I’ll never forget seeing a fellow in Las Vegas – a veritable man-mountain – wearing a T-shirt which bore the legend ‘NO FAT CHICKS’. I thought at first that it might be a joke, but when other men gave him a high-five, he glowed with porky pleasure. Not a ‘Yeah, ironic, right?’ or a cupping of his manly breasts to be seen. Though extreme, it was just the ultimate and logical version of one of the last double standards: ugly men judging female pulchritude in a way ugly women never rate male good looks – or the lack of such. It was recently exemplified by the ‘DAVID BLUNKETT!’ response beloved by social media wags in the wake of Laura Kuenssberg’s recent teasing (preceding her forthcoming memoir) that a politician had once perhaps proffered an unwanted threesome.
Laura K, while not a raving beauty, is an attractive woman, with a no-nonsense manner which I would imagine drives many men mad. But that is neither here nor there. The idea that only a blind man would want to have carnal knowledge of her seemed extraordinarily ignorant – especially in this day and age.
We understand how this started. Until relatively recently, most women had no money, or means of getting it, and so had to make themselves attractive in order to appeal to the highest bidder. But these days, with the rare woman who does not make her own living so unusual that she is sometimes to be called a ‘Tradwife’, it makes no sense. Yet ‘WOULD!’ and ‘Not even with yours, mate’ can still be read as male responses to the perceived sexual allure – or not – of women who would never dream of having sex with them.
What’s going on? Do these men have what I dubbed here in 2015 ‘Magic Mirrors’? ‘Women tend to see themselves as less attractive than they are. A sizeable number of men, on the other hand, suffer from the opposite delusion. I call them Magic Mirror men, because they seem to possess an inner looking-glass which tells them that they are, indeed, the fairest of them all.’ If so, it’s a hilarious – and tragic – riposte to the traditional idea that women are the vainer sex. I can’t imagine Mary Beard – or indeed myself – running a roguish eye down the runners and riders on the James Bond shortlist and listing them in the order in which I would ‘do’ them.
Or is it just a bluff, by men who know that their chance of having sex outside of their own attractiveness quotient is extremely limited? ‘SO MANY CHICKS…SO LITTLE CHANCE’ might more accurately have read the chubby chap’s T-shirt. Fame and fortune, of course, have a way of changing things; it’s unlikely that Russell Brand would have scored such a high ‘body-count’ had he been a refuse collector. (Though refuse collectors are generally far more attractive than comedians.) Comedians are an interesting group. In the olden days they used to claim that though generally lacking in conventional good looks they could ‘laugh a woman into bed’ but this has gone out of style somewhat, maybe because modern ideas of consent might view a woman insensible with laughter – or even mildly amused – as not quite in her right mind.
There’s no end to the high ideas – as well as cheap laughs – which men may hide behind in order to make themselves more shaggable. According to Sigmund Freud, all artists are motivated by the desire for three things – fame, money and beautiful lovers. You’d think it was something a bit more elevated that that, but then you think of his descendant Lucian, who went through the ladies like he was the fifth member of Led Zeppelin. At the other end of the spectrum, unappetising men have always understood that, due to women’s historical inability to earn a decent living, money was a sure way to bag a hottie.
When we see pairings of famous men perceived as more attractive than their female partners, things can get nasty. Pierce Brosnan has been married to Keely Shaye Smith Brosnan for 25 years; starting off as a sylphlike beauty ‘worthy’ of James Bond, she seems refreshingly reluctant to undergo the cosmetic alterations seemingly required of women in the public eye. This has caused a whole lot of what is modishly known as ‘body-shaming’ over the decades and pleasing responses from Mr Brosnan, such as ‘I love her passion…when Keely looks at me, I go weak.’
Most men find most women somewhat attractive; most women find most men not at all attractive
Someone I knew (considered extremely beautiful – for a writer) dated a famously hot film star and was amazed at the ferocity of the online attacks on her. She then had the audacity to go on to marry another famous man, this time an action hero, driving the catty chorus into overdrive. In an episode of Sex And The City called ‘Models And Mortals’ Carrie Bradshaw tires of ‘Modelisers’ – men who only date pulchritudinous posers – and decides to have a bash herself, copping off (though not going all the way) with ‘The Bone’ who transpires to be named Derek, is lonely and shy and dreams of returning to Iowa and becoming a policeman.
Perhaps some of the impetus which comes from many men ‘grading’ unavailable women, famous or not – as though said females are parading in front of them holding a number and yelling ‘Pick me!’ – comes from the sad (for men) fact that almost any woman, no matter how old or ugly, can get sex if she isn’t picky; the true isn’t the same for men, hence the massive slanting of the sex industry with women as sellers and men as buyers. Most men find most women somewhat attractive; most women find most men not at all attractive, as the online dating metrics show, when women ‘like’ between 4 per cent and 10 per cent of males on offer whereas men like the majority. We’re told never to trust the ‘incels’ of the ‘manosphere’ but their fascinated loathing for the ‘Chad’ (the athletic Alpha Male) and ‘Stacey’ (the snooty beauty) scenario at least acknowledges that unattractive men with no money stand very little chance with attractive women. Of course, they can always go and try it on with women who look like them, only female.
Along these lines, I wonder occasionally what happened to that man in Las Vegas. Hopefully he came down to earth, married a ‘chick’ as fat as himself and went on to have a brood of lovely chubby children. And, hopefully, that T-shirt mysteriously ‘disappeared’ in the wash one day.
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