The art of the armpit

Continued: What does it mean for a man to be "beautiful"? As came up in the comments to my last post, there's a paradox: the more a man does with his appearance, the less appealing many women will find him. To give two examples:

-An obvious and relatively easy thing men can do with their appearances is mess with their facial and body hair. There is no consensus among women, however, that removing anything hair-wise makes a man more attractive. (Although there's probably some limited consensus regarding ponytails and very long beards.) To many women, any such alterations are worse than whatever back-hair-having state preceded them. I mean, I get that the man in the linked beauty-blog post is not looking to please women, but I suspect that many gay men, too, would find something like this a bit much: "I trim my underarm hair into shape—there’s an art to it, really." Gosh. To move to the less- rather than more-intimate end of things, there's the question of facial hair - some women like, some don't, some like some variants but not others. The "neck-beard" that so offends Britta probably reads as scruffy-intellectual-in-a-good-way to other women. And Britta's anti-unibrow stance is in fact a pro-eyebrow-shaping one, and some women find any evidence, however subtle, that a man owns tweezers kinda ick.

-A man who weighs 400 pounds will, all things equal, probably get ogled less than one at 200. And across all shapes, sizes, and gender identities, a partner who's active is generally preferable to one who finds reaching for the remote a bit too much effort. But as much as all those gym-going men would probably like to think it's a the-fitter-the-better situation, a six-pack is not something heterosexual women expect. And, as with the whole body-hair issue, finding that a man has put endless effort into his abdomen is going to be a happy surprise for some women, and off-putting to others. Why off-putting? Because it suggests male vanity, because it suggests a lack of personality/professional ambition, whatever, whether or not any of that is true in a particular case.

One way to look at this is to say that ingrained homophobia is what keeps women from wanting a man with a nicely-shaped brow, with glistening pecs, with makeup enhancing his features. That societal misogyny is behind the dichotomy between the dressed-up sorority girl and her rag-wearing frat-boy equivalent. Women are expected to do so much, men so little! Unfair! The patriarchy and all that.

Another, however, is to consider that the only beauty men are allowed in our society is natural beauty, i.e. that which cannot easily be altered, and that which, when altered, gets a man mockery, not admiration. Height? A tough one to fake. A full head of hair? Artifice can be spotted a mile away, and, unlike the hair extensions that give extra volume to so many women these days, is universally mocked. A short, bald man is usually going to be chosen over one with lifts and a wig... but not over a taller guy who goes through massive quantities of shampoo. A tall man with thick hair, broad shoulders, and even features need do nothing more than shower, shave (or keep a beard from reaching his knees), and get regular haircuts, and the ladies will swoon. A "naturally" beautiful woman still must do a great deal of primping to arrive at that same point of desirability, to reach that all-around "groomed" level that indicates femininity.

This is something that had been at the back of my mind for a while, in terms of what, exactly, I'm asking when I ask that women take male looks into account, or, rather, that women acknowledge, rather than suppress, this tendency. What am I asking that women asking of men? What am I asking, broadly speaking, of men? If male beauty is to become more important, how do we square that with there being not a whole lot the individual man can do to look good for more women than he already does?

This brings us back to the question of "natural" beauty in general - is it better for beauty to be a quality some just have, or that some just have for some, or for it to be something the individual can go out and get? On the one hand, it's awful to feel as though one must do X, Y, and Z, all of which are expensive, time-consuming, and no doubt loaded with carcinogens, in order to leave the house each morning. On the other, it's no fun to feel that one is locked into one's self-presentation, that qualities over which one has no control are the ones on which one is being judged. Consider, for example, blondness. Is it better if women feel they must bleach their hair to be thought attractive, or if the only women who are thought attractive are of Nordic extraction or look that way?

Obviously, it's better if beauty gets to be subjective, if a wide range of appearances are thought beautiful by some, and if everyone gets to be with someone with whom there is this subjective mutual attraction. It's also, of course, better if people get some control over their looks, insofar as they can present themselves as part of whichever subculture or "type" they identify with, and to use their looks to attract the sort of partners they seek. I don't know how to make that happen, and am not so terribly optimistic.