This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Sperm is cheap, but IVF is expensive. A single cycle can be $30,000. Maybe her insurance covers it (although I didn't think they usually did)? But you can pursue some good cosmetic procedures for $30,000. I always recommend Western Europe (eg. the UK), where private cosmetic surgery is 1/3-1/2 the cost of the US and near enough as good. There's no shame in correcting nature's mistakes, some would say doing so is a core function of civilization itself!
For $30,000-$50,000, your friend can probably become attractive. (Examples 1, 2, 3). If she's fat, skinniness can be bought by Ozempic, lipo or dieting (usually possible if someone is ambitious Type-A personality) provided there isn't too much loose skin from obesity (which can be removed if necessary). And the face can be changed pretty significantly now. A nose job, possibly a chin implant or jaw surgery, fat redistribution, fillers, facelift/necklift, submentoplasty etc. These can make a huge difference. Very, very few people who have money must today consign themself to unattractiveness. In my case I've had relatively limited cosmetic surgery but it still made a big difference for me.
I always find it quite sad when very ambitious Type A women seem to just settle with their looks even when single. If you're happily married and don't worry about your appearance, that's cool, but if you're single with money in the bank, the investment to get higher tier men is hugely warranted. And, of course, you don't miss out on coparenting, companionship, romantic love and all of the other stuff that many people find they like in marriage.
You have to weigh this against the risks for her children of single motherhood (which aren't fully mitigated by class, wealth, parental background on both sides or any other factor yet discovered). These include substantially higher risks of mental illness, criminality (under all permutations of single motherhood), teenage pregnancy, divorce and relationship issues in adulthood, lower lifetime incomes and so on. Almost every negative outcome in life is correlated with being a child of a single mother, even if said mother is rich, intelligent and a good person. Even at Andover or Dalton, it's the kids of single mothers who still disproportionately act out.
Most importantly, single motherhood completely tanks your attractiveness to men at any stage of life (even older men, because if you're a 55 year old guy and divorced and looking for a new relationship, someone who has to look after her kids all the time is less able to do stuff). Sometimes it's inevitable (divorce because he cheated, widowhood), but if it's avoidable it should be avoided.
Yeah, I'd agree...she could almost certainly become average if she was ambitious enough, unless she is straight up deformed or has been literally set on fire.
More options
Context Copy link
Hmm, if I have more money in the bank I'd go for plastic surgery myself. I don't like my nose or my chubby cheeks, and buccal fat removal works wonders for achieving that zen of having a skinny face even if you let the rest of you go.
I was mildly scared by complications like damage to the nearby nerves causing changes in taste or similar nuisances, but the incidence was like 1% when I checked.
Eh, I'll look into it if I end up single again.
More options
Context Copy link
Wow, they have surgery that can fix bad lighting now.
The difference in those three cases transparently isn't because of bad lighting.
Girl 3 does look unambiguously better after the surgery, I’ll give you that one (though even there the lighting change helps).
Girl 2 looks fake. I suppose some men (and women) like this look, but most of the improvement is from makeup.
Girl 1 has me legitimately confused. I had originally thought the pic on the left was the “after” pic, because that pic is significantly more attractive than the right one. Apparently that’s the “before” pic? I know this one is heavily confounded by angle, lighting, and sunglasses, but what exactly changed for the better here?
For 1, in the picture on the left she has a fatter face, undefined jaw, undefined cheekbones and a double chin - even when she's looking straight ahead or up.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Who are going to want either women their own age (in their 30s) who have a lot of assets to offer - own business, wealthy family background, connections and networking, of their own social circle - or the hot young 22 year old who doesn't need plastic surgery.
Well-off but not rich average mid-30s woman is not going to hook that kind of high status, high attractiveness guy for marriage even with a boatload of plastic surgery.
Will probably have a baby with the new squeeze, that's generally how it shakes out if they've left/been divorced from a wife and they already have kids. It's easier for a guy in that situation, since generally the ex-wife has custody. Single mothers, I agree, will be much less desirable; if the new woman wants kids, it's easier for him to knock her up than to deal with her kid(s) from a previous marriage/relationship. The whole thing around step-parents and prioritising your own biological offspring over those of a stranger.
There's always a question of what we mean when we say 'high status' or 'successful' or 'attractive'. Can a moderately successful 34 year old woman improve herself to the point where she can attract someone of broadly similar looks and status? Yeah, probably. In any case, in affluent PMC circles, cases of 40 year old guys - even wealthy and hot ones - marrying gorgeous 22 year old women are relatively uncommon. They occur, but they are not the norm.
Shooting fish in a barrel in Silicon Valley. Plenty of fit multimillionaire virgins out there. Especially if she's not morbidly obese or a danger to herself or others.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Don't even need lipo. I personally got myself a flat stomach via many many cycles of fat freezing. It takes longer than lipo but absolutely works if you repeatedly hit the same area 3-4 times. Plus minimal pain and no scars.
How permanent is fat freezing? Is it like lipo where it just moves somewhere else?
