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Comment by rmah | Hacker News Reader

I usually don't read articles like this, but it was so well written that I was sort of sucked into it.

What was most interesting to me was not the various controversies about body aesthetics or even health consequences. What stood out to me was the author's description in the early parts of the article of how much she seemed to crave the approval of strangers, especially men. It was thought provoking and I'm still processing it. I find this way of thinking completely foreign. I know intellectually that many people need external affirmation... but from total strangers whom you barely interact with? I can't help but feel a bit sad that so many go through their lives this way.

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I also found the article fascinating for the insights the author shows about her own thoughts and motivations.

When I started working out at a gym, when I was in my early fifties, I barely knew that bodybuilding existed. But the gym I happened to join in Tokyo turned out to be popular with amateur bodybuilders, and I exercised near them most evenings for more than ten years. I became acquainted with quite a few of them, including some of the top bodybuilders in Japan, and made friends with several, but I never really understood what drove them. Although most of them had full-time jobs, they worked out nearly every evening for a couple of hours, and when the summer competition season approached they would drastically restrict their diets and start spending money on skincare and tanning. It looked to me like self-torture, but many of them continued this year after year.

In my job, in foreign-language education, I think a lot about what motivates some adults to keep studying long and hard enough to become proficient in a foreign language, as relatively few actually succeed. I tried to get some insights about motivation from watching and talking to the bodybuilders, but I didn’t really learn much. This article helped.

>In my job, in foreign-language education, I think a lot about what motivates some adults to keep studying long and hard enough to become proficient in a foreign language, as relatively few actually succeed.

I'm not sure I would compare something like bodybuilding with foreign languages. At some point you become proficient enough in a language that you can simply consume movies, TV shows, books, news etc that the language learning becomes mostly effortless. Becoming really proficient at a language requires someone to immerse themselves in it (to use it for a purpose without easy fallbacks). The internet has been amazing for learning English.

I don't know anyone that became proficient at a language by studying it. It's always been through use. The studying just creates a base that allows a person to start using the language.

Exercise requires persistence. You can't really have gaps in it, because you lose your progress. Language learning is much more flexible in this. You might forget what you learned, but the next time you try to learn the same thing it's much easier.

> Exercise requires persistence. You can't really have gaps in it, because you lose your progress.

Well, maintaining your current level of strength is far easier to do than maintaining continuous progress (especially at more advanced stages, which you have to do a lot of fuckery around programming/scheduling in order to realize any progress at all). You just can't do nothing, but the same goes for languages. If you don't use a language at all, your proficiency atrophies over time as well.

It's just not something people really think about. If you were to reach a level of strength you were happy with, you could just figure out a maintenance program and focus your physical energy on other pursuits, extreme sports, slacklining, bouldering, hiking, whatever.

>If you don't use a language at all, your proficiency atrophies over time as well.

I don't think it's quite comparable. I was fluent in German more than a decade ago. I've not really used it since. It's difficult for me to speak or write in it, because I simply can't think of the words - I'll remember them in English instead. However, if I listen to German or read German text then I have no trouble understanding it.

This same thing did not happen with exercise for me. The strength I once had is gone.

Fortunately for you, regaining a strength level that one had in the past is vastly lower effort than what was required to get to that level in the first place. There are many fascinating cellular and molecular causes for the macro-phenomenon that we call "muscle memory" but it is a real thing.

TLDR, your muscles, unlike most tissues, have more than one nucleus per cell. Your "meat", which are protein fibers, can be atrophied through catabolism during diet or dis-use, and this is a form of protein recycling. But the multiplication of nuclei which occurred during your original training does not revert.

So a formerly strong person who let it go is sitting around with a high nuclei/cell ratio, and low muscle tissue. If he resumes his training and calorie surplus, his nuclei will act like parallel processors outputting the commands to manufacture new muscle fiber much faster.

Concur. I worked out quite haphazardly during the last 9 months and have maintained most of my strength.

RE language acquisition, I often wonder how much is circumstance. I have an engineer friend who on the one hand is making excuses but he points out his job doesn't really require him to talk to anyone, further, his programming job is almost entirely in English, looking up API docs or language docs in English, writing code while thinking in English, further he's somewhat introverted. So, his language skills are not so great for the amount of time he's lived abroad. Conversely his sees socialite colleagues doing jobs that require interaction doing much better.

My point is, some adults don't need so much intrinsic motivation. Their situation effectively carries them or at least is a strong helpful push.

