Dear Men, You Are Not Entitled to Underwear Models

If you realize that, you might get more dates

I recently read an excellent piece by Mona Lazar entitled, Constantly Lying to Men About What Women Want Keeps Them Miserable and Alone. You should definitely read it for yourself, but the gist of it was, much like the beauty industry capitalizing on women’s insecurities so they can sell them products, a lot of the dating advice aimed at men does essentially the same thing. It creates and promotes disempowering stories in order to be able to sell men something.

Everyone from Pick Up Artists to men’s rights groups, to some dating coaches, wants to reinforce manufactured stories about what women really want in order to sell their advice and their products. The target audience for all this does not want to listen to actual women talking about things like being yourself and treating a woman like a partner and with respect. No, that’s way too simple — particularly if you’re already deeply indoctrinated into the belief that most women only want a very particular sort of “high-value” man.

They pass along the trope that 80% of women only want to date the “top” 20% of men as if it were gospel— despite the fact that this goes against observable reality or the fact that if it were true, it would have created a genetic bottleneck that would have decimated the human race long ago. It’s a “feel good” story (and by feel good, I mean that it feels bad, but in a way that seems to rationalize something that some guys have a lot of emotional heat around).

And every time that I hear that particular fairy tale, I point out that if you just go to the mall, or to a baseball game — heck, if you just look out the window, you will see couples of all shapes, sizes, and economic levels — clearly disproving the notion that nearly all women want a man who is at least 6 feet tall, with six-pack abs and a six-figure salary.

As Mona points out, it’s not that women are against those things, because clearly, they are not but those are also not the main things that are considered most important by most women. Some, to be sure, but then I might ask, why are you pursuing such shallow women? If you don’t want a woman with those values, don’t whine when a woman with those values isn’t interested in you.

The matching hypothesis says this: “The matching hypothesis (also known as the matching phenomenon) argues that people are more likely to form and succeed in a committed relationship with someone who is equally socially desirable, typically in the form of physical attraction.” I’m not arguing with that theory. I think that in large part it’s true, although there is some room for latitude around what variables individuals find most important but for the most part, people end up with people who are (for lack of a more elegant term) in their league.

Apparently, model Paulina Porizkova initially found Cars frontman Ric Ocasek attractive because he also spoke Czech. Sure, he was in a cool band, but he certainly wasn’t much to look at. She was probably around all sorts of attractive, rich, and powerful people as a model, but Ocasik had something else that she found interesting and important. This is an example of how the matching hypothesis works and is often about things other than simply physical appearance.

A problem arises when the cultural messaging begins to totally ignore the matching hypothesis, setting up false expectations.

As Ellen Beth Gill has pointed out, “Unlike in the UK, where normal-looking but talented people can be stage and screen stars, in the US, actresses must be attractive based on strict standards. Actors less so, much less so, firmly implanting the idea that beautiful, sculpted women, to the point where they no longer resemble real women, will adore very average-looking men but not the other way around. The problems fester when young men don’t find that in their lives; they feel cheated and aren’t too friendly to the too-tall, too-short, too-fat, too-homely women surrounding them.”

Good heavens, how many “hot woman falls for Seth Rogan” movies are there even out there? I’ve lost count. And this isn’t exactly new either— it’s a long-standing dynamic in media and it takes place in a lot of cartoons as well.

A very common trope, particularly in animation and sitcoms, is for a woman to be far more attractive than her significant other, even when the husband does not have a prestigious, high-paying job. Ugly Guy, Hot Wife — TV Tropes

This expectation seems to be at the root of a lot of the complaints I run across from men about dating. It’s certainly a part of the angry incel dynamic. There’s this belief that not only are women owed to men, but that really beautiful women should be interested in guys who are not exactly their “match.” It’s probably mostly a subconscious belief, but that doesn’t keep it from being a problem — for both women and men.

There are other dynamics going on in the dating world right now as well, but this is one aspect that I seem to hear about all the time. I think the fact that most dating apps are somewhere between 70% and 90% men bolsters the illusion that it’s all true, but decades of cultural messaging about how it is actually likely that Charlize Theron will fall for Seth Rogan don’t help either.

On a side note, Theron has been single since 2015 when her relationship with Sean Penn ended. During interviews for The Long Shot which she starred in with Rogan a few years back, Theron noted that dating her was not, in fact, a long shot and that she was available and just waiting for the right person to show up. This further dispels the corollary notion that beautiful women (and in fact, most women) have an unlimited supply of suitors and can simply sit at home choosing between them.

Disengaging from stories put forth by people who want to stoke your insecurities so they can sell you something would be good for us all. This includes (but is not limited to) the belief that most men are entitled to sex with underwear models and that most women only want Chads.

© Copyright Elle Beau 2023