Boundless certainly is much more sensitive to women who openly admit that they have not been trying very hard to earn male affection than it is to men who are in a similar situation:
I consider myself to be a very plain-looking young woman. I've never been one to wear makeup, style my hair, wear fashionable clothes, etc. In addition, I'm overweight. I was never popular, and I never wanted to stand out in a crowd. I emerged from junior high and high school relatively "unscathed" by the typical cattiness of the other girls mostly by remaining unnoticed.
I've heard countless messages about how a girl shouldn't put too much emphasis on physical beauty. But is it possible that this message can be taken too far? Shouldn't we temper what we say depending on our audience? I feel like no one has tempered his or her words regarding beauty for someone like me -- someone who's already disinclined to try to be beautiful.
I find myself at 24 just as I was at 17 -- still overweight, still plain-looking and still detesting the time, effort and money required to "beautify" myself in the world's eyes. I still have never been on a date, and I still stubbornly insist that a man should get to know me and love me for what's on the inside, rather than what's on the outside. The only thing that's changed is that now I find myself wanting to someday be married and have children as God has designed (a result of having come across the Boundless webzine this summer). And I wonder: Have I done something wrong? Have I mismanaged the body God has given me?
Compare that with this statement from Boundless on men and pornography addiction:
"This man need not be concerned with his physical appearance, his personal hygiene or his moral character in the eyes of a wife. Without this structure and accountability, he is free to take his sexual pleasure without regard for his unshaved face, his slothfulness, his halitosis, his body odor and his physical appearance. He faces no requirement of personal respect, and no eyes gaze upon him in order to evaluate the seriousness and worthiness of his sexual desire."
What jumped out at me from the first article was the fact that the woman openly admitted that she has virtually never done anything to be sexually attractive to a man. In that sense, she is unlike the man from Mohler's article who indulges his every sexual whim outside of marriage, lives like a slob, and does nothing to earn the love and respect of his wife which would normally lead toward a healthy sexual relationship with her.
It is understandable when a woman who refuses to get plastic surgery or crash diet her body into an anorexic look in order to not up her chances of getting a man's attention. However, the idea that a man should get to know, and fall in love with, a woman who takes little care of her physical appearance, for "who she is on the inside," is ludicrous. If anything, his first cue just by looking at her, before even talking to her, is that her energy is virtually never spent on accommodating reasonable expectations of how a significant other would expect her to carry and present herself. If the roles were reversed, Boundless would have no problem ripping into a man who never felt the need to "dress to impress" around women. Neither gender does this for the other, despite any protests to the contrary about women being focused on relationships as opposed to imagery (a false dichotomy that anyone with sense knows is not true).
Women are, in fact, very visual-oriented in the way that they approach sex. It's just not always toward the relative physical attractiveness of a man. I don't think anyone would dispute the fact that men who dress very well in expensive clothes, and drive nice, expensive cars tend to get a lot more female attention than ones who don't. With many women, the visual cues that fire up their willingness to enter into a relationship are the criteria they mentally check off when they see men present themselves in certain ways. This is not necessarily wrong, nor is it necessarily unchristian either, but it serves no good purpose to pretend otherwise.
Related:
I had a conversation with someone that said people usually match up with equal attractiveness and when they don't something else must be a factor, i.e. money. I don't know if this is true, but I did have an interesting experience a couple weeks ago.
My wife and I stopped in a at a fast food resturant. There were four teenagers in front of us. The two girls looked very nice and well groomed. However, their what I assumed boyfriends looked like they have been wearing the same baggy clothes for weeks and they did not comb their hair. On top of that the girls payed for their meals. My wife and I looked at each other with confusion. Why are girls that go through so much effort settle for guys like that?
Maybe they're really good musicians who know how to charm the panties off of teen girls. That'd be my guess, anyway, either that, or they're their brothers.
"...is that her energy is virtually never spent on accommodating reasonable expectations of how a significant other would expect her to carry and present herself."
This is an excellent point. That girl is sending a signal to all guys who see her that she cares not one whit about satisfying a man's desire to have an attractive spouse. The message is "you must accomodate my needs, but I won't bother to address yours" loud and clear.
"I don't think anyone would dispute the fact that men who dress very well in expensive clothes, and drive nice, expensive cars tend to get a lot more female attention than ones who don't."
I agree that women gather just as visual cues as men do, it's just that the cues are a bit different. This kinda goes toward what Craig was saying...women are more accepting of physical imperfection as long as man has something else in abundance to make up for it...and that something is usually money or other status/power symbols.
I've heard it said that men are looking for sex objects. But women are looking for "success objects". The latter is certainly as shallow and superficial as the former IMHO.
"Why are girls that go through so much effort settle for guys like that?"
The only thing I can think of was that they were "bad boys", and made the girls feel daring and edgy to date them.
I've heard it said that men are looking for sex objects. But women are looking for "success objects". The latter is certainly as shallow and superficial as the former IMHO.
This should be obvious, since the sexual goals of men and women are different. A man does not need a successful mate, he needs a healthy, attractive mate who will provide solid, healthy genes and rearing to his children. A woman does not need an attractive mate, what she needs is one who shows that he has strength and an ability to succeed over the rest of the pack because that will be his contribution to the success of her offspring.
I suspect that the failure of many to accept this obvious truth comes from a mix of the egalitarianism that runs rampant over common sense and liberty, and the Victorian Myth about female sexuality. It should be obvious, even if painful to admit, that men and women approach the criteria for mate selection from very different points of view based on biology.
The more that the church tries to convince itself that women are not just as depraved and shallow as men, the more it will miss the point, and lose battles.