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JDatersAnonymous has moved to JDatersAnonymous.com. Visit us there, or try my other blog: My Urban Kvetch.
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About Me
- Esther Kustanowitz
- I'm an ever-more-marginally-famous (and yet mostly-undiscovered) celebrity. My glamour is legendary, or will be once I get some.
13 comments:
Rabot banot asoo chayil, v'at aleet al koolanah. Sheker ha'chen v'hevel ha'yofee; eeshah yeer'at hashem, hee teet'halal.
Many daughters have done worthily, but you surpass them all. Charm is false and beauty is vain; a God-fearing woman is the one to be praised. Proverbs 31: 29-30.
Not always, but more often than is fair, but then same goes for the guys with lots of money...
Another no vote. There are plenty of guys out there who think so as well. Younger vs. older is the bigger split. To me, this is the far greater hurdle for many. Cheers & Good Luck, 'VJ'
Nothing is ever "always".
As a person matures (or more appropriatley IF one matures) they will pull their head out of their asses and see beyond a person's physical appearance.
My best friend in the entire world happens to be obese. She's also engaged to the love of her life, and they're to be married next fall. I know plenty of "thin, pretty girls" who curse their single status every day. "Thin" is more or less objective, but I think that "pretty" is more a state of mind than anything else. Happiness is ours to seek and demand; nobody else can give it to us on a silver platter. If someone's unhappy, losing 20 pounds and getting a face lift will just make her an unhappy person who weighs 20 pounds less and has tighter skin. There's no magical route to happiness...it's a matter of finding it within ourselves.
I'm divorced and not interested in dating. But I have to answer this.
I think it is true, that thin and pretty have a better chance. It is not realistic to believe otherwise.
But I also think that value correlates with one's milieu. Out of curiosity, I used to peruse the "want ads" (that's what I call 'em) in the LA Jewish Journal. I was astounded by the desires especially of the men- intelligent, witty, spiritual, financially independent, nurturing, and had to be, bone thin, and look good on his arm. I'm serious!
Okay, that's the extreme, but I think that extreme cities breed extreme expectations. Hence, places like LA and NYC are gonna be more superficial and more demanding. Whereas smaller, more genteel places will not focus as much on thin and pretty.
I think attraction is more than just thin and pretty. I am more turned off by men my own age (I'm "mature") who I just know are looking for mothers. I also find wit to be another form of artifice, and though I enjoy wit, it's like candy and doesn't last. But genuine kindness (especially in a man) turns me on like nobody's business; I find it sexy. I don't think I'd much care what he looked like, then (and my first true love was quite ugly).
So, maybe the more superficial the environs, the culture, the more superficial the expectations.
As for that Eshet Chayil stuff, yeah, sure. If only people believed it. I place it in the category of romantic claptrap.
I feel for ya. But as another anonymous poster said, superficial goes both ways. When it comes to girls, tall boys always win. Boys with full heads of hair always win. Boys with chiseled physiques always win. Etc., etc., etc.
Esther,
They may not win, but their chances are a whole better than the non slender/slim/skinny girls all the Jdate ads seem to want. Brutal truth: beauty standards for women are much more stringent, and harsher than those for men. Period. I didn't buy a $%^!@# treadmill for my cardio-vascular health, and I know it. But I've come to accept that I deserve every advantage I can give myself.
However, my skinniest point in my life also coincided with a JDate binge two summers ago (like any binge, this was a BAD idea). And though I felt more confident (and my friends were dying of jealousy) that didn't change the fact that dating is an arduous task of sifting MUCH chaff from very little wheat. That is, even when I fit more comfortably into some ideal, I still didn't end up being a dating "winner".
Getting out of NYC on a regular basis (I envy your recent trip) can be helpful in providing a little perspective on the Jewish dating scene here. I myself harbor a fantasy of moving to Montreal, San Francisco, Iowa City, a cave...
A guy I dated once told me he would never be with someone who is obesse. Two years latter his fiance (who is not me) is a very um heavy girl.
I think it depends. Right now I'm suffering from a bad case of low self esteem.... so I'm trying not to think about it.
Roz
Boy, I guess this struck a chord with people...
I guess there are people of both sexes who are "ahead of the game" in some way because of how they look or because of the superficial things that are prized in the general culture.
I wish that I fully believed that Eshet Chayil stuff. But I find that men are (generally) more interested in the middos of size rather than the middos that are internal and that are praised by the poem.
As for larger men and women who find their soulmates, that's wonderful, obviously, and I think it points to a tremendous maturity and connection between the partners. But I'm talking about a specific kind of "taste-test" scenario: if a man is confronted with two women of equal or similar intelligence and level of connection, he will (not always, Bob, but nine times out of ten) go with the younger, more conventionally pretty version. But that's societally conditioned: if faced with the identical situation with two men, I probably would go with the more conventionally attractive one too. But women, I think, are more forgiving than men are of physical flaws and are more likely to be attracted to the totality of a person. Obviously, you can all feel free to disagree. But I'm tired of listening to my male friends (some of whom I might have harbored an interest in) tell me how hot the girls they like and date are, and how they're size zeroes or twos (or hell, even fours or sixes), because that sends me, as a woman not of that size, the message that I am not, in their eyes, attractive. And that's just upsetting.
OK, I'm done now.
I had to share this email I got yesterday from a guy I had an awful lunch date with who, at the same time he was asking me to go on another date (as if) sent me this helpful advice:
"I just looked at your profile to see why you looked even better to me in person than in your photos, even though of course your photos looked good enough to make me very much want to meet you.
I think you could make your photo presentation even more fetching, at least to men like me (just in case there are any). Include a photo that makes clear that you have a nice trim figure. The one holding a violin in front of your stomach leads the paranoid male mind (such as mine) to think that you may be slightly "overweight", i.e., not
perfectly in line with the current anti-fat ideology that impressionable minds such as mine are prey to. You are perfectly in line, so why not take advantage of that advantage?"
I'm still seething.
Without a doubt men always choose the prettier skinner girl.
A man at my work who is 54 and married(I am 26), told me how great of a women he thinks I am. We have a great connection/attraction but nothing beyond that. He always goes on and on about how superficial people are and how he cant stand it. About how great of a woman I am etc.
Well there is this other girl who is cuter and skinnier than me and sure enough when she is in the room, I suddently do not exist to this man (who by the way isnt that good looking and way older than me). I realized at that moment that even though I have this great connection and chemistry with this person, the pretty skinny girl still won.
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