Seriouslyserving in Dalrock’s post wants to know what women can do if they aren’t in the top 20% of attractiveness to find a husband. Although I’ve written on this before, this is worth a post and I want to expand on it a bit too.
That raises a question for me: what should a young woman, who is also in this 50-80% range, but not attracted to guys on the same “level”, do?
I mean, I certainly think sexual attraction is an important basis for marriage (not the only thing, but it’s up there). But if 80% of women are only attracted to the hottest 20% of men… well, that seems like not enough men to go around!
You can say that the women should improve themselves to be able to attract some of those more attractive men. And that might work well for individual women, but there will still not be enough men to go around. Or you could say that women should just accept marrying someone they are not super attracted to, but that seems like a poor foundation for a marriage?
Or perhaps people could take the latter option, with a view to doing what they can to increase the “sparks” once married…
1. Work on their attractiveness. The obvious: sleep, workout, nutrition, flattering and feminine clothes like skirts and dresses, long hair, skin care, light and fresh makeup if any, no tattoos, etc. Women need to be mindful and understand that men like young, beautiful, virgin women. There are few exceptions, and that’s how God created us to be.
In case you weren’t familiar with the objective OKCupid data:
2. Work on becoming more godly. The obvious: kindness, generosity, graciousness, fruits of the Spirit, dependent on God for most needs. Most men won’t appreciate a woman who is super emotionally clingy and dumps her problems on him if many can be resolved by herself. How a woman treats those closest to her and the least of these is a good indicator.
3. Work on skills that would complement their dream man: cooking, homemaker skills if she wants to be a stay at home mom, good at massages, or whatever else. Hobbies if she wants to find someone in a particular area.
4. Look for men that have strong potential. The old Russian maxim being if you want to be married to a general then marry the lieutenant. Specifically, men who show flashes of ambition and leadership qualities but may not have fully stepped into his own yet. These men typically won’t be snatched up by anyone yet as most women will be going after the few men with the whole package. Look for men who have written down goals and are working to achieve them.
If women are looking for the top 20% of men, then they’re going to be competing with all of the women who are likely more attractive and have good personalities too. Women need to be taught good discernment for what qualities of men they can see that have potential to grow into a strong, bold, confident leaders. Then they need to be taught to follow his lead, and be his biggest supporter and fan. That is the way women help foster a strong confident man.
5. I do not suggest women marry men they are not attracted to nor men do that for women. That’s recipe for failure. However, women’s attraction is a bit more fluid and tends to increase as a man becomes a stronger and more confident leader. Thus, finding a man with potential will generally be the best.
Frankly, there’s not enough attractive Christian men or women to go around so trying to fix the whole problem is useless. Do what you can with the few people that you mentor.
6. Then what I said earlier: Vet according to godliness first. Then when she finds a man that has potential or is a strong masculine leader she should be respectful, encouraging, and enthusiastic to him. She should be willing to commit and submit to him. Follow his lead.
Hence, my overall maxim of relationships:
- Attractiveness gets your foot in the door and allows you to enter into a relationship. Some more readily than others.
- Personality and attitude [and godliness] will make you a keeper so you don’t get kicked out.
These two short rules about how relationships work should be taught to all Christian men and women.
What parents can do
In general, if you are a Christian parent then you should be preparing your sons and daughters accordingly. Make sure you address the 3 elephants in the room.
Obviously, young Christian women tend to have their best shot at finding a Christian husband who they find attractive if they can land him when they are in the 20-25 year old range. This is approximately when men find women the most attractive. Hence, the women need to be told that during college and the years post college are important to snagging a husband above getting an education and career started if they want to have a family and kids.
Parents, specifically the father, should in my opinion be mentoring their sons in Christ as well as in teaching them about women. Indeed, it would be wise to have some type of coming of age ceremony around age 13 which is the age when most cultures around the world including the Jewish culture. From there you treat him as his own man with his own responsibilities.
This should and can be applied to both the son and daughters although it is more important for the sons. The sons need to learn responsibility for their actions at an early age and life skills so that they can mature into godly masculine men early. This gives them the best shot at approach college or the trades as attractive men that should have no trouble finding and picking out some of the more beautiful, chaste Christian women.
