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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3979 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 27, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Why do women seem to be pursuing the Botox/lip filler/cheek filler look at younger and younger ages? It could just be my perception but I see women doing this in their early and mid 20s, which is bonkers to me. It’s understandable once you hit 35-40, but why do it when you’re young and still in your sexual marketplace prime?

At that age it tends to give your face a very eerie quality and actually make you look older and less attractive. This seems to be the consensus view among men, so presumably high-status men would also overwhelmingly feel this way. Are women doing it for instagram and to compete against other women? If that’s the case it’s counterproductive and actively harming their sexual marketplace value in the large majority of cases.

The other argument that I can buy: maybe I’m just not noticing all the instances of those touch-ups being applied with a milder hand. If done properly, it can increase a woman’s SMV? I don’t necessarily agree with this, I think straight men are extremely fine-tuned by millions of years of evolution to detect unnatural things like this, but I could be wrong. I certainly seem to be able to distinguish the odd and uncanny-valley quality it lends to a woman’s face.

Two years ago I dated an American woman in her late twenties who said she was thinking about getting Botox, under the theory that it's meant to be preemptive/preventative.

It was trendy in some places to start earlier. I remember I first saw it when a friend was showing me clips from "The Hills" and none of the girls could furrow their brows when they were upset.

Gonna take a lot of hate for this. But lip fillers are attractive. *If not overdone.

I always thought the thing with plastic surgery is if you can tell they cheaped out.

Can you link an example of when it's done attractively?

Every part of this debate is confounded by the toupee fallacy. No one notices well-done cosmetic surgery, lip fillers, fake tan etc..

Most cosmetic intervention is preventative. The young man who takes finasteride at the first sign of balding often has a full head of hair well into middle age, the one who only starts taking it when his hair loss is very advanced sees little benefit.

Botox works best as a preventative solution, at very small volumes. I use it and it works, and is mostly unnoticeable. “Botox face” is almost always about old people using it at very high volumes because they didn’t look after themselves when they were younger. Fillers are different and should be used more sparingly, and only in rare cases on the lips (where they most often look terrible).

Agree. I'm seeing a dermatologist soon about preventing aging because I've noticed very faint forehead and nasolabial lines. Best to keep on top of this stuff, especially if you want to maintain twink aesthetic into your 30s.

Mind if I ask your current age?

Not if you have a good reason: so why do you want to know?

I’m thinking about consulting a dermatologist friend about this as well. I suppose I should ask are you starting in your 20s or 30s?

Late 20s.

Because it makes them look slutty. Sluts get attention. Attention is what they want. It's the currency of desire. These women assume that attention will translate into commitment.

While physical beauty in women is pretty objective in terms of physical traits, sexual attractiveness is best modeled as a mix between physical beauty and her signals of availability. Men find women attractive who signal their availability to those men, that they are open to sexual advances. Signals of availability can be cultural, they can be signals of virginity and youth, or of shared interests or cultural compatibility to particular men.

A woman with significant visible work done is signaling that she's available for casual sex to men in the same cultural grouping. Compared to a more natural face, I'd assume the girl with filler is more likely to put out.

It is also signaling. And countersignaling.

  • I care about being fashionable

  • I am willing to spend significant quantities of money on being fashionable

  • I can afford to look somewhat ugly/fake/distasteful and still do well.

It's like a peacock's tail.

While the stereotypical Russian escort type or bottle girl has a botox/filler heavy look, the most ‘ready to put out’ chicks who exist in highly promiscuous subcultures mostly care little about their appearance, girls at anarchist or punk events or your average late-20s or early 30s promiscuous barfly has neither the money for nor the inclination to cosmetic intervention on that level. Promiscuous women don’t need to get filler to signal sexual availability, they can do so on Tinder directly or in real life at a bar or club by their clothing and body language.

The average botox and filler user remains in her late 30s or 40s, probably married with children and - regardless of your own circumstances - is probably monogamous. She isn’t signalling sexual availability to other men, she’s competing with younger women and other women her age for attention and status, from men and from each other.

A woman with significant visible work done is signaling that she's available for casual sex to men

I suppose ‘compared to the average woman with no work done in her social grouping’ might be true, but that’s doing a lot of work. For the most part, she still isn’t signalling that (if say 10% of 40 year old PMC women are ‘signalling’ that they’re ‘available for casual sex’, the proportion with significant visible work done might be 15%).

