‘When Do Cute and Sexy Young Girls Stop Looking Cute and Sexy? Death.’
Charlie Martin has the correct response to the rather prudish question asked by Dave Swindle here at PJ Lifestyle. Swindle is “revolted” by Kendall and Kylie Jenner (who are 16 and 14, respectively) posing in bathing suits and goes on to add:
But as we grow older and mature beyond the shock of puberty we’re supposed to transcend this animal nature. (See point #2 here in my review of Dennis Prager’s new book Still the Best Hope for more on the subject.)
A question for the men out there: at what moment in your life did you stop finding young women attractive? (And I don’t mean just jailbait. I mean 18-22-year-old — legal — but still looking young and girly.) When did the thought of youthful sex shift from a fantasy to a stomach-churning nightmare? When did the natural thought shift from “mmm… good time” to “I wonder what the daughter I have someday will look like at that age?” When did you stop being attracted to “sexy” girls and only interested in mature women?
Women are often at their most fertile and attractive at the ages (18-22) that Swindle is describing. Men being attracted to women of this age is called normal. Should you act on it? Maybe not, but that’s not the point that Swindle is making. He doesn’t even seem to think that you should be fantasizing about women who are of age 18-22. Why not? Why should men only be interested in “mature women,” especially for a fantasy?
When will men stop finding young women attractive? As Martin states, at death and maybe not even then.
Update: Swindle responds here at PJ Lifestyle: “Boys Vs Men and Girls Vs Women. Who’s Sexier?”
Mine is a changing standard guided by a rather reliable yardstick. Any woman younger than my daughter, who is in her twenties, disqualifies her from my Walter Mitty-like fantasies.
My daughter is 9, so I have many years of fantasizing to go.
I have no daughter! Huzzah!
“When did you stop being attracted to “sexy” girls and only interested in mature women?”
For me, and this is since my mid twenties, ‘sexy’ evaporates very quickly when a girl opens her mouth and shows herself to be vapid or shallow. I will spend my time with an average looking, smart girl before any magazine model type with an IQ below average. Age is irrelevant to me.
Amen, Brother!
I can admire a statue for its beauty, but it never opens its mouth! As one gets a few years older, brains and style become much, much more sexy!
Sooner or later, the looks fade. Then you find yoursef with an idiot who has plenty to say, but all of it insufferable!
Yeah. On the other hand, I know a number of young women in that “unholy” age range who are smart and thoughtful. Often uninformed, but also open to thinking about new things and learning, which is more than I can say for a lot of my contemporaries.
Yeah, there seems to be no shortage to dumb old broads. Age doesn’t guarantee the acquisition of wisdom or intelligence.
Sounds like an excuse to me. I work with women in that age range. They talk about Disney movies and Twilight. They are emotionally immature. Why do old men want to take away someone’s youth? Or, interfere in that process of maturing? I always thought it was a “woman” thing to be dissatisfied with the age they actually have become.
The “Daughter” standard… I could live with that.
Especially as I have no daughters.
Blame it on Rio… because self-delusion is the path to hypocrisy.
Precisely. I still think this way.
So you won’t devote yourself to someone who isn’t ‘Smart Enough’ for you…
What a kind, giving, fatherly person you must be…
Attraction to – let’s say delight in – pretty young girls will never end, no matter how old I get. Fantasies about them, however, have already disappeared for the most part. My chances of ever hooking up with a woman half my age are nil, so I don’t torture myself by imagining it.
Also, when I actually encounter women of the age in question, interact with them, hear them talk, I don’t feel sexually excited – I feel sort of avuncular, even fatherly, often protective. I sometimes wonder if instinctive. Maybe after a certain age, your brain switches from “stud” to “dad.”
Finally, the people we’re talking about are GIRLS – not women, despite what feminists might say. Most of them still look girly, talk girly, act girly, and have girly thoughts in their heads. Nothing wrong with that – it’s certainly age-appropriate. The question is, what would one of these girls and a 50-year-old man TALK ABOUT? I’ve heard their conversations. Boring. Stuff that’s very important to them, and properly so, but which to an adult brings the word “airhead” to mind. The ideal woman for a man my age has experienced life, thought about things, and brings more to the conversation than most girls can. That’s not to say “old = interesting.” But the odds are better.
In my opinion, women in our culture don’t start becoming interesting until at least age 27. In fact, I’d venture to say that 27 is the ideal age for a woman to be the subject of old-geezer sex fantasies.
I think Bugs is on the mark; mid-20′s, perhaps a little older, is the “ideal” age for a woman. Say, anything from 27 to 35. But the “She has to have something intelligent to say” standard applies as well; the primary erogenous zone for BOTH sexes is the BRAIN. The body can be as attractive as can be, but if the brain is repulsive, there won’t be any connection.
I am a married 53 year old man who is desperately in love with his 26 year old secretary. I have no children,but feel an unsettling combination of paternalism and lust for her. It is an exquisite torture.
