I'm a straight man who wants to be attractive to women, but society's masculine sex figures (capeshit heroes, underwear models, etc) are shaped for the male gaze even when they're ostensibly meant to be attractive to straight women.* So I'm afraid that emulating their examples, or cultural "common knowledge" about how to perform attractiveness, is mostly making me more attractive to men. Recently I was looking at a male friend's Bumble with some female friends and felt like I totally didn't understand female desire. And men seem a lot more interested in me than women.

Does anyone have reading suggestions? I'm NOT interested in redditisms like "women like rolled up sleeves", I want something more holistic and contextualized.

This post was prompted by a /r/MensLib post but please don't continue their comment fights here.

* Except for "women's media". Boy bands, romance novels, reality TV, etc. I would much rather read theory than consume a lot of pop culture though.


edit: holy shit guys please give me THEORY RECS. I don't care about individual opinions, the internet is full of them already and the comments are full of what I already talked about: cultural "common knowledge" about how to perform attractiveness.

  • kristina [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Is there anything wrong with being more attractive to men? :thinking-about-it:

    I'm honestly not sure if there is a non-shitty self help book written by a woman about it. To me, when I was dating, I obviously cared about whether or not I was attracted to whoever I was looking to's face, but honestly everywhere else wasn't a big deal for me, I feel like because I'm bi I have a pretty wide range of body types that I like. I do like strong men with decent cardio, mostly for the sex cause that means I have to do way less work because when you're with an out of shape dude you are essentially gonna be doing squats for an hour which can be brutal and not exactly the most enjoyable thing at times and makes some types of sex very hard. Good arm muscles are great for prone stuff which a lot of people are fans of. A lot of stuff comes down to personal preference, but generally staying well groomed (re: regular hair cuts or taking care of your long hair and making it beautiful) and clean, and having a very very basic sense of style (re: graphic tees don't look the best) are good. Don't have to dress up all the time but sometimes thats a plus. Brush your teeth. Have hobbies that are of interest to your date (so, you like video games? try to find a girl that likes those). A lot of women seem kinda shallow about the pics guys put up, but I feel like the smarter women realize that men suck at taking photos of themselves (or at least my bf did, he looks WAY better in person). So maybe take into consideration bad luck is based on bad pictures.

    For me, when I was on apps and looking for a date, I was miserable. I had guys constantly spamming me for sex, sending me insults or whatever, saying 'hey' and leaving it at that. Very few even looked at anything I had to say on my profile, and I gave a lot of lead ins. Books, socialism, video games, what I do for fun, a ton of things. Generally hated it when guys didn't want to talk about mutual interests because it felt like it was just a pump and dump situation. At the time, I made it very clear I wasn't in it for just the sex yet a lot of guys seemed to ignore this. Remember that sometimes women ghost you not because they don't like you, but because of fatigue from having hundreds of dudes trying to spam 'fuck me' at them.

    If you have any specific questions you can hit me up, again, don't really know of any specific reading material. All of the stuff above are things that would immediately strike me from point a to z when dating people. Especially the teeth, for the love of god, brush your teeth.

    • StewartCopelandsDad [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 years ago

      Appreciate the advice, already well groomed + in shape. I'm looking for feminist literature about female desire and/or male sexuality. Would be surprised if a self-help book fit this niche.

      Is there anything wrong with being more attractive to men?

      It's useful for job interviews and stuff but I'm straight and already have lots of dude friends so accidentally putting time and energy into it is a waste.

    • Bobson_Dugnutt [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      having a very very basic sense of style (re: graphic tees don’t look the best)

      Well shit that's like half my wardrobe. What kind of shirts should I wear?

      • President_Obama [they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Check r/malefashionadvice . If you wear those graphic tees because you think you're young and hip, check r/streetwear, pick an aesthetic, and you can actually dress young and hip.

      • kristina [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Really for me plain tees are fine. A lot of graphic tees just... Don't look good

        • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I have like only one graphic tee shirt that looks good lol. The rest I purely wear around the house.

          Wish they would actually make something that actually looks good and not like crap.