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Comment by larrys | Hacker News Reader

"Although, I think that if I took some fancy photos of myself and primped myself up, I don't think it would do me any favors and I'd get some unwanted attention!"

My brain lit up on that sentence and I clicked on your profile to see what you looked like. (Happily married and all of that but men are visual)

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Why did you post this?

Seriously, have a think about it. That comment might be smarter than it first appears.

Could you elaborate, I'm failing to read between the lines.

Perhaps the idea is that OP was actually fishing for compliments. She said she doesn't want to evoke unwanted attention because she is too good looking, but by writing that she notified the internet of being very good looking.

The first part is weird and a little creepy. Really, he should listen to what she has to say, not look at a picture and say 'Yeah, I'd objectify her, she has a point'. Plus he had to click a few links deep to find a picture, so he went out of his way to see what some other commenter looks like, solely on the basis of gender. That's at least sexist, maybe you could really stretch and say it's salient to the conversation.

The second, parenthetical statement is what tips it way over the edge. It's like making a comment about 'culturalism' and then adding a footnote saying 'BTW, I'm totally not racist'. He obviously realizes that absent any context, saying "I spent at least 30 seconds hunting for a picture of you on the internet, person I've never met" is not socially appropriate. So he tries to shore it up with the fact that he's married, so obviously he has no interest in any other women outside of clinically judging their suitability for objectification.

This is further supported by the incredible, scientific claim that men's ability to process someone's comments on a message board is directly impacted by their ability to first judge that person's attractiveness - in a purely objective way, remember, he's married. No doubt this gentleman has a Firefox extension dedicated to finding all HN commenter's faces so he can better understand the cryptic squiggles they produce on his screen.

> Happily married and all of that but men are visual

What does that even mean?

It's like saying "I just bought a car and I"m happy with it but I still like to look at other cars at the car show or in the showroom because it makes me feel good".

Do you understand that unsolicited comments on someone's appearance are not ok?

They're not? Why not?

Seriously; unsolicited negative comments on pretty much any aspect are not ok. Sexually charged comments are not ok in most environments. But I don't want to live in a world where complimenting someone on their appearance is a bad thing.

"They're not? Why not?"

Add: Agree. I'm truly baffled by the parent comment.

People say things about appearance all the time. And I can't think of many cases where a comment (positive) about how someone appears (if said in the proper tone of voice [1]) is not appropriate. And even in the case of a negative comment you'd have to take the relationship of the parties into account (agreeing that that's a much broader situation and safer to not say anything).

[1] Of course I can think of many other exceptions (person dying in the hospital and you say "you look great") but the parent comment doesn't appear to be suggesting fringe cases.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, but you should consider that it's often unwelcome. There are things people think of as compliments to me that aren't things I actually want to hear, particularly from people I don't know.

There are legitimate criticisms you could make of the comment in question, but "I was curious what you looked like" is assuredly not a comment on someone's appearance.

"legitimate criticisms you could make of the comment in question"

What are they? I'm curious about what is prompting downvotes other than the obvious sorta somewhat non-pc patina.

This may come as a shock to you, but women are not cars.

Of course not. Acknowledging that two things are the same in some ways does not imply that the two things are the same in all ways. Don't be intentionally obtuse.

His quote is damn near the definition of "objectification".

Which is an utterly meaningless term nowadays. I'd love to hear you try to define it in a way that wouldn't classify every human interaction as objectifying.

and more casual sexism!

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