You are definitely correct, but you need to factor in the actions that puts someone in a place to get that environmental effect. If your friend had motivation to learn the language they would presumably seek out ways to practice it (e.g engaging more with their colleagues or actively seeking documentation in the foreign language).

One directly practical example, since I'm also an engineer living in a foreign country: a lot of the times when I first interact with someone they will ask me if I prefer to speak in English or in their language, and I will always take the opportunity to speak their language to get the practice in.

Since this thread is about the similarity between learning languages and bodybuilding, I guess you could make the comparison between someone working a job that leads to natural exercise (e.g construction) and someone who works a more sedentary job but seeks out exercise on their own.

I'm not a body builder, but I was a competitive powerlifter for awhile and still am a serious lifter now. In my experience, serious lifters of either gender (including myself) tend to have trauma from the past that got them into it and helped the hobby stick. Typically they were either fat, underweight, short, or weak; they felt looked down on; or some combination of these things, and they were angry about it. Alternatively, they felt powerless for some reason and they felt that lifting empowered them and gave them control.

As George Leeman (an accomplished powerlifter) once said: "to lift these kinds of weights is not a happy thing...you do not try and pick up 800 lbs and fucking look like you're going to fucking kill somebody before you do it because everything is fucking great".

Reminds me of the brother in "Leolo" [0]. Super dense movie right on the verge between tragic and funny.

[0] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0104782/mediaviewer/rm2696479744/

You don’t need that validation, but it’s still very noticeable. The difference between being slightly overweight and ripped is shocking. The world is suddenly a different place where you show up at a large party and several hot women hit on you etc.

Granted you need to be otherwise attractive, but it’s not just women men also treat you more positively. Women see a wider range of responses, yet it’s still generally a very positive experience.

I'd say you probably don't even need to be attractive physically in terms of having a pretty face. If you've got a charming personality and you are reasonably in shape, you'll get plenty of attention. You're signaling that you have value and people act accordingly.

> you'll get plenty of attention

But qualitatively different attention IMHO.

Great looking guy with zero personality: shallow attention e.g. one-night stands or pure accessory.

Ugly guy with great personality: veer towards long-term relationships or maybe friend-zoning.

Disagree. If you think that is true of you, then maybe you don't have as great a personality as you think you do. Women love funny, confident guys.

Ha ha!

Actually I was talking about what I have seen in friends and acquaintances, although I have seen exceptions too.

Might depend upon country too...

This is a lot more incel-y than I am accustomed to seeing on HackerNews.

I see a lot of incel-y talk on HN. Some of it seems predicated on Silicon Valley as a gold rush town, with men outnumbering women ten to one and the women taking that in a mercenary opportunity. Almost any discussion of dating will turn up a lot of such views.

A long way off-topic, but any talk of incel is likely to be taken as an insult (although some use it in a positive way). The word definitely doesn’t apply to me! Personally, I have never even heard the word used within my own social circles (some of which are geeky).

The hn crowd seems to be particularly international to me - making assumptions based on SV seems wierd. I am in New Zealand with a normal ratio of genders, and plenty of social situations to meet women since we have no lockdown, however I have heard that NZ has far too many sheep.

On topic: I am acquainted with one world-competing female body-builder. She comes across as extremely competent at the other parts of her life (good artist, good at running her own business).

The difference from being obese to being fit has been night and day for me.

Self confidence plays a role so it's a sort of self fulfilling prophecy, but there's no question others treat you differently.

Like walking into a bank wearing a suit and a good haircut vs ragged jeans and long hair. It’s also a big weakness of humans that they dole out trust this way, but it makes all the sense in the world that we do so.

I think one of the most remarkable demonstrations of this I know of is a study I remember seeing referenced somewhere (maybe "Influence" by Cialdini) that showed that people are more likely to cross a road on a red light if someone in a suit crosses it first.

Can you please elaborate a bit? What differences did you notice?

When he was obese, people were like, ugh a fat slug who needs to stop eating 2000 calories a sitting. plus his nose is kinda crooked. When he got fit, all the sudden he started looking a pretty sexy guy who's got it together. that slightly crooked nose? now a cute quirk that makes his face more unique and charming.

Having been through this myself, my own experience:

Going from being ignored in nightclubs, and have people tap my shoulder if they needed to get past, to having people instead slide their hands over my pecs or stomach or pat them to get past (both men and women suddenly started doing that), getting my butt pinched half a dozen times a night, and having half a bunch of random strangers who also lifted weights want to high five me for no reason.

