A couple of years ago, I was standing inside a coffee shop, fiddling with the condiments in front of the main window. At a table outside, an unbelievably gorgeous young woman, looking like Nicole Kidman's more voluptuous younger sister, was showing a middle aged man in a suit a large album of tasteful fashion photos of herself. Apparently, she was a professional model and the man was some kind of agent or editor.
"Yes, a beautiful girl."
"And she's got a lot of tattoos!" he exclaimed, with a wild look of excitement in his bloodshot eyes.
That struck me as, by far, the least of her charms. On further reflection, though, I assume that her tattoos signaled to him that, while you might think she wouldn't be interested in any fellow below the movie producer / hedge fund manager level, she was actually a really bad decision-maker. So, he had a chance!
You might think that a girl who wants to send that message to hungover guys who look like washed-up ex-motocross riders might find a less permanent way to advertise this fact (such as dress, make-up, or hairstyle), just in case she ever changes her mind and wants to raise her standards. But, in our culture, we have such a commitment to authenticity that countless women feel that it would be downright immoral to advertise that they are bad decisionmakers only part time. Hence, tattoos.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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130 comments:
Before tattoos came along, my buddies and I always used to say, "If she smokes, she pokes."
Tattoos are pretty mainstream now. They're not as radical as they used to be. And I doubt that a movie producer or hedge fund manager would turn her down because of them.
Or maybe she prefers men who prefer women with tatoos. I've seen many very attractive women with men who were obviously not rich at all. What did these men have in common? Well, they were MASCULINE, as in: exuding testosterone. A lot of women prefer thugs. Its nature. We nerds don't like to admit it, but its the truth.
You've been reading too much Roissy, I can tell
Speculation should be based on data. Using google scholar, I pulled up this:
"The motives, family experiences, and personality characteristics of 341 college students with and without tattoos or piercings were studied. Participants completed Lippa's 1991 measures of the Big Five personality factors, a shortened version of the Body Cathexis Scale, a series of questions about their childhood experiences, and questions about risk-taking behaviors. In addition, reasons to have or not have body modifications and the perceptions of people with body modifications were investigated. Of the 116 men and 186 women, 25% and 33%, respectively, had at least one tattoo or body piercing. There were very few differences in the childhood experiences or personality characteristics of people with or without body modifications. Although people with body modifications did not differ from people without modifications on the Big Five personality measures, people without modifications perceived people with modifications as much different from themselves on these measures. These results indicate that tattoos and piercings in college students are associated with significantly more risk-taking behavior, greater use of alcohol and marijuana, and less social conformity. However, the traditional stereotype that body modifications are indicators of social or personal pathology does not describe contemporary college students."
Are you and Half Sigma copying each other's posts?
We baby boomers have pretty much ended up sandwiched between two generations which were/are much more cavalier about inking themselves. When I was growing up we associated tattoos with older guys who'd been in the military, especially WWII guys. I personally would have been horrified at the thought of doing something so permanent. But today's kids, the baby boomlet, seem to think nothing of it. And while the message is not as clearly stated as the previous generation's tattoos, with their don't-tread-on-me or skull-and-crossbones motifs, it is essentially the same: "I don't give a shit, I'm wild, I care so little about the future that I'll do something like this, and if I care so little about my own life I certainly don't care about yours, so don't mess with me." Come to think of it, body piercings send pretty much the same message, as do the black fraternities' brandings of a few years back. And the proof is that you see so many of these things on prisoners.
Loveless sex is also pretty mainstream as White and Black cultures in America pretty much are like that across the board. It has gotten to the point where every program, but the programs on family television endorse it. Just have fun and if it doesn't hurt anybody, it isn't immoral seems to be the way people think. Also, tattoos are utterly masochistic and stupid. When you are mainstream in today's American culture, you are usually a bad, immoral person.
"Tattoos are pretty mainstream now. They're not as radical as they used to be. And I doubt that a movie producer or hedge fund manager would turn her down because of them.
Or maybe she prefers men who prefer women with tatoos. I've seen many very attractive women with men who were obviously not rich at all. What did these men have in common? Well, they were MASCULINE, as in: exuding testosterone. A lot of women prefer thugs. Its nature. We nerds don't like to admit it, but its the truth."
PubMed also turns up a few studies on tattooing / body piercing and sexual behavior among college students.
Tattooed guys had more and earlier sex than non-tattooed guys. Tattoed girls were no different from non-tattooed girls.
Pierced guys were no different from unpierced guys. But pierced girls had more sex than unpierced girls.
Looks like that guy in the coffee shop should have ignored her tats and looked for some metal.
The only studies I found linking tattoos and risk-taking or pathologies were for adolescents -- for whom tattoos are illegal. So, duh.
Admit it, Steve, she knocked you back.
"...her tattoos signaled to him that, while you might think she wouldn't be interested in any fellow below the movie producer / hedge fund manager level, she was actually a really bad decision-maker. So, he had a chance!"
I've always loathed tattoos on women without really understanding why. In your explanation above, you nailed it.
Brit prison doctor Theodore Dalrymple wrote a pretty good piece about tatooing becoming middle class. It's available on the web.
The thing that I don't understand about the current tatoo fad is that so many of the tatoos aren't representational of anything. Men, in particular will get some prickly rings or something on their arms. And with so many of them, it's scarcely even interesting.
But this, too will pass. As soon as a lot of our "body art" patrons start showing some age, and tats are more associated with saggy, sun-damaged skin, it'll be much more passe.
I think Mr. Sailer is right about this folks.
Tattoos exhibit that you "want to be cool", and that you "want to be noticed". I dont have any (and never will).
Men who have extremely coiffed beards, super-neatly trimmed goatees and sideburns (especially those kind that are groomed by trimmers to fade like knives sticking towards their mouths, faded just so), are signalling that they -care- about how they look, and they -care- that people know they are cool.
Tats on a hot babe, especially if she dresses to show them, show sexual availability and show-off at the same time. They are there to attract attention. They are there to show independence and rebellion and coolness and "I can do what I want and Im free".
Roissy's blog had one succinct comment on women who have tattoos anywhere near an erogenous zone: slut.
Im somewhat suprised at how someone like Roissy can be so right about things you wouldn't think a damn-near professional poon hound would know about, and I dont really approve of his purported lifestyle, but he was right on the mark about that. Tats on women are a way for her to show you she has a little wild side. The problem is, the modern world has too much damned wild side and we dont need anymore of it.
For the nerd in the thread who complained about "women liking men with alot of testosterone". Taller men with mesomorphic, meso-ectomorphic, and ectomorphic *but not fat* bone structures, in other words, "the big guys" have some of the same things going for them as a woman with a hourglass figure with big boobs. Men will overlook alot if she has a Carmen Electra body. Women will overlook alot if he is built like Fabio. Women lust too, not as much as men.........but they do. Ive been a people-watcher all my life man, and this is something Ive definitely noticed. If you are physcially small, you can pump iron and make up some of the difference, but thats about all you can do about it.
I consider myself a pretty responsible, stable, considered, unimpulsive, employed sort of gent. And I thought for years about each of my tattoos, and shopped around for months for an artist, before I finally got em. And I have not regretted either of them for a single second, even now sixteen years after I got the first (at age twenty three). Although I do think that 80% of other people's tattoos like stupid/pointless ...
As I mentioned at Siggy's, nothing indicates sheeplike, follow-the-herd mentality like a tattoo.
This is another example of the handicap principle. Never underestimate the erotic charge of a bit of barbaric mutilation on a pretty girl.
There is a pretty amazing essay on tatoos by Canadian philosopher Mark Kingwell in this book.
Good to know Steve thinks about things other than regression analysis,the California school system and the IQ of the Indian merchant class! Hey now! Herb:"Ive seen many very attr women with men...not rich at all.They were MASCULINE..." Hmmm,note to self:Bring that old weight set out of the basement. And today---I dont shave.And I MAY not shower...
"The only studies I found linking tattoos and risk-taking or pathologies were for adolescents -- for whom tattoos are illegal. So, duh."
Just imagine the young beauty 20 to 30 years from now with the tattoos somewhat faded and threatening to crease. What they do to the status/class of a more mature female is the point. Higher class females will likely get these blotches removed as soon as they become aware that they are indeed going to age just like everyone else. The lower classes will just become tough old broads.
Fortunately, I have 20 years on these misguided women so maybe I will be long gone before this happens. Tattooed grandmas, ugh!
...fiddling with the condiments in front of the main window.
I hadn't heard that particular expression for it before. I do hope you got away before the police arrived.
''she was actually a really bad decision-maker. So, he had a chance!''
Pretty funny.
