After winning the Women's Downhill ski race yesterday despite an injury that left her skiing primarily on one leg, Lindsey Vonn, the American champion, broke into tears during her interview until her husband interjected something like, "That's enough crying, Lindsey. Today is a good day," and led her away from the cameras.
Vonn is a big, super-strong, ultra-competitive beautiful girly girl. And that's not too uncommon in the Winter Olympics. The Winter Olympics are always being criticized for all the blue-eyed victors, but a high degree of sexual equality in sports and physical labor is a long-standing cultural attribute that increases the farther north you go in Europe, and among Americans from Northern Europe.
The buttkicking Nordic babe has a more than 1000-year-long history in North America from Leif Eric's ferocious sister Freydis Ericsdottir, who took the lead in battling the Skraelings for Vinland, down to Elin Nordegren Woods running amok with Tiger's golf club last Thanksgiving.
I think it has something to do with the lack of Jersey Shore / Silvio Berlusconi-style strutting machismo the farther north in Europe. If an Italian superbo is laying on the bronzer, hair gel, and pinky rings as symbols of his masculinity, then an Italian women feels impelled to lay on the long fingernails and other excesses of femininity. In contrast, if a Swedish man is uncontriving about his masculinity, it frees up Swedish women to be uncontrived about their femininity.
Vonn is a big, super-strong, ultra-competitive beautiful girly girl. And that's not too uncommon in the Winter Olympics. The Winter Olympics are always being criticized for all the blue-eyed victors, but a high degree of sexual equality in sports and physical labor is a long-standing cultural attribute that increases the farther north you go in Europe, and among Americans from Northern Europe.
The buttkicking Nordic babe has a more than 1000-year-long history in North America from Leif Eric's ferocious sister Freydis Ericsdottir, who took the lead in battling the Skraelings for Vinland, down to Elin Nordegren Woods running amok with Tiger's golf club last Thanksgiving.
I think it has something to do with the lack of Jersey Shore / Silvio Berlusconi-style strutting machismo the farther north in Europe. If an Italian superbo is laying on the bronzer, hair gel, and pinky rings as symbols of his masculinity, then an Italian women feels impelled to lay on the long fingernails and other excesses of femininity. In contrast, if a Swedish man is uncontriving about his masculinity, it frees up Swedish women to be uncontrived about their femininity.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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94 comments:
I'd drag her by the hair back to my longboat!
And I'm not even Scandanavian (actually Scots-Irish; the real kind).
I think it has something to do with the lack of Jersey Shore-style strutting machismo the farther north in Europe. If an Italian superbo is laying on the bronzer, hair gel, and pinky rings as symbols of his masculinity, then an Italian women feels impelled to lay on the long fingernails and other excesses of femininity.
Compare my point about greater Mediterranean [Jewish/Catholic] misogyny on a couple of recent threads [here and here].
Interesting point. As an American women of northern European descent I tend to find men of the same background the most enjoyable to be around. I feel I can act the most natural around them. They don't put women up on pedestals and they don't hold them to a very rigid standard of femininity. Guidos are such a turnoff, I just can't relate to them.
The reason the women are so feminine in Latin America is because the men are so feminine.
In traditional societies, people are stuck in their assigned slot. In modern societies, we are more free to be as we like, which results in more gender variance:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/science/09tier.html
I think the ultimate example of a butch German woman would be Queen Brunhilda---
Clotaire then accused Brunhilda of the death of ten kings of the Franks ... it is usually said to include Sigebert I, Chilperic I, Theudebert II, Theuderic II, Sigebert II, Merovech (Chilperic's son), Merovech (Theuderic's son), Corbo (Theuderic's son), and Childebert (Theuderic's son) and the sons of Theudebert.
According to the Liber Historiae Francorum:
"Then the army of the Franks and Burgundians joined into one, all shouted together that death would be most fitting for the very wicked Brunhilda. Then King Clotaire ordered that she be lifted on to a camel and led through the entire army. Then she was tied to the feet of wild horses and torn apart limb from limb. Finally she died. Her final grave was the fire. Her bones were burnt."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunhilda_of_Austrasia
Well, there's also the access to snow part...
But maybe these are correlated in some way.
'Winter Olympics are always being criticized for all the blue-eyed victors..'*
Not that I don't believe your assertions but can you add a link or two?
* First they came for blue-eyed Winter Olympics downhill champions and I did not speak out...
I'm not saying your thesis is wrong but you're going to have to carve out a huge exception for the United Kingdom.
Women's sport in the UK - particularly team sport - has close to a zero profile (on TV and in the papers) and equivalent public interest.
Football (soccer) dominates. The residual coverage and participation go to rugby, cricket and golf (games which women don't seem to be drawn to play).
The Brits have never been into the winter olympic type sports.
On another Vonn topic, I think her injuries were exagerated by NBC and the media in order to make the story more interesting. Kind of like Curt Schilling and his bloody sock.
Here she is showing her workout.
http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/assetid=88729bc8-16bb-4e93-8b66-5888f5077be3.html
"The Brits have never been into the winter olympic type sports."
That's because there is no real winter in the UK.
I was watching this, too, but I don't like at all women participating in these ultra-masculine sports where they can be badly hurt.
The only reason I started discussing this with my son and husband was because my little guy started laughing insanely whenever a skier fell. I told him not to laugh because they were women and could be hurt very badly. My husband then quipped that they shouldn't be doing it.
BTW, the very next skier to fall just kept sliding and sliding, then moved to the sitting position and kept right on sliding and sliding on her butt. She finally stopped whereupon she was so mad that she threw one of her poles and slammed the other into the snow. I could not suppress my laughter at that one.
