? Not the point you were making by any means, but if we are getting personal about it, then yeah, thats where I am taking it.
That said, I think the way in which it was so easy for all of us to project wildly onto the original essay kind of goes to show that beauty really does go far deeper than the skin. How we look is clearly an important part of who we are - so much so that the way we feel about we look is taken to be indicative of our moral character (at least in some dimension.)
"Why don't we feel hot already?" is maybe the wrong question. If everybody is always, already hot, and it doesn't take any conscious effort, then it's meaningless. Hotness is (fortunately!) relative and subjective, but it's not a no-effort kind of thing; it is a form of distinction, and therefore costs something.
Part of my point here is that some people don't find putting effort into being hot to be something oppressive that they hate, or like they are "forced" to do it for other people. It is possible to genuinely enjoy the challenge and the work. And if you feel like you are "having to" "objectify yourself" for whoever, that's a personal framing problem, not cultural oppression. Absolutely no one is requiring anyone to get Botox to show their face at the office!
I also think maybe there are some things we should present as a normal activity that don't require endless political obsessing over. Of course rich people can buy more hotness than the rest of us, as has always been the case. But the basic elements of looking good have never been more affordable or widely available. Trying to quantify exactly how much caring about one's appearance is OK and how much represents too much selfishness and privilege is both impossible and politically meaningless. Who cares?
I think defining hotness as "a form of distinction" is exactly what overlaps with fascism, no? Putting effort into your appearance isn't inherently fascist, but optimizing a body toward an ideal assumes that that ideal is 'better' in relation to all the bodies/appearances outside of it. I think that kind of hierarchical striving to "improve" one's looks is where people start to draw parallels to fascist movements. Order, symmetry, purity, strength, discipline—these are all things that are positive in the abstract! They are also narrow, and that narrow ideal is I think what people are really criticizing when they critique looksmaxxing as having fascist undertones. And you're right—no one is holding anyone at gun point and making them get lip filler. But "pretty privilege" is real—people tend to treat people who fit a beauty ideal better. I think finding pleasure in working out or personal grooming is totally fine, but it doesn't settle the question of what the broader implications of narrow beauty standards are. I think people are right to question that ideal and what it takes to get there.
i honestly think you could have written a well-structured and cogent essay on this topic without having to reply to the viral note sentence by sentence, although i don’t think you’re wrong that the note stands in for a widespread overall sentiment. your analysis of objectification (and how the term has been stretched beyond recognition) is really smart and i totally agree with it.
I’ll always remember the leftist twitter discourse where a dude promoted exercise since being fit will help combat fascism or w/e but they jumped on him for being ableist & how fitness is fascist
I didn't say you said "don't work out," you said one shouldn't have time to work out. I simplified it a bit for the sake of the sentence, but I think the point stands for a couple of reasons.
First of all, you're exaggerating. Working out 4 times a week is not that hard, and you don't have to eat some insane, specialized, expensive diet to bulk. Meal prep for bulking is no harder than meal prep in general. Making serious gains definitely is a commitment, but it's not an *outlandish* one that is incompatible with social life/other things.
But I suspect that was a straw man in the first place. The deeper point I'm contesting here is the concept of vanity: that fitness and appearance are selfish/antisocial/etc or represent some kind of enslavement to a degraded, atomized commercial culture. That's an impoverished way of thinking about it that no one has to accept.
Are you really disagreeing that people have lost their fking minds and souls doing crazy shit to their faces for no reason other than utter malignant narcissism insanity? Bro. It’s not that deep. This is just your basic end of times hedonism. It’s okay to call it what it is.
“To equate all of these things—Trumpism, scientific research that has discovered something that is transformative to human health and medicine, and looksmaxxing discourse—as somehow rooted in a common “lie that entropy can be reversed” is to generalize so recklessly as to make the entire thing nonsensical.”
You ought to read James Baldwin’s 1964 essay Nothing Personal. Not only does he make those same claims, he throws therapy in there too, and I would hardly call it nonsensical. It opens with a cascade of images he takes in while viewing television which sound exactly the same as the post Kate was quoting.
“This, I think, has something to do with the phenomenon, unprecedented in the world, of the ageless American boy; it has something to do with our desperate adulation of simplicity and youth-how bitterly betrayed one must have been in one's youth to suppose that it is a virtue to remain simple or to remain young!”
He does in fact make the claim that this is where fascism comes from. Or at least one of the places.
Describing Botox, which costs hundreds of dollars a session and has to be done at least every few months to upkeep results as “inexpensive” is just really out of touch
Gets to the end of the post and given what happened with Grok AI and the sex pictures it is rational to know that being objectified is always a risk that could be getting more severe
I think as someone for whom the slavery-and-abolition pile has approached pure shtick that quantity of beauty treatments seemed very excessive with everything that is going on in the world but I am not in a position to shame people for having fixations.
