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Author Topic: Men have reason to fear being devoured by women?  (Read 1075 times)
Abdur
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« on: 29 December 2000, 12:52:00 pm »
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It all goes back to Peter Pan and the praying mantis, says Barbara Quick.

No matter how drawn a man is to a particular woman, there is part of him that fears being annihilated by her.

Homer found the perfect metaphor to illustrate this fear. Odysseus, hearing the Sirens' songs, is bewitched into believing them to be desirable women. But Odysseus' men, who have lashed him to the mast of their ship at his instructions, and stopped up their own ears with wax, see the Sirens for what they are — devouring vultures, pecking at the bones of the men they've destroyed.

Beauty is, by its very nature, both a reward and a betrayal. A man marries a beautiful woman and is fated, if he's lucky, to watch her grow old.

In the animal kingdom, beauty's only purpose is for courting (although it's always the males who have the showy plumage and extravagant manes). Beauty is what says to an animal of the opposite sex, "Choose me! You won't be sorry."

Unfortunately, there are no truth-in-advertising rules in the natural world.

A man brings a woman home on his wedding night only to find — whether after an interim of days or years — that he's got his mom in bed beside him. She making sure that he eats right, doesn't drink too much and never ventures out into the world with missing buttons, soiled trousers or food stuck to his face.
She may, in fact, still be beautiful. But her maternal fussing has made their love relationship problematic. He may feel affection toward her and even gratitude, but lust is out of the question.

Nature probably designed this trick for a good reason. After all, biologically speaking, women have only one purpose after snagging a suitable mate: to be mothers. It's only our romantic cultural overlay that makes us yearn to also be the object of our husband's sexual fantasies.

Nature doesn't care much about men after they breed. Witness the praying mantis, who is devoured by his mate the moment he impregnates her. In Nature's mind, men are bearers of seed and food, but all of this is in the service of future generations.

Is it any wonder that men have such fear, misgivings and basic mistrust associated with the idea of a lifelong romantic commitment? Or that they linger in the carefree world of grown-up boyhood — where women are much more interested in feeding them than eating them — just as long as they possibly can?

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ExpatSingapore Message Board
« on: 29 December 2000, 12:52:00 pm »
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doggmeister
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« Reply #1 on: 29 December 2000, 13:02:00 pm »
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Hold onto your horses..I sense a bumpy ride into Argument City and Backlash Valley!!
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Nicolette
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« Reply #2 on: 29 December 2000, 13:07:00 pm »
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zounds - i await the dangerous backlash!
But you do know - you should be in fear 'coz in nature the female praying mantis kills her partner after sex. bored... no sense... uh oh
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"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is a philosopher"
PhilM
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« Reply #3 on: 29 December 2000, 16:37:00 pm »
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Abdur it sounds as if you expect trouble in dealing with the female of the race! Well I give you fair warning at some point all woman will ask you how they looks - more men have died answering this question than any other man/women thing:-

"How do I look?" she'll ask.

You must be careful how you answer this question. The best technique is to form an honest yet sensitive opinion, then collapse on the floor with some kind of fatal seizure. Trust me, this is the easiest way out. Because you will never come up with the right answer!

The problem is that women generally do not think of their looks in the same way that men do. Most men form an opinion of how they look at about 15, and they stick to it for the rest of their lives. Some men form the opinion that they are irresistible stud muffins, and they do not change this opinion even when their faces sag and their noses bloat to the size of eggplants and their eyebrows grow together to form what appears to be a giant forehead-dwelling tropical caterpillar.

Most men, I believe, think of themselves as average-looking. Men will think this even if their faces cause heart failure in cattle at a range of 300 yards. Being average does not bother them; average is fine, for men. This is why men never ask anybody how they look. Their primary form of beauty care is to shave themselves, which is essentially the same form of beauty care that they give to their lawns. If, at the end of his four-minute daily beauty regimen, a man has managed to wipe most of the shaving cream out of his hair and is not bleeding too badly, he feels that he has done all he can, so he stops thinking about his appearance and devotes his mind to more critical  issues, such as beer and sport.

Women do not look at themselves this way. If I had to express, in three words, what I believe most women think about their appearance, those words would be: "not good enough." No matter how attractive a woman may appear to be to others, when she looks at herself in the mirror, she thinks: "woof". She thinks that at any moment a municipal animal-control officer is going to throw a net over her and haul her off to the shelter.