We were watching it only to pass time waiting for Shaun White. The half-pipe is my least favorite sport, but he's such a pleasure to watch! He is one extremely intense and passionate young man.
Sexual equality also has to do with lack of harem-building and social flatness. If there is not much social distance between King and followers, and not much harem building, women are not guarded from mate-poaching and harem building.
Northern Europe was more thinly settled, fewer food resources, with women needed to work, and often hard, helping with fishing, hunting, high-labor, low return agriculture (ever roast and peel chestnuts, that is WORK!)
You see that today of course with the classic Sarah and Todd Palin pairing, with Sarah Palin in her early years working a fishing boat, hunting, etc. and later Todd Palin watching the kids, quitting his job (which was a job not a career) to watch the kids etc. as she rose to Governor.
The early Romans, pressed for resources, were known for the rough equality they had with their women, as were the farming-land poor Greeks.
The formula seems to be, rough social equality among men, rough resource equality, hard times and struggle for food/resources requiring women participating, leads to rough sexual equality. You saw this on the US Frontier, from before Daniel Boone to the closing of the West, early Greece and Rome, among the Celts and Germanic tribes, etc. It is not just snow though a cold climate usually means fewer food resources before the industrial revolution.
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There's another point about women's sports in the Winter Olympics particularly. They don't generate much money for the participants, so it requires a robust middle class, with supportive parents, and a good social position for women.
Nordic women are naturally shiny so they don't need all the jewels and make-up to shine and be noticed.
It's partly that hair. Go past a Swedish park and you will see female gardeners dressed in overalls, big boots and caps. Despite these masculine clothes you can still see that hair and they remain unmistakably feminine.
I once had a girlfriend from Sacramento California. For the first few months she wouldn't let me see her without her wearing make-up, covering her face if I turned up unexpectedly. In Sweden, women don't seem to use much make-up or wear much jewellery.
Australian girls are tougher and more determined. Swedish girls are bigger and more beautiful. I'm Australian and I live here in Australia with my Swedish wife.
In harsh environments everyone has to pitch in and, just as with modern feminism, if she produces wealth you have to defer to her. I suspect that men and women prefer their men masculine and their women feminine. Politically, that is anathma and nothing upsets the elite more than a young girl that takes an inteest in dolls. Nothing delights them more than a man who applies to the nursing program. They love to educate yound women as lawyers and engineers only to have the women retire a few year into their career. Here in Bergen County NJ (no lack of rich men) every third woman I meet at the gym is a "retired" lawyer. She is typically mid thirties.
In Africa the woman seem to do a lot (most?) of the work, but still they don't have equality.
I don't think Lindsey Vonn is that hot. Johnny Weir is the hottest woman at these Winter Olympics.
Yeah right. When the once foot-bound Chinese women start dominating in two Winter Olympic cycles, what theory of superiority will you proffer then?
Yeah right. When the once foot-bound Chinese women start dominating in two Winter Olympic cycles, what theory of superiority will you proffer then?
If you invest enough I think practically anyone can dominate a specific sport. I think West African derived sprinter types could easily dominate speed skating if they were properly trained.
I don't know. Pagan Germanic men had very exaggerated forms of masculinity. They wore helmets with horns, carried giant swords, drank a lot of mead and burped often, wrestled with bears, draped themselves with big thick fur, and etc. (I saw this in "The Vikings") According to Tacitus, Germanic women were wild and warrior-like and cheered their fighting men from the sidelines. It seems like the overly masculine nature of Germanic men rubbed off on the females.
The difference between southern and nothern Europe is they came to Christianity at different levels of development. When the sobering and equalizing faith of Christianity spread in the South, places like Rome and Greece were already high civilizations. They had long ago developed High Paganism with great architecture, great literature, elaborate rituals, fancy dresses, refined manners, and/or some bloated but elaborate excesses. Paganism of the South was so highly developed and admired that much of it survived the egalitarian and universalist influences of Christianity
Paganism of the Northern Germanic peoples, on the other hand, was pretty barbaric and arrrgggh-ish, thus seen as beyond redemption.
If the new Christian order preserved and used pagan temples and embraced pagan intellectual/cultural ideas in the South, most of Northern pagan culture was wiped off clean in a waves of 'cultural genocide'. It was seen as beastly, satanic, and wicked.
It's no wonder that the purist strain of Lutheranism began up north. Northern Europeans had less of a proud or notable pre-Christian tradition or heritage.
Since Northern Europeans became purely immersed in Christian ideals and less anchored to the past(which had been crude and barbaric and, for that reason, wiped off the map by the coming of Christianity), it's possible that Northern Europeans became, by nature, more ideologically oriented. So, with the rise of Christianity and then ideals of social progress--equality and justice and all that--, it's possible that the Northern Europeans took to them with greater earnestness, seriousness, and purity of heart than the tradition-bound peoples of Southern Europe.
There's a paradox here. The South was held back from future progress because it had progressed so much in the past; their past glory became not only a proud tradition but a heavy cultural baggage.
The North, which had been more barbarian and backward, could progress further and faster because its pre-Christian barbaric 'tradition' had been totally wiped clean. It had nothing to look back to.
It could also be temperamental. Southern Europeans could be more colorful and show-offy, thus less likely to focus on ESSENTIALS. Compare Argentina with Anglo-American, and the former cared more for style whereas the latter cared more for substance.
Quoting myself:
Here in Bergen County NJ (no lack of rich men) every third woman I meet at the gym is a "retired" lawyer. She is typically mid thirties.
Think of the use of resources. Undergraduate education at about 50 thousand dollars per year, total 200 thousand dollars spent or invested. Law school same smount for three years, invested 150 thousand dollars.
Net educational investment 350 thousand dollars, plus years of youth spent, years a woman could be starting a family, gone.
