Beauty and Dating
Friend of the JG Tom Stringham has a pithy essay on what a working dating culture looks like (it looks like our dating culture, still, some).
Latter-Day Saint Sexual Ethics Work
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Which reminds me. I love seeing Gentiles gradually reinventing gospel truths about sex and family. Though rarely do they have the hardihood to go all the way. That has been happening lately.
There’s Peechy Keenan, Operation Marriage Material
Then there’s some young edgy people’s manifesto on modern dating I saw a link to. And there’s an exhaustive article analyzing beauty that I ran across somewhere.
Besides the bit where they work their way into heresy on the Sexual Revolution, all three had some dating advice which I will pass on and save you the trouble of reading the articles yourself.
The best dating advice still is, of course,
Don’t be fat. Be not fat. Be someone people like to be around.
But that isn’t all. A lot here is basic, but reminders never hurt. None of these advice pieces are the gospel, not the gospel of dating nor the gospel of salvation and eternal life, and shouldn’t be taken as such. Some of it may be bad advice.
It is interesting to see how much of good dating advice applies after marriage (answer: quite a bit).
Keenan – her advice is for women. Good news for our ladies, her main advice is to be marriageable. Which means
You are someone who has never doubted her gender, is glad to be female, wants a monogamous relationship with a man who also has never doubted his gender, and has no extreme body modifications. You are open to having children, you reject synthetic birth control and SSRI mood modification pills. You don’t have drug or alcohol issues. You come with very little baggage of self-inflicted “trauma.” This is not to say you can’t have experienced misfortune—tragedy makes us human. But you don’t fetishize your trauma as a disability and make TikToks about it for clout. And crucially: your past is not a gruesome self-inflicted minefield of abortions, psychological breaks, and estrangement from your parents.
More:
- Get married young.
- No ho.
- Looksmaxx — hip to waist ratio, don’t be fat. Good facial skin with tasteful makeup. Modest elegant clothing.
- Have interests and dreams, have something to talk about. [Interjection—with men, they talk about confidence as key all the time. But it is for women too. Confidence is what allows you to chat charmingly without the paralyzing fear that you are being evaluated.]
- Realistic standards. [There is a calculator out there that lets you know what percentage of men meet a certain set of requirements. For instance if you want over 6 feet, not fat, same ethnicity as you, salary of 60k+, and under 30 you might as well add a single horn and a ringing neigh, because you are already looking for a unicorn.]
- Mindset – marriage is the beginning, not the end.
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Manifesto on Modern Dating — this is is the most obvious ‘gentiles rediscovering the wheel’ one. Its only a bit more for men than for women. No link because edgy people.
We believe that in this postmodern dystopia, romance is one of the last wells of magic accessible to most people. We believe that strong marriages nurture the next generation of life and that dating is a means to this end. We believe in love.
Real female empowerment is not just landing a highly desirable guy, but a highly desirable guy who’s not a degenerate, who’s willing to give his woman the ultimate sacrifice and marry his youth with hers to create something lasting and beautiful
More:
- date for marriage.
- Have something to offer.
- Quit porn, as many times as it takes.
- Sex should not be your shortcut to intimacy.
- Dating apps are nigh-unavoidable and unspeakably cringe and rife with all sorts of evils. Learn to meet people in other ways. Only about 1/3 of eligible men and women are on them.
- Learn how to approach people, signal interest, and flirt just a little. Climb that mountain.
- People who have rigid types are psychopaths. Far better to have mental types: to look for loyalty, kindness, drive, intelligence.
- Keep first dates, especially blind first dates, short and respectful—with room at the end to improvise.
- Make a move. Eye contact, smile, flip your hair. A good rule of thumb for anyone is to slowly escalate: get closer, voices more hushed, the brush of a hand, and continuously assess the situation. If you make a move and realize you’ve erred, apologize, laugh it off, and don’t take it personally.
- Respond to moves.
- Ask questions, listen, be genuinely interested.
- Courtship is a process. Separate the end from the beginning.
Female Beauty
The last article I really won’t link to it, its skeevy and embedded with even more skeeviness. It’s an autistic obsessive analysis of what constitutes female beauty complete with the author’s own studies and a survey of other studies. The analysis is exhaustive and convincing (and exhausting).
But here’s the summary.
- Beauty matters for every woman. Intelligence and personality won’t cut it on their own. The good news—working at their appearance benefits ordinary women more than it does stunners. [The rediscovered gospel connection put in crass material terms: get married young if you can, that’s when you are the most beautiful]
- Don’t be fat. Men like small waists, but waist to hip/breast ratio is even more important, so dieting when you are reducing hip/breast more than waist is important. Moderate dieting and exercise should be enough. Experiment to find what works.