It has been called in other contexts the "antiracist walkabout". In January of *2021* I decided to read David Blight's biography of Frederick Douglass because I was going to do that anyway and then just see where things would go from there. With breaks for the Hugos and the 3 Weeks that has been going on ever since. (I read relevant books such as "The Price of Whiteness" and "Fear No Pharaoh" DURING the 3 Weeks but still.) The pile of books may be as tall as me by now.
There was an NYT article about the 1000-dollar spa treatment years ago and I was properly trained that you LAUGH at this but spouse did not get the memo and had done some of these things on cruise ships before marrying me
Well, that's a lot of five dollar words to try to prove a point. I can see your audience is struggling a bit. That's generally a good indication that you're being too wordy in an attempt to appear more knowledgeable, but the quality of your writing is suffering as a result. Just a helpful observation.
TL;DR: Man wades into female conversation and is immediately in way over his head. Proceeds to sputter and spit, as his head bobs along, breaking the surface, but never his superior tone. Eventually, we catch his final words, amidst all the gargling and gasping, just before he slips below the silent, black water for good: "Well, actually ...." 😉
I am deliberately challenging the idea that this is a “female conversation.” If I am implicated in the activities and behaviors being discussed, then I can have a view about it.
Bud, you didn't understand the conversation to begin with. You're just out here flapping your dick in the wind for no reason. But I appreciate your desperate need to be the center of attention no matter what. I guess.
🎯
it's completely fine for people of any gender to discuss the politics of aesthetics
I didn't say it wasn't fine. Feel free. But don't expect me or any other woman to coddle your big boy ideas and tell you what a good job you did. Y'all wanna jump in and offer your 'thoughtful critique' and then whine about being kicked out of the conversation when someone points out that you're flapping your gums for no reason. 😂
E. Black's post is just a bunch of $5 words to say "shut up" so there's a bit of pot calling the kettle black there...
Unfortunate byproduct of a post picking up steam on the algorithm: a lot of low-quality engagement
Sweetness. It's not "a lot" of engagement, period. Bless your heart. But my low quality comment is close to surpassing the likes on your original post, unfortunately. 😪
By the way, in the spirit of the original post, but better (ie, the theme of this comment thread), let me womansplain what I meant for those who are actually interested in writing better quality posts than this dingus.
Being wordy is not the same as using too many five dollar words. You see how the average fifth grader could both spell and define almost every, if not every, word that I used in my comment? Go back and scan the original post for the same quality.
It's fine and great to use big, complicated words when necessary, but it will always, always be better to choose a simpler alternative whenever possible. That way your writing doesn't start falling down beneath its own weight, and your reader doesn't feel like they're slogging through the muck for little payoff.
But mine was so much more fun! We all pay a little more for nice things.
Hey so this sucks, disregards the meaning of the original note, which was about *women*, and only reinforces sexist tropes.
I think you are missing the larger point. Of course it is okay to want to be hot. The question is why don't we feel hot already? Why do I only "feel" sexy when clean shaven and have a little lipstick on? Its one thing if I want to objectify myself to someone special, but this idea that I should have to objectify myself for my coworkers (or for myself even) to the point where I am doing all of this botox bullshit every day, and that I feel "ugly" if I don't somehow go thru this absurd routine - idk. We all have our struggles, sure, but I think we are allowed to ask what exactly we are struggling for and why its so important - especially because some people don't even get to struggle to "be hot." Some people struggle merely to put food on the table. Not to say that being rich makes you a bad person, but I think having the privilege to obsess over your looks is something that needs to be earnestly reflected on, rather than presented as this perfectly normal activity.
But at the end of the day I do agree that it is a bit silly to make sweeping judgements about people, but I also think that is kind of what the internet is for. The looksmaxxing community deserves to be challenged earnestly - ESPECIALLY in the context of a world that grows increasingly intolerant of trans people. The trans community is routinely mocked for its "obsession" over aesthetics - so why do cis people get a pass for shit like "mewing" and the like? Not the point you were making by any means, but if we are getting personal about it, then yeah, thats where I am taking it.
That said, I think the way in which it was so easy for all of us to project wildly onto the original essay kind of goes to show that beauty really does go far deeper than the skin. How we look is clearly an important part of who we are - so much so that the way we feel about we look is taken to be indicative of our moral character (at least in some dimension.)
"Why don't we feel hot already?" is maybe the wrong question. If everybody is always, already hot, and it doesn't take any conscious effort, then it's meaningless. Hotness is (fortunately!) relative and subjective, but it's not a no-effort kind of thing; it is a form of distinction, and therefore costs something.
Part of my point here is that some people don't find putting effort into being hot to be something oppressive that they hate, or like they are "forced" to do it for other people. It is possible to genuinely enjoy the challenge and the work. And if you feel like you are "having to" "objectify yourself" for whoever, that's a personal framing problem, not cultural oppression. Absolutely no one is requiring anyone to get Botox to show their face at the office!
