For my last column, I made a compilation of column ideas that didn’t make the cut. In other words, they weren’t good enough for their own feature-length column.
A girl’s worst insult
Girls are insulted by many, many things, but the insult I would like to focus on is “slut.” According to Urban Dictionary, “slut,” means a dirty, nasty promiscuous woman that no one would even touch.
Even more obscure than the definition is the amount of slutaphobia exhibited in today’s college girls. “Does this make me look slutty?” is the new “Does this make me look fat?” A girl’s self-worth depends on the modesty she displays to the world. The more she conceals, the higher she believes others will value her. Looking at how college girls present themselves today might have you think otherwise. Even average girls have no remorse in exposing their (damaged) goods. So what’s with the hypocrisy?
To answer this, you have to understand that slutiness is all about context. If the standard of sluttiness were lowered enough, the average girl would look like a discount stripper.
If you or someone you know is concerned about looking like a slut, just do the following: Take a sample population from the context you’re concerned about, rank the average sluttiness and stay within one standard deviation of that average!
Cuteness Blue Balls
You let out a thunderous “awww” as your face scrunches up like you’re having an orgasm with your eyes open. You gaze at the cute figure for another 10 seconds fantasizing about how much you want to squeeze and cuddle it until the cuteness runs out. But then what? You’re left with what I call “Cuteness Blue Balls.” There is absolutely nothing you can do about your cuteness frustrations but to wallow in your own sadness. No button you can press, no body part you can stroke that can alleviate you from this pain.
Psychologist Konrad Lorenz theorized that cuteness is an evolutionary adaptation to ensure that adults cared for their children. Lorenz’s theory, however, falls short of explaining why animals have the same cuteness qualities humans have (e.g., big eyes, big (fore)head, small body and other soft features).
In my opinion, Cuteness Blue Balls is not limited to humans, but includes other animals, too. Because humans and (some) animals have the same cuteness characteristics for their offspring, there is a chance that we get Cuteness Blue Balls from the same creatures! We finally have an activity we can mutually enjoy with our interspecies friends: looking at cute creatures together.
How to judge attractiveness
Imagine you are in a Starbucks with a gossip buddy and one of you spots a girl who looks like she came back from a Paris Hilton convention. Her face has enough makeup to protect her skin from a powerful laser. Her skirt is so short that she couldn’t even hide a paperclip between her legs. You whisper to your friend, “Jesus, I bet she is disgusting behind all that glamour gear.” Then your friend replies, “Yeah, um, I would still hit it.“
In this case, who is making the better judgment on the attractiveness of this Paris impersonator?
There are two extreme ways of judging attractiveness (I’m using girls for my example): 1) Judge how she looks in the worst lighting and in the worst camera angles, or 2) Judge how she looks in the best lighting and in the best camera angle. Both ways seem to offer a fair platform for scrutinizing and comparing her looks with others.
But there is something wrong with this measuring scale. Consider two girls: girl X and girl Y. Girl X looks better than girl Y in test 1; however, girl Y looks better in test 2! How can one girl be more attractive than the other girl, yet at the same time, be less attractive!
For the majority of the time, you won’t see girls in their worst or best possible light, so you have to judge them somewhere in between. A better test would determine who is more attractive based on how each girl normally looks.
Now let’s analyze the attractiveness of the Paris Hilton wannabe. If that’s how she normally looks and both of you agree that she is attractive at that moment, then she officially is – despite how ugly she may be underneath her glamour gear – attractive. Disregard everything above if you are drunk.
LIOR GOTESMAN is pleading you to contact him at liorgott@gmail.com for the last time. And if you’re wondering why I titled this article “philosophunny,” it’s because that’s the column title that didn’t make the cut.