She gets to play a game, spend 350 thousand dolars of her parents money supported by every conventional belief, forgoe seven years of fertility, and then decide to become a house mom at 35 for two designer kids. This, suddenly is better than the crappy world of making money and pleasing bosses. What a disconnect.
"Germanic women were wild and warrior-like and cheered their fighting men from the sidelines. It seems like the overly masculine nature of Germanic men rubbed off on the females."
Thata pretty masculine, cheering from the sidelines.
Thrasymachus said,
"The reason the women are so feminine in Latin America is because the men are so feminine."
Latin American men feminine? Huh? I need more information.
So, is this why I find Asian men a bit fem...because Asian women are fem? Actually, I just think that I tend to see them as less masculine than Euro men because they are short, slight of build, and hairless.
"On another Vonn topic, I think her injuries were exagerated by NBC and the media in order to make the story more interesting."
I thought so too until I saw the replays and slow-mos of her downhill run. She was clearly favoring her bad leg, unable to use the edges of that one ski, and it's amazing she still had the awesome strength to hold her line and post a winning time. It was a brutal, icy mountain. She was really risking life and limb.
End of the line for Elin Nordegren.
Women's sport in the UK - particularly team sport - has close to a zero profile (on TV and in the papers) and equivalent public interest.
Women's team sports are also close to zero profile in the United States as well. In fact, outside of basketball the profile IS zero, and even in basketball it's barely above water. The WNBA is a big money-loser that exists solely due to the NBA's subsidies. As for women's college basketball, it's telling that despite being hugely dominant, most of the University of Connecticut's games are carried on public (i.e. taxpayer subsidized) television because commercial stations aren't interested.
Peter
"They wore helmets with horns"
No they did not wear helmets with horns. Much of your description of pagan nordic men is rather stereotyped and ridiculous; laughable even. It would be tedious to counter it point by point.
****
As to remarks above about Britain, I've watched UK sports news here in the USA (Sky Sports News, etc) and they do cover women's sports - tennis, English national teams in football (soccer) and cricket, field hockey, athletics, etc. But the sporting culture in the UK in regards to women's sports lags behind the USA and the rest of Europe.
The problem with the UK is that it has neither the USA's scholastic athletic system, nor continental Europe's sports club system, and thus women's sports have lagged considerably in the UK.
Title IX has helped women's sports in the USA, but even without it, universities, colleges, high schools, etc were supporting women's sports. Likewise in continental Europe, the multi-sport sports club is common, so even though football (soccer) is the dominant sport, the big football clubs also support other sports, and thus have no problem supporting women's sports as well.
Whereas almost no British football club wants to divert money to money-losing women's football teams (much less to other, non-football sports). There is not the kind of institutionalized financial support for women's sport in the UK that you see in the USA and in continental Europe.
As to winter sports: Britain used to be quite good at winter sports, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Partly it is climate that has changed - England developed the modern rules for bandy (the ancestor of ice hockey) but bandy died out in England as the fens area that used to freeze up in winter no longer does so - bandy is going strong in Scandinavia, Russia, central asia, etc - it is sort of like ice hockey with a small ball instead of a puck and a big football field sized rink with no boards, with rules similar to football (soccer) and field hockey. Bandy might become an Olympic winter sport eventually. The UK also won some medals in ice hockey in the early 20th century, but ice hockey is a very marginal sport in the UK now.
If you've been watching the Olympic curling competition, you'll see that the UK has a curling team. But that's mostly a Scottish sport; I don't think the rest of the UK knows much about curling or cares about it. It's a Scottish sport in origin, but unlike golf it has not spread to the rest of the UK much.
"Northern Europe was more thinly settled, fewer food resources, with women needed to work, and often hard, helping with fishing, hunting, high-labor, low return agriculture (ever roast and peel chestnuts, that is WORK!)
You see that today of course with the classic Sarah and Todd Palin pairing, with Sarah Palin in her early years working a fishing boat, hunting, etc."
WTF? Buddy, Sarah and Todd worked on a fishing boat for what, two months a year? It was like an Eskimos-only fishing season which Todd had access to because he's one eighth Eskimo or whatever. In other words, it was a cake subsidy. Add that to the cake subsidy they both get (along with every other Alaskan) in the form of an annual allowance from Alaska's oil royalty fund. They hunted for sport -- it's not like they would have gone hungry if they didn't bag a caribou.
Comparing the Palins to pre-modern (pre-welfare state) Scandinavians scraping by on their own labor is ludicrous.
Steve:
You should re-post Freya's comment as its own post. There's a lot of meat in it.
Anon:
"She gets to play a game, spend 350 thousand dolars of her parents money supported by every conventional belief, forgoe seven years of fertility, and then decide to become a house mom at 35 for two designer kids."
It's not a game. The $350k gets her into the law firm where she meets her future husband, who will earn many multiples of that in the time they live together. As for giving up "seven years of fertility", what's the difference? It's not as if she would have had 8 kids if she started having them in her 20s. She'd probably have the same two kids. You want women to have 8 kids, go to Ramallah.
Wikipedia notes: "Vonn was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and was raised in Apple Valley, MN. She was on skis at age 2 before moving into Erich Sailer's renowned development program at Buck Hillin the next city door to Apple Valley, which also produced slalom racer Kristina Koznick."
Any relation?
I'm not so sure about the sexual equality of sports in Northern Europe being anything but a very recent development. Also, an awful lot of Nordic girls are highly attracted to the strutting guido types.
One attractive quality Nordic women used to have was a kind of quiet modesty. That's gone now, and the ones who still possess it are dying off. I grew up surrounded by Norwegians, and the older ladies were very proper and feminine. My Norwegian grandma never even wore pants. So perhaps this used to be true, but no more.