I'd never had women pick me up in nightclub before, as opposed to having to be the one to approach. Afterwards I did. I had random women want to make out with me within minutes of meeting on many occasions. Of course not all of that is necessarily down to the change in my appearance - it's very possible some of it was also down to my increased self confidence, but either way the difference was massive.

Looks and confidence are of course by no means the only things, but it's a multiplier, and you can up that multiplier significantly by lifting weights.

I was pretty attractive in high school. The most startling example of this I ever experienced was sitting at a table playing yugioh with only traditionally "nerdy" looking guys, and a girl came by and said "do you know how unattractive playing that game is?" and then she looked at me and said "except you, it's cute when you do it". It truly is a completely night and day experience in how you're treated, negative things about you become cute and quirky and you can do no wrong in many people's eyes.

Total strangers are the most honest signal of whether you are generally attractive.

Since the pandemic started, my interactions with strangers of the opposite sex have been quite curtailed. Last week a vague acquaintance in my condo complex, 35 years my senior, stopped me and spent a good 30 seconds telling me how blue my eyes looked, and musing on how my outfit made them stand out especially. On the one hand, this is weirdly objectifying, and I kind of wish she had the slightest interest in who I am as a person - she’s one of those archetypal condo neighbors who mostly just goes around complaining about people. But on the other hand, I had the distinct thought, “Hot dang, Daniel. You’ve still got it.” This thought was steeped in irony, but at its kernel, there’s a stark emotional reality there. I’m even tolerably well adjusted.

Positive attention from strangers is a singularly terrible thing to hinge your wellbeing on, but man. It sure feels nice.

I would comment that many men seem use sex with women as a form of self esteem boosting. Like, if I fuck enough women, the emotional void inside of me will finally fill and I’ll know I’m worthy. Women do the attention seeking stuff more overtly, and they’re encouraged and allowed to display themselves as objects. men have a pretty similar set of emotional drives, just have different avenues for acting them out.

Nice story (first paragraph; third paragraph rings all too true). I don't think being told you have beautiful eyes is necessarily objectifying, though.

Objectification is where you disregard all aspects of a person in favor of what they look like; the word literally means treating a person like an object. Think posters of swimsuit models on the walls.

Anyway like another person in this thread mentioned, while it's shit, at the same time it feels nice to get complimented on a feature of yours, especially if it's a novel experience. I've never felt like I was particularly attractive, because I got zero feedback on my appearance during my formative years - good OR bad. But I'm in my mid thirties now and my girlfriend has the hots for me, so that's nice :D.

> Objectification is where you disregard all aspects of a person in favor of what they look like

I know the context is largely missing, and I am obviously not telling the OP what they should think in a specific circumstance.

But as you say, objectifying is when an individual is seen only through the prism of a stereotype (though I don’t think it’s necessarily physical, but that’s another story). We tend to get very defensive because we reject others’ judgement (and crave validation at the same time; we’re nothing if not contradictory), but a compliment every now and then is not necessary wrong.

And I know what objectification means ;)

I recognise myself in the rest of your post, it’s uncanny. Are you me?

> Positive attention from strangers is a singularly terrible thing to hinge your wellbeing on, but man. It sure feels nice.

The addictivity of facebook/youtube/instagram/hackernews upvotes condensed in a single sentence, great insight!

This is so interesting. I had a similar experience like what you described. A friend of mine drunk dialed me when she was partying with her girlfriends, telling me that her friend thought I was cute.

It felt weird - that she was sharing photos of me with her friends - and a bit objectifying too. But yeah, I had the same thought as you. It felt nice.

Also, your writing style is amazing. If you ever write a blog or a book, I would give it a try just on the basis of how well you articulate thoughts.

> I would comment that many men seem use sex with women as a form of self esteem boosting. Like, if I fuck enough women, the emotional void inside of me will finally fill and I’ll know I’m worthy. Women do the attention seeking stuff more overtly, and they’re encouraged and allowed to display themselves as objects. men have a pretty similar set of emotional drives, just have different avenues for acting them out.

In the absence of a demonstrably testable and provable God (or Gods, or religion) the only real success is genetic success -- that's the way of things for 99% of the living critters on the planet. Getting laid a lot means breeding a lot means genetic success.