I believe the thread question is specifically about women in their early 20s. Nor did I say they were the most promiscuous, merely that it was a signal of sexual availability.

As someone with a sister-in-law who married into a higher socio-economic bracket and told stories, my impression is that it's basically a class marker for the people who can afford to get such things casually at a young age, or who can afford to not care about the downsides.

That's in Orange County, at least.

I'm still uncertain of whether this term actually applies to this trend or if there are subtle nuances making it a mismatch, but it might be "Californication", the mechanism by which Hollywood distorts and perverts culture and art and beauty by amplifying its own degenerate tendencies.

People are not actually rational calculating agents, a lot of learning happens implicitly by associations. So suppose Hollywood gathers a bunch of incredibly beautiful people, suppose they have 3 times average beauty. And then they get older which drops their beauty by 20%, and then suppose they get botox which counters 10% from the aging but adds a separate 30% loss multiplicatively. So now you have a bunch of older botox women whose beauty is (3 * 0.9 * 0.7) = 1.89

That is, these botox women are still almost twice as beautiful as a random average person off the street. In reality, this beauty is entirely from genetic and selection effects: Hollywood finding and collecting the most beautiful people it can find. But what people see is really beautiful people with Botox. If enough people do this, then some people may start mentally associating Botox with beauty, implicitly assuming that that's what distinguishes Hollywood women and causes their beauty, rather than it being selection effects. This self-reinforces especially among people who actually live in Hollywood and encounter these people regularly in real life, which is how distorted memes like this spawn and spread. One or two beautiful but psychologically damaged people do X, people in Hollywood falsely associate X with beauty and fame and do it more, people outside Hollywood see them on TV and falsely associate X with beauty and fame and do it more.

This is also essentially the entire theory behind endorsement deals.

Because women don’t have an accountant’s focus on “sexual market value?”

Maybe it’s because we’ve been discussing housing prices in another thread, but that term really bugs me. It’s imputing a model which most people wouldn’t even consider. Women aren’t estimating sexual supply/demand curves or tracing out their depreciation. I suspect the term only sticks around because of the number of disaffected men who would like to believe that women are calculating aliens from the planet Zygax.

If you’re asking why women—or any collective group—do something, you have to frame it as individual incentives. A average woman sees some trend and asks “do I like this?” or even “would that look good on me?” She may be right or wrong about the answer, and she may be able or unable to implement it effectively. That puts a lot of noise into any signal.

As an aside, I really doubt that men are evolved to detect “unnatural” things. Our earliest evidence of cosmetics is, what, the Egyptians? 5,000 years is not an evolutionary timescale. And surgery didn’t approach modern levels until, well, modern times.

As an aside, I really doubt that men are evolved to detect “unnatural” things.

The uncanny valley certainly seems to be innate, and probably explains why people dislike looking at people with extreme cosmetic surgery e.g. the Bogdanoffs.

I should have been more clear—no objection to the premise that we can and do detect “unnatural things.” What I find unlikely is that it’s “straight men” detecting things “like this,” i.e. sexual selection. I’d say it’s an extension of our general pattern-matching skills.

That clearing looks like an ambush, that bush looks like a tiger, that dude looks like a corpse.

that term really bugs me

It makes me feel kind of uneasy using it, but I think it has explanatory and predictive power. An economist knows people don’t view the world the same way they do. However, in order to explain human behavior you need to dig deeper than a person did something because they like it. Sometimes you even need to uncover hidden subconscious motivations. Models and language that view things as an unattached outsider can help achieve truth-seeking goals.

The behavior still exists whether we explain it in politically incorrect terms or in platitudes and flowery language. A woman might say, “I don’t want to be in a relationship with that guy because he is fun but he smokes too much pot and doesn’t have career ambitions”. Saying his relationship market value is not high enough expresses the same sentiment.

I think the real reason SMV and the related terminology became so popular among disaffected men is because it provides a much more direct and actionable explanation for how they can attract women. Instead of things being vague and opaque the language puts things into blunt terms. Women rank their choice of possible mates by some value system and generally traits x/y/z (such as confidence, physical fitness, social skills) are highly valued in their ranking system. The things they value in initial attraction can differ from what they value in a long-term partner. This explains why some men get a lot of attention on dating apps and others get very little/none. If you want more attention then signal more of traits x/y/z.

Also, what’s going on with the tattoos and piercings? Does anyone think that stuff looks attractive? It’s not just women either. Am I getting old? Why are people intentionally discoloring their skin and putting holes in their face?

