Let older boys tell girls what turns them on... says man

[PuffinsAreFictitious]

Article here

Horrible gaslighty article about how older boys should tell girls in schools what they find attractive in females... to stop 'body shaming'. Because all girls really need to know is how best to attract a man. No mention of older girls going and telling younger boys that not being a sexist dickhead is a good way to attract a woman though.

This from a man who wrote a truly awful and deeply unscientific article a while back about how women who leave their children in daycare are damaging them because men don't leave their children, it's always women.

Obviously the best thing a girl can do is listen to older boys tell her how to win a man and then stay at home and look after the babies. Unsurprisingly, it's causing a bit of a stir.

By and large, the young women who don't have problems with their body image aren't necessarily the skinny 'idealised' shape. They are the ones who don't need external validation, and who value themselves other than for looks. My DD loves that she's got biceps which allow her to lift a bloody great big windsurf sail and I don't think could give a toss about whether some random sixth form boy finds that attractive or not. Chances are that in the natural course of events she'll attract someone compatible with who she actually is.

It means when he is "doing the sex to you" that your body is getting in the way of his fun almond.

More eloquently one could say, "She has less cushion for the 'pushin"

I think I get you and it's all good. The reality is if someone makes an advance on me and its unwanted, it is but a moment of awkwardness. For women there is also a component of "shit am I in actual danger here?". I've obviously not experienced it personally, but I am cognisant of the difference.

He wasn't trying to chat me up!
He is part of a good group of friends and were together having a chat about what we were finding attractive. No trying to seduce or anything like that. And he was never a bf or trying to be!

Thinking about it though, the issue is that there isn't just clear list of things that all men find attractive anyway. So trying to tell girls that this is what they should do isn't going to work is it?
It is also the idea that at the same time you want woman to act in a certain way, you are also expecting men to do so too (and be attracted by the same things as over said list).

What a sad and stereotyped life it would be!

I can imagine that if my children were in school and I knew in advance that was something they were planning on implementing that I would go in to the school and explode in to a great firey maternal explosion of fury.

Yes. I find it hard to see how describing finding a thin woman's body as 'uncomfortable' can relate toanything other than physical experience.

He is saying he fucked a thin woman and it was a physically uncomfortable experience.

Ah, I see - didn't mean to shock you! But, my view on it stands. I'd find that clumsily sexist now. I'm not sure how I'd have felt about it then.

I don't think the issue is that there isn't a clear list. So what if there were? How would it help?

I agree with you, though, that this idea also stereotypes men. Because, I would bet that boys would feel constrained to respond a certain way. Very few teenage boys are going to stand in front of his classmates and say 'oh, actually, I've been told I need to find women attractive and I'm gay' or 'as it happens, what really turns me on is this very specific thing that lets you identify precisely who it is I'm trying to work up the nerve to ask out'.

They're all going to mutter and say 'erm, nice girls with, you know, like ... yeah ...'.

dervel - that's not quite what I was thinking, but true, I agree.

I will try to think how to put into words what I am thinking!

And I'm sorry but we all are attracted by different things. I know some women who don't like very muscular men exactly for that reason too. They will tell you they are just too hard and uncomfortable. Nothing to do with all the stuff you are referring to, automatically putting negative intentions behind words. It's making me regret sharing something very personal here. :(:(

On the thin thing - I've slept with someone who was, at the time, so thin I could count all the bones in his spine and get one hand around his wrist with room to spare. It would still not occur to me to say to a third party that thin men were 'bony and uncomfortable'!

Cross post.

I'm not automatically putting negative interpretations anywhere. I'm sharing something personal too, which is that that sort of language would make me, as a woman, feel uncomfortable and objectified.

I'm sorry you feel only you have the right to share personal opinions, not me.

I can't really see how it is remotely ethical to get boys to talk about something so personal as what characteristics turn them on either

It's not an unusual comment that men don't like "bony women" tlm.

I just don't see it (as a fat woman) as any better than saying he likes skinny big breasted woman. It's still all about him and it's still trying to make you feel better by being accepted through his eyes.

If a thin woman on here said her friend said he found big women podgy and gross to have sex with would you think, wow that's great. It must have done wonders for your self esteem?

I've just remembered another line in that article which got right up my nose:
'He said it was important that teachers picked boys from an older year group because girls look up to them'.

WTF should we be expecting girls to 'look up to' slightly older boys?

petula you are right it is unethical and it will not happen. I feel it is a distraction from the good work of everyday sexism etc which has made inroads in arguing that men do not have the right to assume that their opinions of women must be given a hearing however it may manifest.

This feels like a deliberate muddying of waters. Ie male commentary and objectification is useful in these circumstances.

FFS. Yet another group of people to tell girls/women how they should be/act/look.

And of course, we all know teenage boys know *exactly what they want and aren't influenced by their peers/society/fhm...

And aspiring to what boys like is totally healthy, of course.

I really wish the world would just fuck off sometimes.

Apart from the many and varied layers of BS, will 16 year old boys necessarily have a wider perspective on attractiveness than 13 year olds?

He's speaking at a conference for heads of independent schools ffs

Whodrank you are right that it is going directly against those campaigns

I went to a private girls school with some firmly feminist underpinnings. This will be politely ignored.

I hardly see private girls school rounding up a few local youths to give their girls a talking too. It's irrelevant it just gives the sort of idiot who thinks shouting bs at school girls or any woman a fig leaf of intellectual cover for their behaviour.

Exactly, who drank!

Asking boys what girls should look like, be like etc. simply reinforces the message that society already gives them: that they are the arbiters of our worth, based on whether they find us attractive.

Yet another group of people...
AFAIK it's just one bloke, the sort of 'expert' beloved of newspapers who predictably enough gets written about in Bad Science. Grrr... bloody media.

Errol, I meant another group in the sense that he's advocating girls asking boys.

Other than that, yes, he's exactly the type!

Someone should post the article to everyday sexism. It's sexism 101. This is quite explicitly targeted at girls and there is zero intention to include boys to be recipients of this "ego boosting chit chat".

That's exactly what I was thinking whodrank. They know full well that eating disorders and body image issues won't be solved by a group of boys saying "don't worry, we'll objectify all of you!"

Just found something else related to Dr Sigmun which is making me even more . Not quite sure what to think.... I googled to find out a bit more about who the heck he is and on his webpage found this 'Dr Sigman’s biology paper on body image was selected as the '2012 Scientific Article' for the recent Biology A-level exam (Paper Ref: 6BI05/01).'. Here is the 'scientific article' for use with a question (don't know what the question was, but I'd imagine would carry a fair few marks.).

WTAF? Given that just writing 'M' or 'F on an exam paper can influence outcomes, does anyone else think this is a bloody awful choice of subject?