Basically, young men and young women need to be given information to allow them to be prepared for life, and be taught life skills much earlier in middle and high school. This will allow them to approach their late teens and early twenties with the full knowledge that although education and career are fine, if their goal is to eventually have a family they need to make it a priority over those things. Avoid the life scripts and focus on the Scriptures.
Kids need to be taught to…
- Take responsibility for your physical attractiveness including weight.
- Take responsibility to dress nice and classy rather than lazy.
- Take responsibility for searching out ministries on campus with young people interested in obeying Christ.
- Take responsibility for developing life skills to run a household, manage finances well, and work hard.
- Take responsibility to be disciplined to work toward their goals.
Don’t make them into idols, but don’t ignore them either. Otherwise, they might hit their late twenties and early thirties like most of us wondering why we never were able to build good relationships that led to marriage. Or women wondering why they were never or rarely asked out.
Christianity and masculinity 
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Not every woman is gonna have long hair though, especially if you’re talking about african-american women. I have short hair but not like pixie short but think 1960’s afro but not too big. If i were to straighten it with a chemical (relaxers) then yeah it would be long but it would only damage my hair. So not every woman is gonna have long hair
ChildofRa: Not the best at this but I didn’t want to leave you hanging. I felt like I could help you out by offering my perspective!
The issue of hair was always an interesting one to me. I understand and on a basic level agree with the manosphere’s voiced consensus on longer hair on women = better but as an African-American male, I comprehend that AA women typically have short hair.
I personally believe that since the majority of people in the manosphere/U.S. have females who naturally grow long hair, that that rule is a Westernized belief and nothing more. Clothing and dress changes with the times. Heck, back in the Bible days, Jewish dudes had big beards and long hair and were rocking robes. If you want to use the Bible as a reference, we should all be wearing dresses. So short hair isn’t the end of the world. As a wise man once said, “You shouldn’t stress over the cards you weren’t dealt but instead master the ones you have in your hand!”
The main idea is that you should look decent and approachable. Now I’m not a hair expert but I speak as someone who’ve seen different hairstyles on AA women: as I’m sure ya know, with AA hair there’s the option of braids of weave. There’s always options for styling hair w/o adding weave, though–I’ve seen AA girls with cute styles. Hair isn’t an absolute dealbreaker or maker—every persons should enhance their strengths and be made aware/do what they can with their weaknesses.
What do you guys think?
@ ChildofRa
My personal opinion. Grow it longer but use hair bands or whatever else to keep it tame.
If you look at black or half black celebrities no woman ever looked better with shorter hair. Even if you have an afro and have to tame it then it’s better than keeping it short. Yes, it may be more work, but it is what it is.
I’ve liked black people before, but not with short hair. Whatever works for you though.
Here’s a comment by Novaseeker on the same issue, same thread where DS originally posted his comment.
_______________
If a person finds themselves unattractive to the people they are seeking to attract, they can either become more attractive, settle, or abstain. This is true for both men and women alike. Historically (and even currently) we have had a lot of marriages that involved settling, because of the problem you raise — there will always be a shortage of men in the top 20%, relative to the women who want them, because only 20% of men are in the top 20%. In 2015, settling is very dangerous, because strong, maintained sexual attraction is the cornerstone of 2015 marriage due to the fact that the legal/cultural/social supports for sustaining a “so so” marriage are no longer there — so settling runs a significant failure risk.
On the margins, I think we will see an increase of sitting it out, but still quite a few people settling because they prefer that to sitting out, at least initially. Whether or not the settling marriages fail really depends on a number of factors, some of them personal and some of them socio-economic class related.
It’s what happens when sexual attraction and hotness becomes elevated to the level of importance that it has today, coupled with the model of marriage being “hedonic marriage”. It leads to a small number of people having hot-as-fire marriages, and a lot of other people being in precarious ones.
_____________________
So the problem is that for women, there aren’t enough sexually attractive men to go around. There just aren’t. So women are going to have to settle if they want spouses. They are going to have to accept that they aren’t going to get the hawt guy to commit. That’s just not going to happen for most women.