That goes both ways. 27 is also the most attractive age of a male (that was the opinion of my past single women self anyways). There is just something about the standing on the cusp of manhood that is very attractive. It doesn’t move me anymore though, the only man that interests me is my husband.
That’s interesting. I was just thinking about old movies – mostly before the 1960s. In those romances, males tended to be older and women younger. They all *seemed* older than people of the same age today. But from what I recall, the male star tended to be mid- to late-30s at least, but the females all seemed in their mid- to late-20s. Early- to mid-20s couples seemed cute, naive, innocent – not serious. Maybe the older man/younger woman scenario was just a Hollywood fantasy dreamed up by older men. Or maybe younger women back then really preferred a more “mature” partner. Either way, back then “boyishness” and “girlishness” weren’t something most people hung on to. Maybe the generations weren’t as compartmentalized back then.
When I was growing up, both males and females were expected to start behaving like responsible men and women at the age of 18, and be adults in every respect at the age of 21. We looked forward to assuming the adult rights and responsibilities that went hand-in-hand.
These days, not so much…
I have coached elite girls sports for about 25 years. I now coach with my daughter, as her assistant. I thoroughly enjoy being with these young women. I notice their beauty. I have never had sexual fantasies about them. My fantasies are usually about my wife. Any other men out there like that?
No, there is something wrong with you.
Seconded … Keaton, you are a sick perv and should seek immediate help.
Keaton, you were sort of asking for that.
I fantasize about my wife all the time: Will she ever stop bitching at me?
The answer, “YES”, is a quite a fantasy!
I would say if she’s bitching at you, she’s not fantasizing about you either. Your even!
Keaton, I hate to tell you this but I too fantasize about your wife. Not often, though.
I’d like to give a serious answer. Based on conversations I’ve had, some men, once married, have no interest, even theoratical, in other women. Others still do (I mean theoretically, of course) and have to deal with it.
That’s because you’re a decent and mature man. (Unlike some of the others here who are saying there’s something wrong with you. I wonder how the wives of such men would view the conversation.)
If the wives of some of these men could view their written thoughts I would say that any feeling they have for their husbands would be gone. Forever. Maybe they’d even wish that their husband would get hit by a train so they could collect the insurance. Sorry, that used to be my fantasy. (No, he didn’t get hit by a train. Darn, I could have used the money.) But then again, I think they probably know what kind of men (jerks)they have and they are very unhappy women.
Looking back, on those years of coaching, i can tell you that if i had been looking at these girls , in a sexual way, they would have known it. I learned a lot about women, being with them so much, practising, and traveling. They know who is “creepy” and who isn’t.
These women, and their parents, when i meet them now, greet me warmly, as a close friend. We shared many highs and lows, but the friendships i have with them now, is very special to me. I don’t believe that would be the case, if i had been seeing them as sexual.
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At age 17, Elle Macpherson enrolled to study law at Sydney University. Before beginning her university studies, Elle visited the United States to spend one year doing modelling work in order to earn money to pay for her law books.
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Cindy Crawford was discovered at the age of 16 by a newspaper photographer. He noticed Cindy at work during her summer job of detasseling corn and took a picture of her. The photo and positive feedback she received were enough to convince her to take up modeling. She entered the Elite Model Management’s Look of the Year contest at 17 and was the runner-up. The Elite modeling agency in Chicago then started representing her.
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Kate Moss was discovered in 1988 at the age of 14 by Sarah Doukas, the founder of Storm Model Management, at JFK Airport in New York City,[7] after a holiday in the Bahamas. Moss’s career began when Corinne Day shot black-and-white photographs of her, styled by Melanie Ward, for British magazine The Face when she was 16, in a photo shoot titled “The 3rd Summer of Love”.
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As I have noted to others: there is a reason that fantasies are called “fantasies” and not “realities”, “plans”, or even “dreams”. Those who forget that do so at their peril.
Indeed, Akatsukami-san, I agree. I’d also add that there’s not a thing wrong with fantasies, as long as one takes your advice and does not confuse them with “”realities”, “plans”, or even “dreams”.”
Ever since I was in college, I’ve always been attracted to older women.
Let’s remember these wise words of Benjamin Franklin:
You should prefer old Women to young ones. You call this a Paradox, and demand my Reasons. They are these:
1. Because as they have more Knowledge of the World and their Minds are better stor’d with Observations, their Conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreable.
2. Because when Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over Men, they supply the Diminution of Beauty by an Augmentation of Utility. They learn to do a 1000 Services small and great, and are the most tender and useful of all Friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old Woman who is not a good Woman.
3. Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly produc’d may be attended with much Inconvenience.
4. Because thro’ more Experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an Intrigue to prevent Suspicion. The Commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your Reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the Affair should happen to be known, considerate People might be rather inclin’d to excuse an old Woman who would kindly take care of a young Man, form his Manners by her good Counsels, and prevent his ruining his Health and Fortune among mercenary Prostitutes.
5. Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding2 only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.
6. Because the Sin is less. The debauching a Virgin may be her Ruin, and make her for Life unhappy.
7. Because the Compunction is less. The having made a young Girl miserable may give you frequent bitter Reflections; none of which can attend the making an old Woman happy.
8thly and Lastly They are so grateful!!
A wise man (or was it a wise guy) once said that, “Just because I’m on a diet, doesn’t mean I can’t check the menu.” Or was it Woody Allen who once wondered, “Is there sex after death?”
A married man should look at another woman like he looks at the sun, only fleetingly lest he goes blind (because his wife will scratch his eyes out!)
The way I heard it, “It’s OK to work up an appetite as long as you come home for dinner”.
Your quoting, Woody Allen? You do remember he married his own step-daughter? He’s guilty of at least “emotional incest”? Then again, some people think incest is best. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2012/06/woody-allens-son-drops-fathers-day-bomb/
Can anything involving the Kardashians ever be normal?
Women should capitalize on their youth by finding the best man they can and marrying him quickly. Along with that, women need to develop themselves beyond physical beauty. Whenever I see some hag bitter about male preference for youth and beauty, I want to ask:
1. What were you doing at your physical peak? Chasing bad boys, holding out for unattainable alphas, or sincerely seeking a solid marriageable mate?
2. Why have you failed to develop other aspects of yourself that are attractive to men?
One of the biggest attractions of my life was for a woman who was about 15 years older than me. She was short and bony, and not particularly pretty, but she was smart as hell, hilarious, caring, genuine, and understood men.
As a society we have no problems heaping scorn on men who don’t know what women want, but women get to blame men for everything from her personal life choices to biological reality.
Wrong website. The Spearhead and Chateau Heartiste are over there.
And Dr. Smith contributes to the overall discussion on topics of men’s rights and social pressures as well as those other sites. Perhaps you’ve missed it.
Regardless, your comment is incorrect.
“Girls lean back everywhere, showing lace and silk stockings; wear low-cut sleeveless blouses, breathless bathing suits; men think thoughts and have emotions about these things everywhere–seldom as delicately and imaginatively as Mr. Bloom–and no one is corrupted.” Jane Heap, 1920.
And history has proved her wrong.
You never read Ulysses, obviously.
I’m attracted to women of lots of different ages, both by their looks and their personality. But is their something wrong with finding a beautiful 17 or 18 year old girl hot or sexy? I agree with Helen, it’s completely normal.
“Normal” does not equal Good.
Which is more normal? A man who wants to sleep with a bunch of young, beautiful women or a man who wants to marry and respect one woman? Which standard should we advocate for in our culture?
“Which is more normal? A man who wants to sleep with a bunch of young, beautiful women or a man who wants to marry and respect one woman?”
Most normal is a man who wants to do both; though of course few men get to do the first.
“Which standard should we advocate for in our culture?”
I don’t advocate.
For your average, healthy man, the answer is “both.” If a decent man is in a position to choose between the two, he picks “b” and eschews “a,” while remaining human enough to admit the latter’s charms.
Any man without any native appreciation for both choices, or who has burned either species of appreciation out of himself, is generally repulsive company.
Well said. Civilized men control their desires. It is why here in the west we don’t cover women in burkas.
“Civilized men control their desires. It is why here in the west we don’t cover women in burkas.”
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If a woman goes out in public here with her butt uncovered, she’ll be arrested.
If a woman goes out in public here with her vagina uncovered, she’ll be arrested.
If a woman goes out in public here with her breasts uncovered, she’ll be arrested.
Seems to me there might be a small quantitative difference in our various sensibilities, but certainly nothing striking enough to warrant such a smug and self-satisfied dismissal.
70. bobby b
That’s just goofy.
That wasn’t a strawman Bobby B slew, that was straw monster. ‘Twas a legendary fake combat…
“A man who wants to sleep with a bunch of young, beautiful women or a man who wants to marry and respect one woman?”
Wow. How about, the first is a fantasy, not a plan; and the second is a plan and therefore in no way incompatible with said fantasy.
“Which standard should we advocate for in our culture?”
The standard of attempting at all turns to stay out of people’s thoughts and actions that in no way interfere with your life.
“The standard of attempting at all turns to stay out of people’s thoughts and actions that in no way interfere with your life.”
This issue does interfere with my life. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t write about it.
Okay, I’ll bite: how does what other people think when they look at pictures of yet other people, none of whom you know, interfere with your life?
You’re avoiding seeing the forest because you want to look at the trees. The issue is not “what other people think when they look at pictures of yet other people”. The issue is about the bigger damage done from accepting teenage boy and teenage girl sexuality as “normal” and acceptable for adults.