When I was still dating, I had the impression that certain piercings strongly signalled promiscuity in women. It was usually very accurate.

Also, what’s going on with the tattoos and piercings? Does anyone think that stuff looks attractive?

In short, yes. There is also the Girardian mimetic desire thing going on. If you spend time around people with piercings and tattoos, you will desire them.

I can't stand tattoos on women. I've never seen a woman with them who doesn't look masculine or trampy.

I have a similar (but less intense dislike) for facial piercings.

I keep hoping that the pendulum will swing back and they will become unfashionable, but it doesn't look like that's happening yet.

Most piercings are a miss for me (even many earrings) but for tattoos it is entirely on a case by case basis, with some being awful and some being quite fetching.

Does anyone think that stuff looks attractive?

Yes. I genuinely struggle to be attracted to people without them.

An unadorned body is like never changing your desktop background from the Windows default. It speaks to the lack of a soul. The dreary type of person who keeps their toys meticulously mint-in-box in case they're worth something in many years, instead of playing with them. Someone who thinks a navy blue suit as opposed to a black one is just outlandish.

I'm the other way. To borrow your analogy I see it as more like the person who has a perfectly good computer that they could change the desktop wallpaper on whenever they choose but instead they fire up a hot glue gun and permanently fuse a bunch of sea shells and sequins to their monitor, and they still keep the default wallpaper anyway.

If someone thinks navy blue suits are too boring then get a bespoke mustard yellow suit instead, or just get some garish socks and an ugly tie. Most tattooed people these days wear a boss-friendly uniform over some cliche tattoos and regard themself among the social exiles while dilligently clocking in to yet another regulation 40 hour work week.

There's only one thing about a body that makes it fitting for displaying permanent imagery and that's the person it belongs to. That's why tattoos are used for identification; to tell other people which group a person belongs to and/or to prevent a person from telling other people they don't belong to that group. That's why tattoos are associated with exclusive groups, whether that's outlaw bikers, Maori tribesmen, Jews in Nazi Germany, football hooligans or military veterans. If there's no cause to be permanently identified with a specific group then you can use surface pigments for body-specific 2D decoration and traditional flat surfaces for any other 2D images.

Someone who thinks a navy blue suit as opposed to a black one is just outlandish.

Black? Who the hell wears a black suit willingly other than teenagers that don't know any better?

Huh? Black suits look fine.

Black suits are for mourners, funeral directors, bodyguards, bouncers, waiters and musicians.

The unadorned body is already quite beautiful. No tattoo can match the elegant simplicity of unadorned skin. Changing the windows default is all well and good, but how about graffiti-ing a burbling brook versus leaving it alone in its natural splendor? There is perhaps some work humans can do to improve upon nature, but it generally has more to do with accentuating features already present rather than adding your own touch. Like clearing away the underbrush around the brook, which would be more analogous to a good haircut than a tattoo.

People can create artificial beauty. I find skyscrapers beautiful. But they're their own thing, not a modification of natural beauty. Considered in a vaccuum there's plenty of quite beautiful tattoo art, but paste it onto somebody's skin or onto a rock by a waterfall and it mars the natural beauty more than it adds to it, no matter its quality.

Of course, it's all pretty subjective at the end of the day.

No offence, but that just sounds like received aesthetic indoctrination. Western culture has been historically low on tattoos, probably since Leviticus, which itself likely spawned from local hygienic concerns, like not eating pork. Overall we see that people have been using their body as a canvas since time immemorial. It can look trashy and it can look good (and even, shockingly, better than the unmodded version).

No offence, but that just sounds like received aesthetic indoctrination.

My preference against tattoos arises from deeper preferences. I appreciate elegance, simplicity, and the beauty of fully functioning complex systems. There is something spectacularly beautiful about semiconductors, well-crafted clocks, and ant colonies.

Art is less beautiful when it lacks focus. I don't find the Mona Lisa (or really any portrait) very beautiful, but I certainly wouldn't choose to add some random design to her face, no matter how beautiful the design was, simply because then there would be two competing objects of attention. I wouldn't give a beetle a tattoo, paint a design onto a statue, etch a shape into a nice watch, or arrange ants into geometric patterns, because all of those things are already quite beautiful and don't need to be changed.

You could argue that this broader preference not to tattoo beetles etc. is also culturally engrained, but at that point I think it's both a reach and also pretty irrelevant.

Western culture has been historically low on tattoos, probably since Leviticus, which itself likely spawned from local hygienic concerns, like not eating pork.