Seems like metal piercings are not much different than pierced ears - and thus easily heal and one can forget one ever had them. Tats are more permanent - I doubt folks get them with the idea that they will have them removed by laser once they tire of them. Btw, tats vary dramatically - from a cute ankle butterfly to that hideous bikini-line tat that Asia Argento stupidly added while she was going through her nervous-breakdown phase.
"Tattoos are pretty mainstream now". So is being a whore.
I'm not usually one to stereotype or generalize but EVERY single girl with a tattoo is a whore.
Before tattoos came along, my buddies and I always used to say, "If she smokes, she pokes."
Growing up in the late-boomer South, I knew far too many 'good girls' for whom cigarettes and alcohol were their sole forms of rebellion, and anything more physical than tongue kissing and a little clothed groping was out of the question.
Our cohort used language markers instead: "If she'll say it, that means she'll do it."
In my experience, women with conspicuous tattoos aren't usually natural beauties, and that's putting it charitably. In the absence of the tattoos, the dyed hair, the piercings, and the funky clothing (usually it's the entire package) they wouldn't warrant a second look from any eligible male. Once these plain Janes ink themselves up, however, they'll at least get attention from some male demographics (albeit mostly of the wrong sort). As a bonus, the tattoos may also serve to distract attention from shifting to some of the woman's less attractive features. They'll end up looking ridiculous when they reach their thirties, but why not have a little fun while they still can?
I am, of course, assuming the woman is not a lesbian. The role tattoos play in the lesbian mating rituals, while no doubt fascinating to a queer studies professor, is something I'm disinclined to think about right now (or ever).
Maybe guys who find tattoos on women can explain to me why. I understand the social aspect, sorta. But aside from any signals it might send, is there anything hot about tattoos on women, to anyone?
I find them repulsive.
Agnostic - the data only tells you how sexually active. It doesn't tell you what the difference in partner choices are between people with tattoos or piercings and people without. Hot girl without piercings may be as likely to be sexually active, and have similar numbers of partners, as hot girl witt tattoos or piercings, but I'll bet their partners look pretty different.
Spot on Steve.
Another reason to get tats for the underclass is they are a permanent conspicuous consumption.
An elaborate tattoo that takes up ones entire upper arm costs something like $1000 to $4000 depending on quality, and the quality is obvious for those in the know. It shows to potential female mates that "At some point I had $3000 in spare money to burn."
Many poor American males have never been so lucky.
And unlike other conspicuous consumption (jewelry, flashy car rims), it never goes away and can't be stolen.
I'd attribute much of the mainstreaming of tattoos to the availability of laser tattoo removal. Of course, teenagers aren't renowned for doing due diligence before acting.
On top of being physically painful (it has been described as feeling like being splattered with hot grease), laser removal can be painful to your wallet as well. Depending on your tattoo, you may need anywhere from 1-10 sessions, each costing in the range of $250-$850 per session. A large, professional tattoo in color could cost thousands of dollars to remove, and the effectiveness of the removal still isn’t guaranteed.
http://tattoo.about.com/od/tatremoval/a/tatremoval.htm
Holy frijoles, Steve, you hit the nail right on the head.
Self-mortification is an art form. The one way to show you are truly free of puritanism, totally pure, if you will, is to cover yourself with artistic pollution. In an atmosphere poisoned with promiscuity, a young woman may feel the need to seem more available than the next girl. "If I'm willing to be poked with all these needles just to be hip, think what I'm willing to do behind closed doors."
Which promotes more promiscuity, as men may be attracted to damaged, graffiti-covered women for short-term recreation but despair of finding someone to build a family with. Mass culture demands that we abandon our romantic hopes - it insults everyone who wants to build a stable family unit (while government of course taxes the same people to pay for subsidies to broken families). It's like replacing the vegetables in someone's diet with candy - it doesn't usually garner too many complaints, up front, but it leaves a vague feeling of sickness from deep within. "You CANNOT build a family, you CANNOT find a partner who hasn't been exposed to less than three dozen strangers' physiologies, you WILL NOT build a home in which you children are secure, but you may be able to spend the night with a fit young person."
Tattoos are a propaganda tool dictating that K-selection is no longer hip, and that r-selection is more or less mandatory.
Women want to be appreciated as much as men, right? But the discrete gazes of K-selecting gentleman no longer seem like much of a compliment. They're not likely to get noticed over the din of r-selecting catcalls and newspaper aisles filled with magazines detailing the inability of gorgeous celebrities to keep a mate.
Steve, you're right. Nothing ruins a beautiful female body like tatoos.
the data only tells you how sexually active. It doesn't tell you what the difference in partner choices are between people with tattoos or piercings and people without.
OK, but no one was talking about this -- aside from Steve who made a passing remark about appealing to the wrong sort of guy.
All the discussion so far has been on whether tattoos are a sign of sluttiness or not.
How did we get to 31 comments without the phrase "tramp stamp" being uttered?
Skeptical of the idea that it is a marker for sexual availability. A wink will do...100 percent of the time...for 100 percent of women...in the minds of 100 percent of men.
I suspect women are getting tattoos for the reason they so readily adopted so many other ugly fashions, like padded shoulders, hair perms, and deep red tanning:
1) It fed that female need to think she controls her appearance.
2) It became fashionable (a process which is completely unclear, but it's inevitable and arbitrary.)
Trouble is, people can't discard their tattos like their hairstyles and look back and laugh. Otherwise they would.
Reminds me of that 'Suicide Girls' website where nearly all of the women are tatooed: http://www.suicidegirls.com/
I've noticed that in many porn movies (um, I was writing a school paper, OK...) the women are absolutely covered with unattractive tattoos and piercings, not to mention the ugly boob jobs, fried hair, and other grotesqueries. Clearly the usual customers must like this sort of thing, and to me it looks like a more extreme version of the same statement, i.e., "Look at me! If I'm the kind of person who'll do this to myself, then I'm the kind of person who'll do pretty much anything with you." At least, that's the best explanation I've been able to come up with.
Here's the right way to think about what tattoos are nowadays: bumper stickers.
If you have one or not. If so, how many you have. And what specific message they send, if any (not what you infer, like "so-and-so is a slut").
Consult the Stuff White People Like entry on bumper stickers, and you'll see this is true.
We'll see if upper-middle class parents get the insignia of their kids' Ivy League schools tattooed on the back of their neck...
BINGO! Blode. I could not agree more. In fact I think you may be on to what is killing fertility and causing the declines in well, most of the modern world.
Pill+Condom+Social Acceptance of promiscuous, consumerist-sexual behavior = low family formation. How able is a woman to form deep romantic/sexual connections to a man who will stick with her for life if she's had dozens of sexual partners? Or vice-versa (a man with a woman)? And yes, SEXUAL SELECTION has changed from the nerdy long term guy to the "hot guy" until women age out of the marriage market.
Various studies have covered how hormones and so on create deep emotional bonds by suppressing anxiety and inducing trust during sexual activities (but only some of them). It's adaptive in all mammals, and particularly powerful among humans. This is likely why no promiscuous societies last -- families do not form. [Single motherhood is on the rise, Thomas Sowell reports 25% for white women, up from less than 4% in 1960].
Blode of course says this far better. Great insight.
The German government has started a massive media campaign to dissuade young people from taking tattoos and piercings. The reasoning is that the public health care system is broke so they are saving on things which are unnecessary, and doctors have been warning for years that tattoos and piercings cause infections which then have to be treated in government hospitals and cause unnecessary costs. So the government has an interest in dissuading young people from taking tattoos and piercings.
Apart from that, unfortunately many stunning chicks make really bad partner and health decisions [smoking, drugs, piercings, liberal sex lives, dating other races etc.]
I'd assume it depends on the size and position of the tattoo...
I know plenty of well educated people with tattoos, although none of them are geezers with a 'tribal' or birds with a 'tramp stamp' above their arse. A 'tribal' (which tribe exactly?)is of course the international symbol for "I am a c**t".
Nerds are diametrically opposite to tattoo-ers.
Tattoos signal an interest in "Clothes make the man". The whole worldview is that you have to look the part to get anywhere with your disparate goals.
Nerds (non-pejorative sense) on the other hand, go to great lengths NOT to dress up. Subconsciously or consciously saying - what I can do counts more than what I look like.
Paul Graham has very interesting articles on his site about this. Esecially his "Why Nerds arent Popular" Article.
To quote, but one example -
Nerds dont just happen to dress informally. They do it too consistently. Consciously or not, they dress informally as a prophylactic measure against stupidity
Danindc: I'm not usually one to stereotype or generalize but EVERY single girl with a tattoo is a whore.
True dat.
Seems to me that tattoos signal that you're not expecting to become 50.