My little sister is off to college this year. And I’m thrilled that the boyfriend she’s found is a very mature 18 year old who acts like a man instead of a boy. (He wants commitment, not sex.) But what happens if they break up when she’s at college? What kind of man or boy might she meet and get involved with? I want her to be with a man who will treat her with respect, not a teenage boy in an adult man’s body who will manipulate her and use her for his own pleasure. And we get back to a world of men instead of boys by articulating the difference between teenage boy sex and mature husband sex.
And Swindle remains an embarrassment for PJMedia.
“And Swindle remains an embarrassment for PJMedia.”
Indeed. In his defense, though, the boy just graduated from college in 2006. It seems he hasn’t yet shaken off the attitude of, “I’ve gotta win the argument at any cost, no matter what linguistic contortions I must go through to do so.” Still, with this attitude, it’s ironic to see him hectoring us oldsters on what constitutes maturity.
Dave Swindle
Oh yeah–Your sister’s boyfriend isn’t interested in sex. And she isn’t either, I guess. This comment alone disqualifies any of your subsequent comments on this subject from being taken seriously.
Oh they’re interested in sex, alright. They’re just more interested in marriage. Because they’re trying to be men and women instead of boys and girls. That’s the difference.
Oh. My. God.
Is it really that much of a stretch to realize that a lot of Millennials immersed in a culture of porn and sex, who grew up with a President getting blown in the Oval Office would eventually get bored with sex and be more interested in marriage?
There is a scene in an old Jack Lemmon movie, which was not a comedy, called “Save the Tiger”. Lemmon, a businessman, is in his fifties. His business is headed for bankruptcy. He is considering the arson of his business and collecting the insurance as a solution to his money troubles. He is, generally, going through an existential crisis. One night, after a long day’s work, he is driving home and picks up an attractive free-spirited hitch-hiking young woman. In conversing with her he proposes a word game. He mentions the names of a series of important public figures during his lifetime to which she is to reply with comparable celebrities known to her.
To the aging Lemmon, it soon becomes disappointingly and stunningly clear that all of his public heroes arose before the Beatles. All of hers, came into the public eye since the Beatles. Simply stated, he has nothing in common with her and cannot engage in a meaningful conversation with her. Her momentary allure swiftly evaporates. He drops her off at her destination and drives on feeling more disconnected and alienated from the world.
Someone has observed that man’s largest sexual organ is his brain. The surface beauty and sexiness of the hitch-hiker could not engage Lemmon’s brain.
I am an older man and I still enjoy looking at and appreciating young women. But I do agree with you that unless a woman is capable of sharing something in common and has some life experience, they aren’t that interesting.
I love the sound of a woman’s laugh, her smile and today when I see young women having fun and enjoying life, I smile because I was once their age too.
“Hey Nineteen
No we can’t dance together
No we can’t talk at all”
“Please take me along
When you slide on down”
She’s nineteen years old
She got ways just like a baby child
Nothin’ I can do to please her
To make this young woman feel satisfied
I’m gonna say this to you
I don’t care if you get mad
You ’bout the prettiest little girl
That I ever had
Can’t ask her where she’s going
She tells me where she’s been
She starts a conversation
That don’t have no end
She’s nineteen years old
And got ways just like a baby child
Nothin’ I can do to please her
Woah, yeah, woah, yeah, woah, yeah
To make this young woman feel satisfied
I am 73 years of age. 30 to 40 years ago I stopped phantazing about babies between 18 and 22. Believe me, if I still have any interest, I find a 40 year old woman to be but a “child”. Add at least 10 more years and, well, a 50 year old looks pretty good. Lose you testosterone, more or less, and a real sense of “liberation” sets in. I joke not. I am ready to be a monk, but, alas, without any effort. In case it is not clear, I am not yet “dead”. When I see an old gizzer like Hugh Hefner lying next to 27- year old “babies”, I see foolishness incarnated.
I will give a hint about what we “golden oldies” can have (and which is more difficult for the “young” to grasp for obvious 22 year old reasons), namely “wisdom”. Such ageless Wisom of the aged is: (1) Observe that your body will no longer allow you to continue on with the foolishnesses of the young (e.g. phantazing about 22 year old “broads”, not to speak of trying to live it out)–and if you do not recognize this “fact”, your body will remind you; (2) reflect carefully on this “fact” and acknowledge it consciously: and (3) accept the fact and behave accordingly. There remains a gigantic challenge ahead, which I will mention below. At any rate, these three factors distinguish the true wisdom of the elderly (men) from the “giggling idiots” such a Hugh Hefner (and the man embarrasses me in my masculinity, really). Other than swallowing testosterone pills like a drug addict consumes ever more heroin (and risking cancer–so German doctors tell me) or just go for it with evermore powerful “starching” injections, Hugh is condemned to lie there in bed giggling adolescent blah-blah with just post-pubescent bodies, totally unable to rise to the call (perhaps even fibbing to himself that the 22 year old “chics” find him sexy).
