20 - chase words by Chase gouin
Appearances, Relationships, Love, Sex... etc...
It should be no news to anyone that society in general and its imagery through media largely dictates how the average person thinks and acts, even though many people would deny that such outside influence controls them to a considerable degree. In my opinion, the more a person is aware that this is happening, the less they will be prone to obliviously imitating it. The main subject I want to bring up is that of what we perceive as being physically attractive, then leading into related subjects. Speaking mostly about women, in the attractiveness category, historically there have been different ideals of what was attractive, although some things have remained the same. There was a time when voluptuousness (fat) was considered a sign of being well fed, which meant wealth/higher status, which could add to the desirability. Curves in all the “right places” and bodily features that seemed to portray femininity would definitely be one for sure. But the fat “ideal” still exists today in a Country called Mauritania where young girls are force fed under pressure of additional physical pain such as squeezing their feet between pieces of wood and being whacked and forced to eat their vomit after they throw up. The women must be fat to be ready for marriage and desirable to the men. This stems from the ages old idea that men could afford to feed their livestock more than men other men could. So the men are inherently attracted to women who are associated with being owned like fat livestock. The young girls go to camps to fatten up and consume between 14000 to 16000 calories per day... four times as much as a grown male body builder. In some areas up to 80% of women result in being obese. Google Mauritania force-feeding for an article on this. Then there is the extreme opposite of psychological bombardment in Western culture upon the minds of women who are drilled to believe they must be thin to be attractive, resulting in a mixture of self absorbed narcissism and insecure dysfunction, sometimes to the point of self mutilation or anorexia and bulimia nervosa? Neither approach is logical and they are based on irrational ideologies not grounded in a goal of reasonable weight and health. The other (and this alongside with men) would be symetrical facial features, which is most likely evolutionarily built in to suggest of perfection in “design”. All in all, there is no escaping the gender roles we have developed through the ages and nearly everyone plays into those roles to some extent by the ways we act and think. It is generally thought that women are more emotional or sensitive than men, and this is often very true. This is often associated with the idea that women have higher standards or deeper criteria for what they desire in a man and expect out of the relationship. I am here to suggest that this is mostly false. Men and woman (again, generally speaking about average people) are about equally shallow. What I see is that neither gender delve very far into the inner most qualities of a person (or themselves for that matter) before entering into a “serious” relationship, which of course suggests that those deeper and admirable qualities are not there to begin with because if they were, each person would do what it takes to discover them and make their connection on those grounds. Go figure why couples argue and break up and get back together over and over and repeat the same themes and in cases of marriage of course get divorced half the time. And in the end, usually neither is the wiser because they never knew themselves or the other from the start. That damage and baggage just gets carried into the next relationship. This is pretty much how it goes: we meet, we’re physically attracted to each other, we have sex, end up in a relationship and not much of any substance is discussed. A vague notion for the desire of love (to be wanted/ needed) by someone else usually suffices, and if the sex is good, that will keep it going for a while. Then people just exist robotically in the relationship, taking each other for granted, a loss of interest begins, frequency of sex decreases, which creates animosity and greater distance (“you aren’t attracted to me or love me anymore etc”). Many couples stay in relationship out of mere familiarity. They grow accustomed to the way things are, even if they are bad (and remember, most of them don’t even have a real understanding of what the problems are) and just think it’s easier to continue like that, rather than make definitive hard choices or changes to save the relationship, or end it once and for all. They have it in their heads that the person they are with is the only person who really knows them, and see it as too much work or anxiety to search for someone else, or, like I said, have just become addicted to having someone around and have developed a fear of being alone. How can any of this be avoided or improved upon? Well it starts with developing some depth of your own character. To be aware of what the world/media is embedding in your head in regards to what is physically attractive and desirable, combined with what is built in by evolution. Outer appearances are so strongly emphasized. It sickens me when I hear guys say “she’s gotta be skinny”. There was an example when myself and two buddies were remarking about a particular female we had seen. This girl was about 21 years old and very attractive by any standard. But my two buddies made it a point to say how she was “past her prime” merely because she has the slightest amount of “extra” cushion in the belly area. This apparently meant she could not technically be considered “smokin’ hot”. I mean really, is this type of superficial scrutiny
