Friday, August 09, 2013

Checking you out

There's a common fallacy that opposite human genders are constantly checking each other out. This isn't always true. Mostly, men are looking at men and women are looking at women. This isn't a sexual thing (entirely) but a competitive thing. We like to check out the competition, see what they're wearing, their haircuts, their mannerisms. It happens in all walks of life – dogs do it, cats do it, and children do it. Children in the street, when they see a child of a similar age and the same sex, literally stop and stare at one another, they're locked in a stare battle. But generally, men are looking better nowadays than women (an observation I've mentioned previously) and I probably look at men more: they're just more stylish. In the 1970s, men looked terrible and women looked good (in the 80s at least everyone looked terrible). Now it's largely the opposite. Men, inspired by homosexuals, are looking great whereas women, inspired by, er, lesbians (and celebrities and hipsters and Primark and sports/leisurewear becoming acceptable mainstream attire), are looking dreadful and misshapen. As was mentioned to me recently, women nowadays look either overtly sexual or dowdy; looking feminine doesn't come into it.

• A recent study by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln found that women do look at other women's breasts and hips more than their faces, probably to 'check out the competition'.

NB: This post has been labelled 'Controversial (Perhaps)' and is not necessarily the views of the author. But he does like a beautiful woman in a polka dot dress.

2 comments :

Caspar said...

Easy, tiger! Someone's likely to jump on here and bite you in the ass for this curious assumption that the sartorial influence of gay men is good, while that of gay women is bad. Have you been down Old Compton Street lately? The gaysters there dress like builders. Not that there's anything wrong with builders, but "metrosexual" they ain't, even in this style-obsessed age.
And it's true that there are lots of women - as well as alarmingly young girls - who dress in a manner once reserved for the skankiest Sunset Strip hookers, but I wouldn't extrapolate a general principle from that. Likewise the fact that many men are far better groomed than they used to be - it depends where you live and the kind of people you see around. In the Shangri-La that is London you see a very broad range, including those who actually do "dress to impress", but that ain't the case everywhere.

Barnaby said...

Yes of course, all you say is true. I was just making stereotypical, outrageous and generalised assumptions to get a point across. No offence intended.