All of the most tattooed countries are Western. We are the most accepting cultures towards tattoos in the world. You're inventing a just-so story that isn't just inaccurate, it's the exact opposite of the truth. That's not to say Westerners have always been accepting of tattoos--I have no idea what our history has to say--but rather that we are currently the very most accepting of tattoos.

I don't think tattoos always look bad, but they usually do, and the ones that look good IMO detract from the simple beauty of the human form much more than they enhance it.

but how about graffiti-ing a burbling brook versus leaving it alone in its natural splendor

Would work if we weren't talking about a literal blank canvas. It's nothing special, everyone has one. They are all mostly the same. Probably the most unremarkable thing on the planet. A gallery full of blank cavases would be a boring sight indeed.

Even if our bodies were blank, they are not canvasses. Shape alone is its own art form. I've never seen a statue with tattoos, and those are universally less interesting than actual human bodies. Do you consider all statues, sculptures, etc. unremarkable and boring? I find even simple statues and sculptures more aesthetically interesting than almost any 2d art.

Statues and sculptures are remarkable because they're creations of human talent. Everyone has a body. I can walk outside and see hundreds of them just wandering around my town. They are all broadly the same. Some are nicer than others, like some rocks have a more pleasing shape than others. But a statue is on a level above, and requires that rock to be shaped by human intervention. Meaningful art requires human intervention. Trying to put a stock human body on the level of someone who has turned their body into art is like bringing a nice rock you found as an entry to a sculpture contest.

Meaningful art requires human intervention.

Meaningful beauty does not require human intervention. I agree that the skill required to create statues is very cool, and adds to the beauty, but also the amazingly complex systems which create other things (such as human bodies) are cool too, probably even cooler imo.

Statues and sculptures are remarkable because they're creations of human talent. Everyone has a body. I can walk outside and see hundreds of them just wandering around my town. They are all broadly the same. Some are nicer than others, like some rocks have a more pleasing shape than others. But a statue is on a level above

That's interesting. I generally find statues much less interesting and beautiful than actual people.

Trying to put a stock human body on the level of someone who has turned their body into art is like bringing a nice rock you found as an entry to a sculpture contest.

I'd compare a stock human body to a natural stream. Some streams are more beautiful than others, but nearly all are quite beautiful and nearly all fulfill their purpose in a very aesthetically pleasing way.

Some bodies being much more beautiful than others says nothing about how non-artistic bodies compare to non-bodies.

but also the amazingly complex systems which create other things (such as human bodies) are cool too, probably even cooler imo.

Something which everyone possesses by default has almost no value. If everyone's super, nobody is.

I generally find statues much less interesting and beautiful than actual people.

I find most people to be profoundly boring and lacking in substance, soul and imagination.

Being scared to alter your body in any way immediately marks you to me as being boring, lacking in substance, soul and imagination. You are store-brand Cornflakes in a plain white box.

More comments

Even when you’re in your prime you still have competition. If the competition is wearing more revealing outfits and using filters to improve their photos then you too must do those things to maintain your relative popularity among your competition. Of course, that assumes those preferences are the actual preferences for many men. If men really enjoy more modest women then dressing in a more revealing way would decrease your marketplace competitiveness.

So in the case of the trends you are talking about I think women are perceiving that the behaviors in question improve their sexual marketplace competitiveness. I agree with you that it is totally unnecessary and pointless for young women so maybe women doing this have misjudged the true preferences of the marketplace.

Are women doing it for instagram and to compete against other women?

This is the biggest reason. Also it is emulation of popular (among women!) stars like the Kardashians etc. There is a pretty big disconnect between the female celebrities that women like and those that men like (or lust after). I think that the subconscious thought process is a) these women are awesome/hot/popular, b) if I look like them I will have higher status among women, c) (distant 3rd) since they are hot/popular men will obviously find me hotter.

Speaking personally I vastly prefer the natural look (or "minimal makeup") and find the Botox (also tattoos and piercings) off-putting. But I am a middle-aged man...

I think that lip and cheek filler can improve looks if done correctly. The problem is that women acclimatize to their appearance and star to feel they no longer have the "wow" effect, so they keep pushing farther with the filler.

I'm less sure about the "preventative botox" injections. It's been going on for a while, but I remember back when I first saw an episode of "The Hills" that none of the girls could furrow their brow.

I think the answer is that many young women are horribly insecure because of modern western culture.

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