February 13, 2014

Maybe that wasn't the ultimate Slate headline

Instead, how about this new one?
 
By Steve Sailer on 2/13/2014

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

Blame the female audience members instead.

2/13/14, 1:30 PM
Anonymous said...

How about this one from their ideological sister site?

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/10/from_harvard_to_webcam_girl/

2/13/14, 1:45 PM
Anonymous said...

Slate is now National Inquirer for hipsters and hopesters?

2/13/14, 1:49 PM
Reg Cæsar said...

Blame the actresses. And their surgeons, and trainers, and cosmeticians. Sexy at sixty is sick.

2/13/14, 1:50 PM
Anonymous said...

"Blame the female audience members instead."

I think it's also market pressures. Internet sites live or die based on how many hits they get, and after yrs of research, the most shrill and rant-ish headlines get the most hits, so all sites do this.
Slate used to be saner and more respectable in the early 2000s when I used to read it regularly. I can't anymore.

But worst are those 'best' and 'worst' lists where you have to go from page to page. So, to see 50 best of something, you have to click through 50 pages. Lots of traffic that way.

2/13/14, 1:52 PM
Anonymous said...

Losing weight often has to do with looks than weight itself.

Generally, losing weight makes one look better. Better slim than fat. But some people get the wrong message: weight loss = better looks. So, they keep losing more and more weight with the delusion that they are looking better and better.
A kind of mental fallacy takes over: Losing extra fat makes one more attractive, so losing more and more weight makes one more and more attractive when, in fact, it makes one look like a skeleton.

2/13/14, 1:55 PM
Svend said...

Blame the gay males who like to look at bodies similar to 12 year old boys.

2/13/14, 1:59 PM
PatrickH said...

Odd how many of Slate's headlines are in the imperative.

2/13/14, 2:03 PM
kfg said...

" . . .it makes one look like a skeleton."

Because they have lost most of their muscle. A fair amount of bone density as well.

Lesson One: "Fat" and "Weight" are not synonymous.

Lesson Two: The best way to lose a lot of weight in a hurry is to get shot into space. Application of a chainsaw is functional for trimming mass, but not recommended.

Lesson Three: For most people, weight is an irrelevant parameter in the first place. See lessons one and two.

The problem is that weight is cheap, quick and easy to measure to a precision below the noise threshold, whereas the relevant parameter is not.

So weight is used as a proxy. It's an OK proxy, but not a great one, given the caveat that you understand that it is a proxy. If you don't, it's a horrible proxy.

2/13/14, 3:59 PM
Anonymous said...

Sailer should take cues from Slate and come up with exciting headings for his posts:

Instead of

"What if there is terrorism at the Olympics?"

how about..

"Does antisemitic and homophobic Russia deserve to get blown to smithereens by terrorists at sucky Sochi Olympics?"

2/13/14, 4:21 PM
Alden said...

Steve, you need to crowdsource this and make a post for your readers to try to come up with the ultimate fictional Slate headline. My first shot:

"What the online bullying of a gay African-American youth in Ohio says about us"

2/13/14, 4:30 PM
Anonymous said...

Slate always has to be click-baitier than the Atlantic. Ever since the Atlantic found Hanna Rosin, Slate has had to crank it up to 11.


http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/02/13/kansas_anti_gay_segregation_bill_is_an_abomination.html

2/13/14, 4:48 PM
Auntie Analogue said...


If Janis Joplin had lived, her biggest hit might have been "I Got Dem Old Kozmetic Surgery Blues."

2/13/14, 5:09 PM
Anonymous said...

Not one mention of the fact that a large percentage of Hollywood mover and shakers who are male are gay, and that gay men and straight women are primary drivers of anorexic women in the fashion industry, so why wouldn't they be in the entertainment industry as well? Nope it's all down to insecure heterosexual males according to this sorry excuse for a journalist. Look at Hollywood in the 40's, 50's, and 60's, when straight men ruled, were there any waifs back then? Sophia Loren, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, Raquel Welch. Straight men like curvy, even voluptuous women. Christina Hendricks was hired by a straight man, Matt Weiner, she didn't seem to get a lot of roles prior to Mad Men did she?

