The Hotness Curve (how age changes a woman's appeal)(aella.substack.com)
2 pointsby surprisetalk6 hours ago1 comment
  • PaulHoule6 hours ago
    Asked a woman the other day “Did anyone ever tell you you look like Jill Lapore?” which is one of the nicest things you could say to a professorin: she’s a really great writer and great looking too but by no means young.

    On the other hand I can’t say I find her top photos for casual sex to be that attractive though from a mimetic perspective I could recognize that other people would rate them highly.

    • JohnFen5 hours ago
      I think this is the deep flaw this whole thing sits on: it's relying on photos. Photos do a very poor job of relaying how attractive people are, because most of what makes a person attractive is not their static appearance, but how they move, how they speak, how they interact, what they have to say, etc.

      And that's completely ignoring the fact that how much you like a person directly affects how physically attractive they appear to you.

      Also, speaking personally as an older man, I have always tended to find women roughly my age to be the most attractive, regardless of what my age was. It's no less true now than it was when I was in my 20s.

      • PaulHoule5 hours ago
        If I attempt synesthesia, like fantasize kissing or making out with those women, I can't help but imagine getting smudged with makeup and the mineral taste of lipstick. On the other hand in real life I might wind up accidentally really close to somebody and have their perfume herald the tang of their microbiome which one could interpret as "they should shower more" but because of the whole experience I am thinking about it weeks later.

        This book goes to the heard of what is wrong with that whole evpsych approach

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_l%27amour_(Stendhal)

        which reveals a whole inner psychology which can enrich our lives but that I think a lot of people are closed off to. If I am working with someone who's attractive but a little annoying I might cultivate a crush on them because then I'm not annoyed anymore.

        That's lady's whole problem is that she casts such a wide net and considers so many options whereas when you fall in love with somebody that person seems absolutely singular, at least in that limerent phrase that Stendhal calls "crystallization". The more people she considers the more certain it is that they'll all fall short and she can't get it because

        https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-ge...

        Stendhal makes polyamory seem like a delightful aristocratic game whereas those rationalists in the bay area make it seem like a stressful chore that you need a technical dictionary to talk about.