If anything, it was a culture of thrift that kept Nordic women from putting on ostentatious displays. I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating that Scandinavians were very poor compared to other Europeans for a couple hundred years.
However, if you read the sagas the women were fond of gold torques and bracelets, and demanded furs and finery from their men during the Viking age. Ibn Fadlan documents this from his time trading with the Rus as well. The men of the time were heavily tattooed and gussied up as well. In fact, the men were so vain that when they croaked they had to be buried with a ship, a horse and couple of "virgins."
The blond buttkicking babe is mostly a myth. The toughest Norwegian women are generally the brown-haired sparkplugs you see x-c skiing, and they're pretty butch for the most part.
As for Vonn, she was born Kildow, which looks pretty Irish to me. Actually, you can see it in her eyes -- she's a gael, not a norsewoman. That figures, as the Irish girls are usually more formidable than the Norse.
Here's ol' Lindsey looking green-eyed and Irish to me:
Lindsey Vonn
mark wrote:
"The Brits have never been into the winter olympic type sports."
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The Scots invented curling, didn't they? It is an Olympic sport now.
Not many women in their mid thirties spent 50 grand a year for undergrad. Top schools were more like 30 grand a year when they would have been there. Very few people pay the full rate too.
"I think it has something to do with the lack of Jersey Shore / Silvio Berlusconi-style strutting machismo the farther north in Europe. If an Italian superbo is laying on the bronzer, hair gel, and pinky rings as symbols of his masculinity, then an Italian women feels impelled to lay on the long fingernails and other excesses of femininity."
Steven, that's a little, well, "racist", isn't it? Aren't you adopted? Your original last name might be "Salerio." I'm from New York, I've met some 6'4 250 lb. Eye-talians like THOMAS BRUSO. )
(come on Jody I'm leaving fresh meat before a bear!)
"They wore helmets with horns"
No they did not wear helmets with horns. Much of your description of pagan nordic men is rather stereotyped and ridiculous; laughable even. It would be tedious to counter it point by point.
I saw it in the movies, many in fact. And don't forget the metal breastplates.
"Germanic women were wild and warrior-like and cheered their fighting men from the sidelines. It seems like the overly masculine nature of Germanic men rubbed off on the females."
Thata pretty masculine, cheering from the sidelines.
They weren't shaking their asses and pom poms like cutesy highschool cheerleaders but growling for blood and acting like rowdy biker chicks.
Lindsey Vonn is not remotely hot and women's sports are not remotely interesting - I don't understand the point frankly of watching inferior athletes; it's like having a basketball league for midgets (or whites).
Vonn is a big, super-strong, ultra-competitive beautiful girly girl.
I just checked out her sexy bikini Sports Illustrated photos and she doesn't come off as physically "big" or "strong" in the pics at all. And the camera supposedly adds 10 lbs right? But Wiki does say she is 5'10".
In the SI photos she looks average female size and only mildly athletic. She looks very normal in her appearance. Nothing about her physique screams "olympian!" or "jock!"
All I can say is bravo for her staying a natural athlete. It is obvious from the pics that she doesn't take steroids...unlike some other famous olympic athletes we have known.
Lindsey Vonn - Swimsuit 2010
Anyhoo, even in America winter olympians seem to skew North European.
But thanks for giving me another excuse to mention a certain Finnish beauty ice.
America's female contingent is said to suck this year, so I'll feel no disloyalty cheering for her.
"The Brits have never been into the winter olympic type sports."
That's because there is no real winter in the UK.
I'm losing faith in Great Britain. Reading Theodore Dalrymple has got me depressed about the homeland. They did manage to take 4th in the medal count in Peking 2008, but their winter count always stinks. Sure, there's no "real" winter there, but they do have these things called "ice rinks" - hockey, speed skating and figure skating, along with curling, can all be done indoors, and usually are.
If you want to see how Liebour socialism has turned Brits into a bunch of pantywaists look no further than this Liebour commercial from last year, featuring "comedian" Eddie Izzard, who hasn't been funny in a decade.
Why do you use the term Nordic when the Finnish are so bad at winter sports?
And the Finnish don't seem to win Nobel prizes unlike the Swedes or Danes.
Do Finns feel sorry for themselves when they compare themselves to the Scandinavians?
This is one of the dumbest posts you've made in a long time. Northern Europeans dominate in the Winter Olympics because they (and their many Canadian and northern US descendants) have more snow and thus a longer tradition of winter sports. Same reason Koreans, Japanese and Chinese dominate over more southerly East Asians. It's got nothing to do with hair/eye color or cultural attributes. It has to do with weather.
And reducing all Italians and southern Europeans to the small, marginalized and hated (even by most Italians) guido subculture -- absolutely ridiculous. That's like saying that chavs represent all British people.
"Yeah right. When the once foot-bound Chinese women start dominating in two Winter Olympic cycles, what theory of superiority will you proffer then?"
Settle down. These northern sports aren't native to China. So there haven't been as many Chinese interested in training for them. Also the Chinese outnumber Nords at least 50 to 1. With such an enormous pool to draw from, they should have no trouble being competitive.
" Buddy, Sarah and Todd worked on a fishing boat for what, two months a year? It was like an Eskimos-only fishing season which Todd had access to because he's one eighth Eskimo or whatever. In other words, it was a cake subsidy."
If your friends come over to help you take the wheels off your new house, you just might be a redneck.
If you consider fishing in Alaska to be some kind of privilege granted by our overlords, you just might be a serf.
I said, "Australian girls are tougher and more determined. Swedish girls are bigger and more beautiful."
This girl supports my first claim but then goes and undermines my second claim.
