A couple of posts ago I asked a question about pornography and whether people enjoying watching a single naked man or woman. I was curious to see the results because I already had an inkling of what they might be. Just as I suspected it turns out that many (indeed I might even say most) women preferred watching another naked women versus a naked man. Even if they preferred being with a man over a woman in real life. Of course the men also said they preferred women.
I’ve asked questions similar to this in the past. So I believe these results to be fairly accurate. Now the question I ask myself is “why?”
Most of the responses I’ve gotten here or elsewhere indicate that people (men and women) simply feel that the female form is more attractive and that women are more alluring to watch. I’ve even had women comment that they view penises as “ugly”.
So I ask myself “why is it that the female body is more attractive to females then the male body?” One would think that among straight people, men would prefer women and women would prefer men. An equal balance of attractiveness based entirely on your sexuality. But obviously this is not the case. Which only causes me to be more confused. Beyond that, as a man it makes me feel that we men are less desirable in general. If both men and women prefer the female form, then who enjoys the male form? Gay guys it seems. Yet as an ex of mine who had a lot of gay friends once said to me “even gay guys like a good titty pillow to rest their head on from time to time.”
It’s taken me some time to try and figure this all out. I had both a girl and guy friend of mine say to me “women are just more attractive, plain and simple” as if I was being dense in not realizing this. But it’s not plain and simple. There are many questions. Like why, why do both men and women prefer the female form? Where does this come from? Is this based on social standards or is it deep rooted in human psychology somewhere?
Where other people simply accept it without question I on the other hand have clearly not accepted it. I am out to understand it. I want to know why the male form is getting the shaft (no pun intended).
Don’t get me wrong. I understand that many women enjoy the male form and find guys sexy. But the scale seems to be far unbalanced in favor of women.
So what has me all up in arms about this? I’ll tell you why, even if it means giving you a glimpse into my inner workings.
I’ve had some success with women over the years, but just like any quiet moderately attractive guy I’ve often wondered why I never got more attention from women. I’ve walked into bars and clubs dressed to the nines and feeling all sexy and attractive, only to discover that throughout the night I was not approached and those I approached seemed to care less. On the other hand a woman who walks into that same bar in the same condition will have guys and possibly even other women flocking to her.
So it’s taken me a long time but I’ve finally figured it out. Here’s the answer. Women, even if they are quiet and / or their personality sucks, will still be desirable for their sexuality (for their body). Whereas women seem to pay less attention to a mans body and more attention to what he’s saying or doing. So if a mans personality isn’t out there and sparkling, it doesn’t matter how good he looks, he’s not getting any attention from the ladies. His body holds no credit with them the way a womans body holds credit with men and apparently even some other women.
Why is this? Here is why. Women are spectacles and men are spectators. That’s how it’s set up. Women get dressed up to feel desirable and be desired, even if they don’t plan on doing anything with it, they enjoy being the spectacle. They play a game with other women, the game is called “who is the best spectacle.” Tthey compete for the attention of the spectators (men and other women). When they win they can have their choice of anyone. When they realize they’ve been out gamed by another women who is prettier, hotter or just dressed better, they either get jealous and catty and begin cutting her down either privately or to their friends. Or they gracefully admit defeat and say something to her along the lines of “oh wow! I love that dress you look so cute.”
This is all well and good and I’ve begun to understand why my quiet ass standing against the wall with my beer in my hand (looking hot as hell) never got any attention. I was never part of the show, never a spectacle, as much as I thought I was. As a guy, by default my role was already set for me. I was meant to be a spectator. I was supposed to compliment the women and give them all the attention. The fact that I thought I could seek the attention myself by looking good, HA!
This seems unfair to me. Why can the average woman be both the spectacle and the spectator (to other women), yet guys can’t ever be the spectacle? Why can’t an average guys body just get him laid without having to jump though a bunch of hoops? A guy can’t just stand there talking to a friend and have women want to bang the crap out of him by just looking at his ass. Yet this is common for guys. We see a girl with a decent ass and we’d happily want to tap that. Women aren’t like that. This disheartening to guys like myself who want to be the spectacle.
I’ve placed all the players, yet I still have yet to understand why women are more desirable. Why is the male body considered less sexy?