That could mean psycho girlfriend, you know.
iSteve: I was wondering how we got 32 comments on tattoos w/o the buzzphrase "stuff whiterpeople like" being used?
Also: Do tats predict Barry O. vs Johhny Mack votes? I'm saying yes unless the letters USMC appear in the skin art (even if it's near an erogenous zone).
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"Tattoos are pretty mainstream now". So is being a whore.
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And being a whore is a deal-killer for more men than one might think:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1581043/French-women-%27are-the-sexual-predators-now%27.html
maybe that's why the fundy christians put so much effort in to advertising the chastity of their young women. to recruit men who aren't attracted to whores.
Svigor -- You nailed it. Tattoos are a turnoff, period. To me a girl who's a natural seven and has tattoos has demoted herself to a six, at best, and maybe even a five. And if the tattoo is in a private place, I think I'd find it so distracting I'm not even sure I could perform. Instead of focusing on the usual feminine attributes and reacting in the usual way I imagine I'd start thinking about the tattoo, what it signified, what it said about her intelligence, what kind of partners she'd had, what it will look like in twenty years....all of which would have a rather wilting effect.
Thanks to testing99 for reading. Contraceptives are SUCH a conundrum - their usage in a given situation is usually good but their overall effects adds up to bad. And their differential usage by demographic is why some of the people with low family formation are having lots of children and some - the whiterpeople - are just dying out.
"maybe that's why the fundy christians put so much effort in to advertising the chastity of their young women. to recruit men who aren't attracted to whores." - klaosoldanburg
Coincidence ... I was just going to follow this up by writing about how, before I met by wife-to-be, I used to despair of finding someone without converting to a religion I didn't actually believe in.
There are several elements to the low family-formation rate of those afflicted with promiscuity. Low desire, maybe, but serious impediments as well. How exactly is a woman to find a man who won't use her and leave her? LDS, Pentecostal, Orthodox Jewish, etc. gents wouldn't do that, but that's a pretty big gulf for a woman to cross, particularly on her own.
Lots of guys court women professing the intention of marriage (or at least of serious boyfriend-girlfriend stuff like picnics and hugging), but outside of religious groups intent on punishing cads, it is well-known that a lot of these professions will be dishonest. So there it is again - despair. Lots of women claim "All guys lie; all guys want Just One Thing" - and in their narrow experience, they may be right! So they try to at least learn to enjoy the One Thing, with booze and drugs to help, maybe.
Sailer talks about leftism as the political dogma of loneliness. Women feel very sad and disappointed about this kind of thing, but in my limited experience they almost never feel isolated. They can, after all, feel kinship with other women whose romantic hopes have been crushed by the army of cads. (This doesn't make Sailer wrong; he's largely right, I just wanted to clarify a special case.) Maybe you could even replace the nuclear family with a group of women who share child-raising duties among themselves. Of course, that would be tantamount to the wholesale replacement of European culture with West African culture, and no one is suggesting that. (They're just doing it.)
And let's face it, they're not women when they're first exposed to immature (or even predatory) male sexuality. They're self-chaperoning at age 14 or earlier (it's almost too sad to type) around males whose genes are telling them to reproduce as much as possible (30 bastard children being a better genetic shot at the future than three happy tots in a minivan). And the left is happy to always talk about sex "among consenting adults", and how any departure from 100% permissiveness "smacks of paternalism".
I'm concentrating on reasons women are hurt by this trend because I think this blog's readership is mostly male, and we've already got clear ideas why we are disappointed. Read Clio from Sailer's blogroll for an insight from an actual female. You may have gotten mocked for it in high school (I did), but displaying romantic/sexual conservatism is an important gesture to women - they have a lot to lose in this. I'm not saying, challenge a guy to a sabre-duel for dishonoring a lady, but maybe take a step in that direction.
You can't honestly join a religion you don't believe in, but you can take your children out of the public schools. Don't send them to a "dance" - teach them to dance! There are sensible ways for young people to meet and relate to other young people without cloistering. And to hell with the anti-white Uncle Toms who say "Caucasians can't dance" with a big grin on their face - as if they were kidding.
This post gave me a chuckle because it's very true. Low class and often low-IQ people get tattoos at greater rates than the "normal" population.
Now, though, it's almost rebellion to not get one. I'm glad I never did!
Tattoos are pretty mainstream now....
They've played you for a fool.
Steve,
The tattoos are likely signals of inclusion in various subcultures and groups that you're unfamiliar with. While, I agree with you that it's slutty and unpreferable for me on the face of it, I would likely find her more enticing if her "signals" targeted me.
Obviously, she's not trying to get it on with judgmental and analytical evolcon bloggers. But, imagine if you will, that you're a fan of the Grateful Dead, and all the things that GD fandom implies and she had a tattoo serving as a reference to such.
I suppose I would make an exception for a tattoo which was either a rune or a family crest. That would be a powerful signal to me that she shares me strong sense of heritage. I would be inclined to mate with her. Nothing says dedication to something quite like a tattoo, and that's really central to the point.
In a world where everybody's using superficial signals to gain inclusion in subcultures, tattoos probably do confer real value in that pursuit. It's all just standard human mating rituals, I believe.
I used to want a tattoo, back in the '80's when it was a rebellious, punk thing to do.
However, even at that tender age, I was able to comprehend that they are PERMANENT, and I couldn't think of anything I wanted to permanently affix to my body. I mean, even at 17 I could understand that I might not feel quite so passionate about my favorite bands in ten years. And I had certainly seen empirical evidence that tattooing one's beloved's name is never a good idea, seeing as how ephemeral romance often is.
I did rather like the tribal tattoos, but there were no local artists who did them in those days. And by the time they were commonly available, EVERYONE had them and they were no longer cool.
I'm really glad that I never went through with the tattoo.
I'm especially glad because they look OK when you have dewy, smooth 18-year-old skin; but on 40-year-old skin they just make you look like a bargain-priced truck stop hooker.
I noticed that Angelina Jolie is conspicously donning tattoos in her new movie Wanted.
Girls aren't the only ones who are screwed by the modern world, as many of you imply. Has anyone ever read the book The Game? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game:_Penetrating_the_Secret_Society_of_Pickup_Artists)
It shows how many miserable, unsatisfied, often intelligent guys are out there. Humans weren't built for the modern world, with all it's feminism.
Theodore Dalrymple has studied a number of phenoms of the underclass and how they relate to each other
in the UK the underclass adopted binge drinking to a much greater extent than in the US.
A typical pattern is that young women will get drunk to the point of almost passing out - they do this at a "vertical drinking establishment" basically a bar with no place to sit
the vertical drinking establishments can sell beer faster than traditional sit down pubs
the point is that the women become visibly falling down drunk as a signalling device - the more drunk they appear to be the more attention they attract from suitors
the tats in erogenous zones are designed to convey the same message
I think 99 times out of 100 tattoos look ridiculous and disgusting on white people, both male and female. Blacks can look good with certain kinds of small, elegant tattoos.
Steve, I'm pretty sure you related this story in a comment on 2blowhards a few years back. What made you bring it up again now?
As for nerds not dressing well, I can sure relate to that. In my case, though, it wasn't deliberate; I was just a complete deadbeat about everything to do with popular/cool culture. I was a real nerd's nerd up until the age of 15, when I finally underwent puberty, shot up and experienced a real 'ugly duckling' transformation, at which time I happily swapped over to the winners' team. :) Sadly, the long years of cavorting with goodtime gals and guys stunted my development and I never managed to capitalize on my intellectual endowments. Playing catch-up now. To older nerds, listen, start dresssing well: it can be transformational, and for those of who adhere to strict IQ-is-everything positions, the ... cliche alert ... paradigm shift you might experience could be quite educational.
Ron, I agree, it used to be "if she smokes she pokes. Same with "French Kissing".
Now if she has tatoos or piercings, she probably pokes but watch out!
A frequent commercial on my local radio stations is for 'wrecking balm', a painless tattoo removal product.
To follow up Sally's comment, I think one allure of tattoos are their permanence, and the emotional juice of a life changing decision.
Klaosoldanburg -- Link doesn't work. Can you repost the link? Thanks.
Yes too much promiscuity/too many partners is a deal killer for guys. There are sound reasons. Enhanced risk of STDs, which also lower fertility and increase birth defects. As well as enhanced risk of guys being dumped for a better opportunity. Women hold most/all of the dating power in their teens and twenties, often behave in their thirties as if they still hold that power.
There's a huge difference between a clean-cut 22 year old girl with only say, 6 partners, versus a thirty two year old with 30 partners in her history. Just on the face of past predictive history, the ability of the woman to form a lasting relationship is pretty low.
