Readers often graciously share links to information they think I or the blog’s readers would find of interest. I always appreciate this, but at times I struggle to find those links later, especially if I was sure I would never forget the context at the time. If I remember to bookmark the link this helps in part but I still risk forgetting who to give a hat tip to if I use the link in a future post. Also, there is the understandable hesitation to post a link on an unrelated topic and risk derailing the conversation.
Back in November I created a placeholder page to list game resources for marriage. This is a similar page but here I’ll ask for general links you think would be of interest to me and/or my readers. I’ve created a new category of Reference at the top of the site which brings up these two pages.
Feel free to share anything you think is related here. Other bloggers are welcome to point out their own posts as well (within reason of course). Think of this as a mini Dalrock reddit page.
Doing some intel for a post over at the new blog and I ran across these lyrics:
Who Says You’re Not Perfect, by Selena Gomez
As a mother of teenage girls, I was already familiar with the song but I’d never seen all of the lyrics or the video before.
I thought it might be interesting to you with its message that every girl is perfect, deserves a beautiful life, and can even be in the movies if she wants. I appreciate the noble intention of this young singer, but I think she fails to see the potential harm in her message.
Terry, I agree that the lyrics are unrealistic, but when we live in a world that says the best thing a woman can be is beautiful, can you blame Selena Gomez for trying to boost seIf-esteem and aceptance with lines like, “I wouldn’t want to be anybody else.” or “I’m no beauty queen, I’m just beautiful me”? There’s far worse out there in the pop world.
Yes, J. That’s why I acknowledged her noble intentions. I do believe her heart, like most of these 16-year-old pop princesses, was in the right place.
We have worked hard to instill confidence and character into our girls. I think my problem with this is that far too often, the message that young, immature, impressionable girls get is:
“I’m perfect just the way I am no matter what anyone says or thinks. People who try to correct my foolish behavior simply fail to appreciate me for who I am. Who says I can’t be a model or a pop star? Of course I can! To heck with all y’all. I’m gotta be me!”
If I’m wrong (and I sincerely hope that I am) I stand corrected. But my gut tells me that far too many girls will take the wrong message away from songs like this.
I knew what you meant, Terry. I just think you overestimate the number of girls who’ll take the message the wrong way. I’d be more worried about young girls internalizing what Kesha has to say about brushing your teeth with a bottle of Jack Daniels or about girls becoming anorexic self-haters because they don’t look like photoshopped models. I’ve worked with adolescents in various capacities for all of my professional life, and IME that’s more frequent and dangerous than girls thinking that they are going to be movie stars. Very few girls (outside of drama club) really think that. More have genuine problems with self-esteem.
Now, would I rather have seen lyrics like, “Hey, don’t worry. It’s all BS anyway. Just be nice, work hard, build some competencies and don’t worry about your looks”? Yeah, I would have..but if I say that half a dozen manosphere guys will tell me that the most important thing a woman can do is look good.
J,
Looking good doesn’t require a perfect 10. Most beta providers would trip over themselves for a 7 or non fat 6. Both of those can be achieved by 80% of girls by simply going to the gym and keeping a diet.
this is VERY eye opening. i’m retiring from the military in 3 years. i’ve saved a VERY decent amount of money up (and i’m not ever 40), and i’ve held off on marriage, i own my own home, and i have a pretty marketable profession.
what i DON’T have is a woman siphoning off of me. as much as i’d love to be in a LTR, i don’t think it’s in the cards for me until i retire from the navy.
great post btw Darlock. very enlightening.
@davver
That may well be. While there are many manosphere who say they wouldn’t touch a “6,” but my eyes tell me otherwise. My objection however was to the idea that looks should be paramount. I understand that no one, male or female, wants a partner they are not aroused by. OTOH, I’d like to think that character is more important.
“My objection however was to the idea that looks should be paramount. I understand that no one, male or female, wants a partner they are not aroused by. OTOH, I’d like to think that character is more important.”
This is such a predictable meme with women – “why are guys so shaaaallow? There are more important things than sex!” I’ve come to believe it’s as simple as women today were never taught that a man in love expresses that love through sex. The corollary to this complaint blows my mind – women are raring to get married to guys who aren’t attracted to them.
http://badgerhut.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/ladder-theory-for-men/
The way men generally work is that if they are in the market for an LTR/marriage, the looks rating is binary. She’s either attractive enough, and he proceeds to evaluating the rest of the package, or she’s not and never gets considered. He’ll trade off some attractiveness he could have gotten for other traits he needs in the LTR, one reason you sometimes see guys marry a woman less objectively attractive than others he has dated. And quite honestly, the bar for minimum attractiveness for a guy seeking a goopd LTR is not that high.
So looks are paramount, but only to the point a man finds her hot or not – but still paramount because if you don’t make the cut you don’t get an audition at all. To davdav’s point, there are a LOT of young women who would be MUCH more attractive ten pounds closer to their ideal weight. Just as there are a lot of guys who would be much more attractive with just a bit more game.