I believe firmly that females are the alpha. That females came before men and from asexual females men evolved. Possibly modern day hermaphrodites are an example of where the human race came from. At some point we probably split into two genders to promote genetic diversity among the species. We know that all humans begin female before being affected by the Y chromosome in the womb, turning them male. Perhaps this has something to do with all of it. Perhaps this is why females are more desirable. Perhaps this is also why more females are bisexual. I don’t really know, it’s just a guess.
This is only the beginning of my research and understanding. There will be much more coming in time.
I find certain parts of males sexy — nice shoulders, legs, ass, jaw, etc. I’m usually not attracted to them as a whole, and I agree that penises are ugly. But I also think vaginas are ugly, too.
I think it’s “deeply routed in human psychology” like you suggested, and it’s been perpetuated in art from very earliest Venus sculptures. Women are the providers of life, and this is ingrained into us as a matter of survival (procreate to continue the species). That leads to the celebration of the breasts (sustenance) and the womb (life), and by proxy, the entire female form.
@methodElevated – So I have to ask you then as a women, why even be with men at all if you are not attracted to them as a whole?
@roxics – I’m with my boyfriend, James, because I see him as gender-neutral. I am attracted to that. I’m attracted to individuals, and not really one gender or the other in its entirety. I think his personality is a good balance, and I don’t think I’d like him if he were very masculine. I see myself as having an androgynous personality, as well. I simply prefer people who are gender-neutral, whether they’re male or female. While I tend to like women more, I wouldn’t want a girly girl, either.
James and I compliment each other very well and are also sexually compatible. While I’m not exactly attracted to his body in the way I suspect many females are to their male S.O.’s body, I do derive a lot of sexual pleasure from his body, and I enjoy giving pleasure to him, as well.
@methodElevated – That’s kind of interesting you say that because that’s kind of how my girlfriend and I are. She can have a real guy-like persona about her at times and I can definitely be feminine from time to time. But she seems to love my body as I do hers. So we also compliment each other well. In fact she’s the first girl I’ve ever been with that seems to know how to fulfill my desire to want to be viewed as attractive the way women are viewed as attractive. But I also give it back to her.
I completely agree with you 100%.
@methodElevated – I also completely agree with you, as well as your reply. I feel the same way.
Interesting stuff!
Interesting. I can’t really explain it either. I think men have the ability to be very sexy, but women are beautiful. I know this is a generalization, but women tend to be drawn to beauty in all forms more than men.
I really like your theory about humans evolving from women, though. It’s thought provoking.
This was very interesting, and I also would often times rather look at the female form than the male, and I am totally hetero. My sister would often go to strip clubs with her husband because she enjoyed it, and when he offered to go with her to look at men, she declined. Her reason was that males are just not as pretty, and that it would gross her out. I think that certain male body parts are sexy, but as a whole most men are just not all over pretty like women. I dont think that penises are ugly, but some can be, so can some vaginas though!…..My husband was talking last night about one of my friends who doesn’t shave her arm pitts and he was totally grossed out, and even said that he could not have dated me if I had been like that. I replied by calling him sexist, how can someone with arm pitt hair tell someone else that they thought they should shave thiers…….standards are so different for men and women.
@xxquarterlifecrisisxx – Yeah I think it only makes sense if indeed the genders split apart that far up the evolutionary chain. But even if that’s the case, when I say women, I’m referring more to androgynous hermaphrodites who probably have characteristics of both men and women. But even so they would have had the full range of emotions that humans have and the ability to conceive and give birth asexually.
Over time some probably began producing more testostorone and others more estrogen and progesterone. As such their body parts would have changed to reflect this, as we can observe from transgendered people today. It’s interesting to watch, run a youtube search for transgender progress (or something like that) and you’ll see a lot of slide show videos people have put showing their progression from male to female or vice versa. They often span over the course of months and years as they take the hormones required to make such changes. The guys begin growing breasts and their weight redistributes to the hips and butt as well characteristics of their face softens up. They’re skin becomes softer, their facial and chest hair thins out and generally begin to take on the body of a female. They also become more emotional mentally and some have a hard time with depression as a result of it.
The changes also happen in reverse for female to male and their clitoris begins to form into a small penis.