Kinda like money: having it is no promise of happiness, but not getting any will make you miserable.

To the parent thread: bartended a bit after getting out of the Marines. Now currently a fat beardly linux type. Night and day in terms of how people, of all genders and orientations, treat you when you're fit, clean cut, and dressed well.

Thanks to you I'm now going to imagine all Linux Greybeards are former hot bartenders.

I was a ridiculously cute little girl and I'm pretty damn sure a lot of my social issues as a young adult were rooted in getting essentially trained to play to the crowd as a toddler. At that age, it's a form of brainwashing and it's amazingly hard to root out after you become an adult and are puzzled that your antics no longer get you adoration. (PSA: Please don't do this to your own children. It's an awful thing to experience.)

My oldest son was a ridiculously cute toddler but I never taught him that he was expected to play to the crowd. So when he got to be school age and found that too much social attention was actively problematic, he was able to choose to intentionally behave differently.

This is likely to some degree a gender difference. Girls seem to get a lot more social pressure generally to "be cute" and to engage socially in a performative manner.

On a tangentially related note, I've noticed that many heterosexual men imagine the comedian Felix Kjellberg (AKA Pewdiepie) must be the height of attractiveness for women, while few heterosexual women find him particularly attractive. I found this very confusing, but after a few discussions with heterosexual female friends of mine we've come to the conclusion that the kind of playfulness and disinhibition this persona consists of is looks like vivaciousness in a woman but immaturity in a man. I imagine some similar dynamics must be in play there.

If you are heterosexual, "opposites attract." What is attractive for a woman will almost by definition not be attractive to a woman.

Do you mean personality wise?

Physically, I just googled and found he won a most beautiful faces award this year and consistently ranked on the same list. Never heard of TC Candler but their youtube lists have millions of views. I doubt he’s actually objectively #1 but clearly they don’t think he’s unattractive.

There’s a lot of variance in female taste, so you frequently see comments along the lines of “[Objectively attractive celebrity X] is not attractive AT ALL”. And the comment is true, for that woman.

But it’s very risky to generalize based on a small sample, especially if it’s all from your personal bubble. I guarantee that if Pewdiepie wasn’t famous and you put his photos on Tinder they would do well. He’s lean, young, 5’10”, has good skin and a reasonable fashion sense, and there’s nothing obviously wrong with his face. That alone more or less puts him in the 90% percentile.

https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/pewdiepie-most-handsome-20...

>He’s lean, young, 5’10”, has good skin and a reasonable fashion sense, and there’s nothing obviously wrong with his face. That alone more or less puts him in the 90% percentile.

Well yes, not to mention that he's a completely self-made multimillionaire with a charming accent. He's certainly what I imagine going for were I attracted to men. Having anyone who is into men say they're not interested is noteworthy, such a large percentage of even a fairly small sample size was definitely pointing to something unusual.

Have you talked to women about attraction? It’s extremely common to hear them say “ugh celebrity x is not at all attractive”.

No woman universally finds all celebrities attractive. Okcupid had an excellent blog series on attractiveness ratings by gender. When rating women, men used more or less a normal distribution.

Whereas the default female rating was “unattractive”, and only a tiny fraction are rated extremely attractive. And from my own experience the variance is high: different women find different types of men attractive.

Check out okcupid’s graphs here, see the chart female messaging and male attractiveness: https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/yourlooksandyo...

I don’t follow pewdiepie and I certainly wouldn’t claim he’s the most attractive man in the world or anything. I’m pushing back against the idea that he’s unattractive or against the idea that some women saying he’s unattractive means he doesn’t also have a ton of women who find him attractive.

My point wasn't really about absolute numbers so much as how consistently men overestimate his attractiveness to women. I'm not saying he's the only one or would be considered more unattractive than the average man, just that it's surprising how poorly we understand what the opposite gender finds attractive.

If you doubt that is an objective observation, it would be quite easy to test and I'd certainly be interested in the results. One possible protocol would be to select several celebrities, make pairs of them at random, and ask your friends both which of the pair they find more attractive and which of a different set of pairs they imagine the other gender would find more attractive.

That’s fair, I suspect you might be right that if you to make some sort of index of “male overestimates of universal attractiveness of a celebrity to women” he might be high on it because he’s so popular with men on an emotional level.