@ thedeti
True, though, historically men were more respected as a whole. This led to the elevation of say a 7 man was actually higher on the totem pole than a 7 woman which would satisfy her hypergamy. When everything was “equalized” so to speak, a 7 woman is no longer attracted to a 7 man.
Thus, women can be attracted to men of “lesser caliber” but their expectations need to be adjusted.
Additionally, since women can work to respect their man which allows them to become attracted to them they can all marry off and be happy IF they wanted. However, most of them don’t want their own “situational alpha” but an objective 20%+ alpha.
Envy over Godliness.
I wonder if I could replace most of my comments with “Deadly Sin Y over Godliness”. It fits most of my responses, realistically.
All good stuff, but of course it’s all been said before.
– Don’t be fat.
– Be feminine
– Don’t be manly
– Be pleasant
– Don’t be unpleasant
– Bring more to a marriage than what’s between your legs. Every woman has one.
– Like men
– Be approachable
– Tell everyone you know that you’re seriously looking for a husband
– Say yes when someone asks you to get coffee
– Get out of your house. Your future husband doesn’t live there.
– Spend enough time around the male of the species to figure out what behaviors etc you can’t abide and which things are important to you. These things will likely differ from what you think before you do.
– Understand that you are also a product of your culture. If you were raised in China, your tastes in food and architecture etc. would differ. Your attraction triggers are somewhat fluid.
– Closeness makes the heart grow fonder when you let it.
@ anonymous_ng
Sadly, yes.
Easy to say, hard to do. People are lazy and entitled. Who knew?
I tried weave and relaxing my hair, it just didnt work for me. I like my hair in its natural state, even when i put it in braids(my own hair) because i take of it people think i have in weave but its just cause i take of my hair. Also i watch what i put into my body, i dont eat fast food or drink a lot of soft drinks. I also workout mostly bellydance,pilates and yoga. Plus getting good decent brushes is also a key to maintain your hair.
For ChildofRa:
My hair is relaxed, but I have 2 young adult daughters who wear their natural hair. This is one:
Her hair, as you can see, is not long in its curly state, and although she hasn’t been asked out all that often, she has seen interest shown by men of various ethnic backgrounds. Her natural hair hasn’t been much of an issue. However, when she adds a curl creme and twists it out, it hangs to brush just the tops of her shoulders and that is almost always when men notice her more quickly.
It’s always taken a little extra effort to keep natural black hair well groomed but it’s not impossible. The reality is that even among black men (making exceptions for those who have a political/ethnic pride preference for natural hair), a black woman ups her chances of being noticed by doing things to her hair that make it more “mainstream”, for lack of a better word.
Hope that helps.
So sorry, DS! I meant for that to be a link that Child of Ra could follow, not for the picture to show up in your comment thread. Can you fix it?
@ ChildofRa
I will defer to the advice of others on hair. What I would add is that you can compensate some by maximizing your femininity in other areas. Dressing well is a good method. Given your ethnic background, I would think dresses and skirts/blouses with strong solid color combos would work well. A black and white combo can often be a winner.
Elspeth
But it’s a cool pic of your kid.
@ Elspeth
I’ll remove it if you want but that’s fine.
At this point in the cultural decline, I think that so many women are corrupted by their hollywood-fueled fantasies that a woman in the 50th percentile can no longer be truly satisfied with her 50th percentile male equivalent.
For too long, these women have polished their ideals and nourished their fantasies. They have engaged in a continuous feeding of their pride and carnality. Even if they have a revelation of the fact that they are a 5, they still cannot manage attraction for a male 5, since they have conditioned their mind, heart, and probably their oxytocin-anticipation for men that are out of their league.
They must be left behind in the desert, and never to enter the promised land of marriage and family. Because they chose to believe a lie. A small fraction of them may be able to undo their edifice of pride thoroughly enough to be grateful for a the kind of man they can actually have. The rest can be relegated to bitter spinsterhood.