I also think maybe there are some things we should present as a normal activity that don't require endless political obsessing over. Of course rich people can buy more hotness than the rest of us, as has always been the case. But the basic elements of looking good have never been more affordable or widely available. Trying to quantify exactly how much caring about one's appearance is OK and how much represents too much selfishness and privilege is both impossible and politically meaningless. Who cares?
I think defining hotness as "a form of distinction" is exactly what overlaps with fascism, no? Putting effort into your appearance isn't inherently fascist, but optimizing a body toward an ideal assumes that that ideal is 'better' in relation to all the bodies/appearances outside of it. I think that kind of hierarchical striving to "improve" one's looks is where people start to draw parallels to fascist movements. Order, symmetry, purity, strength, discipline—these are all things that are positive in the abstract! They are also narrow, and that narrow ideal is I think what people are really criticizing when they critique looksmaxxing as having fascist undertones. And you're right—no one is holding anyone at gun point and making them get lip filler. But "pretty privilege" is real—people tend to treat people who fit a beauty ideal better. I think finding pleasure in working out or personal grooming is totally fine, but it doesn't settle the question of what the broader implications of narrow beauty standards are. I think people are right to question that ideal and what it takes to get there.
i think women were really waiting for someone like you to explain how they should feel. 🙏
i honestly think you could have written a well-structured and cogent essay on this topic without having to reply to the viral note sentence by sentence, although i don’t think you’re wrong that the note stands in for a widespread overall sentiment. your analysis of objectification (and how the term has been stretched beyond recognition) is really smart and i totally agree with it.
You're right! This is a bit of a thought-dump to hopefully push me to explore some of these threads in a more sustained way.
I’ll always remember the leftist twitter discourse where a dude promoted exercise since being fit will help combat fascism or w/e but they jumped on him for being ableist & how fitness is fascist
Toward an ethics of superficiality...?
Can you show me the part where I said you shouldn’t workout? I’m dying to see it.
I didn't say you said "don't work out," you said one shouldn't have time to work out. I simplified it a bit for the sake of the sentence, but I think the point stands for a couple of reasons.
First of all, you're exaggerating. Working out 4 times a week is not that hard, and you don't have to eat some insane, specialized, expensive diet to bulk. Meal prep for bulking is no harder than meal prep in general. Making serious gains definitely is a commitment, but it's not an *outlandish* one that is incompatible with social life/other things.
But I suspect that was a straw man in the first place. The deeper point I'm contesting here is the concept of vanity: that fitness and appearance are selfish/antisocial/etc or represent some kind of enslavement to a degraded, atomized commercial culture. That's an impoverished way of thinking about it that no one has to accept.
Are you really disagreeing that people have lost their fking minds and souls doing crazy shit to their faces for no reason other than utter malignant narcissism insanity? Bro. It’s not that deep. This is just your basic end of times hedonism. It’s okay to call it what it is.
“To equate all of these things—Trumpism, scientific research that has discovered something that is transformative to human health and medicine, and looksmaxxing discourse—as somehow rooted in a common “lie that entropy can be reversed” is to generalize so recklessly as to make the entire thing nonsensical.”
You ought to read James Baldwin’s 1964 essay Nothing Personal. Not only does he make those same claims, he throws therapy in there too, and I would hardly call it nonsensical. It opens with a cascade of images he takes in while viewing television which sound exactly the same as the post Kate was quoting.
“This, I think, has something to do with the phenomenon, unprecedented in the world, of the ageless American boy; it has something to do with our desperate adulation of simplicity and youth-how bitterly betrayed one must have been in one's youth to suppose that it is a virtue to remain simple or to remain young!”
He does in fact make the claim that this is where fascism comes from. Or at least one of the places.
Describing Botox, which costs hundreds of dollars a session and has to be done at least every few months to upkeep results as “inexpensive” is just really out of touch
Gets to the end of the post and given what happened with Grok AI and the sex pictures it is rational to know that being objectified is always a risk that could be getting more severe
I think as someone for whom the slavery-and-abolition pile has approached pure shtick that quantity of beauty treatments seemed very excessive with everything that is going on in the world but I am not in a position to shame people for having fixations.
“the slavery-and-abolition pile” - what does this mean? Genuine curiosity, actually don’t know
It has been called in other contexts the "antiracist walkabout". In January of *2021* I decided to read David Blight's biography of Frederick Douglass because I was going to do that anyway and then just see where things would go from there. With breaks for the Hugos and the 3 Weeks that has been going on ever since. (I read relevant books such as "The Price of Whiteness" and "Fear No Pharaoh" DURING the 3 Weeks but still.) The pile of books may be as tall as me by now.
You will read some awful, terrible things but in the world of 2026 this almost is escapism because we know how everything turned out.
There was an NYT article about the 1000-dollar spa treatment years ago and I was properly trained that you LAUGH at this but spouse did not get the memo and had done some of these things on cruise ships before marrying me
Taylor Lautner??
You go for it. I couldn’t care less.