There is one really deep challenge left, the most important one of life. The answer is how to die unto death and how one might preserve dignity therein. Ernest Becker in his “The Denial of Death” (the most insigtful book that I read in younger days–I do not need it anymore) asserts that a full awareness of death (or perhaps dying unto death) would make a person possessing such clear consciousness simply stark, raving mad. Phantazing about 22 year old women or 50 year olds, let alone any attempt to “deny death” with ejaculatory producing phantasies, robs a person (in my case a man) of the great challenge relative to which I (and no one else) must take a conscious stand (which certifies my dignity), or slip in the ejaculatory illusions that “deny death” and literally just pass away. What a fool is Hefner! The man has lost the ability to be aware of said challenge and, thereby, also his dignity. No, keep 22 year olds out of my imagination, i.e., even if they could get in at my age. I want my aged liberation.
Well said. Thanks for the heads up as to what’s coming in 23 years here and a strategy to live it with dignity.
Hey, Leonard, so when did this “goldie oldie” period start for you? Just wondering, I’m 67 and what you describe seems really sad to me. Please accept my condolences.
Thank you for your concern. I will take time later (and I still possess quite a bit) today for a fuller response. But, your expression of “sadness” for me is misplaced and reveals your, uuh, THE illusion of many 67 year olds (including me during that youthful period–your illusion was my illusion as a 67 year old), not to speak of those younger tigers permanently in heat. This is the “sadness” that I, a bit wiser in the age that exposes bodily the truth of life, feel for you. But you are still young and foolish. Carpe diem! I am mostly, God willing, somewhat liberated. Because the femine (or sexuality in that form for my masculinity) still works it charms (just a bit) on me I am not LIBERATED yet, and maybe never will be. Death may catch me “like a thief in the night” still being a bit foolish, but not an “idiot” like Hefner. If, however, the stage of LIBERATION is reached, I will have reached a truely vintage freedom, one based upon insight. What insight? The insight was provided to me by Ernest Becker decades ago in his psychological study, “Denial of Death”, though St. Augustine knew and expressed it about 1600 years before and such a fine theologian as Reinhold Niebuhr reflected upon it 30 years before Becker got around to his “insight” (or, as I call it, deep structure anthroplogy). You remain trapped in the pansexual illusion, still not unmasked. And what would be an unmasking of this “illusion”? That sexual pursuit reaches its “death denying” forgetfulnes is as good and valid as yesterday’s dead and gone orgasm and the waining hope that the next, next and one will come soon, again and again ad infinitum. A foolish illusion, for one day it does not do so. The body will tell you so. At this point we “oldies” have an easier chance to gain some “wisdom” by comng to terms with the “VITAL lie” (as Becker would call it), namely that life’s satisfaction finds fulfilment in orgasmic, viz., sexual vitality. We cling to this “lie” (= self-delusion), we wallow in our waining vitaliy forgetting the insight, “til death do us part” is awaiting us. And “Death” was the femine wisdom with which Dr. Hellen ended her title Thanks again for the condolences. I hope this partial response has livened your curiosity.
Indeed! Thanks for your kind response and sharing your experiences and understanding. Also, I like NOT being the oldest guy in the room
I hope you understood my offer of “condolences” as a jest, and I think you did. Just I understand your sharing your sadness with a less experienced whipper snapper like me. You seem content with the path you’re on and that’s what matters most.
Whether or not Hugh Hefner is an idiot I can’t say. He has certainly been more successful in a material sense than I have. If he finds joy/happiness rutting after 26 YO tigers in heat, who am I to gainsay?
This is not the venue to go into details. Still, I would like to mention that due to some experiences in my younger years and some stuff I encountered as a result of them, I’ve think I’ve been on a different path and have arrived at a slightly different place than you at this point in my life.
When young the main orientation is reproduction. Those who take on the responsibility of parenthood gain not only the satisfaction of passing on the gift of life but the joy of seeing children and grandchildren grow to adulthood. Seeing part of yourself living on in them. It’s a kind of everyman’s immortality at least for your DNA if not consciousness.
With age the orientation changes. In some ways I think for the better. Another opportunity for immortality presents itself, a shared opportunity.
Thanks again and best wishes. BTW I had attempted to respond to your post earlier but it looks like the submission process ate my response. So I’m trying again. Maybe the first attempt will show up eventually, who knows?
I too tried to reply and was blocked. I appreciate your reply (and, my friend, I am your physical future willy/nilly–think about it!). I had wanted to send a pruned down reply stating my stance in a more general form. I will below try a pruned pruned down reply almost in staccato form. You will see that we are probably “ontological” worldS apart, though we share the same physical one. From my standpoint we are ALL “foolish” in this shared world!
1) “I believe that those who speculate that a full apprehension of man’s condition would drive him insane are right, quite literally right. … (Man) literally drives himself into a blind obliviousness with social games, psychological tricks, personal preoccupations so far removed from the reality of his situation that they are forms of madness-agreed madness, shared madness, disguised and dignified madness, but madness all the same.” (Ernest Becker, “The Denial of Death”, 1973).