2/13/14, 5:38 PM
kfg said...

Anon 5:38 - You left out Rita Hayworth just to piss me off, didn't you?

2/13/14, 5:59 PM
MC said...

"Why Isn't There More Outrage About The Lack of Openly LGBT Religious Leaders?"

2/13/14, 6:21 PM
Anonymous said...

Gay men have a supernatural ability to make straight men prefer lean women. Well, at least they're consistent - you don't see many beer bellies in gay porn.

Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian are contemporaries who are both considered "hot". The spectrum of hot is wider than back in the good old days - I bet the differences in their measurements are greater than those of Sophia Loren and Grace Kelly.

The Rubenesque ideal - thick middle, small breasts -has never existed in Hollywood. I don't think it has ever appealed to any male reading this blog, unless they are 300 years old.

2/13/14, 7:52 PM
Anonymous said...

The obsession with waif thinness is best explained by Mitchell Heisman's theory that memes correct genes. The waif ideal is a reaction to the epidemic of obesity. Quote from suicide note:

"If one is naturally stingy or argumentative then the effort to achieve a “golden mean” will be insufficient, since one will have a natural tendency towards recidivism. In such cases, the twelfth century scholar advocated a temporary effort to go to the opposite extreme. A commentary upon Maimonides’ teaching illustrates this point:
If a bamboo cane is bent in one direction and you wish to straighten it, simply holding the cane straight is of no use, for it will spring back. You have to bend it in the opposite direction, and then it will straighten.54"

Makes a lot more sense than a conspiracy to define who's hot and who's not.

2/13/14, 8:19 PM
Anonymous said...

>you don't see many beer bellies in gay porn.

I'll trust you on that one.

2/14/14, 12:08 AM
in thin whiny white girl voice said...

"Don't hate the playa, hate the game!"

2/14/14, 2:31 AM
Anonymous said...

I'll trust you on that one.

Evolutionary psychology is not for the squeamish, but you might be on to something - women aren't nearly as fearful of lesbian porn as men are of the gay kind - are men more easily flipped?

2/14/14, 4:59 AM
kfg said...

"The Rubenesque ideal . . ."

. . . was an art form. I doubt any male 300 years old finds it particularly attractive. I'll note that Botticelli's Venus is actually leaner than Kate Upton.

2/14/14, 8:36 AM
el supremo said...

re: the "Rubenesque ideal"

The "Rubenesque ideal" was basically just Ruben's own taste for pudgy, bulky women, mixed with some ideas on nude painting derived from Michelangelo and classical sculpture. It was not a historically widespread view of female beauty, even at its time.

The solidly built women in Rubens' paintings derive from Michelangelo's solidly built women based on classical sculpture, with an added layer of masculine muscle, given Michelangelo's preference for men. Rubens added some femininity and a layer of fat onto it in his own taste, but his contemporaries didn't share this aesthetic.

The realistic portraits of courtesans and models who made their living from their looks by Titian or Caravaggio have bodies that are fairly similar to what we would consider attractive today. (As opposed to paintings of mythological scenes, which were expected to generally follow a set of conventions drawing in part on ancient sculpture)

2/14/14, 11:02 AM
Dan said...

A biggish Dutch or Scandinavian woman can under the right circumstances be a pleasant physical sensation.

Not much to look at, admittedly, but...Kiera Knightly is probably like getting tangled up in a Specialized Carbon Fibre bike frame.

The Venus of Willendorf is probably the fevered dream of a half starved hunter gather. More tits more ass, then double it. A fleshy Dutch lass isn't quite as grotesque.

2/14/14, 9:36 PM
Anonymous said...

Episcopal Church

2/15/14, 7:20 AM
kfg said...

Dan - Steel is real, and slimmer.

2/15/14, 7:33 AM
Marissa said...

Sophia Loren, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, Raquel Welch. Straight men like curvy, even voluptuous women.

None of these women were curvy or voluptuous in the way that fat Western women mean those terms today. Some of Monroe's costumes were auctioned recently--they had an average waist length of 22 inches. The dresses were too small to fit on a modern size 2 dress form.

2/17/14, 2:45 PM

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