It's permanent because you literally destroy the fat cells with cooling, and once the pop the cells don't return. My stomach is now permanently flat, even though I weigh a few kg more than I used to before the procedure.
This is going to happen with every single fat cell removal procedure, our body has multiple set points it tries to mean revert to, so yes your weight or total amount of fat is unlikely to change. However you'll definitely look better as the amassed fat in one area will get distributed to all over your body, and you can target the exact areas you want to change your physique into an ideal shape (e.g. if you have too much fat around the chest but little around the stomach, get cycles done on your upper body, which will reduce its size to normal, and who cares if your stomach gets a little bigger as fat moves there because it was already below normal size, thus improving your physique taken as a whole).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Insemination with sperm does not typically require IVF, but a intrauterin insemination which is much cheaper.
I agree with your assessment of plastic surgery, and it can be very beneficial to many women. A typical nose job can do wonders on some ethnicities. Weight loss, even with the new wonder drugs takes time, and then you have to find and keep a man while approaching your late thirties.
But you have to remember that many women have unrealistic ideas about their own attractiveness. They can attract men, but not keep them. Their friends and family will tell them, they are "cute". Guys who dump them will tell them they were not ready for a relationship. No one IRL is going to sit down and say: "you would be such a catch with some fillers and a nosejob". Instead all they will hear is: " You are a catch, the right guy will turn up one day". I think by the time these women realize they can not compete for the men they want, they are quickly approaching a fertility cliff.
The risks from being raised by a single mother clearly cut through social class and education, and I agree that all else being equal it would be a poor decision. But all else is not equal here. You get to have a child that is likely more attractive and possibly more intelligent than if you have settled for a man that will have you. Surely the risk of criminality is lower in people who are both attractive and smart? If you believe personality traits like conscientiousness are heritable too, the tradeoff looks even better.
And while I agree with your last point, I think these women are at a stage in their lives where they have given up on finding a man. Female sexual drive also falls off a cliff around this age, so the thought of living the rest of their life without a man might not be so daunting any more.
That is why there's a niche for people who are very kind and very caring...and who are also blunt AF and have no filter. I've known people like that - who'd say 'well yeah, that really fucking shows the fat on your stomach' without even a tiny bit of malice. They were very polarizing people, but not unpopular: they were as caring as they were tactless.
More options
Context Copy link
I know it's a common thing in online spaces like this to claim that Western women have overinflated ideas of their own attractiveness, but I haven't found that to be the case. I think most women could (and do) very well rank themselves against other women relatively accurately, somewhat adjusted for male vs female preferences (eg. women prioritize skinniness and face, men often prioritize waist-hip ratio and slim-but-with-curves).
A woman with an ugly nose or weak chin or whatever knows exactly what is wrong with her, she likely already tailors her makeup, selfie angles, poses/positions in group photographs etc. based on it. It doesn't take a genius (for men or women) to look at the kind of person you want to be with, and then to look at the kind of person they tend to marry or have LTRs with, and then to compare yourself to that person.
Point taken, and I think you are right about the average women. But again, these are not average women, but women who are still single at 35. In my experience they come in 3 groups:
My friends are a mix of 2. and 3. I think for nr 2 there is a psychological mechanism that keeps people from seing their own shortcomings. For what its worth, I think men who are single at 35-40 also fit into these categories, but with slightly different cutoffs. The typical example would perhaps a short immigrant male with an advanced STEM degree who cant understand why white girls are not attracted to him, because in his mind having a good degree and a well paying job is the pinnacle of male achievement. In the same vein, my friend is an avid runner, but objectively she lacks raw femininity and with skin that has aged quite poorly due to sun damage. She cant see this, because in her mind being a skinny female runner makes a woman very attractive.
That guy...well. Very few American-born women would be attracted to him. Even if he's a second-generation guy, if he's been raised middle-class? He's got to deal with a lot of things before he can start looking for a partner. First of all, he's going to have been told all his life that dating and relationships are live options for him and of course he's going to find a partner. When he starts looking, or even openly expressing interest in sex or relationships, in high school or college, he might be told that this isn't happening for him, and he might find people that are uncomfortable with him being anything other than a celibate monk who's far more interested in computer science than women. He's been raised middle class, and probably hasn't had to deal with any real struggles or face any real hardship. He's not at all accustomed to accepting that he's often going to be in situations where all of his options suck and he is choosing the least-bad option, not the best. By the time that fully sinks in, he's either resigned himself to loneliness or is too old, inexperienced, and afraid to attract anyone. At least, anyone that can hold a job and isn't a danger to herself or others.
As for morbid obesity...morbidly obese women can definitely get guys, even rather well-put-together and conscientious guys, if they're willing to go for shorter dudes. You can be 5'5" and 300 pounds and have a boyfriend or husband with a body like a Greek god if you're OK with him being 5'4".
More options
Context Copy link
If you don't mind being lonely, you should also not mind not becoming a mother.
That is, uh, not how things work. Like it or not, people want kids because they want them, loneliness has nothing to do with it. It’s biological, not psychological.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link