As a heterosexual female, Matt Bomer is the height of peak male attractiveness. I'd say Charlize Theron would be tops for females. Pewdiepie - ha. I actually find him repulsive, but you are right it's the personality - too loud, too awkward, too ... zany. I think I'd find that offputting in a female as well.

Interesting, Theron is certainly an example of someone whose attractiveness I've mostly heard affirmed by people not sexually attracted to women - there seem to be a fair number of people who possess what we might call beauty without much in the way of sex appeal. What's strange is how unconsciously we'll imagine that someone is highly desired without ever encountering a reality check.

Agree. She has all the metrics (symmetry, blonde, tall, in shape) and yet she does nothing for me at all. She activates the sense in me of "That is like my mom: Female but not a sex object".

As I get older the more I come to terms with the most attractive women being those who Hollywood never tried to push on me: slightly thick, introverted, and grumpy.

ha! I think we're a love match but sorry not on the market :)

I dunno, if he wasn't such a prick I'm sure he'd be considered attractive enough. Not everyone's cup of tea, but then, who is?

You'd be surprised. Male attractiveness is simply NOT TALKED ABOUT much, especially around older people. But my mother, who is quite reserved, once blurted out that in his early years father looked 'like a young god'. And yeah, I've seen a black&white photo. He looked pretty much like Clark Kent. Square jaw, glasses, swole from muscles... except he wore a linen shirt instead of a suit. He always enjoyed labor. I wouldn't get this description if I just asked about him.

Many women don't feel comfortable openly saying they find some men attractive. That doesn't mean they don't care about it a lot.

Women having sexual preferences and predilections is not at all the same thing as men getting a ton of social pressure from all quarters to look and act a certain way.

A very attractive female actress once said "I dress for women. I undress for men." For that and other reasons, I'm not convinced that male sexual preferences really drive the female tendency to try hard to look good and dress well, even though that's the supposed justification. Society gives women a lot of silly ideas about what men want and I think most women don't really bother to ask men if any of that actually holds water or not.

When I was relatively young and married I bought a new coat and got all mad when my husband failed to notice my new coat at all and, thus, failed to compliment me on it. I have to wonder how much women go around demanding that men tell them they like and approve of X, Y and Z rather than checking to find out if he even really, truly cares about X, Y or Z at all.

During my long, drawn out divorce at a time when I did not expect to be in a position to make a relationship really work long-term, I just began asking men point blank what they liked about me. The answers were surprisingly varied and completely destroyed a lot of preconceived notions I had about what made me "attractive."

It was very eye-opening and life-changing for me. It also made me enormously skeptical of a lot of "standard wisdom" related to such topics.

Your experience, described this way, makes me wonder: to what extent are fashion and notions of sex appeal mostly unrealistic competitions, trapped in their own inertia, unhinged from actual human desire, just like those in the article.

I think there is a huge societal weight that is hard to escape because most sexual liaisons are also social relationships.

We date. We get married. The people we are romantically attached to in a public way get judged by others and that judgement impacts us.

The only way to separate your actual sexual preferences from your desire for social approval is to get involved secretly, out of the public eye. And that's inherently problematic.

How do you arrange such secrecy? Will it come back to bite you later? Can you successfully transition from secret love affair to public association with this person?

The plot for the movie Legally Blonde is rooted in family interference in Elle's boyfriend's love life. She's gorgeous and they are in love but she's not what his family wants for him.

There are countless other such examples in both fiction and the real world. Hollywood even coined a term for marriages intended to cover up socially disapproved preferences for LGBTQ stars during a certain era: the lavender marriage.

The world often interferes significantly with whom we can marry, which means it interferes significantly with whom we can openly be sexually involved with.

It's a quite difficult thing to escape, even for people who simply cannot make those expectations work for them (like gay men being forced to marry women and pretend to like sex with women, a still fairly common occurrence in the world). If your sexual orientation and preferences make those social expectations not overly onerous, the path of least resistance is to just go along to get along, at least publicly and superficially to some degree.

But I suspect it still does enormous harm in ways that go largely unrecognized.

I'm sure they are unhinged to some extent. But I've also come to realise over the years that a lot of it comes down to different priorities.

Ask a number of men what their dream women would be like, and odds are you'll get more descriptions of women we'll sleep with, than will want to stay with long term. Sometimes we'll even known this and still opt for the short term payoff, even if we "in theory" want the long term payoff, because impulse control is hard.

> "I dress for women. I undress for men."

