A “Single Bum” Looks for Wife
March 16, 2015
WH writes:
Thank you for the link to the post regarding why so few men are married. As I commented on that site (which follows below with some more explanation), there is a flip side to this as well. I commented there in exasperation.
I am in my early 30’s and have always been considered attractive and virile. I WANT to get married. I do not need to be convinced of its merits. But where, oh where, should I find my wife? I am told my standards are too high. Too high?!? My standards: pretty girl with nice legs who is Catholic. That’s it. Those are my “standards.”It’s actually everyone else who has bizarre standards or definitions of what “pretty” or “Catholic” means. I mean “pretty” in the turning-heads-walking-down-the-sidewalk kind of pretty. And I mean Catholic in the not-previously-married, non-contracepting, holy-cow,-I-really-need-to-save-my-and-my-family’s-souls kinda Catholic. You nay-sayers find me one of those, and as I said in my comment on the blog I’ll fly out to her, drop down on my knee, and cross off one more “single, not married” bum from the world’s ledger.
Matthew H. writes:
WH:
Look, it’s normal and healthy for a man to want a pretty girl. And the truth is that fat girls aren’t attractive, and mousy girls who don’t pay any attention to their appearance aren’t either. If those women want to find a guy, they need to lose weight and take more care with their appearance. There’s just no denying either of those facts.
I’m not trying to be holier-than-thou here, but please consider: is it really true that you only want a pretty girl who is Catholic? Don’t you want someone who is kind? Isn’t that even more important to you than someone who looks good? Back in the day, I dated lots of pretty girls, not because I’m good-looking, rich, famous or particularly charismatic, but because I’m persistent, LOL. And they were very pretty girls, I’ve dated at least two actresses that you’ve seen, and several other women who were just as pretty. At first it’s a rush to walk into a room with a woman that all of the guys are looking at. But that wears off pretty quickly. For me it wore off after the first couple of dates with a really beautiful woman. After that I was honestly indifferent to her great beauty and cared more about the personalities of the girls I dated. If I were to become a widower and start dating again, attractiveness would not be a huge factor. It’s a factor, sure, but personality counts for a lot more, I’d take a 7 who is warm and caring over a 10 who is a little selfish and a little shallow ever time. (Not suggesting that 10’s are inherently selfish and shallow, just illustrating a point.)
Also, how pretty do you need a girl to be? I tend to think that female attractiveness is on a bell curve. Most women are 4’s, 5’s and 6’s. 10’s are very rare, and so are 1’s. And most women have the looks that they are born with. They can move themselves up a couple of points on the scale with by staying in shape, the right clothes and makeup, and a pleasant attitude. And they can move themselves down on the scale with tattoos, weight gain, and an unpleasant attitude. But no amount of makeup will turn a 5 into a 10, it’s just not possible. Fortunately, most guys aren’t that discriminating. If a girl is between the ages of, say, 18 and 35, and takes reasonably good care of her appearance, 90% of guys will find her attractive. That’s certainly true in my case. I find most women attractive. As a married man I am, and always will be, faithful to my wife, but I’m not blind, either, it’s not like you flip a light switch when you get married and stop noticing other women just like that. Most women are attractive, in my opinion.
So there is nothing wrong with wanting to meet a girl who isn’t ugly. But once a girl reaches a minimum threshold of attractiveness, don’t you think that other qualities count for more? You’re marrying more than just a pretty face, you’re marrying someone who is (hopefully) kind and nurturing, you know?
Laura Wood writes:
Well said.
Prettiness is not as important in a wife as kindness.
Lily writes:
Just how much more offensive can it get?! Do these men even recognize that common pudeur would have it, if you already “rate” women on a “scale” in your mind (the “Matthew H.” apparently operates with the one up to 10), that you take caution to hide that you do so? That even on the anonymous internet one doesn’t allow oneself to externalize everything, and in such crude terms, as it’s by definition in a mixed company, especially on a rare morally sound website where one could expect that a habit of “rating” women by their physique would generate scandal with some readers? In a way I suppose this is a huge advantage of my generation, having access to the internet and knowing sufficient English to browse the web past our own linguistic ghettos, so now we can have an insight into what’s going on in men’s minds in a sort of conversations we wouldn’t normally be exposed to, but that are now registered. But it also leaves me with such a de-romancitized vision of men which, as I spoke to you earlier, even exposure to academic feminism couldn’t accomplish, they do it for themselves. So the commenter “WH”, older than me by nearly a decade (shouldn’t thus be more mature and of better discrimination of potential wives than that?), wants only two things in a wife – that she’s Catholic proper (understandable) and that she’s remarkably pretty. He particularly emphasized nice legs. Not a single consideration on character, although arguably some of it is implied in the Catholic part. Skin deep and babies, little more.
The commenter “Matthew H.”, in response, other than proposing a “scale” which attaches “numerical value” to women in function of their physique (!! I still can’t get over that), agrees that it’s the attraction that matters. He frames it in much more reasonable terms, of course, but it’s there nonetheless: women who don’t take care of their appearance ought to do so (it sounds almost like an ethical imperative, other than an only practical consideration).