Blode -- I think you put your finger on something that's been bothering me for a long time. As late as say, the mid 1960's, there were no need for "the Game" or other various player-school strategies. As Steve has noted, as late as the 1970's, a man in his thirties could buy his own house. Huge in family formation.
I think the problem goes deeper -- women chase after the bad boys far too long in over-estimating their looks lasting. Then by their thirties they find guys uninterested. As one woman noted in the Daily Telegraph (sorry no link) a guy she knew who was "great" in his twenties, wanted to marry his girlfriend (who said no) ... "spoiled." Marriage for a man in his twenties to a beautiful woman in her twenties is a good sell. To a woman with many, many partners, much baggage, and limited if that fertility, not so much. In essense women ask men to share in serial fashion with other men, which is not conducive to marriage or happy ones at least.
But clearly, something major has happened all over the world. TFR in Algeria, Tunisia, and Iran are all around 1.7 according to CIA World Factbook. Yemen's is around 8, with half the women/girls married at 15 or under. Modern societies don't seem to offer a happy alternative to tribal measures of family formation, either of the West African or Arabian variety.
My own take is that women, unconstrained, chase after and want the Bad Boys who have greater "masculine" markers. That beautiful woman may not have "bad decision skills" if she can "afford" the bad boy. Bad for society but good for her (satisfying her wants/desires).
Steve's traffic here indicates how powerfully interested people are in male-female dynamics society-wise without the PC nonsense.
I did the serious-courtship thing with a woman I thought would make a great wife. She dressed modestly, had a "natural" hairstyle, little makeup, no tats or piercing, etc. Didn't drink, smoke, or swear. Nothing skanky about her.
We did all the tings women are supposed to like - romantic dinners, long walks in the park, lots of hugging and kissing.
The result? She dumped me for a guy who was an inch taller and a bit more muscular.
Lets face it - the great Western experiment with "love matches" and sexual freedom has been a flop. Either we go back to arranged marriages or the West is dead.
What a great blog. Steve made a remark about a hot babe and it developed into a discussion of r/k selection theory and declining western fertility. Where else can you get this kind of conversation?
This is one of Steve's best posts for the comments mainly. Ken...tough break, you should have gone down on her. Also, girls with tats can't have an IQ over 110- that"s common knowledge... my buddy in high school got a tat on his forearm (15 years ago mind you) of a red devil with the phrase 'lil devil' under it- when he showed it to us I said he should have gotten 'big mistake' written under it instead- he was DEVASTATED- because it hit him just how stupid and permanent it was. Also, my nephew got those earring circles in his ears and wants them out but it will cause a sag of some sort so he doesn't want to get rid of them...he should probably just be euthanized.
one thing that needs to be said: in the contemporary western world, procreation has been completely detached from sex. when i look at the people i went to high school with(i'm in my late 20's, from an affluent suburb of a major city), the "alpha males" are having a lot less children on average than the nerds or regular guys. the most fruitful males have been shy, nerdy guys who came from conservative christian families and who weren't popular and didn't have girlfriends or much of social life as teenagers. the best looking girls aren't doing too well in the reproduction contest either.
Wow, this discussion emphatically demonstrates that the correlation between white supremacists (sorry, "race realists") and "creepy losers who terrify women" is still about 1:1. Some of you people sound like Travis Bickle. "Whores...they're all whores..."
Tattoos are pretty mainstream now...
And therein lies the problem, oh sure they show committment, subculture allegience etc etc
But what happens 10-20 years from now when the hot young things look at oldies with their celtic armband or whatever. Fashion has made the tattoo and fashion will unmake it later and you will be lumbered with it in a way that Im not saddled with my '80s haircut.
Tatoos are so today -- they give people a feeling of beingness and even accomplishment without having done anything.
blode said...
Mass culture demands that we abandon our romantic hopes - it insults everyone who wants to build a stable family unit
------------------------------
To quote F Roger Devlin from "Sexual Utopia in Power"
"The sexual revolution asserted the right of each individual to sex on his or
her own terms—in other words, a right of perfect selfishness in erotic matters.
One effect of this change was to eliminate the moral dignity of feminine modesty.
It was not to be forbidden, of course, but was henceforward to be understood
as no more than a personal taste, like anchovies or homosexuality."
Mmmm...anchovies.
You're right, anonymous, promiscuous leftists who act like someone out of The Unbearable Lightness of Being (and not just the cute sex-addict physician) are total gentlemen.
Whats really ironic are the people who post here supporting the modern status quo as if they have some great new insight.
Promiscuity, lack of family formation etc etc has been around as long as humans (currently understood) have been. And its one of the defining features of a society in decline.
Tattoos and piercings are deal killers for me. They look like an advertisement for herpes.
my 2 cents
Lets face it - the great Western experiment with "love matches" and sexual freedom has been a flop. Either we go back to arranged marriages or the West is dead.
There are moments when I believe Michel Houellebecq is the world's greatest writer, but then I come to my senses. But certainly no one writes better on the subject in discussion here (not tatoos, but sexual relations between men and women in Western Civ.)
The rise of the bourgeoisie and the rapid economic changes of the 1950’s had led to a decline in arranged marriages -- except in the rapidly dwindling aristocracy, where lineage was still of real significance. The Catholic Church, which had always frowned upon sex outside of marriage, welcomed this shift toward the love match. It was close to Catholic doctrine (“Male and female created He them”), and brought its ideal world of peace, fidelity and love a step closer. The Communist party, which was the only spiritual power that could rival the church at the time was fighting for almost identical objectives. Consequently, young people in the 1950s, without exception waited impatiently to fall in love, as the desertion of the countryside and the concurrent disappearance of the village communities allowed the choice of future spouse to be made from an almost infinite selection, just as the choice itself became of the utmost importance. (At Sarcelles, in September 1955, a new political movement dedicated to the preservation of the “extended family” was launched; proof in itself that society had been reduced to the nuclear family.) It would be fair to say that the 1950s and the early 1960s were the golden age of romantic love…a time we remember today through the songs of Jean Ferrat and early Francoise Hardy.”
Elementary Particles
Wow, this discussion emphatically demonstrates that the correlation between white supremacists (sorry, "race realists") and "creepy losers who terrify women" is still about 1:1. Some of you people sound like Travis Bickle. "Whores...they're all whores..."
Hey, I'm just a LOSER that annoys women, they're not terrified! I don't care what that restraining order says!!!
Anonymous: the most fruitful males have been shy, nerdy guys who came from conservative christian families and who weren't popular and didn't have girlfriends or much of social life as teenagers
You should read Spengler, over at the Asia Times [2004-present, 1999-2004].
A few essays you might enjoy:
Power and the evangelical womb
Nov 9, 2004
fk09aa02.html
They made a democracy and called it peace
Mar 8, 2005
GC08Aa02.html
Death by secularism: Some statistical evidence
Aug 2, 2005
GH02Aa01.html
Why nations die
Aug 16, 2005
GH16Aa02.html
Deep in denial (or in de' Mississippi)
Sep 7, 2005
GI07Aa01.html
Christianity finds a fulcrum in Asia
Aug 7, 2007
IH07Ad03.html
Why Israel is the world's happiest country
May 13, 2008
JE13Ak01.html
Some of you people sound like Travis Bickle.
Wait, last I heard we were all tattoo-encrusted, beer-swilling woman-beaters. What happened to that? Ah, Marxists (sorry, "progressives," no wait, "moderates")!
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/06/15/tattoo.record.ap/index.html
I'm a male with a tattoo. Nothing fancy, actually relatively tame; I have Goldilocks and the Three Bears above my left arm. Does that make me a man slut? My one tattoo doesn't really put me in a huge position to comment on those covering there body with them, but I do believe that half of them are done for artistic purposes, not necessarily much else.
If you choose to regard a female with ample tattoos (unless completely obvious..) as a mark of an easy lay, than most likely you can count on three fingers or less the amount of women you have slept with. That isn't something to be ashamed of (in fact maybe you should take pride with it in this day and age) but it does prove you lack the experience to be a competent judge on the matter.
This is your worst post ever.
Don't do the Roissy thing. Stick to what you're good at.
anon. said
the correlation between white supremacists (sorry, "race realists") and "creepy losers who terrify women" is still about 1:1.
The correlation between nonwhite supremacists (sorry, "antiracists") and superficial jerks is 1:1.
jmr said
Lets face it - the great Western experiment with "love matches" and sexual freedom has been a flop. Either we go back to arranged marriages or the West is dead.
I agree. The acid test of a civilization must be whether it reproduces itself. We have deep problems requiring radical solutions.