A Mormon snowboarder from Australia with a Jewish-sounding name. Now there's your multiculture. If only she looked less you know what.
This is just second-hand reporting but I had a friend that started going to Scandinavian countries expressly for the ease of forming sexual relationships--back in the '50s. Back then, he told me that, even in those days, the place was full of southern European men, northern Africans, and a fair number of black Africans, all intent on the same quest as he was--and all, seemingly, doing well at it.
In particular, he mentioned that this annual "invasion" (during the northern summer) seemed to draw little or no hostility from the native men (even to his telling me that, at the beach, men didn't even seem to mind other guys flirting with the gals they--the natives--were with). It seemed to him that the lack of jealousy and possessiveness were simply an outgrowth of a culture of greater (than other places) sexual
equality of long standing.
Eventually, he wound up with a Finnish wife.
Here's ol' Lindsey looking green-eyed and Irish to me: Lindsey Vonn
A little off-topic, but with a countenance like that, the sky's the limit as far as what that chick can now command in endorsement contracts.
Wheaties, Kellogg's Corn Flakes, Estee Lauder, Maybelline - you name it, that chick could endorse it.
Wow, is she a cutie-pie...
Nice post! But you forgot to mention Sweden's own magnificent Anja Pärson, who took a terrific fall trying to best Vonn's downhill time. Anja soared 60 meters and fell on landing, skidding across the finish line sans skis at about 55 mph. She managed to get up and pulled herself together to win the bronze in the combined event on the same course the following day.
I can also vouch for your observations personally, being married to a beautiful Swedish neurosurgeon, who is also just about the most capable, courageous and steadfast person I have ever met.
"She gets to play a game, spend 350 thousand dolars of her parents money supported by every conventional belief, forgoe seven years of fertility, and then decide to become a house mom at 35 for two designer kids. This, suddenly is better than the crappy world of making money and pleasing bosses. What a disconnect."
Ha, funny you mention this, I just read a review of a new book out on loneliness written by...surprise! a 39 year old Canadian female ex-environmental lawyer. With four cats.
Not a bad looking lady, and noticeably less bitchy than most women. How on earth could this woman be lonely? I'd hardly have less of a problem believing her had she complained of erectile dysfunction.
There has to be a sex attraction component at play here; women bail out on the workforce around the time their looks begin to deteriorate rapidly. Whiskey, can you give us the uberbeta analysis here?
http://www.lonelythebook.com/
We Brits DOMINATE women's curling, mate.
Fun post, but change final sentence from Sweden to Norway, which has better athletes, but fewer beauties.
The winter olympics draw from a small genetic pool of mostly upper-middle class+ kids. As such, it's not surprising that more common feminine women (eg non-hormonal freaks) like Von can still win out.
In more competitive sports, one would expect only the far tail of humanity to be competitive. For women, this means those that are very masculine: the many lesibians in the WNBA or ripped black sprinters (or the SA hermaphrodite). The Williams sisters are biologically teenage boys playing against less stringently genetically selected women.
Even in my lifetime, it seems that country club sports of tennis and the LPGA have noticibly butched up. I suspect that as womens' soccer becomes more competitive in the US it too will become more masculine.
The success of (feminine) blonde buttkicking babes in sports is inversely proportional to the competitiveness and lesibian ratio.
I just love the great overarching explanations of everything that you get in Freya's and Whiskey's posts. Whether they're true or not is hardly the issue. It's that human, all too human, compulsion to wrap everything up in a great all encompassing theory that fascinates.
"You should re-post Freya's comment as its own post. There's a lot of meat in it."
Right Typed Fred. It is an excellent, and well-written post.
Bob - Queen Brunhilda (Brunehault) of Austrasia was not German. She was a daughter of the Spanish Visigothic king Athanagild. Her sister Galswintha was married to Chilperic I of Neustria, and was murdered at the instigation of Chilperic's mistress Fredegonde. This brought about 40 years of war between Sigebert I, the husband of Brunehault, and Chilperic, who married Fredegonde after the death of Galswintha, and their respective descendants.
Fredegonde far more than Brunehault deserves to be called bloodthirsty and ruthless. She not only brought about the death Galswintha but of all of Chilperic's children by her, and the ensuing warfare killed Sigebert, Brunehault, and all their offspring. All surviving Merovingian lines descend through Fredegonde, a testimony to her vindictive determination.
The history of Sigebert I and Brunehault is preserved in very distorted form in the figures of Siegfried and Brunnhilda in the Niebelungenlied; Brunehault's end in the flames is re-enacted every time "Die Walkure" is performed.
On the other hand, Fredegonde is probably the archetype of the wicked stepmother so frequently met with in traditional fairy tales.
It's not a game. The $350k gets her into the law firm where she meets her future husband, who will earn many multiples of that in the time they live together. As for giving up "seven years of fertility", what's the difference? It's not as if she would have had 8 kids if she started having them in her 20s. She'd probably have the same two kids. You want women to have 8 kids, go to Ramallah.
--
Thank-you, and it's true. Women who have kids in their 20s don't generally have more than 2 either, although I know some who had a 3rd kid who was usually an "accident" in her late 30s.
And not to mention, she gets to step back into a decent-paying career once the kids are older. Maybe not make as much money as she would have if she stayed on the partner track, but decent.
In general, however, I think society would be better off if there were fewer lawyers of either gender. We've become ultra-legalistic, somewhat like the Byzantines when their civilization started to decline.
Soviet Union and other commie nations produced a lot of tough women athletes, and this may have something to do with egalitarian essentialism at the core of Marxism. There was no 'man' nor 'woman' but only the all-purpose comrade. In the Soviet Union, female commissars dressed like men. During the Maoist era, all Chinese men and women dressed alike. It's no wonder that some of the most beastly female athletes came out of USSR, Romania, East Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia, China, etc. Even after the fall of communism, this legacy continues, with Russia producing many great female athletes.