@kidzandK9z – I agree the standards are very different. I don’t believe they should be. While I think it’s interesting and fun to have two genders and for each to have their “thing.” I also believe that we should be more accepting of people and who they are or want to be. If a woman wants to not shave her legs or her pits, that should be perfects acceptable, just as if a man wants to shave his entire body and put on some makeup should be entirely acceptable.
@roxics – I will have to run that part about make up and men past my husband.
Some parts of nature are naturally more beautiful than others. Say a flower and a tree. A flower is more beautiful than a tree, on average, although both can be beautiful in their own ways. Why? I have no idea why. Beauty is beyond definition. It’s instinctive and elusive. I don’t know why a woman is like a flower and a man is like a tree, but that’s just how it is. And because we have minds/souls to see beyond our bodies, our own desires affirm this.
And I think men would die out if (1) you didn’t need them to reproduce (2) birthing a male wasn’t a coin flip, aka you could eliminate them by not breeding with them and (3) exotic wasn’t erotic.
Exotic is SO erotic to me.
Wait, also men’s strength is a huge factor. They can force us to have sex with them, so… yeah, they win there.
There is something Jungian about women that’s more primal that goes back to our very earliest days as infants, even to our connection in the womb that’s imprinted deep on our memories. Perhaps that’s why—it’s a comfort craving, the need to be nurtured. Men also play a similar game to the one that women play, though in this case it’s more like fighting for the best seat in the house, to continue your analogy. Biology drives sexual politics as much as anything. Women are looking for desirable genes in a man, as evidenced by his physique—shoulders, arms, chest, back, etc. Men aren’t quite so picky about where they’ll… deposit their genetic material. They have one directive: procreate, as often and wherever possible. Oh, biology.
Unfortunately, I don’t find the female form as appealing in that way, although artists wouldn’t have paid so much attention if it weren’t undeniably attractive from an aesthetic POV. (Wow, that sounds like a load of bullshit at 3am.) So ultimately I don’t know if it’s a matter of the male body being less sexy or attractive. Women are just more selective when it comes to who their baby’s daddy is going to be because they have an entirely different set of directives (and I use the plural). A women’s mating plan looks like an extensive logic tree in which every possible scenario is considered. A man’s is more like firing the torpedoes into the exhaust port of the Death Star. Personally I’m very turned on by the angularity and hardness of a man’s body, but then I’m operating under a different set of biological directives and ruled by different hormones. I find it very attractive.
@immortalwithout – I think beauty is more culturally defined than universal, and the fact that the body is merely a reproductive package for attracting a mate. We each play our respective roles, so it goes to show that regardless of how civilised we are as a species, biology still trumps everything.
You’re right it is unfair, and a side-effect is that it’s so damn difficult to find sexy male models online! I have to surf the gay male porn for that. I think there are many reasons for the tendency of women to prefer to look at women, some of which have already been addressed, so I’m going to talk about one that hasn’t as much: conditioning. We still live in a society where women are constantly flaunted as sexual objects in the media, but men are not to anywhere near the same degree.
People simply are used to the idea that we should look at women and admire women and dream about women, but not men. Amazingly, women in this society are still taught that “purity” matters. What makes a woman impure? If a dirty penis touches her, or worse, goes inside of her vagina! Now that is hardly telling her to admire and appreciate the male form. On the contrary, she’s constantly told that she has to be the one admired, and is practically demanded by all of society to put herself on display for men. Of course that’s going to make her think she should view other women as a display, if that’s how she views herself.
And for the women who do dare to admire the male form with zeal? They’re nymphos, cougars, sluts… the list goes on. I think it’s bullshit. I love women and men! I want to get both flavors of eye-candy. I believe the movie industry almost gets it: after all, the recent action films offered us both Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale in all their amazing topless glory (and pantsless, in some cases). Things are slowly turning around.
One more thing: I don’t like penises in porn a lot of the time because they’re not well-rounded characters – they have no subtlety. It’s always “oh, look how big it is” and “see, it goes in and out of the hole!” Penises have personality, they can give and receive so many different kinds of pleasure, and they’re even fun to look at.
I know this is an older post, and I have given a little of my input in person, however; If society was to place pictures of Men (and naked men as well) and reduce the amount of women sexuality, the conditioning would be in favor of Men. I think that it is because society has conditioned us to view the female form as more alluring.