We'd better implement the solutions grass-roots and under deep cover, though. Look at what happened to FLDS. If Whites breed successfully as a group, or successfully perform any social task as a group, tanks roll in. Why is that?
Here is the future: robot sex!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080615/sc_afp/lifestylenetherlandstechnologylovesexrobots;_ylt=AqV0B.cK1QjkRdkCjVRnAHoPLBIF
I'm wondering if the best solution might be to move to a non-western country and "go native".
PS - Blode's first comment is right on. The counterculture of the past 50+ years presents a united front againt K strategy breeding/White family formation. That sexual morality stuff? It's repressive and sick - a sure sign of an Authoritarian Personality! It's so whitebread and 1950s-ish and reeking of white picket fences! What we need instead is the world of Mad Max, with tatted hos and scarred tubes, graffiti and feminism, individualism and antiracism, nonjudgmental attitudes and "sexual liberation"...so that 100 years from now, no White people will be getting in the way... As Susan Rosenblatt (aka "Sontag") spat, "The white race is the cancer of human history." (For this remark she later apologized - to cancer victims.)
Tattoos and smoking can be signals of either "I'm a bad decision-maker" or "I am present-oriented and body-oriented", which many men will find sexy (but only for women who are already young and beautiful). For most men, female attractiveness requires 4 of 5 criteria (face, figure, youth, health, availability), so if you're young, pretty, and curvy, you can get away with signaling availability at the expense of health.
But sluttiness is only attractive in the young -- someone who looks like she has a new partner every few months, if she's 21, might be worth "saving" and securing for oneself, but if she's 27 she'd better be projecting a strong desire for permanence, and if she's 33 it's probably way too late.
The other kind of message tattoos give, group membership, is related to sexiness for men, but the only group I can think of for which a tattoo identifying a woman with that group would not be unattractive is the U.S. Armed Forces.
I have Goldilocks and the Three Bears above my left arm. Does that make me a man slut?
It makes you very strange.
Let's try this again:
Tattoo artist sets record for most tattoos drawn in a day
Lots of great comments.
I work on an Ivy League campus. For what it's worth, my hot-weather observations lead me to the conclusion that these elite students - the future SWPL crowd - do not generally go in for large visible tattoos. Walking across campus on a hot day, you'll see a few men (and somewhat fewer women) with tattoos, but they will almost always be small and discreet.
This suggests that tattoos retain at least a limited association with social class.
Blode wrote:
Sailer talks about leftism as the political dogma of loneliness. Women feel very sad and disappointed about this kind of thing, but in my limited experience they almost never feel isolated. They can, after all, feel kinship with other women whose romantic hopes have been crushed by the army of cads.
Very good observation. You've just described the audience of Sex and the City.
I'd like to see an IQ correlation survey of people with tattoos and people without. I would expect to see the average IQ of the tattooed at about 90-92, with no more than 2% of the IQ 115+ population inked up. I could be off base, yes -- that why a actual survey would be interesting.
P.S. to my previous comment: It hardly needs to be said that there are a disproportionate number of Jewish and Asian students at the Ivy school where I work. Is there an ethnic correlation with a tendency to tattoos?
The recent trend I've seen in London in tattoos are Maori-style tribal markings, either on the upper arm or lower leg. What can it all mean?
I don't agree generally that the decline of the family is due to "love matches" or that arranged marriages are the way to go. Nor do I blame feminism, or Marxism, or the other usual suspects.
Iran, Algeria, and Tunisia, Islamic countries lacking all of the above with a good whacking dose of arranged marriages still have TFR of 1.7 or so. You can look it up at CIA World Factbook. Nor do Yemen or Egypt provide very good models, with even more arranged marriages, too high TFR (8 for Yemen) with no opportunities for all those young people.
What stands out to me is the degree in which consumerism and rootless isolation have destroyed mediating institutions. Steve pointed out that older women used to advise and offer insight to young women searching for love that prevented a lot of bad outcomes.
Women and men searching for mates, as opposed to short-term hookups, have problems in decision making and need, frankly, help in filtering out bad choices.
Consumerism gives the illusion that choices in mates are like choosing dish washing detergent: easy and with no consequences. Which is hardly the case.
Ken -- the woman who dumped you was probably searching for a short-term relationship under the illusion that she will be beautiful and desirable all her life. Consumerism carefully preaches this myth to women, along with the idea that each woman can be happy sharing an Alpha Male. THAT fuels the beauty arms race: fashion and cosmetics and plastic surgery and yes, tats for women competing for the few Alphas totals in the trillions world-wide.
Mediating institutions such as churches and stable communities would offer women and men constant advice. For women, trade off on pure masculine qualities for the traits of kindness, loyalty, stability, etc. Rather than pure height and strength. A man's character being his defining quality (see Jane Austen). But that sort of choice doesn't matter if you move from one effortless and costless relationship in a consumerist fantasy.
The same applies to men: trade off on purely physical attributes for loyalty, intelligence, morality etc. The qualities of a one night stand are not that of a potential wife and mother of one's children (something the tat-laden young women often don't know).
BUT ... this requires the ability to confidently assess a man's or a woman's character, and get re-inforcing research/opinions from people you know and trust.
Consider this, Consumer Reports will tell you the reliability and satisfaction of car models, and a used car report is available from Carfax. While Google, Facebook, Myspace might tell you some things about a man or woman you are considering, short of engaging an expensive Private Eye you can make little judgments about character and even less independent assessments by those you know and trust.
Is there any wonder that short-term decision making on the r-model is displacing the K model?
While I can understand many may believe that a "movie producer / hedge fund manager" would be a better sexual partner choice than "hungover guys who look like washed-up ex-motocross riders", a bit of reflection may be in order here...
Ditto everything testing99 said (we're not the same person, I promise). Arranged marriages don't seem like the way to go ... a revolt against Vogue-Cosmopolitan culture is the way to go. Revolt against "How to Get Cheap Sex" guides. Revolt against short time horizons Pick up a copy of A Return to Modesty and see how some of the other young women feel. Or Jane Austen - good marriages are made in her world by smart women who seek real knowledge about their partners.
"If you choose to regard a female with ample tattoos (unless completely obvious..) as a mark of an easy lay, than most likely you can count on three fingers or less the amount of women you have slept with." - James
You may be right, but I'm not sure that too many men actually regard these women as easy partners for them. I think a lot of women would love it if the message got across that they would sleep with anyone, despite the message being patently false. Few women would actually sleep with anyone, but getting hit on by anyone and everyone gives them the chance to present the persona that they actually have high standards, at least compared to the "real sluts", which is the mythical woman who would sleep with anyone.
The persona of the choosy slut may be intended for the woman who chooses it, or for the general public. Probably both. I bet the graffitied woman actually turns down more propositions than average, they are just propositions of a completely different nature and frequency.
As to who these women would actually sleep with, they've been described as alpha males. Maybe, but I'm not sure ... I would describe them variously as Big Men or Byronic anti-heroes. Classic alpha males are fiendishly difficult to find nowadays - they are supposed to be natural leaders, and set everyone at ease by seeming relaxed and confident. Oversexed males nowadays seem relaxed and insecure, at least to me, with their fatalism, sporadic hostility, constant reliance on their cronies to make their crash-and-burn lifestyle seem acceptable.... The sad thing is, they're willing to prey on women from outside that lifestyle (ingenues), while women from the lifestyle pretty much date within it.
"Wow, this discussion emphatically demonstrates that the correlation between white supremacists (sorry, "race realists") and "creepy losers who terrify women" is still about 1:1."
And people wonder why I use data to trash liberals. "They're so sweet--why pick on them?"
In a recent post, I used General Social Survey data to document that liberals are more than twice as likely as conservatives to cheat on their wives.
Sure, it's the conservative men you have to watch out for.
http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2008/05/liberalism-and-caring-for-others.html
Maybe it's because I live in Hollywood, the capital of successful but nerdy guys paired with improbably lovely wives, but I really don't see this alleged crisis in women choosing high testosterone thugs over decent, intelligent men. Of course, around here your average tattooed guy in a leather jacket is typically a highly paid special effects artist or dweeby screenwriter living out his bad boy fantasies. And a Saturday at the beach or farmer's market or Trader Joe's usually reveals a passel of tattooed dudes with tattooed hipster wives/girlfriends, chasing around a couple of moppets in tiny Doc Marten booties. Surfaces aside, it's really pretty middle class. A lot of you need to learn to stop being so goddamned judgmental of anyone who doesn't look like a mid-20th Century middle class white American. The earlier anonymous was right. While Steve Sailer is a really interesting writer, his blog attracts one of the biggest collection of creepy, misogynist losers on the Internet-- a high bar, that!