In contrast to egalitarian essentialism--present in purist Christianity and Communism--, there is what might be called traditional ornamentalism. Under this system, a woman is culturally defined as different from men. As a prized possession of men, she is ornamentalized and confined to her sphere. There is the man's world and there is the woman's world, and they are to remain separate. You see this among many traditional pagan cultures.
What of Islamic culture? It has elements of egalitarian essentialism, but if Christianity really broke with the past and eventually spawned modern liberalism and Marxism, Islam maintained much of the cultural baggage of the Arab tribes. In embracing the universal and egalitarian, Christianity abandoned--at least in theory--the old ways. In contrast, Islam essentially universalized what was particular to the Arabs. Christianity sought to spread ideas. Islam sought to spread a way of life. Since Arab tribes treated women as mere possessions, women remained thus under Islam.
Of course, women were not exactly free under Christianity. And indeed there was much in church teachings about women needing to be dutiful wives and all that, but that was not in the original teachings of Jesus. Given the nature of the founding text, the Christian world was bound to move toward greater idealism of universalist egalitarianism. The most radical form was the godawful communism which turned everyone into equal prisonmates of an iron utopia. But, it produced some great female athletes.
@Whiskey
When is your PhD thesis titled "Why Everybody Other Than Jew-loving Europeans Suck: Because They Are All Harem-Builders" coming up? If you don't find that a propagandistic enough topic for your free-wheeling bullshitting urges, you can give "Why Beta-Hating Shiksas Must Be Stopped Immediately By Bombing Iran" a shot.
Come on dude, one of these days your efforts to derail the whole HBD discussion for neocon purposes should come to fruition. Don't give up.
@Anon NE Lady
They don't put women up on pedestals and they don't hold them to a very rigid standard of femininity. Guidos are such a turnoff, I just can't relate to them.
Are these the guidos living in Jersey Shore, hon, or you have in mind all Mediterranean ethnies? Most women and men in MY social environment do NOT display any of the ridiculous attitudes people on Jersey Shore display. And I AM living in a Mediterranean country. When I was growing up (in a family with 4 sisters and 1 brother on mom's side, 3 brothers and 1 sister on dad's side, and almost 2 kids per each family), in family dinners and such gatherings, we were supposed to not even raise our voices above a certain level since it was considered rude and disrespectful to elders. Nor were the women in my family or my social surroundings excessively feminine, or the men effeminate or anything, despite Thrasymachus's comment to give the impression that non-Euro societies' men/women are all effeminate. All sexually-oriented display of emotions were very subdued and very discreet. People behaved themselves, in other words.
All this excessive feminization started with the younger generations, with the progress of liberalism and sexual egalitarianism/feminism. As we all know, Liberalism is the work of... harem-builders, right, Whiskey? Who then converted the SWPL people to Islamofascism, right?
Jeez, Mossad must have created a task force to channelize all these pro-HBD, anti-feminist efforts to bombing Iran. Ab-freakin'-solutely fascinating.
--
You guys might want to take a break from projecting the preposterous attitudes people from all sorts of ethnicities from around the world -- leading the mad, pampered, decadent modern-day American urban life -- display in your neck of the woods these days to all tribes from 10,000 BC onwards from Paraguay to Pakistan.
JT
> compulsion to wrap everything up in a great all encompassing theory that fascinates <
Where would bullshit artists be without it?
"Queen Brunhilda (Brunehault) of Austrasia was not German. She was a daughter of the Spanish Visigothic king Athanagild."
Sigh. That's German, dude.
despite an injury that left her skiing primarily on one leg, Lindsey Vonn, the American champion, broke into tears during her interview until her husband interjected something like, "That's enough crying, Lindsey. Today is a good day," and led her away from the cameras.
The quote by Steve provides stark evidence that women, whether blonde Nordics, darker Italians, or very dark Africans can never be regarded as “blue eyed (or brown eyed) butt kickers.” Lindsey Vonn was doing what women have been doing under stress since homo erectus. Crying! Not that men don’t cry--they do--but in truth women are 4.5 times more lachrymose. Crying is a call for understanding, support, and too often a signal that says “I quit.” A sign of weakness no baseball player would wish to see his manager indulge, and no football player watch his quarterback engage.
Nor would any enlisted man desire to see his company captain sobbing as she led him off on a search and destroy mission. The muddled gender situation in the armed services has brought about the removal of a number of distressed female officers in Iraq, some of them blonde and blue eyed. They are generally transferred and administered proper (and expensive) therapy, but generally keep their rank. Hell, ask any army drill instructor about teary eyed women and their butt kicking propensity to quit (Don’t waste time asking the brass.)
Which is a big reason why, whether from Norway, Nigeria, or Nicaragua, women athletes can never be serious butt kickers.
despite an injury that left her skiing primarily on one leg, Lindsey Vonn, the American champion, broke into tears during her interview until her husband interjected something like, "That's enough crying, Lindsey. Today is a good day," and led her away from the cameras.
The quote by Steve provides stark evidence that women, whether blonde Nordics, darker Italians, or very dark Africans can never be regarded as “blue eyed (or brown eyed) butt kickers.” Lindsey Vonn was doing what women have been doing under stress since homo erectus. Crying! Not that men don’t cry--they do--but in truth women are 4.5 times more lachrymose. Crying is a call for understanding, support, and too often a signal that says “I quit.” A sign of weakness no baseball player would wish to see his manager indulge, and no football player watch his quarterback engage.
