I think a good way to define your standards is to figure out your “edge case”—the girl you consider attractive enough to have sex with/date but juuuuust barely. Then consider what percentage of girls are less attractive than her, what percentage are more attractive, and then you have a good idea of what level of discrimination you operate with.
My edge case would be Lena Dunham at her fattest and with her hair the shortest. I think she’s actually kind of pretty when she grows her hair out and loses weight. But when she looks like she does in this picture (not meant to be a “would you do her” or rate thread; just using it to illustrate my own personal standards):
...she’s juuust barely f’able for me. A little fatter or a little dykier and I’d have to decline.
So what percentage of non-black, non-elderly women would you consider uglier than Dunham in that picture? 20%? 10%? Let’s average those out and make it 15%. So that means I’d be fine with 85% of non-black, non-elderly women.
That about matches how I feel when I see women in public. I find about 80-90% of them attractive. Only a small handful do I consider unattractive.
And yet it seems that the only women who show even a modicum of interest in me are in that small handful. It’s so frustrating to be attracted to almost all women, but almost no women are attracted to me. If you were to draw a Venn diagram, there’d be no overlap between “Women I find attractive” and “Women who are attracted to me.”
So I do need to reset my standards?
My edge case would be Lena Dunham at her fattest and with her hair the shortest. I think she’s actually kind of pretty when she grows her hair out and loses weight. But when she looks like she does in this picture (not meant to be a “would you do her” or rate thread; just using it to illustrate my own personal standards):
...she’s juuust barely f’able for me. A little fatter or a little dykier and I’d have to decline.
So what percentage of non-black, non-elderly women would you consider uglier than Dunham in that picture? 20%? 10%? Let’s average those out and make it 15%. So that means I’d be fine with 85% of non-black, non-elderly women.
That about matches how I feel when I see women in public. I find about 80-90% of them attractive. Only a small handful do I consider unattractive.
And yet it seems that the only women who show even a modicum of interest in me are in that small handful. It’s so frustrating to be attracted to almost all women, but almost no women are attracted to me. If you were to draw a Venn diagram, there’d be no overlap between “Women I find attractive” and “Women who are attracted to me.”
So I do need to reset my standards?