something to be proud of... As if the guys were on the cutting edge of knowing what exactly was considered “hot” and that failure in any category made the girl undesirable? People are brainwashed to have a very narrow idea of what is attractive. Such focus on this objectifies women and sees them as something that is there as an arm trophy to build the ego of the guy because he can say to himself that he is capable of reeling in the hotties. It is coming from a place of insecurity as well, because the guy wants to be seen with the “hot chick” because he really cares what other people think. In what sense is he any less insecure than the women he is probably calling insecure, and in many cases capitalizing on this? There is no denying that the outer appearances are the first thing we see, and immediately registers as to what degree the person is attractive according to what we’ve been led to believe is attractive (however, again, we cannot rule out natural selection dictating what we tend to gravitate towards). There is also nothing wrong with approaching a person with the intent to date/have sex etc based on this initial instinct/attraction. The problem is when the focus never goes any further than that. It is often true that typically attractive people are always told they are attractive and compare themselves with others who are typically attractive and view themselves as such. They are usually treated different/better than “lesser” attractive people and this tricks them into thinking that they are somehow better than the average person overall, even in other areas not related to appearances. The attention/adoration they receive can actually create a mentality of entitlement, just because of their looks. If a person can get by in life with the various “advantages” of being “hot”, this can turn out to be a disadvantage in the realms of depth of character and intellect, or even general kindness and an attitude of equality. They fail to develop other important inner qualities because it doesn’t seem like they have to. Generally people only do the bare minimum of what they need to do to get by in life. Being born with a naturally high metabolism or an “ideal” body type and look is what I call winning the “genetic lottery”. Since your looks and body type is mostly pre-determined there is nothing to be proud of since you did nothing on your own to turn out that way. Ironically, for what most guys think is an attractive woman, I am actually turned off because I know of the high likely hood that the woman thinks she’s superior to “lesser” attractive women, and along with that can come a bunch of undesirable crap/drama etc. But to be fair, of course this is a generalization and not always true. In fact, the opposite may also be true in that a person who is perceived as or perceives themselves as being un-attractive by common standards may be spiteful towards “better looking” people and develop a bad attitude, in a sense over compensating for being so called “ripped off” in the realm of good looks. This can make for a miserable person who hates the world, and in being so could hurt them intellectually due to their pre-occupation with anger and a defeatist mentality unto themselves and a lack of openness towards others. Yet again, this can be an over simplification and their ultimately is no concrete rule either way. There are plenty of “lesser attractive” wonderful and intelligent people. One thing to keep in mind though whichever way you look at it, it is generally more common for a “typically highly attractive” person to be “excused” for their rotten attitude. It is often tolerated because appearances tend to supersede the poor inner qualities. But by the same token of the genetic lottery, there is no need for you to feel badly or less than anyone else perceived to be “better looking” because you didn’t fail in any way in being born like that. Unfortunately, the inescapable tendency to compare is so engrained and encouraged that people do it either way. Realize that the only things to be proud of are things you did that involved particularly hard work/sacrifice/persistence etc. To be honest, I see people of all classes of income and status and “attractiveness” and social advantage who exhibit very similar trash like mentality and levels of intellectual and emotional intelligence (or lack of) and prone to many of the same pitfall themes. I have traveled and had sex with many women of all ages shapes and sizes and colors and looks etc. By doing so I experienced a great variety and never zoned in on one particular look. I can’t say that I was always having deep conversations with them, because many times I wasn’t. But when I met my current girlfriend over 8 years ago, something began to change. We didn’t go home together the night we met but we emailed each other from opposite ends of the city for about two weeks. It consisted mostly of me proposing my basic life views/philosophies and seeing if she agreed... and she did. Our first date was at a fitness club in the swimming pool. She is a chubby girl and I’m sure it was difficult for her to be seen in public with me like that on our first date. But it probably made it a bit easier since I had already expressed an attraction to her as well as her realizing that I prioritized other matters of the mind. On our walk home I expressed to her that I like variety in women so she knew right away that even though there would always be honesty, I needed to know that variety was a possibility if we ended up dating each other. Of course this would be a two way street. She was agreeable to this. The point I want to get to is this. I thought she was a cute girl but wasn’t particularly overwhelmingly attracted to her physically (although I am perfectly fine with chubbier girls and did like that). The more time I spent with her, the more I