Nor would any enlisted man desire to see his company captain sobbing as she led him off on a search and destroy mission. The muddled gender situation in the armed services has brought about the removal of a number of distressed female officers in Iraq, some of them blonde and blue eyed. They are generally transferred and administered proper (and expensive) therapy, but generally keep their rank. Hell, ask any army drill instructor about teary eyed women and their butt kicking propensity to quit (Don’t waste time asking the brass.)
Which is a big reason why, whether from Norway, Nigeria, or Nicaragua, women athletes can never be serious butt kickers.
In contrast to egalitarian essentialism--present in purist Christianity and Communism--, there is what might be called traditional ornamentalism. Under this system, a woman is culturally defined as different from men.
Women are different from from men, and any "universalism" which is not aware of that basic fact will eventually be undone, much as communism was. Regardless of how many butch women athletes if can produce while it lasts.
"Those High Plains people, they made it somehow/ You spend your life leanin' into a hard wind/ You're less likely to take a bow." - John Hiatt
You guys will belive just about anything they tell you to won't you?
Sorry, Lindsey Vonn has the face and body of any teenager you would see in the mall, and Tora Bright looks like she would wear hiking boots to a formal dance.
Allyson Felix blows them both away, and she's not even considered attractive by the MSM.
Anon of 2/19 - Whether the Visigoths were really German depends on what you understand German to mean. By the time of Brunehault and Galswintha the Romanized Visigoths had ceased to live in what is now Germany for two centuries. They were by then no more German than the Normans of William the Conqueror's time were still Norse.
It may be of interest to note that such surviving ethnic Goths as there may be are claimed as subjects by Sweden, whose king was traditionally styled "by the grace of God, king of the Swedes, Goths, and Wends." The Wends are, in the Latin version of the style, equated with another historic barbarian tribe: "Dei Gratia Suecorum, Gothorum et Vandalorum Rex." They are not Teutons, but rather a Slavic people.
Women's sports is kind of like watching high school sports - it can be interesting but you know you're not watching the best athletes.
It's probably good that most sports in the winter olympics are not efficiently recruiting talent. Having relatively normal, sometimes pretty, feminine women is a draw for most of the mainstream women who watch it with their hubbies.
Think of the WNBA. Who wants to watch a bunch of butch, often ugly, women play a shadow of the real game? Are there any professional WNBA players yet who can even dunk? At least if WNBA players were more normal in appearance, it might be more relatable and pleasant to watch.
The only reason anybody watches women's sports is their looks and personality. That's why Lindsey Vonn has been so publicized. She's an attractive, strong, girl next door who also happens to be a champion skier. It's awesome that she was crying. It shows she can still be feminine even while kicking ass. I like the combination.
All of you criticizing her would never ever kick her out of bed. As a Southern European guy I'll take 5'10 of long legged athletic Nordic/Irish skier any day of the week.
"Which is a big reason why, whether from Norway, Nigeria, or Nicaragua, women athletes can never be serious butt kickers."
Christo, I don't think he meant the women were serious butt-kickers compared to men or anything. He is comparing Nordic women athletes to the standards of other women around the world and admiring their traditions. I see nothing wrong with that. Everyone knows it's ridiculous to compare women to men in any sport that is remotely mainstream.(the only sport I can think of that would be comparable would be target shooting? perhaps.) But still, that doesn't keep the women from enjoying their athletic pursuits in the meantime. Women enjoy competition too, although perhaps not quite as intensely as men. Think about the ancient Spartans- their women participated in sporting events despite the fact that their mens sports were obviously a more important event. You'd think most men would be pleased about young women getting involved in athletics, especially since more and more women are getting disgustingly obese these days...
"Nor would any enlisted man desire to see his company captain sobbing as she led him off on a search and destroy mission."
i know that's not funny but I started laughing and it's not stopping....
For people who know and accept the basic sex differences, watching women's sports is no problem at all. Certain competitive traits are attractive in women because it tells us what they bring to the table genetically (makes us think in other words we are mentally adept at grading women's athletic performance on the curve).
I don't trust guys that get to hung up on the fact that we "are not watching the best" etc.
"Lindsey Vonn was doing what women have been doing under stress since homo erectus. Crying!"
Women can be tougher than you give them credit for. Giving birth isn't exactly a pain-free proposition. Women have also proven themselves in combat (as fighter pilots in the USSR for example).
Are there any professional WNBA players yet who can even dunk? At least if WNBA players were more normal in appearance, it might be more relatable and pleasant to watch.
I would consider the now-retired Stacey Dales to be pretty hot:
http://www.southernpigskin.com/index.php?ACT=31&fid=6&aid=781_xLwpOD12nWJFoCaXfbSW&board_id=1
However, it you saw her in uniform she would look extremely unflattering since those baggy NBA uniforms are NOT very becoming to the female form:
http://hoopedia.nba.com/images/5/5e/Stacey_Dales-Schuman.JPG
It's not a game. The $350k gets her into the law firm where she meets her future husband, who will earn many multiples of that in the time they live together.
Try not to get "intention" confused with "outcome", Fred.
The reason the women are so feminine in Latin America is because the men are so feminine.
I've lived in Latin America for seven years; fights are easily avoided and you can be the best Bench Presser in the gym without much effort.
The Brits have never been into the winter olympic type sports.
Thats got to be down to the weather.
We are cursed/blessed to be well to the north yet the climate is too warm for serious snow for long periods. Paradoxically people say its cold here, it isnt, its warm for the latitude but its very wet.
"As a Southern European guy I'll take 5'10 of long legged athletic Nordic/Irish skier any day of the week."
Where did the Irish come in? I've noticed Irish guys are quite short.
The Brits have never been into the winter olympic type sports.
Not very surprising given the climate of the British isles.
