More Thoughts on a Minor Irritation

A couple days ago I wrote about my irritation with men who brazenly undervalue a woman’s looks for the purpose, in my opinion, of raising their own status and appearing alpha. Needless to say, I find this tactic transparently self serving and ineffective. Reader Silas left a comment that I thought was pretty insightful.

Even supposing that people in the Roissysphere subtract 1-2 points from the average opinion, is that really a bad thing? Part of the mindset of Game requires depedestaling women and viewing yourself as the chooser.

To clarify, I didn’t intend to indict the whole Roissysphere with my complaint.  Only a small subset of probably 10% or so. 

Frank Sinatra once said that he was for anything that got a man through the night, be it God, or whiskey.  I have similar feelings about how a man internally “depedestals” women in the looks arena.  If knocking em down a couple points works, great.  If imagining a woman with a big dog turd on her head works, thats fine too.

In his book, The Mystery Method, Mystery suggests that when describing women you should limit yourself to two categories: cute, and alright. No category for hot. No category for gorgeous.

I have no objection to this. I think objective analysis should be possible though when not in the process of attracting women.  For example, Grace Kelly is not objectively “cute”.  She is (err was) beautiful. 

In this sense, the 1-2 points that are subtracted from an average woman’s looks aren’t added to women. They are added to you. If you’re a male 7, and you rate a female 8 as a 6, then you already have the view that you are more desirable to her, which will naturally cause you to act more assertively and confidently, thereby increasing her attraction to you. As your scale of female attractiveness is readjusted, you gain more psychosocial value.

Again, if this works for an individual guy to act more confident, have more swagger, and put aside approach anxiety, I’m all for it.  However, like actors who keep “in character” offset, some guys think they need to carry this mindset everywhere. 

Perhaps they do, but only up to a point. I would hope that a man would have the ability to rationally discuss, and rate a womans looks, as objectively as possible when not in the process of raising his perceived value.

Here is another thought.  Why couldn’t a man internalize himself as a 10?  No need to worry about her looks.  I think that would be more effective in approaching a true 9 than telling yourself the 9 is really a 6.  After all, who wants a 6 when they can have a 9?

Does Michael Jordan think he won all of those titles because the other teams weren’t that great, or does he think he won them because he was that good?

 However, personally, I would submit that the lower scoring isn’t simply a psychological technique, but is actually a readjustment of a flawed scale. If too many women rate 8-10, then the 8-10 rating simply doesn’t mean as much. By setting the bar for 10 astronomically high, you realize that such a women is actually extremely rare. From a statistic standpoint, it makes more sense that 1’s, 2’s, 9’s and 10’s should essentially be statistical outliers, and that 3’s and 8’s should fall between 2-3 SDs of the average.

Agree completely.  This doesn’t require disengenous and harsh rating though.  Simply accurate and realistic judging done in good faith.

Let me use an example to demonstrate what I am talking about. This post from Roissy shows what I am getting at.  It contains a few outlier comments that are, in my humble opinion, completely off base.  The girls in the picture were being called 3s and 4s in some cases.  Completely over the top.  I’ll let a few Roissy regulars speak to this from the comments section…

First Thursday…

The white girls are 7s. Genuinely pretty, but nothing spectacular. The asian appears to be a 6, but she’s at a funny angle, so its hard to say.

A lot of guys have a tendency to depress girls’ ratings just to out macho other guys and prove how ultra-high their standards are. Not an attractive trait.

I might as well have used his second paragraph as a post to what I was getting at.  That’s it in a nutshell.

From Roissy himself…

as for the girls… from left, 6.5, 7, 6, 7.5. the girl on the far left looks as though she could go up or down a full point based on viewing angle. she’s a wildcard.

Completely reasonable.

From the 5th Horseman…

Relatively similar to mine (6.5, 8, 6, 6.5). Beauty is objective, and serious observers will not deviate to far from the consensus.

Again, reasonable.

Here are my ratings, FWIW…

7, 7.5, 5.5,7

 

I also found two rating systems from two smart, well spoken, and prolific posters.

First from PA…

As public service and a mater of urgent necessity, here is the 1-10 scale. It ranks healthy adult women of childbearing age. In other words, it is not applied to children, old women, or women with obvious and unusual deformities.

1 – actively repulsive
2 – ugly
3 – unattractive
4 – unpleasant but tolerable
5 – indifferent
6 – approaching cute
7 – cute with flashes of pretty
8 – consistently pretty
9 – hot
10 – beautiful

By Willie’s standards the four photo girls are 5s. By David Alexander’s they are 4s.

By my standards they are 7 for Red Shirt, 8.5 for Blondie, 5.5 for Asain Chick, and 8 for Romanian Pixie.

Next from Doug1 with a bit different scale…

PA–

Your version of the scale seems a bit ideosyncratic. It allows more 10s than seems usual in the PUA community or certainly than how Roissy uses 10. It’s not good to not have an ultimate that’s really up there. Hot is usually used to cover the high area of the scale, not just one spot on it.

My scale (for 18-29yos):

1 – repulsive
2 – ugly
3 – unattractive
4 – not very attractive; tolerable
5 – plain; ok
6 – cute
7 – pretty
8 – very pretty; beautiful
9 – gorgeous
10 – international class gorgeous

That puts the middle of the scale between plain and cute, which seems about right to me for 20s girls. Given the amount of chubbiness around, the average american girl these days may actually fall between 4 and 5.

Both are (not to beat a deadhorse) reasonable.

 

I didn’t pick this topic only because of what I see online.  I have had a couple friends likes this.  They try to AMOG the group with dismissive comments about women the others find attractive. 

I can remember one incident where I basically went Lloyd Bentsen and told the guy, in so many words, that I knew alpha and you aren’t one.  I didn’t use the term alpha of course, but words to that effect. 

I have also had friends who were the exact opposite.  Every 5 that showed any interest at all was suddenly “so” hot, “fckin” hot, or my all time “favorite”: “smokin” hot.  “Sure bro, go for it”, was about all I could usually muster.

I think If I had to choose one or the other, I would prefer the unreasonably tough grader as a wing man as opposed to the soft touch. Maybe. Would depend on a lot of independent variables though.  I could see arguments for both.  Perhaps more on that another time.