I suspect that close to half of females aged 18-30 where I live in California have tattoos, mostly small and inconspicuous but nonetheless suggestive of impeccable hipness and style.
I was a nerd in college when some girls told me that my shabby dress indicated that I was most definately a conservative Republican. This had never occurred to me, and I was not a Republican, but there you had it, an absolute link between personal presentation and ideological identity. Fashion was fate, and if I didn't want my nerdy genes to be evolutionarily annihilated, I had better look like everybody else. A few years later, I consciously dress like I might snap any moment and have to kick somebody's ass, and I'm no longer accused of political untowardness. This is important to young women who require solid evidence of one's character to determine whether one is mating material.
"Creepy" is a pretty interesting word when leftists use it. I remember talking to a leftist friend of mine about a series of painting an art class had done of the same nude model. It was interesting to compare the paintings - different styles, same subject matter. (Quite different than looking at two paintings of different subject matter, in different styles.) Some fine artists in that class, who didn't IMHO capture the sexiness of the model but created largely worthwhile art anyway. Anyway, he eventually cut short our little armchair art history class, shamefully admitting that looking at a naked woman was "creepy and sexist".
But of course, he wasn't a Leftist Big Man (LBM), who could cheerfully go to strip clubs and get lap dances and be hailed by the left as "annihilating puritanical middle-class morality" or something. He was a Leftist Little Man (LLM), a man trained to believe that heterosexuality is inherently - uhh ... "creepy", I guess. Think of the LLM as Kerensky while the LBM is Lenin.
LLMs believe that any appreciation they show of women constitutes sexual harassment. LBMs cheat on their wives, and say it's perfectly okay to do that, because it "makes the Christians mad". LLMs court women haltingly, by talking about abstract subjects, or by talking about how guilty they feel about the poor, or whatever. Not surprisingly, that leaves plenty of success opportunities to the LBMs. This makes the LLMs pretty sad and lonely, and the lonelier they get the more leftist they tend to get. The creepier they feel they are, they creepier they seem to others. They don't really understand why the LBMs get to drool over everything female and everyone pats them on the back, while the LLMs aren't allowed to even notice that they women they love have, e.g., feminine bodies.
It's all a racket, created by the mental institutions we send our children to. The LLMs obeyed the rules; they listened intently to the PC crap and noticed it made no sense, and tried to believe it anyway, and got socked in the brains by the inevitable neurosis. The LBMs didn't notice the PC crap made no sense, because they never paid attention in the first place. They made their scatalogical jokes, which the proles have decided is ample proof of "non-creepiness". And the LBMs got rewarded in exactly the way that matters most to adolescent males - fawning attention from females.
In truth, of course, LBMs differ very little from other Big Men. The former have just learned to put a political icing on their cake of barbarism, to attract a few more flies. While an old-fashioned Big Man would say, "I don't care about anything except getting sex for numero uno" and LBM says "I don't care about anything except getting sex for numero uno ... and fighting racism" and the girls just swoon. (Some of them do! My guess is that young women from outside the institutional schools from our urban areas are less susceptible, but I have no statistics.)
You want to find an LBM ... pick a male comedian out of a hat and you may well have one. These are the guys who joke about how great is to be dump women and be an alcoholic ... and then scream their heads off about how someone frowned at a black guy once. Bitter, easily enraged, red-faced hippies with drug problems - I'll admit they're easy to laugh at.
"Wow, this discussion emphatically demonstrates that the correlation between white supremacists (sorry, "race realists") and "creepy losers who terrify women" is still about 1:1."
This reminds me of an article written by John Derbyshire when he was coming out of the closet as a race realist. It was titled something like "Are you an antisocial loner like me?" and talked about how sociable people tend to go with the crowd and those of us that talk about race and iq are socially deficient, but in the end, right.
As a college student, I've seen this over the last couple years. Someone denounces "racism" or "sexism" and everybody in the class nods. I bring up race and IQ or even an argument against diversity and everyone is shocked and horrified. I document some of these experiences on my website at http://thenewfaith.org/what-is-the-new-faith/.
I'm a pretty sociable person, and I've found that political beliefs don't matter in personal relationships as long as you're not dealing with a politically correct lunatic but in the end it's always easier to go along with the crowd then to care about being honest or moral.
Have to agree with the anonymous posters who have commented that this site attracts a lot of creeps.
"Race realist" = creepy net nazis who hate women and dream of a race war that they know will never happen.
I'm pleased that they resorted to "Nazis" only after using "creepy" several times, but I'm disappointed that none of the critics have even begun to address the effects that promiscuity has had on family formation and the (highly divergent) effects it has had on teen pregnancy.
There are actually a lot of implicit questions the left won't touch: do tattoos and piercings remind you in any way of "cutting"? (Surely you know what "cutting" is?) Do you feel like parents can successfully get moral messages across to their children in an institutional schooling environment? Do you have plan to stop teen pregnancy? If so, what is the track record of similar programs?
I don't know if it's because the implicit questions weren't clear enough or what, but I suppose this is all post-script now. Thanks, your majesty.
Mass culture demands that we abandon our romantic hopes - it insults everyone who wants to build a stable family unit.
But what is "mass culture"? And how do you propose to combat it?
I think tattoos on a woman is disgusting!
I agree with the assessment that tattooed women tent to be more sexually promiscuous. It shows a lack of judgement, impulse control (strong pre-frontal cortex), and concern for the future.
One irony is that the women who get these tattoos claim to like variation, hence the dyed hair, and radical change in makeup and outfits. However, tattoos are permanent, and entail no variation.
I would never get a tattoo, as they are permanent, and I like my skin as it is.
Hollywood Anon -- yes it is you, and it is because you live in Hollywood. Trader Joes in West LA is not representative of say, Barnes and Noble in Metarie.
There is a middle class structure in Hollywood, but that's alien to say the various IT workers in and around LA. Most of whom are nerdy guys who can't get dates. I think you suffer from observation bias -- Trader Joes is not the proper sampling ... all the cubicles and business parks are.
Misogyny? You mean like forced marriages, arranged marriages, honor killing, or female genital mutilation? You're looking at the wrong people. Guys who don't think single parenthood is smart for society compared to those who force women into tents? Liberals are nuts.
As far as "race realists" and sexual selection/single motherhood, those noted "creepy" neo-Nazis Bill Cosby, Juan Williams (of NPR), and Barack Obama have all noted the devastating effects illegitmacy have on the Black Community. Which is 70% nationwide and 90% in the urban core. Williams noted btw that 25% of white births are illegitimate.
Culture matters. As Obama noted in his biography, under Jim Crow black families were largely intact and communities safe. Intact nuclear families = safe, secure and economically striving upward communities.
Race realists like say, Bill Cosby or even Barack Obama dream of reform in the Black Community to restore the nuclear family and upward mobility. So much for a "race war." So much for Nazis.
What I do find "creepy" is the assumption that the PUA make. That to be successful with women a man must conceal his true persona (particularly nerdiness) in imitation of Blode's well-founded portrait of the LBM. None of these PUA seem happy or fulfilled or able to form lasting relationships.
I also find "creepy" the idea that a society can have lots of young men unattached romantically with no consequences. The history of Arabia or West Africa, with Charles Taylor, is not a happy one (33% of West African marriages are polygamous). Men do not like to share women with other men, generally react with violence when forced to do so, and create unstable, tribal, violent societies in the process. Our modern society asks men to essentially "share" women with other men. No other society has done so and survived.
That the PUA folks are making money filling a need ought to concern every person in society, since there was no need for these guys in generations prior.
To blode:
Who cares about promiscuity?
You should live the life you want. Life is short. Have fun.
You conservatives are all the same: You all think that if we could only return to the 1950s, everything will be ok.
NEWSFLASH: The only way you are returning this country to the 1950s is with a time machine.The cat is out to the bag, the milk has been spilt, etc., etc. etc.Get over your BS and get with the times.
King Obama -- I am not Blode but I will tell you why YOU should care about promiscuity in general.
You should care because the person who might find a cure for your cancer or heart disease might never be born, nerdy bio-science guys not being high on womens desire for the LBM. You should care because single motherhood breeds disfunctional hell-holes like Cabrini Green or Hawaiian Gardens with hordes of young men killing and being killed, in the game of "Que es More Muy Macho?" It's not either Fernando Llamas or Ricardo Montalbaln btw. You should care because one day, like Karen Toshima* the gangs may stray into "nice" neighborhoods and kill someone you love.
You should care because your son might not find a mate, ever, and live a lonely life. Or your daughter move from bad boy loser to bad boy loser as described by Theodore Dalrymple. Until her entire life is wasted pursuing hooligan copies of abusers. You should care because society is fragile, wealth and safety ephemeral, as is youth and health.