WH writes:
To Matthew:
Thanks for your thoughts. I do appreciate them and will think them through and can tell they were meant in earnest. And maybe I should have been more explicit that the comment was sort of blowing off steam perhaps at frustrations in the dating world. However, I must be honest that I couldn’t help feeling there was a little “the lady doth protest too much” going on here. You seem (and I apologize if this is a false assumption) to be older than me. Do you realize that in my age group, no one is wanting a “pretty” girl. You know what they want? “Hot,” “sexy,” and other even more explicit and vulgar expressions that I’ll spare Mrs. Wood and her female readers. “Pretty” is considered to be (in the circles I run in, I suppose) not too far a cry from middle of the road in your “numbering system” (and you lecture?). And while we are flailing away at strawmen, perhaps I’ll take a swing. I find it interesting that in all your advice you hardly seemed to notice how I stated I wanted a Catholic woman – and I defined a Catholic lady as one who was committed as my wife to my salvation and our family’s salvation. And you think I’m not interested in kindness? In a nurturer? Do you think a good Catholic lady is not interested in kindness (it only being one of the fruits of the Spirit and all)? Let me be more frank: even if I did have to choose between a Catholic lady who was fiercely interested in my salvation and a Catholic lady who was “kind” or “nurturing” (whatever that word means these days), I’ll take my salvation any day of the week. Pretty girls are a dime a dozen, as you stated. Catholic ladies are worth their weight in gold.
I fear at this point, we are just speaking past each other. That’s the nature of these comment boxes. By the grace of God I left Puritanical Protestantism a long time ago. Maybe it’s just emotional baggage (and I do apologize for that!) but you don’t have to go too far into the “looks don’t matter” talk before you’re squarely in the enemy’s territory. Again, I know you meant your comment in earnest and as good natured advice. There just is something in there that is gnawing at me as wrong or even harmful. Feel free to remind me that might be why I’m still a single bum : )
Sorry one last thing. According to the holy Catechism of the Council of Trent (or the Roman Catechism if you prefer), regarding marriage:
“First of all, nature itself by an instinct implanted in both sexes impels them to such companionship…these are ends, some one of which, those who desire to contract marriage piously and religiously, as becomes the children of the Saints, should propose to themselves. If to these we add other causes which induce to contract marriage, and, in choosing a wife, to prefer one person to another, such as the desire of leaving an heir, wealth, BEAUTY, illustrious descent, congeniality of disposition – such motives, because not inconsistent with the holiness of marriage, ARE NOT TO BE CONDEMNED. We do not find that the Sacred Scriptures condemn the Patriarch Jacob for having chosen Rachel for her beauty, in preference to Lia.” By the way, beauty is not just, to use your words, “a girl who isn’t ugly.” Let’s just say I’m looking for my Rachel, sir.
Laura Wood writes:
Thank you for your excellent comments. I forgive you for saying these threads are just people talking past each other. :-)
I didn’t read Matthew’s comments as a rebuke to WH and I was not offended by WH’s initial comments although Catholic women ideally keep their legs out of view. Lily is being unfair in saying WH did not mention character. She has over-reacted to Matthew’s remarks too but I sympathize with a young woman’s desire to know that men have higher values.
It is not immoral to value beauty.
Agreed, it’s not classy to rate a woman’s appearance numerically. But since this is an informal conversation, and Matthew was basically arguing against it, I did not find his remarks offensive. Also when men do this they are only rating appearances. That’s all. We all know ‘tens’ who are not women one would wish on any man. I have known women who are not naturally very pretty who seem to attract men all the time. They have a feminine way about them. It can be depressing to realize how much men value beauty, but many women turn down poor men of high character and good men do not value appearance only. They just don’t. The value men place on a feminine appearance is an incentive to enhance one’s appearance, which can be done in a thousand ways. It is the rare young woman who does not have something beautiful about her.
Lily writes:
I agree that it’s not immoral per se to appreciate beauty, but don’t you think there’s some problem with it factoring so highly among the things men value in women? Not only is it depressing to wake up to that fact beacause you’re one of those young women who have little to offer in that area, it’s also depressing as a consideration divorced from any personal context. Men seem to conceive of love very differently than women. I try to take into account that there’s a psychological difference between the two, but I can’t help not liking what I am told is their conception. If men’s love is conditional upon beauty, if they can’t love women who aren’t beautiful, it’s certainly a legitimate concern for them to look for prospective wives only among the beautiful ones, but I still find it troubling that they should love in such a way at all. What you’re saying, essentially, is that they also value other things – I understand that – but that implies that beauty is still among the primary considerations. If I understand it correctly it means, in abstract, that from a pool of already-beautiful women they would choose those who also have other qualities of value. But with most women I know it seems to be the other way round: from the pool of men with other qualities they may be more inclined to gravitate towards those men who are also beautiful or rich, the pool itself not being defined by those characteristics.
But granted, maybe I overreacted to Matthew’s “scale” (but I’m really not accustomed at all to that sort of “quantitative” reasoning, that’s why it caught me by surprise – I don’t think it ever as much as occurred to me as a peripheral thought to assign numbers to men by some qualities and then discuss these abstractions with other women), and I understand that his basic point was that beauty matters less than WH had it. Also, as WH said in this new comment, he was venting. And I vent too on this topic, from the perspective of a young woman invisible to men. I don’t know that in my case there’s much to improve, some women just aren’t beautiful, even as a child I think I was less cute than children typically are. It’s depressing to think that this single quality is where so much of our value as potential wives gets concentrated. That’s what disturbs me, not the fact that men value beauty, but that there’s such a primacy to that consideration, it seems to be universal, spanning among men of different worldviews, politics, in different countries. Maybe they differ about what they see as attractive, but that’s just different tastes, the centrality of the physical aspect remains, and I’m so uncomfortable with it. Maybe because I’m a bit of a late bloomer in things concerning the opposite sex, so maybe most women get over waking up to this fact at an earlier stage in life, but I’m currently quite depressed over it and don’t know what to make of it.
Laura Wood writes:
Firstly, I find it hard to believe that you don’t have physical qualities that cannot be significantly enhanced with make-up, appealing clothes, jewelry and scarves.
Secondly, please look around you. You will find many thousands of women who are not beauty queens and yet have attracted the attentions of men.
Thirdly, regardless of what men want in a wife, character does matter more than beauty in the long run. It matters in marriage and in all things. No one gets to heaven because she is beautiful.