2) Becker holds that humans spend their life trying to deny the reality and meaning of death, thereby fleeing insanity. Who wants to become literally mad? How? Buy repressing, viz., denying (all psychoanalytical terms) death by lunging into life’s forms lived as enlivening “VITALITY”. But, said vitality does not alter in the least the human condition, only covers it up or renders it forgotten. Hence, vitality itself is but a lie. In other words, a pychologically healthy (to be understood as positive) person lives a “vital lie”. If Becker’s thesis is false, then the following below is but rhetorical blah-blah. If true, just about all (there are some “wise” exceptions) comments are foolish in their sexuality because the commentators just do not face the human condition. (And I might add: Judging from the puerile comments, most commentators are amateurs in sexual denial–for that one needs a really fanatical personality. If one has that, the question discussed so avidly is silly.) Helen Smith revealed the end of it all, namely “death”.
3) I add obviously SEX to the “tricks” listed by Becker. There is nothing like sex to drive us humans into “blind obliviousness” to the the “literal insanity” lurking in the phyical/ontological depths of our being, namely DEATH’s effects once understood. If Becker’s thesis holds, we humans in our various “pychological tricks” remain ignorant of the truth of reality and cannot confront it. It is just such a confrontation that constitutes true human “dignity”. (Comment #71 by Desi Erasmus offers a “wise” quotation from the “old” Socrates–leading me to believe that one of my philosophical heroes would agree with my argumentation.)
4) Based upon the Beckerian thesis, I “logically” conclude that the absorption by the sexual theme is but a “foolish” undertaking and, if someone like Hefner continues such denial acts lying erectionally dead in bed at 85 with young “broads”, he, truely, is an advanced fool and, hence, earns the title of “idiot”. Your counter argument misses the point, even if the man is having a “kick”. But you too, along with me, we are also foolish. The point is not that an old man such as Hefner is foolish, it is that sex per se, even in the vitality of youth, is foolishness, though a necessary one for society to function.
5) I confess my life-long foolishness. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! It just so happens that my “advanced” age (along with some death defying operations) has accomplished two things. First, my body can no longer whip it up like those young 67 year olds, try as I might. Second, I can deny all I want, but the reality of the human situation impedes me from falling back into “blind oblviousness”. If I decide to be oblivious, I must chose to do so, which is sort of a psyschological oxymoron, i.e., conscious (sic) repression of a fear producing situation. But I can do so using Hefner as my model. That is my choice. For decades I have known of Becker’s thesis and the wisdom therein, but for decades I slipped into the roar of sexual denial, and with fanaticism (which be makes me scornful of the amateur comments). I have a fanatical personality! So, the “easy” wisdom of the “golden oldies” is easily won, and with difficulty denied. Nothing to brag about. I have chosen to follow the thrust of the ancient Greco-Roman tradition (e.g., stoics) and confront, though late in life, the truth of the human situation (as revealed by Becker). This confrontation has been, of course, taken up by our Judeo-Christian civilization and resides in the background of my thinking. What does this wisdom imply for a fanatic such as I.
6) I am in truth a “moins manqué”! Why? I find that monks in particular have grasped the situation and chosen a lifestyle formed by wisdosm. Monks know that all is transitory –or as I say, life is as satisfying as yesterday’s orgasm– and live a life of “repression” of worldly wants, ones passing by, for a concentration on “deep, profound eternity” (as the atheist Nietzche once formulate it). This is the “moins” in me. That I was too foolish to recognize this until forced by age to do so, makes me “manqué”. I suggest that you view the seven part series “Steps to the Skies”, all about the monastery of Valaam in Russia (that I have visited), particularly Part 6. At least you will understand the “moins” in me, even if you reject my infatuation with it. I repeat: I am burdened with a fanatical personality.
7) I am in no way lowering the value of THIS world. A Jesuit, Fr. Sirico, has published a book “Defending the Free Market” based upon moral principles (it is about time that some Catholic theologians start defending the captialism). Try reading the book just for a natural law understanding of “freedom” and “human dignity”. At any rate, Fr. Sirico relates the story of a young monk who writes home praising his lifestye with his fellow monks, finally finding their true “vocation” (and a “vocation” in Catholicism refers to making a fundamental choice relative to the formation of one’s lifestyle). The father writes back reminding the son that “when all the world was hushed, your mother and I rose from our beds to change your dirty diapers. And in doing so we found our vocation”. Their parental sexuality was taken up into a vocation.
8) Here is my considered criticsm directed at ALL the overstimulated thoughts concerning sexual phantasies (by Jupiter, well over 180 comments for a half-page article–sex was the theme, ah!!) When all the sexual techniques and all the objects of phantasy have been laboriously determined, none of it, absolutely none of it, offers a “vocation”. In a sense Hefner is right. Why? Hefner has made a perverse vocation out of his pursuit of tomorrow’s past orgasm. And that makes him an “idiot”. Perhaps all of us too. Well, you have my position. I hope you understand me better, even rejecting the direction my fanaticism leads me in.
xkcd Standard Creepiness Rule:
Don’t Date Under ((age/2)+7)
That’s the old French rule for how old one’s mistress ought to be.