- Clothing – most fashion is irrelevant. Men like small waists, so clothing should emphasize that. Exceptions: beanpolish gals can go for flowy clothes, and busty thicker gals might consider empire waists. Baggy ill-fitting clothing is NOT modesty.
- Breast surgery works, he says. Research indicates that the average male breast size preference is basically grotesquely large. [I am extremely dubious about the risks and morality of cosmetic surgeries for anyone who isn’t suffering from abnormalities, but fyi. FWIW my own impression is that men of taste have less exaggerated preferences but that he is unfortunately probably more right than any of us would like.]
- Most current female glamour figures have an extensive array of sophisticated cosmetic interventions. For ordinary women, too much cosmetic surgery raises real risks of something going wrong.
- Gentle moderate ‘natural looking ‘ make up is always advisable. It is what guys who say they like girls without makeup actually are wanting.
- Men prefer natural hair colors to pinks and purples and so on, and blonde and red to black and brown. But the most important hair advice is have long, full, healthy hair. Length matters a LOT more than color.
- Marry young. Youth is the most natural beauty augmentation.
His summary: being pretty is key for women and it’s good to work at being pretty
- Have a healthy body composition.
- Yes to makeup.
- Hair as long as you can.
- Clothes that fit your waist.
- Glute strengthening exercises.
breast implants- Consider a nose job if you have a really bad nose.
hmm
January 27, 2022
Of course, men can be as fat as they want, as long as they are rich. I have seen plenty of seriously obese men with extremely fit and attractive wives.
My guess is, though, the relationship is not very solid and may lead to the all-to-common “marry a rich guy, have a sweet pre-nuptial, and then divorce him.”
E.C.
January 28, 2022
Welp, if this works, I’ve yet to see it in my own life. Of course, one problem might be that I seem to be really good at seeing men’s interest in other women, but fail to catch signals when they’re sent my way. It *does not help* that I am extremely introverted, no, but I do try to go to as many activities as I can physically handle, and I do *try* to participate.
. . . Not that I actually want the attentions of some of the guys that flirt with me. The last time I belatedly realized that was happening, he was a dudebro with a mullet, and he was trying to flirt by asking me to put him in a wristlock. Repeatedly. *facepalm*
But seriously, though, I’d say I have 85-90% of your list covered, and the guys around me are far too busy on their phones to look up and take notice. Even girls far prettier than I am have admitted to feeling invisible.
G.
January 28, 2022
Yeesh.
Yes, modern dating even in the church seems to be an apocalyptic wasteland.
Of course in your case dudebro was your one true love of destiny trying to wristlock your way to happiness
Rozy
January 28, 2022
Interesting. When I was late 20’s and still single I had elderly aunts say to me, “Why’s a pretty girl like you not married?” My answer was, “Pretty isn’t what gets you married. Have you looked at the society pages and seen some of the brides?” One man’s pretty is another man’s ugly! My daughter recently admitted that she believes she will never marry (she’s 32) simply because there are no men, zero, nada, here where we live and she goes to school. None in our branch, none in our stake, non in her grad school program, none at the Institute class. The singles ward is 2 1/2 hours away and she can’t afford the gas to drive there. Married women her age in our branch have four children. She can see she’s running out of time to have any. It breaks my heart. One of our sons is discouraged because there are few LDS girls where he lives; they all go out west to BYU or BYU-I. And the ones who remain won’t give him the time of day. It really is an apocalyptic wasteland. What is the answer?
G.
January 28, 2022
I wish I knew. My teens are getting older and I am very, very concerned. Not because of them, but for them.
G.
January 28, 2022
I’m not planning on spending money on their higher education, as such, but I am willing to do and spend to put them in a position to get married and have kids. I only wish I knew what that position was. Right now the plan is making sure they go to school somewhere with a big LDS presence, but that’s more faute de mieux than an actual plan, as EC’s experience shows.
Zen
January 28, 2022
I think the experiences of Abraham (looking for a wife for his son), Jacob (looking for a wife) and other Prophets in a similar situation are highly relevant.
Yes, it is an apocalyptic wasteland. (I certainly have my own stories) But the term apocalypse actually means Revelation from God. Revelation and miracles are NOT something you should rule out or take lightly. Because we NEED it. This does not matter more to us than it does to God.
TDE
January 28, 2022
“I love seeing Gentiles gradually reinventing gospel truths about sex and family.”
Agreed, and I’ve seen this a lot recently in unexpected places.