A good demonstration of this can be showcased pretty heavily in the difference between how women are dressed in women's magazines vs. in magazines targeting men - whatever their state of undress.

Many years ago, I read some article about some guy who was seeing two women and the two women found out about each other. Neither woman dumped him. Neither woman gave him an ultimatum of "It's me or her!"

No, both of them began dressing completely differently and the brunet dyed her hair blonde and the blonde dyed her hair red.

They both had this internal script that said "The way you win a man is with looks, by god!" and neither of them ever bothered to ask the man in question "So, what would it take to get you to myself? Is that even possible? Why are even seeing two women in the first place?"

He didn't care how either of them dressed. He continued to see both of them and was quietly amused by their completely ineffectual attempts to "win" him and get him to themselves.

I mean, in competing for him instead of being willing to walk, they're basically validating his choice, and then putting him on a pedestal where they're making it clear to him they see him as higher value than other men they might find. I'd imagine it made him even more inclined to keep seeing both of them.

They behaved exactly as red pill proponents say. According to that line of thinking, a man popular with ladies is more attractive and they are more happy sharing a high status man than having a lesser man all for themselves.

Of course, this is just an anecdote and cases like this are more likely to stick in our memory. You be the judge.

Wanting affirmation from and to be attracted by others around you (total strangers included) is basic human nature. It’s why we adorn ourselves with clothing and perfume, not to mention our skin and hair, whatever gender you are. I am a male and always want to seem attractive in physique and in character to the opposite sex, and even in some level to the same sex. My wife insists she doesn’t care what other people think about how she looks but she spends hours doing her hair and makeup when she goes somewhere with me or by herself. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this and it is completely healthy from a psychological standpoint.

I generally don't care what people think of my appearance, but I'll still shave and comb my hair before meeting people -- not because I want to impress them, but because it says "I value you enough to make at least a little bit of effort if we're going to be seen together in public".

Honestly, a shower in the morning, a brush and maybe some product and being reasonably healthy already puts you at a great advantage over others. It doesn't take two hours of Bateman level prep (unless you aim to supermodel levels), or a life dedicated to sports.

Are you trying to say you don't use a herb-mint facial mask as part of your morning routine?

I can do over a thousand crunches now.

Right. Who would count their karma points here on Hacker News and make a big deal about how many strangers anonymously clicked on the up arrow next to their post?

I actually know such person. That is exactly what happened - karma was supposed to be proxy for social status and mine was lower so I was supposedly not allowed to argue against that person.

This magazine is a great one for getting me to read long articles about things I didn’t think would be interesting. It seems like they attract writers that are more honest and human about their motivations than you see in other places.

Thank you to share. If you have time, can you add links to other stories that caught your attention? I would like to read more!

I used to have a paper subscription to it 16 years ago, so most of my memories are from then.

See if you can find links to the audio-visual cds/dvds too.

I am working a lot for the next 2 days but I’ll try and reply, check back in 3-4 days.

OK I have some time, I hope you are able to see this:

Great piece on the reality of living in Las Vegas: https://believermag.com/the-people-of-las-vegas/

An interview with Terry Gilliam (of Monty Python) from one of the early publications: https://believermag.com/an-interview-with-terry-gilliam/

This volume came with a DVD that had a bunch of great artsy videos I used to watch a lot: https://believermag.com/product/the-believer-december-2004-j...

Hope you get some enjoyment from reading these or finding other things.

I don't think for self-validation it matters much if someone is a complete stranger or not, it's more about where in the perceived social hierarchy that person sits. Attention from someone who you feel is "higher" in the social tree is a positive, ego boosting signal, and we're wired to react to that. That's the core mechanics behind animal groups organization, and while human society tolerates individualism to much larger extent than other animals, still we're hard-coded to strive for it. I think very few people have such amount of healthy ego that their self-esteem is completely independent from their environments social signals - and it's not necessarily a healthy sign, as it might be also a consequence of some personality disorders.

... really?

You've never wanted to be attractive to whatever gender you're attracted to? I find it surprising that this can be "totally foreign" to any human that's not asexual.

Being the most attractive version of yourself that you can be isn't just about sex, either. It really does open doors socially and economically. Right or wrong, people enjoy the company of people who put thought and effort into their appearance. And if for no other reason, your partner certainly appreciates it!

It surprises you, on Hacker News, to find someone who doesn't give a lot of thought to his appearance and thinks it's weird that other people do?