Will you be young and strong forever? Always able to depend on yourself? Never at the mercy of society? I doubt it.
For all these reasons you should care about the viability of the fundamental building block of Western Society -- the nuclear family.
Unless you're joining the Heaven's Gate folks on that Spaceship behind the Comet, or Lord Xenu. If you've gotta ride out of the solar system, then obviously you shouldn't care.
Anon -- mass culture is consumerist culture. It ought to be replaced by one of conscious civic virtue. This won't be the 1950's, but some obvious do's and don'ts:
*Don't sleep around with too many partners, particularly for women. Condoms and the pill can't stop all STDs and lower your value to a partner.
*Don't have kids until you get married, and stay married unless absolutely desperate in abusive situations -- kids come first.
*Don't delay marriage and family till your thirties -- do it in your twenties. [Women should be able to resume careers with no penalties, by law, and get paid Social Security for taking care of kids.]
*Don't embrace a life of childish eternal adolescence for twenty years after college. Grow up.
*Embrace the values of restraint, modesty, compassion, kindness, loyalty.
This is hardly the sit-com situations of the 1950's, but the basis of a healthy society, not an endless loop of Viagra/Valtrex ads.
Your Majesty:
What you don't realize is that "the times", as you put it, are not stable and not sustainable. Society as it currently exists will not last, and cannot. If current trends persist the country will disintegrate into chaos, for all the reasons that Testing99 just explained. We conservatives won't be surprised by this, but you will be.
Testing99: Good post, but what does your abbreviation "PUA" mean?
Wait, Steve-o...
You are saying that sluttiness is somehow BAD?
Man....
Long live sluts, I say!
The more the merrier!
Bring on the sluts!
I am sick and tired of good girls, myself. And tats are sexy, by the by, old man :-)
You are just a playa hata, from what I see.
One word advice, Steve-o: S H A V E !
"Who cares about promiscuity?
You should live the life you want. Life is short. Have fun."
In response to King Obama:
(regarding the first sentence)Try telling that to HIV/AIDS patients. If it weren't for sexual promiscuity and hedonism, most HIV/AIDS patients would not be under their current predicaments. The same applies to those who can live, but are infertile (and are guaranteed to never have children of their own), as a result of veneral diseases.
Veneral Diesases are a reason to know when it's appropriate to keep the pants on.
Also, strong sexual restraint shows a strong pre-frontal cortex, which is a signn of a more developed mind! : ) Usually, but not always (I will admit), those who limit sex partners before marriage, tend to be more faithful (in marriage) than those who loved the promiscuous lifestyle. There are few exceptions, but this is still the general rule.
Such mates also provide great genes of being able to control themselves. K-Scale, all the way!
Another thing:
10 years ago I often saw ads for tats in busses and street corners. Now I often see ads for tat-removals in busses and street corners. However removals are usually more expensive than applying and also carry health-risks. I guess it serves these liberal idiots right.
Love that LLM vs LBM idea.
Some years ago I was at a friend's house.
On the kitchen wall was a postcard sized photo of a pretty asian girl. I commented that she looked nice and this guy adopts a crestfallen expression and proceeded to lecture me about the sad state of exploited women in Thailand (where he had just been on holiday) like I didnt know anything about it.
As I said said to my girlfriend at the time, it was amazing, he gets to have a picture of a hot looking girl on the wall and he gets to adopt the high moral ground about sexist exploitation.
Whether that made me the LLM or him I dont know, I cant in all honesty call him an LBM though. Still, I feel its all connected to that somehow.
I am generally attracted to women who look a little slutty..or maybe you could say I like the glamour look..makeup, sexy hair, nails, heels, skirts,etc. Yet tattoos repulse me! They look so ugly.
Just today I was feeling sad and depressed that so many women are covered in tatoos..I like going out in public and being attracted to women as opposed to being repulsed by their crude tattoos.
After reading everyone's comments I actually feel better. I am in awe that there are others who dislike tattoos, I was starting to think I was the "only one". Also, the comments connecting the tattoo trend with moral decay and the decline of the family are most interesting and thought provoking. Thank you, just knowing there are like minded people has lifted my spirits.
Hey blue eyed jew,
Don't worry. Here in Germany the only tat-related ads are for removal. Shows how the tide is turning. I guess it helps that the public health system is cutting down on compensation for infections directly related to tats. That's the only way you get people to act responsibly nowadays.
One parting comment:
A few months ago, I was in the bank.
And this really old man on a scooter was there, absolutely crippled with arthritis. His hands were in the shape of claws, bent back and immobile. He turned as much as he could and asked me to put the key in his scooter. I did so, reluctantly but didnt start it. And just watched as he went through contortions to do so. It was only partially public shyness. It was also definitely an aversion to helping others.
I developed a distaste for helping people. How am I to know what kind of person this old helpless man is? If, of course, he wasnt old and helpless?
Would he care about me? Would he be a 'stud' and chase after my wife? If in college, would he resort to violence if he were stronger than me just to make himself feel good? Would he yammer on about social justice while happily and gleefully stealing my hard earned income via the Nanny-State?
The urge to help, in foro interno is simply not there anymore.
I may, or may not, be an anomaly in this regard - if not, I expect there will be increasing number of people like me - somewhat helpful in the past, not so anymore - in the future.
Thank you liberals, and liberal posters! You succeeded in having your cake and eating it too! Till it all comes crashing down on your heads anyway...
"Anonymous said...
Maybe it's because I live in Hollywood, the capital of successful but nerdy guys paired with improbably lovely wives, but I really don't see this alleged crisis...."
Maybe? Let me clue you in genius - yes, it's because you live in Hollywood - a place entirely unrepresentative of anywhere.
And as far as I'm concernced, all you people of the hip, do-your-own-thing, weren't-the-50s-so-awfully-repressive crowd can go screw yoursevles. A lot of us like the 50's just fine.
And just who are the "creepy losers" in society? Bill Maher and Jerry Springer - Not very right wing. Or the Warshawski brothers (one of whom is now a "sister") - hip purveyors of bloody revenge fantasies to weak-willed teens. Or how about the Creepy Mysoginist Loser in Chief - Bill Clinton. The band-geek who sought high office so that women would have to put up with him groping them.
Or just read the Daily Kos, or any site where skin-head anti-racists and anarchists rant. The Travis Bickles of today are mostly on your side.
When I graduated from 8th grade, if a man wore an earring, he HAD to be gay. End of story.
By the time I graduated from high school, the "rules" had changed. Now, if a man wore an earring in his left ear, he was gay, but a straight guy could wear an earring in his right ear (or was it the other way around? Nobody could ever remember!).
By the time I graduated from college, a man could have six earrings in both ears, and it didn't mean a thing.
Women's tattoos and piercings have gone through a similar progression. Thirty years ago, a woman with tattoos or body piercings had to be a redneck or biker type. Twenty years ago, a woman with tattoos or piercings was obviously a rebel and a Very Naughty Girl. Today, a Baptist minister's virginal daughter might have a navel ring and several tattoos, and it means nothing.
American Goy: You are saying that sluttiness is somehow BAD? Man.... Long live sluts, I say! The more the merrier! Bring on the sluts!
Yeah, until you wake up one morning and your Johnson feels a little weird and you scratch it and it kinda hurts and you look down at it and it's got all these weird little bumps all over it and so you go to the doctor and he says, "Dude, you've got the Human Papillomavirus and you're going to Disney World [right after your Johnson falls off]!!!"
And to think that it was less than two weeks ago that people were remarking about the subtle, refined eroticism of the young Angela Lansbury...
The person inventing a process for quick, painless and effective tattoo removal will soon have a net worth rivaling Gates or Buffet.
As one spending a lot of time in the football, weight training, etc. culture in my youth, there was always peer pressure to ink up, but I never took the plunge (though I came THIS close on drunken night in Tampa). I couldn't think of a good reason to get one, never mind what design to get. I think I agree with Douglas Coupland that the only truly post-modern tat would be a bar code.
Conservative estimate from observing the VISIBLE data at the gym, my girlfriend and I have decided that about 40% of the female 18-30 group are sporting ink. We wonder where to count the girl with 12, as she would probably have at least a few unseen! As the girls with ink are mostly talking to and flirting the guys with the ink at the gym, I see no class or status issue obtaining.
The numbers here in MA are skewed by the fact that tattooing was and illegal, underground activity for a long time, only being legalized at the turn of the century. Kids are making up for lost time, however, ignoring the fact that tats, like cigarettes, are a pretty reliable class marker.