On the topic of long hair, I know a girl, now early 30s, who is slim and naturally quite pretty and feminine but always wore her hair short. And not just short but in a sort of unfashionable, boyish cut that didn’t suit her. She should be married, she always wanted to be, but she’s not, and believe it or not I think the haircut is the main reason (not having a good eye for fashion was probably number two). It’s hard to overstate how appealing long, glossy hair is to men. Even men don’t realize how much it matters to them until they do a double take on a girl who has grown her hair out and styled it well. Knowing this girl’s family, I just think no one close ever sat her down and said, “look, you are absolutely marriage material, but you NEED to grow out your hair.”
E.C.
January 28, 2022
@ G,
Said dudebro definitely did not share my religion, but if I can find a guy who’s not terrified of me that’d be nice. I’ve stopped telling men I do martial arts because they give me the side-eye and don’t ask me out on dates. This makes me wonder if a) they were planning something unsavory, or b) they think I enjoy violence (I definitely don’t!)
G.
January 29, 2022
TDE,
Yes, women should assume that men are idiots when it comes to signaling and need to hang flashing lights on the message they are trying to send.
I AM PRETTY HAIR
EC,
Sounds like it’s the dudebros eternal loss.
You should lean into the karate thing. When guys ask what you do for fun, tell them violence
Zen
January 29, 2022
It is funny how that works.
Back when I was single, I got to the point where I hated mentioning my degree in Physics, because girls would look impressed, and then immediately turn and walk away. At no point, did a graduate degree help. Not sure it was ever even neutral.
But, if it makes you feel any better, when I did marry, it was because I found a professional, intelligent woman who was impressed (deluded? who am I to argue) how smart I was.
There is a match for everyone. There really is. Modern life just makes it a million times harder to find.
John Mansfield
January 29, 2022
Two effective options are among the least promoted:
1) Teen-aged romance. The official church messages discourage romance starting in youth. There is a fear of teen-aged fornication that is mostly 30 years out-of-date; fornication is not among the top 10 hazards of today’s youth. For many there are opportunities to meet the opposite sex while minors that will not be there later. More couples that start dating when 17 and find after his mission that they still like one another would be a success that is worth an uptick in interviews with the bishop about hands that were touching bodies too liberally too early.
2) Find a good man, marry him, and wait 10 or 20 years for him to become converted and ready for baptism. “Good man,” besides the qualifications that a latter-day saint man would uphold, means that the non-believing man accepts the woman as a believer who will teach their children the gospel of Jesus Christ, who will tithe the family income that he earns and she spends for the family’s needs, and who does not have sex while courting and engaged to marry.
Robert S.
January 30, 2022
I completely agree with Zen that “Revelation and miracles are NOT something you should rule out or take lightly. Because we NEED it. This does not matter more to us than it does to God.”
Because of various reasons, including but not limited to my own personality and moral defects, it took me about eleven years from the time I became seriously interested in dating for marriage (at age 23) until I actually got married. I have now been married longer than that. It has been the most difficult, most painful, most joyous and most wonderful experience of my life to date.
I would not have found my wife had it not been for an inspired Stake Single Adult Representative who took extra time to get me to one particular Single Adult activity. Because of circumstances too involved (and revealing) to be mentioned here, I know absolutely that meeting and marrying my superlative wife was indeed a miracle.
Unfortunately, because of her health we have not had children together, nor will we in this life. I have, however, inherited an interest in her three children from her previous marriage–and developed relationships with them that are far better than my own with my parents at their ages.
So I suppose my conclusion is that although the world–especially the world of dating and marriage–is irretrievably broken, God really does work miracles for his children. Sometimes those miracles take what seems to us to be an achingly long time to appear, but when they do, they are better than we could have imagined.
E.C.
January 30, 2022
@ Zen,
Yeah, my sister who got a Master’s in Civil Engineering took a good 15 years to find a man who wasn’t scared off by her degree. She did find him, eventually.
Bookslinger
January 31, 2022
@EC: Have you read
David Wygant’s “Always Talk to Strangers”,
Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”,
and
Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking” ?
Highly recommend.
Eric
February 1, 2022
In the Church’s counsel against dating before 16, one of the reasons given is that it tends to limit the variety of people that the underage person will end up going out with.
Case in point, I had a couple of friends who started dating when he was 16 and she was still 15. She only dated him through high school. He went on a mission, came home, and she was still available and waiting for him to take things to the next step. But he dated other girls, and eventually married someone else. Last I heard, she was still single (though it’s been a couple of decades since then).
As for hair, something I’ve noticed in myself is that I like it when women change their hairstyles from time to time, even if no cutting or growing is involved. They’ll change the style (pull it up, let it down, straighten it, curl it, whatever), and I’ll think of how much better the new style looks compared to the old one. And if they change styles again, I’ll think of how much better they look, even if it’s a change back to something they’d had before.