Why do women have such low self-esteem? There are many complex psychological and societal reasons, by which I mean Barbie. Girls grow up playing with a doll proportioned such that, if it were a human, it would be seven feet tall and weigh 81 pounds, of which 53 pounds would be bosoms. (Boy would Rob be happy!) This is a difficult appearance standard to live up to, especially when you contrast it with the standard set for little boys by their dolls... excuse me, by their Action men. Most of the Action men that men played with when they were little were hideous-looking. For example, many were very fond of an action figure (part of the He-Man series) called "Buzz-Off", who was part human, part flying insect. Buzz-Off was not a looker. But he was extremely self-confident. You could not imagine Buzz-Off saying to the other action figures: "Do you think these wings make my hips look big?"

Women grow up thinking they need to look like Barbie, which for most women is impossible, although there is a multibillion-dollar beauty industry devoted to convincing women that they must try. I once saw an Oprah show wherein super model Cindy Crawford dispensed makeup tips to the studio audience. Cindy had all these  middle-aged women applying beauty products to their faces; she stressed how important it was to apply them in a certain way, using the tips of their fingers. All the woman dutifully did this, even though  it was obvious to any sane observer that, no matter how carefully they applied these products, they would never look remotely like Cindy Crawford, who is some kind of genetic mutation.

I'm not saying that men are superior. I'm just saying that you're not going to get a group of middle-aged men to sit in a room and apply cosmetics to themselves under the instruction of Brad Pitt, in hopes of looking more like him. Men would realize that this task was pointless and demeaning. They would find some way to bolster their self-esteem that did not require looking like Brad Pitt. They would say to Brad: "Oh YEAH? Well what do you know about LAWN CARE, pretty boy?"

Of course many women will argue that the reason they become obsessed with trying to look like Cindy Crawford is that men, being as shallow as a drop of spit, want women to look that way. To which I have two responses:

1. Hey, just because you consider we're idiots, that doesn't mean you have to be; and

2. Men don't even notice 97 percent of the beauty efforts you make anyway. Take fingernails. The average woman spends 5,000 hours per year worrying about her fingernails; I have never once, in more than 40 years of listening to men talk about women, heard a man say, "She has a nice set of fingernails!" Many men would not notice if a woman had upward of four hands.

Anyway, to get back to my original point: If you're a man, and a woman asks you how she looks, you're in big trouble. Obviously, you can't say she looks bad. But you also can't say that she looks great, because she'll think you're lying, because she has spent countless hours, with the help of the multibillion-dollar beauty industry, obsessing about the differences between herself and Cindy Crawford. Also, she suspects that you're not qualified to judge anybody's appearance. This is because you have shaving cream in your hair.

Now Abdur if you had this trouble with your mother as well I feel worried for your future relationships!!

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NTP
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« Reply #4 on: 29 December 2000, 16:42:00 pm »
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The whole point about the praying mantis is that the species failed to evolve beyond being a lowly insect - that is what one gets for not giving enough respect to the male.

On the other hand, the apes have an excellent record on evolution - led by the patriarch (note gorilla, chimps etc). This is the natural condition of humans whether we like it or not. No female led group of humans has ever developed an evolved civilization since the beginning of time.

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LULU
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« Reply #5 on: 29 December 2000, 19:38:00 pm »
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Love your post PhilM!

NTP, actually I don't think that's true. Some primate species are matriarchal as are some societies - although I grant you not many. As for civilization, I don't really think we're there yet are we?

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PhilM
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« Reply #6 on: 29 December 2000, 22:56:00 pm »
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NTP - go to your search engine and type in any of the following, Amazons, Boedica, Catherine the Great, Cleopatra, Elizabeth 1, Helen of Troy - Boy are you in for a rude wake up call!!
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Chichi
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« Reply #7 on: 30 December 2000, 0:26:00 am »
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Sure men don't sit around in a room and apply cosmetics under the instruction of Brad Pitt.
But try going to the California gym and...why do they need to have full length mirrors where you pump iron???!!!! The dancerooms I can understand, that's for you to see if you're dancing in sync with the rest...
And why are the GNC health stores mushrooming around town again?
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Abdur
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« Reply #8 on: 30 December 2000, 14:31:00 pm »
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This post was based on a column of Barbara Quick in NY Times, titled: Eat your boyfriend for lunch. It raised interesting questions about evolution and civilization. I found her arguments unique, well-researched, and carefully thought-out. This has nothing to do with my own views and perspectives on women, etc.

PhilM - I usually get along well with women and hardly had problems with my mother.

ChiChi - I don't want to defend vanity but much of working out and looking good needs reinforcement/convincing and perhaps gym mirrors help that cause. As for GNC stores, I believe health nuts are much more into supplements. Besides the amino acids and protein/steroid stuffs, they do carry loads of good vitamins and nutritional supplements though.

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