By the way, what is the least likely country to win the Olympic gold medal in ice hockey? I think it's probably Nauru because Nauru (nauru = laughter in Finnish) is 1) has an equatorial oceanic climate with the highest elevation being something like 10 meters, 2) has a population of only about 14,000, and 3) is too poor build an ice hall.
Why do you use the term Nordic when the Finnish are so bad at winter sports?
What do you mean bad?
And the Finnish don't seem to win Nobel prizes unlike the Swedes or Danes.
One in science and one in literature so far. One Nobel peace prize, too.
Do Finns feel sorry for themselves when they compare themselves to the Scandinavians?
I don't. Norway used to be a bit of a backwater before oil was discovered there. Sweden is filled with crazy feminists and political correctness running amok. The Danes are what I'd call degenerate Germanics. Their incessant smoking and drinking causes their womenfolk to hit the wall earlier than in the rest of Northern Europe. Otherwise I like the Danes a lot.
Where did the Irish come in? I've noticed Irish guys are quite short.
Statistics please. "I've noticed" doesn't count in an area that can be quantitatively measured easily.
The Irish (and Scots) are some of the tallest people in the world. When I was working on immigration files from the early 1900s, that described the individuals including height, most of the men over 5'7" were from northwestern Europe--British Isles and Scandinavia. And amazingly I did notice the more educated and affluent were taller than the poor. I couldn't verify the class difference with stats though, only anecdotally from looking a few hundred files.
"Try not to get "intention" confused with "outcome", Fred."
I'm not confused at all, Templar -- and neither are the women going for their J.D./Mrs. degrees.
There's so much misogyny mixed up with HBD that many of you don't give women credit for the subtle strategic approaches for finding mates that they've refined over the years. It's not an "accident" when a woman ends up working in a field where she is surrounded by highly-paid men, and being a lawyer isn't the only way a woman puts herself into such a milieu.
I'm not confused at all, Templar
I realize you're quite convinced of that, hence my calling it into question.
I was about to say there should be a special circle in hell reserved for those who supply a 'link' to a supposedly hot woman which results in a 404 error. (See Allyson Felix below). Then I noticed the 'linker' was Twuth, and I'm so white I make allowances for the cognitively challenged.
Only one ethnic Finn has won a Nobel prize in science.
Sweden has won 28 Nobel prizes (most are science)
Danes have won 9 Nobel prizes in science.
Why are Finns such under performers?
Anonymous connected toy doll aversion and law school.
My lib sister casually mentioned to her inlaws that her only girl "had no interest in dolls" as a child. I snidely added, "Well, not after the ist few raps on the knuckles." Boy, did I get a glare!
Followed by a "Whaddya mean?"
Sufficiently cowed, I changed the subject.
BTW, that girl is now a 3L at Columbia.
Why no attention being paid to Julia Mancuso?
She has more medals than dyed blonde Vonn, and she wears a tiara!
"I was about to say there should be a special circle in hell reserved for those who supply a 'link' to a supposedly hot woman which results in a 404 error. (See Allyson Felix below)."
See Allyson Felix where, exactly, Steve Jobs?
Anonymous said "why are Finns such underperformers?"
In comparing Nobel Prizes per capita, Finland ranks no 14 in the world. Finns might have won fewer Nobel prices in sciences because our academic traditions are shorter than those of Sweden or Denmark, and our resources for funding science have been scarcer.
Since becoming independent from Russia in 1917, Finland had to fight the Soviet Union in WWII, twice, and evict the German army from Lapland too. After that we rebuilt our industry and society into a Nordic state, on par with our neighbours to the west. Our achievments as a nation stand up quite well in comparison with any other.
Of course we have some people you might label "underperformers", but on the other hand, your anonymous remarks as posted here does not look like much of a performance either.
Only one ethnic Finn has won a Nobel prize in science.
Sweden has won 28 Nobel prizes (most are science)
Danes have won 9 Nobel prizes in science.
Why are Finns such under performers?
What's up with this fixation on Nobel Prizes to determine a peoples' worth? What about the far superior heavy metal bands in Finland compared to Sweden?
I'm only half joking!
I've never agreed with Truth on anything, but he's right that Vonn is not all that attractive. Couldn't hold a candle to (even an older) Jan Stephenson.
"The buttkicking Nordic babe has a more than 1000-year-long history in North America..."
According to the Soultrean theory, people of European descent may have been the earliest settlers in the Americas.
They have found very ancient (20,000+ years) Clovis arrowhead points in the Americas that match the arrowheads from Europe (and not Asia), and they have also found long-headed skulls dating back many thousands of years which match the skulls of long-headed Northern Europeans.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutrean_hypothesis
Could you maybe explain the apparent lack of interest in Winter Olympic Sports and the loss of revenue to NBC? I frankly found more to to get excited over in the Summer Olympics. I think the basketball event alone made us all re-think the whole "white men can't jump" philosophy. I think Summer Olympic Games are far more relevant to the whole discussion. But maybe, that is just me.
Lets see:
1.The athlete who made his mark in this winter olympics as the winner of the most medals ever is a dark-eyed half-japanese who looks like a puerto rican: Apolo Ohno.
2. The fastest man on skates, the world champion, won a gold and a silver in this Olympics. He now has two gold medals and two silver medals: dark-eyed african-american Shani Davis.
3. The dramatic highlight of the glamour event of the Winter Olympics, figure skating, was the showdown between the dark-eyed/black-haired 2008 world champion Mao Asada of Japan and dark-eyed/black-haired Kim Yuna of Korea. Kim won.
And on and on. This silly nordicism is getting very old and very stale. It should have been buried in the ruins of nazi Berlin, but some folks still cling to it stubbornly.
Odd, my written smackdown of Sarfaraz appears to have been eaten by Comment Control...
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