Kia’s Experiment
@MollyRen: “Think the email messages you get on dating sites suck? It’s worse if you’re black.”
Not something I’d considered. Despite having practiced a long list of internet follies, I’ve never actually seriously attempted to use a dating site. My impression is that the experience sucks for pretty much everybody. So, mass suckage. Which people wade through the way they wade-through any other necessary-but-unpleasant process (like, say, moving apartments or finding a job).
But just because it sucks for everybody doesn’t mean it can’t suck worse for some than it does for others.
Meet real Kia and fake Kia:
Yes, boys and girls, Kia put up more or less the same profiles, two of them, using her friend Erin’s picture (“Erin. So cute. White.” on one, and her own (“Me. Cute…like a cabbage-patch kid. Black.”) on the other. Hilarity (of the “laugh because it beats punching holes in drywall” variety) ensues.
One man’s assessment — rare for you to see here, because I am a big believer in the “all women are beautiful” school of thought — is that Kia speaks fairly when she uses “cute” to describe both herself and her friend Erin. Neither picture shows a movie-actress Great Beauty, but I’m seeing two friendly-looking people both of whom are squarely in the middle of the bell curve of human attractiveness.
People, it’s rough out there. Try and take care of each other, okay?
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=4472
One of my guy friends had an experience of the type when he made a female avatar on World of Warcraft. He couldn’t believe the rude, sleazy, and condescending treatment he got. He said he’d always figured the complaints he’d heard from his female friends were somehow exaggerated. “It was WORSE than they said!”
Enlightened guys are SEXY! ;D
http://blog.okc...back/
Well, the cute girl on the left needs to get out from under the hat.
Sorry if that sounds unkind. My wyf and I enjoy What Not To Wear, it’s a powerful lens through which to see the whole dating thing. IMO, the only reality TV worth watching.
I think there’s a pretty big divide in the level of attractiveness between those two photos.
I have little doubt that if you swapped the skin color between the two pictures, this would still hold true.
Kia’s picture looks like the ones some “larger” women (honestly not trying to be inflammatory or offensive here) post on dating sites to try and hide their size. The shot’s cropped incredibly tight, not extending out to the shoulders, clothes bundled up as high as they can go, neck well hidden.
Erin, meanwhile, is on full display, head and neck-wise. And her face is a good bit less chubby.
That’s not to be critical of Kia at all. But the implication that the two photos are relatively equal save for skin color is, well, I think in a lot of guys’ eyes, it’s far from true.
A. Nonymous, there’s a level at which it can be said, de gustibus non disputandem. About matters of taste, dispute is pointless.
But there’s another level at which I think you are confusing your personal preference for thinness with some (mythical?) objective standard of attractiveness.
Erin’s thinner than Kia, sure. She also appears a bit older to my eye, and looks like she may have been more tired when the picture was taken. We could come up with dozens of different attributes (affecting attractiveness) by which to compare them. It’s a mistake, I think, to preference one of those attributes and claim it defines attractiveness. All it does is announce what your standards are.
I’m pretty confident in what I said: that both women are squarely in the middle of the bell curve of human attractiveness. Exactly where under that curve they fall is going to vary a lot with the personal preferences of the viewer.
Now I’ll really go out on the limb:
“I have little doubt that if you swapped the skin color between the two pictures, this would still hold true.”
A. Nonymous above points clearly at Kia’s girth compared to Erin’s. I say if the BMIs were reversed, it would put Erin at a greater disadvantage than it does to Kia, all other things held equal.
In Europe have I seen Caucasian women with that assumed girth carry it off as powerfully sexy—a train station in Italy in 1987, to be specific—not often in the US. To understand why, start watching What Not To Wear. Seriously.
Besides, with me the pity-me race card stuff does not play. Sexual attractiveness is more deeply ingrained than even upbringing can reach, and my upbringing was about as racist as any. Chicks who pity themselves are a turnoff. Again, to understand why, start watching What Not To Wear.
Seriously.
On the one hand, I agree with Bacchus – they both seem pretty fairly evenly attractive, in a generic sense. But their positive qualities are very different, which has nothing to do with skin colour.
Kia on the left looks sensual. On a warm day without the bulky clothing, with a glint in her eye showing she likes you, she’d be downright sexy.
Fake-Kia on the right looks cheery and light-hearted. She looks like she’d be fun to hang out with – maybe she likes bike riding or movie marathons. She probably has a small dog.
I’d go for the real Kia any day. But alas, it doesn’t seem like she’s into girls…
Bacchus: You assume too much about my “preference”. The fact is, my wife’s body would fall much more in line with Kia’s than Erin’s (judging solely by the photo).
However, while on an individual level, people may have various size preferences, let’s please not pretend as if this culture doesn’t have a strong “thin” bias. It’s hardly surprising that the girl who appears considerably thinner received more messages on a dating site.
While we can’t point to the thinness for certain as the reason why Erin’s picture received more messages, it is a huge enough potential factor to shoot all sorts of holes into the idea of this “experiment’s” results showing bias of race.
I don’t think I am assuming anything, or too much, about your preferences, A. Non; you spoke of attractiveness and then explained it in terms of thinness.
I see you now talking about our culture’s thin bias, but in your first comment, you spoke as if you shared it. Which is fine, but I believe we should be crystal clear — a heavier person is heavier, not less attractive, because attractiveness at the end of the day is always in the eye of the beholder. You can’t say “there’s a pretty big divide in the level of attractiveness” and then try to duck out and claim “but not to me, just to some other people.”