Never act on fantasies in real life, because they almost always never come true and turn out much different than what your mind envisioned, imagined, or expected. There is also something else: unintended consequences, if you act or try to act on a fantasy in real life.
Some of the most attractive young women I’ve encountered over the years turned out to be disappointments to me (after imagining what they would be like before I meet them): shallow, not smart, vapid, mean personality, or intellectually condescending. No wonder they always turn to jerky men or conceited a-holes to validate their lives.
So wait . . .
You are not “revolted”, or least more than marginally concerned, about the deliberate sexualization of a 16 and 14 year old girl?
Should they be presented as being in that prime breeding age category, and thus available for private perving?
Should I pop up some links to those dance groups of hyper-sexualized 8-10 year old girls so we can consider the full range of the issue?
Of course that still ignores the issue of perving on 18-22 year olds.
Is that acceptable simply because they are prime breeding age?
Well, privately anyway, publicly seems open to discussion. How exactly would we determine the suitably of public perving on them? By the age of the man? By the actual body type of the prime breeder?
David Swindle seems to make the distinction first on body type, and your basing it on breeding age would seem to suggest that perhaps it is based exclusively on say cup size – C+ = okay, B- = chickenhawk on the prowl? If so, then exactly what are you dissenting about from what he wrote?
(Of course he then goes on to other factors in his rebuttal, but those are failures on his part to be addressed separately.)
And of course all of this completely overlooks women over the age of 22 who might have petite/waif body types, not to mention starting in on issues of girls under 18 who have curvy body types.
Worse, it still leaves unaddressed your rather casual acceptance that not mere perving on women/girls of prime breeding age is acceptable, but the implication that commercial exploitation of that natural/”natural” urge is utterly unremarkable.
Really?
Perhaps a rephrasing of David Swindle’s question is in order:
“When did the thought of attraction to prime breeders from natural to a stomach-churning nightmare? When did the natural thought shift from “yes, that is what men are like” to “I wonder who will be perving on the daughter I have someday, and how much can I make off it?” When did you stop accepting men being attracted to “prime breeding age” girls, and start thinking they should be attracted to “mature” women and not your 14-17/18-22 year old daughter?”
“David Swindle seems to make the distinction first on body type, and your basing it on breeding age would seem to suggest that perhaps it is based exclusively on say cup size – C+ = okay, B- = chickenhawk on the prowl?”
I make the distinction based on mental and emotional maturity, not body type.
The point for those missing it: the sexual attitudes and sexual nature one has as a teenager should not remain the same as one matures. Eventually sex should be about more than just “ooh! This feels good!”
Perhaps you can be more explicit about what sex “should” be about, other than “ooh! This feels good!”
Or is that inappropriate for a family blog?
“… for a family blog?”
You answered your own question.
“Eventually sex should be about more than just “ooh! This feels good!”
Middle-aged women without sex drives all across American agree with you.
Really?
“(L)ooking young and girly” is not about physical appearance based on dress and body, but about some universal visualization of mental and emotional maturity?
Is that a problem in how you express yourself, or do you just not understand that attitudes are composed of more than mere appearance, physical or dress?
It seems perhaps both, and why you went too far trying to make a useful point and wound up just plain wrong.
uhm…… let’s put a link in here for reference because people are having a hard time following through on the concept. This is high exaggeration of what Dave is getting at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolicon
EXACTLY!
If you want to have a rational discussion about the psychological and sociological norms and ideals of males, start with NOT using phrases like “perving on.”
If you want to suggest that young females are not, in fact, beautiful, or that there is no objective measure of female beauty, go ahead. If you want to propose some sort of rigid structure for when it’s okay to look at a person, and find them attractive, fine. If you want to propose some alternate universe where girls are born 5’10″ 36dd/24/36 and fertile, but since she’s only been alive two years she’s off limits, be my guest. I doubt you’d convince anyone, but you could make an argument.
Your writing reads like you’re trying to insult everyone with while gagging at their thoughtcrime.
You are not “revolted”, or least more than marginally concerned, about the deliberate sexualization of a 16 and 14 year old girl?
Menarche did it first.
No it didn’t.
Menarche does not make a profit for a third party off of selling the sexual maturation of one party to a second party.
And that leaves unaddressed the issue of the hypersexualization of pre-menarche girls.
I make the distinction based on mental and emotional maturity, not body type.
How exactly do you infer that from a still picture?
The point for those missing it: the sexual attitudes and sexual nature one has as a teenager should not remain the same as one matures. Eventually sex should be about more than just “ooh! This feels good!”
Sez who?
I”d like to know who appointed him arbiter of what constitutes “maturity?”
“How exactly do you infer that from a still picture?”
Does she have pigtails and a cheerleader outfit and is she calling you Daddy?
