I’ve recently had a foot injury and so I’ve had to use public transport because well cycling is simply impossible. grrrrrrrr…anyway it’s been interesting. Besides learning a kind of humility that I don’t think I possessed before, and having an opportunity to dress up everyday, I have been observing myself doing something else. Watching other women. Not exactly a new experience for me, I think women have been checking other women out long before we became obsessed with our bodies. I myself observe their lines, their clothes, their expressions. Infact I look at women more than I look at men. I only notice a man if he is standing right in front of me, if we make eye contact, if he has a certain energy about him…women are different. I look at all of them and I do so in every detail. Why?
We compare ourselves. We gather ideas for our own sense of style. Many times women dress for other women. I find myself handsdown dressing for myself… and men, but am working on dressing for “man,” if you get my drift.
Surely that would depend on one’s perspective. As a woman, I must say that men are beautiful. Not in the same way that women are, but then men aren’t women now are they? I assure you, when a man captures my attention, there aren’t a thousand women that seem quite as beautiful.
We don’t dress for women for attracting them, but because they are more critical than men. They check us out, are jealous of us, talk behind our backs, and then copy what we are wearing. It is survival at its most petty. Gotta love women. I avoid most of them actually.
Bess, I read what you write. Norm Crosby quotes. My Cousin Vinny quotes. It’s always something good.
(Plus your advice in the parenting topic should be printed out by everybody and saved. I never got around to posting there and once I read yours, I saw that everything that needed to be said was said).
I don’t agree. My female friends don’t talk behind my back, they are not jealous of me, they are not critical of me. Most of them have their own individual styles when it comes to dressing - we borrow clothing from each other, but each person will wear the same item of clothing differently. We’re more of a sisterhood than a back stabbing bunch of bitches. And my dear, I’m really not struggling to survive. Not only am I surviving, but I’m living!
I don’t think I dress for anybody, I dress as an expression, whatever wants to be expressed really. Even if there is no audience.
I wasn’t referring to my girlfriends, just other women. I think some women are very jealous of each other, at least that is what I have seen. My friends never judge what I wear, and we have our own individual styles as well. I am talking about women whom I don’t know. I may check them out for a reference point to my own style, as well as getting new ideas. I do maintain that many women have a green thumb —>and I am not talking gardening.
Tab,
Don’t you start. That is one of Zeno’s answers to everything. I am far from bisexual and check out other women’s bods all the time. Bisexual> Nah.
Schopenhauer talked about this subject long ago and not in any flattering terms.
Think about all of the style shows out there. The usually have women or near-women (gay guys) basically tearing other women down for how they look. It’s a competition for what? I guess perfection or maybe the right to call one’s self attractive.
Many think that it is a fight for who will be the most mate-able queen bitch (in the true animal sense of the word). The constant observation may be like the way two people eye their opponent up before a fight.
Whatever is going on there I doubt that it is very nice.
On a side note:
I have noticed something odd about the way women, especially younger ones, make friends. It seems that girls of similar looks, breast size, and weight will hang out together. The other paradigm is that there will be two friends and one will be hot and the other won’t be. The attractive girl is the one in charge.
The first set of conditions indicates to me that what many women want is to be around reflections of themselves. The second condition is obvious and all of it together indicates that women aren’t too friendly in general.
Noticing other women may have to do with dealing with a reflection of self.
Okay, then how do you analyze a woman that would rather hang around with other men. Most of my best friends are men.
I did find that an interesting way of looking at women, Ad. I have never thought of it that way, but as I think about it, you are right. Most women here in the suburbs hang with carbon copies of themselves. My variety of friends would scare most women in my neighborhood. I am in the suburbs and hang with musicians of all ages from the hood, bank CEOs, and people on welfare. If I have a party, it is sooo interesting. I need to have Shyster and Dr. Satanical in my little social repetoire. They would make such a nice addition to my happy homestead.
I must say that I know a good number of women that AREN’T like I pointed out, but it has always bothered me that I have observed so many women that ARE that way.
I especially hate to see a group of busty girls and then a group of flat chested girls go by. I have observed LARGE group examples of this.
Anyway, most women that are “boys” kind of girls, that I have met, tend to find women unpleasant in some way or another. That makes a certain amount of sense, however, if it reaches the point where you don’t even care for your own sexual characteristics then something has gone wrong there.
Another interesting thing for me is that I really went through some difficult, in my 20s, when I realized that women were not automatically nice or good, like I had read or dreamed about. Those kinds of thoughts are generated by reading romantic (fantasy, sci-fi) fiction and movies.
It was very distressing. My mom was a noble sort and that coupled with the fiction made for a lot of confusion. I could not believe that girls would date you based on the amount of money that you had and so forth.
After a period of anger and disappointment I began to realize that women are no better than men in any way. Both sexes have their strengths and weaknesses and there are many indivual champions in both camps.
Ah, but how does he do that? By merely standing there within view? Or does a man capture your attention by, say, sending you a bunch of flowers or a box of candy (or some such thing)? In other words, the man’s beauty may be more a result of what he does. The woman’s beauty, at least at first, at least in so far as you find yourself interested in checking her out, comes from simply being beautiful. All of which is to say that I stand by my idea that women are more inherently attractive. More check-outable. A man, being of the more utilitarian, functional structure, is worth checking out perhaps based on activity, not necessarily looks.
A man doesn’t capture one’s attention by sending flowers, sending flowers only serves to re-assure a woman of his attention. He captures her attention by simply being. Nothing more. It is his being that is beautiful that flesh out the lines on his body…the same with women. A woman can be have a symmetrical face, a shapely body, but it is her being that truly makes her beautiful.
Maybe you are right, I simply look at them because they are easier to look at…there must be something more than that though… more than pettiness, more than sizing up, more than comparisons…I won’t believe that I would not look for the beauty in another woman because I’m somehow threatened. What a load of rubbish. How do we make friends, how do people inspire us if we are so self-centred?
Gotta love women. I avoid most of them actually.