I should not probably feel the schadenfreude I do about this. This is a failing of mine, of course. But every time I see some woman wailing about how she can’t find a worthy man, I smile. Every time some 39 year old chick bares her soul about her alpha-banging past and her barren womb, I laugh. Shoulda thought of that, chica.
(Certain high-quality women exempt, of course).
@ChildofRa
From a black man’s perspective, I think the natural look is fine as long as the hair is grown out. I understand that our hair is different and doesn’t grow the same way as other ethnicities’. The example that Elspheth posted is good, and there are plenty of other natural styles that look feminine and attractive. I only don’t like it when the hair is cut really short; I’ve seen plenty of black women with buzz cuts and I think it looks rather masculine to be honest.
To use some examples from Voddie Baucham’s family.
No (I think that’s his wife?, second photo all):
Still no, but better (daughter):
https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/e88fc7003c71e1198640cb6bbc096359?s=400&d=blank&r=pg
Much better (daughter):
She looks much better with longer hair whether straightened or more natural.
In my opinion. Elspeth’s daughter is generally the minimum length I would consider personally understanding that black hair tends to be poofy, curly, or frizzy so it doesn’t usually display as long.
My general overall preference is scapular length to low back. White, asian, and other ethnicity girls the minimum length I like is to the top of the breasts. They have no excuse for cutting their hair shorter other than “wanting a change” or “being a rebel” which are not good godly excuses. Medical excuses like cancer not withstanding.
As long as the pic is okay with you, DS. My daughter’s hair looks almost identical to Jasmine Baucham’s hairstyle in the picture with her fiance when she twists it out the way I tried to describe to Child of Ra. It’s not hard and it should work well if she has a medium length afro as she said.
It’s not that uncommon for black women to cut their hair as short as Mrs.Baucham cuts hers, actually. She’s a pretty, petite woman so it works, but few can pull it off and I don’t advice.
@Elspeth – “She’s a pretty, petite woman so it works, but few can pull it off and I don’t advice.”
This is basically true for all women. Thin, attractive women can get away with wearing their hair short and still being seen as attractive, but it’s not because of their short hair, it’s in spite of their short hair.
Of course, that’s a generalization. I’m sure that some men prefer short hair on women.
@ anonymous_ng
I’d estimate it to be the same number of men who prefer obese women. Not many.
The men who do may seem higher, but they are typically very thirsty. They affirm their woman in whatever she wants to do rather than stating their preferences because they’re afraid of being single again.
Nah, DS. I actually know of at least two men who strongly prefer short hair. One husband actually ordered his wife to cut it after she grew it out. Also blogger Juluan O’dea (aka David Collard) springs to mind. Such men are a distinct minority, but they do exist.
Okay, I’ve overstayed my welcome. Just wanted to encourage Child of Ra. I have a lot practice with it of late…
@ Elspeth
That doesn’t really refute my point.
The amount of men who prefer fat women compared to the amount of men who stay or put up with fat women is vastly different.
Likewise, lots of men will say they prefer short hair (to placate women) but only few actually prefer it.
My point was simply that there are certainly more men who like short hair than there will ever be who like fat women, 🙂
@Elspeth
“My point was simply that there are certainly more men who like short hair than there will ever be who like fat women,”
I agree. I’ve reconnected with a college friend whose hair is short to the point of being near bald, but it fits her little head perfectly. She’s about 5’10” and works out like a boss.
it works for her.
If she were 5’3″ and chubby, I’d be like *meh, do something*. LOL
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“Specifically, men who show flashes of ambition and leadership qualities but may not have fully stepped into his own yet.”
How can a young lady judge whether her suitor has strong potential to be a confident leader?
Thank you very much! Appreciate any tips. (:
@ purplezpeace
She can’t. Judging potential requires experience, and a young lady – by definition – lacks experience. The same is true of a young man. That’s why they need to rely on the judgement of older, more experienced Christians (ideally parents and other relatives).
@ purplezpeace
Per Jesus:
Luke 16:10 “He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much.
If a man is consistently responsible with leadership in small things like say Bible studies, small group activities, in daily life, and things like that then you probably have a good candidate on your hands.