*This is such a predictable meme with women – “why are guys so shaaaallow? There are more important things than sex!” I’ve come to believe it’s as simple as women today were never taught that a man in love expresses that love through sex.*
But you know I think this is more shaming language and sour grapes. Have you ever seen a woman highly attracted to a guy and not wanting sex from him? I mean you can delay sex for the sake of other things (morals, birth control issues and so on…) but women do want sex from men they find attractive. Things is that a man doesn’t have to be good looking for them to be atractive so they are projecting the idea that a man is shallow, when in reality being atracted to a guy because he shows confidence (without anything real to back it up) is as shallow as the big boobs are. Is just a subtle kind of shallow.
I don’t think such lyrics are going to teach girls that they literally can be movie stars, but I do think it’s part of the problematic culture of narcissism.
It’s not good for girls to hate their existence or develop eating disorders, but the other option doesn’t have to be so extreme. I think this “I am special just for existing and perfect just the way I am” teaching has grown a generation of people with serious entitlement issues and contributed to rising obesity.
Instead of telling a fat teenage girl that her body is beautiful and she should love herself just the way she is, why can we not have some reality? You are not your body. You are not your hair; you are not your body fat percentage, you are not your IQ, you are not your SAT scores, you are not your family, and you are not your history. All of these matter, and all of these are relevant, but no one part has to be what defines you as a person. A girl can be comfortable with herself as a person, yet recognise that math is not her strong point, so why not be able to recognise that she’ll never be a supermodel?
Better to teach people to realistically evaluate themselves. Those who are not genetically blessed with good looks will have to work a little harder at it, just like those who are not genetically blessed with quick brains have to work harder in school.
I’d rather see a “I’m not perfect, but I have strengths I can play up and weaknesses I can work on, and I am okay as a person, but will become someone special if I work to do something special” message.
“I’d rather see a “I’m not perfect, but I have strengths I can play up and weaknesses I can work on, and I am okay as a person, but will become someone special if I work to do something special” message.”
Wonderful! ITA
Something that I struggle in the differences between USA and Latin America is this idea that parents should have a special alone time for kids individually.
I don’t want to sound harsh but I grew up with three siblings and I developed a charming, smart, chatty persona to compete for my parents attention against them and those skills had opened to me many doors in my adult life. My baby brother did the same. So its not better to have the children to learn that people won’t spent time with them unless they have something interesting to add to their lives? I mean mom and dad have to love you, but in the real world people won’t give attention for free.
So what do you think of that?
Not everybody is good at math. If your IQ is low there isn’t much you can do about it.
But every warpig can stop shoving Haagen-Daas bars down her piehole and get on the friggin’ treadmill.
Picked this article up via twitter the other day, what do you think about it?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-bloom/how-to-talk-to-little-gir_b_882510.html?ref=fb&src=sp%22
@Terry
Thanks for kicking this off with your link.
@Lily
Interesting. I’m somewhat sympathetic to her point of view. I think we short change women and girls by not expecting more from them than good looks. I think she has the cause backwards however; it isn’t society which is pushing our girls to act that way, it is the lack of civilizational restraints on girls which is allowing them to devolve to a more feral state. Feminists can’t understand why the changes they made to the culture made women and girls more focused on sexual competition instead of being more like the men they want women to emulate. I think it is quite obvious. Men and women both need societal restraint. Feminists had a temper tantrum and wanted to remove any restraints on women/girls. Now they have what they wanted and can’t stand it. So be it.
Lisa Bloom is the woman who was totally owned by Tucker Max in an interview concerning an exhibitionist sex at USC:
http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2011/03/31/hookinguprealities/straight-talk-on-the-rooftop-sex-controversy/
She had no rational response to Max telling commitment-hungry young women to stop blowing frat guys and start dating engineering majors.
That being said I’m highly in agreement with her article – it’s just disgusting how adults reinforce the tarting up of young girls by constantly evaluating them on their presentation.
Here’s the rub: Lisa Bloom is obviously very attractive, so it’s easy for her to tell everyone else to lighten up on the looks. It’s like a book I saw a few years ago by a Harvard alumna telling girls to accept their bodies as they are. The catch? The author was a beauty pageant winner. It rings hollow when hot girls tell their homely friends it’s what’s on the inside that matters.
Interesting article in the Daily Mail on a book which confirms game: A controversial book claims feminism and the rise of ‘new men’ have killed off women’s libidos…
I’m not sure I want to do a post on this, but someone else might want to.
I never quite got the hang of Hyperlinks. For reasons I need not go into, I came across a blog, by an Australian mother (otherwise known as Noonie224) of three children, presently in post-marital spinsterhood, the blog being titled Life’s a Feast. Her blog entry for 12th August 2011 is entitled My Car Broke Down. I feel that if Dalrock googles this and reads her main page and this entry that he will have more than enough material for a most scoriating attack on the delusions and stupidies of the willfully single woman.
My wife found another ridiculous advice column for women from match.com titled Overcoming the jinx: How to stop attracting losers. I sent this over to The Private Man, as I knew he was the right man to take this apart. He didn’t disappoint. Check out his post at: Match.com Hates Happy Relationships
You gotta see this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/juliet-jeske/dating-after-divorce-in-a_b_944133.html?ref=mostpopular “I am not slutty enough for New York.”
Also, a humorous takedown of a typical bar girl tactic: http://somethingpositive.net/sp09012011.shtml (note – I’m not particularly recommending the comic in general, just this strip.)
A more ‘serious’ article (BBC news from yesterday) on the ‘glass ceilings’, potentially good for comments:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14795958