Not that we should go around calling people 'neckbeards', it's rude, but there's a reason the term exists.

Not OP. But, maybe, a bit, it does surprise me. Most programmers I know in real life are not neck beards and quite presentable, despite what the cliche' is like.

“Presentable” and “attractive” are often different things. Most engineers I know put in enough effort to be presentable, but not attractive.

You wouldn’t know the others are engineers.

The traits associated with technical skills definitely bump the distribution more to the side of 'neckbeard'. So, yes, most programmers are normal (well groomed, exercise, developed social skills) but the number people who show no compelling evidence they possess a theory of mind is noticably higher and account for the tropes.

I like that "no compelling evidence they possess a theory of mind". I spent some time worrying about what "people" would think when I was young, but never "what does that individual person think?" And I never spent any time trying to be attractive because I didn't find men attractive. Reddit helped me read everyone else's minds and made me more normal, but I still don't have conversations where I'm thinking "How are they reacting to what I said?" or "What will they do if I act like this?"

I see you, Larry David.

I always assumed the unpresentable ones never showed up in person to things and therefore didn't present themselves to me

Of course I have. But that's not what she described. From what I read it was a near obsession, consuming her thoughts on a near constant basis. THAT is what I found foreign.

And of course being more attractive makes life easier. Did I say even once that it did not? That's blatantly obvious. But do you really actively think about if strangers that you happen pass on the street or in a store find you hot? This is what she described.

Everyone cares what some other people think of them. Friends, family, collogues, and people they're attracted to, etc. Some people care more, some people care less. But, I think, most people don't really care too much what complete strangers think to the point where they actively think about it while passing them by. Or do they?

I’m not an attractive woman so I can’t say for sure, but I have been obviously “checked out” by women before, and it made an impact on my mental state. If someone were to become used to that, I’d imagine clear changes to that feedback would become noteworthy, especially in a confessional essay.

I think that's one of the points of the article, or at least an observation. Bodybuilding made her more attractive to men, then as she excelled, made her much less attractive to them. The world changed around her as she changed appearance, as men held open the door for her or ignored her, corresponding to her attractiveness. Bodybuilding for women was for years obsessed with making sure the competitors preserved their femininity, as if building too much muscle takes that away from a women. One of her idol (Bev Francis)'s major contributions to the field were ignored by the gym friend, because he viewed Francis as being too unattractive to have sex with, and that was all he cared about.

Beyond that, I think it's extraordinarily hard to not care what strangers think of you. Not a particular stranger, but just strangers as a whole. Depending on where you live (e.g.catcalling is more common in particular cultures or more metro areas), you can have people commenting on your appearance every day. After years of that, of course you start noticing the comments being more or less nice, or more or less frequent, and I imagine it's easy to obsess over it. It should be pointed out though that it's clear the author doesn't enjoy obsessing over how men think of her - I imagine these are more intrusive thoughts.

I enjoyed a feminist lit book with similar themes of a character who embraced being 'unf*ckable' called "Dietland". The 2nd half of the book goes off the rails but the first half was thought-provoking to me, for anyone who might be interested.

Nice! Thanks for the last paragraph about "Dietland". I found a Wiki page about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietland

I will try to read it!

Reward Dependence - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_dependence

This is much more common than you would imagine. And on both sides of the typical gender roles. (I’m speaking about western society here as it’s what I know, and where I feel like a lot of that need comes from.)

Because it's objective. Strangers, in the aggregate, have little incentive to modify their gut reaction to how you present yourself.

Doesn't feel all that different from obsessively posting on web forums for karma. Which is something I do.

> What was most interesting to me was not the various controversies about body aesthetics or even health consequences. What stood out to me was the author's description in the early parts of the article of how much she seemed to crave the approval of strangers, especially men.

We very much stand on opposite ends.

Fools exist, and many fools try to phrase their foolishness in terms of gender so to arouse the impression that they have an excuse.

Not a day goes by that I see a man attempt to excuse his foolishness by claiming it stems from his gender, his ethnicity, his religion, or anything else.

Needlessly craving the approval of others has nothing to do with gender, — some do so, and some do not.

> I can't help but feel a bit sad that so many go through their lives this way.

Foolish behavior exists everywhere in many forms. Some crave the approval of others to deluded paranoia of rejection; others wish to control their fellow man for no purpose but control itself; yet others are disproportionally afraid of very specific, uncommon things, yet ignore far more common dangers. — it is old news.

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