Brutus
Tatooing is just another way to show you individualism - by doing exactly what countless millions others are doing.
mike r -- PUA = Pick Up Artist, ala "Mystery" from that VH1 show or Neil Strauss "the Game" about Pick Up Artists.
I found the show fascinating, not the least of which was my instinctive dislike for Mystery in particular and the whole pick up artist scene.
I finally decided I did not like them because they contorted themselves into weird parodies of themselves in a way that was unmanly merely to have as many girls as possible.
I certainly do see the need for Joe Average to have realistic assessments of female selection criteria and behavior and their own, at different stages of their lives. But I really disliked Mystery and found it sad and depressing that so many guys both needed it, and it worked. Because it speaks to a bottleneck, and a few guys monopolizing most of the women, never an environment for social peace.
i"I developed a distaste for helping people. How am I to know what kind of person this old helpless man is? If, of course, he wasnt old and helpless?"
I've actually had the libs pretending to be handicapped b/c there's a rumor going around that I plan to have them all euthanized when I become Emperor. I would've felt a strange sense of relief at seeing the man's gnarled hands as evidence that he wasn't just some old bolshevik practicing his acting skills for the good of the state.
I usually help out of habit, i.e. keeping the door open for the person behind me, things like that are so ingrained I'd have to be on guard constantly in order to block the response. However, I never give money to beggars any more believing they all have Mercedes parked around the corner. And those natural feelings of pity have been replaced by suspicion. Of course, my instant response to the tattooed is negative. They may mean no harm to me as an individual but they are probably liberals who are helping to destroy the country that is the last and only refuge from totalitarianism.
Those who believe New Zealand or Australia are options if the tattooed prevail here better take a closer look at the evolving political climate in both countries. BTW, did you know those wonderful Maoris used to eat human flesh? (One wonders that naive whites aren't getting tattooed with the Maori symbol for "the other white meat") Now, they're getting all kinds of AA for being oppressed by the white man. Go figure. ; )
From Dalrymple
The cause of criminality among the white population of England is perfectly obvious to any reasonably observant person, though criminologists have yet to notice it. This cause is the tattooing of the skin.
A slow-acting virus, like that of scrapie in sheep, is introduced into the human body via the tattooing needle and makes its way to the brain, where within a few years it causes the afflicted to steal cars, burgle houses, and assault people.
I first formulated my viral theory of criminality when I noticed that at least nine out of ten white English prisoners are tattooed, more than three or four times the proportion in the general population.
Who cares about promiscuity?
You should live the life you want. Life is short. Have fun.
No, life is not short. It's lasted for hundreds of millions of years, and it continues through a process called "reproduction". We will all benefit from your decision not to participate in this process.
Rob,
I'm in the middle of reading Dalrymple's book (Life at the Bottom)and I was sooo gunna quote that!
Besides the fact that it's low class and eventually you'll regret it, there's also a very practical and compassionate reason for not getting tattooed: blood donation centers typically won't take your blood if you've had a tattoo - ever.
Compassionate chicks (the only ones worth marrying) will actually go for that excuse.
Steve,
You're a genius. You scored 123+ hits (in a supposedly intellectual blog) on a short pseudo-pornographic piece on a pretty chick with tats without showing a pic.
By the time I graduated from college, a man could have six earrings in both ears, and it didn't mean a thing.
I don't know where or when you went to college, but my college english teacher wore 2 studs in each ear, and there was noooo doubt at all about his sexuality.
Today, a Baptist minister's virginal daughter might have a navel ring and several tattoos, and it means nothing.
It means she's not a virgin. (Fine, fine, "almost certainly not a virgin").
Danindc:"every girl with a tatoo is a whore";lucius:"True dat." Hey,dummies, the jokes on you! My MOTHER has a tatoo! So there!
blode said:It's all a racket, created by the mental institutions we send our children to. The LLMs obeyed the rules; they listened intently to the PC crap and noticed it made no sense, and tried to believe it anyway, and got socked in the brains by the inevitable neurosis.
I disagree. I think it does make sense, or at least it sounds like it makes sense, or that it should make sense. To a rational, logical nerd (I'm speaking from experience, obviously) when the girls complain about guys only wanting them for their bodies, treating them as "sex objects," moaning about the latest "azzhole" who broke their hearts, it makes all the sense in the world. It's only in applying it to the real world that one realizes what a crock it all is.
It's the same thing with "discrimination." Don't judge others by the color of their skin, they told us. Why of course, what could be more unfair than judging someone on the color of their skin? When they tell you blacks suffer poverty etc because of racism it, again, just makes sense, because everyone's dirty little secret is that they've looked at blacks and had some unbecoming thoughts about them so when the marxoids scream that subtle forms of racism exist and these are holding the black man down these LLMs, as you term them, gulp guiltily.
Similarly, when they tell us it's not actually crime, it's "fear of crime," it makes sense. Very few base their aversion to traversing through black neighborhoods on having checked the crime stats, it's just a "feeling" they have.
The LBMs didn't notice the PC crap made no sense, because they never paid attention in the first place. They made their scatalogical jokes, which the proles have decided is ample proof of "non-creepiness". And the LBMs got rewarded in exactly the way that matters most to adolescent males - fawning attention from females.
Most of them still mouth the platitudes, though; they picked them up but ignored them all the same. Their genius was to base their behavior on what demonstrably worked, rather than on what eggheads' theories said was supposed to work.
Bringing it back to race (hehe, what are we all here for?), it's like some valley girl saying all the right things about anti-racism but expecting to marry a white man and nothing but a white man (or at worst a whit-ish man -- like me :)), innocently assuming that the supply of whites is inexhaustible.
As for earrings, in my case, plenty of big city ethnics considered my first one a bit gay or underclass in 1995. (College liberals, of course, thought nothing of it.) I went on to get two in each in ear which was somewhat "out there" but created something of a buzz because it really suited me: I could have played a convincing ethnic badboy in 60s/70s flick, before ethnics began to be cast as the good guys.
Sometimes I wonder if PC isn't, in the end, a kind of demonstration of mental agility. Like proper manners or grooming or grammar or a sense of humor, remaining PC requires some extra mental resources. Showing off that you can remember never to say you're moving to a neighborhood where the kids playing on the street are mostly white, but instead will remember to say "it's a lovely neighborhood, very low crime, a couple families from my parish, just lovely," means that you're smarter than you look, smarter than you're required to be to do your job and live in your community. I imagine this has gone on forever--centuries ago, everyone knew the king's son was a gibbering half-wit fathered by his most trusted minister, the local priest was an illiterate drunkard, the local lord was gay as an easter bonnet, etc., but nobody was so crass as to say those things while sober.
Of course, this breaks down when we need to be honest discussing stuff that violates PC, in the same way that the impressively long peacock's tail that charms all the peahens will keep that fine, fit male from getting away from some predators.
i think some of it depends on where and how you grew up. i was actually surrounded my drugs sex and what not a lot as a young kid and grew up in a horrible enviroment. my mother has tattoos. my brother is a 'tattoo artist'. i recently found out my oldest daughter got some to my disapointment. ive never gotten one. you would think being surrounded by the stuff you would beleive i would approve but i dont. i use to also play music in bars, and all the girls in their had them as well.. my mom slept around.. i dont know.. maybe it has to do with all that, that i have a natural reaction to think its a slutty feministic thing to do. i wont tell people openly they cant have them, or shouldnt have them. i just know i really detest them personally, and the only person in my life who id hold accountable for it is my spouse; becuase i have to look at her, and have a physical relationship with her and it would gross me out if she ever got one so much i wouldnt want to touch her again.
Wow, I cannot believe how stuck up and narrow minded people commented this post...
I ran across this while searching for some pictures.
I am tattooed, I am not a whore (I am in a stable relationship, hadn't had may lovers or boyfriends (I had two relationships, both of them lasted cca 3 years). I am employed (and progressing on my job), and studying, and belong to upper class (if you can categorize that).
So, what do my tattoos mean? That I am still looking for sex, or I do not have high enough IQ to make good decisions? You people need to get out of your tight shells and look around, maybe you even notice that people changed in the last 50 years, and that tattoos do not say anything about the persons character or status, same as the way they dress or look.
Tattoos in porn are a huge turnoff for me: they say, I'm experienced/used/unclean, not innocent/fresh/clean. I would have thought almost all men would prefer clean to dirty, except for occasional pervs, but somehow we're supposed to be ashamed if we prefer innocence. Glamorizing anal sex seems vaguely related, and piercings are also a huge turnoff for me but they don't seem unclean so much as unnatural. I can picture bored sorority girls convincing themselves that an hour getting stabbed by a biker will make them feel more grown up... but when will wiser heads start to prevail?
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