“Sez who?”
Western Civilization. Mitt Romney is more mature than Bill Clinton when it comes to sex. A man committed to his wife who has a large family is more mature than a man with only one child who cheats on his wife constantly. Disagree with that?
Hm. Which of the Jenner girls was in pigtails and a cheerleader outfit, Dave?
As far as “Western Civilization” saying that sex ought to be about more than “it feels good”, you need to travel more.
My husband dared me to put my profile on POF [plenty of fish] just to see what would happen. I claimed I was married etc. but my inbox was filled to the max within a few days with guys who seriously didn’t care I was already take (or guys who were taken).
That was a very disheartening experiment. It seems many men are in very unhappy marriages and feel ‘stuck’.
Advanced culture requires us to bypass our genetic tendencies in a million ways, including this.
Any middle aged man with soul should admire young women, but if he’s wise he’ll turn his attention before it becomes lust or fantasy. Just be happy for some deserving young man’s life with her while remembering his own at that age.
I’m confused. When did it become appropriate to tell people what they can and cannot fantasize about? Isn’t the sanctity of your own thoughts absolute?
I think you’re confusing what someone says that you “should” not fantasize about and what someone demands you “must” not fantasize about. There’s an infinite number of things one “should” not fantasize about or they’ll become miserable, dangerous or creepy. Even the freest society would suffer if we didn’t pass on our wisdom like this. But in the end, we’re all free to damage ourselves if we insist.
And the arbiter of this “should” and all the moralistic garbage it carries is whom? Youm? No, anyone attempting to tell me what I should and should not FANTASIZE about can stick many a sundry object into many a sundry orifice.
“You” are the arbiter. You are also the one who injected himself into a public conversation of beneficial vs. self destructive and them melted down like a two year old. You’re now free to ignore everyone else, stay childlike and do what you want. Good luck with that…
I find women I have a chance with most attractive. They’re getting older and older.
A friend of mine, whose daughter’s are a few years younger then mine, asked he how to react to the his daughters’ attractive young friends. I told him it is like going to the Louvre – you can admire the art work, you just can’t take it home.
I suppose you could “enjoy” the experiences I had with my second wife and then you’d find all women less desirable. That said, I have a 16 year old daughter who is hot and sexy, and fairly mature for her age. She has lots of hot and sexy friends. I recognize that but don’t find them “desirable.” Talking with some of them is too painful due to the teeny bopper stuff, or being really big little princesses.
Yeah, if it we were the only humans left on Earth, I would probably do my duty to re-populate. Otherwise, give me a Sarah Palin type or other non-self-centered, mature woman. Looks matter, looks are like the delicious smell luring you into the restaurant. But, personality and maturity are the presentation of the food that makes it irresistible.
In Sweden they are thinking of outlawing men peeing standing up.
So if you break the law and pee on the rim, does that make you an outlaw?
I use that Swedish example of just how bad things are getting for men.
Smith, you’re just smug because you’ve got the 18-22 year old looks AND the 45 year old character. And Swindle’s problem is just the standard twentysomething envy of the cruel biological fact that he’s competing not only with his age group, but also with men much older, for the attention of twentysomething women. He’d sure like the competitive field swept clean of the 45-year-old men, naturally. And here he tries to recruit the 45-year-old women to his cause. Isn’t it yucky if your man makes mental eyes at girls who might well be your daughter?!
It’s a good tribal strategy, generally, but in the case of the middle-aged women who is perfectly confident of her ability to compete with the younger girls, apt to backfire, as here.
sinz54
2. Because when Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over Men, they supply the Diminution of Beauty by an Augmentation of Utility. They learn to do a 1000 Services small and great, and are the most tender and useful of all Friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old Woman who is not a good Woman.
Benjamin Franklin
Well then…my X must be the exception……..
In many cultures, including our own in the first 15 hundred A.D. years, for a girl to be 15 and unmarried meant she was just about a spinster. The idea that men don’t react to women under 16 “because it’s illegal” is BS… that’s not the way Nature works. Pretending it’s so out of political correctness is a waste of time. Our conversations need to grasp a little more than just current social norms.
All the intellectuals who pontificate above on the correct attitude which males ought to adopt towards sub-eighteeners must certainly be well informed on history, being intellectuals and all. Tell us then, wise ones, does your righteous indignation apply to all the 18th- and 19th-century Americans of economic competence (that is, males who’d finally gotten established in a trade or employment furnishing a reliable enough income to provide for a family) who asked for the hands of 15-year-old women in marriage and were approved by their parents? Those males frequently didn’t reach that economic status until their 30s.
‘sexy’ evaporates very quickly when a girl opens her mouth and shows herself to be vapid or shallow Ok we heve Nobel Prize winners commenting
When the paternal/avuncular reflex kicks in.
I’m 68 and young girls still make passes at me (ask the first mate). One young server girl was particularly obvious, coming over to my side of the table to do something more conveniently done in front of the First Mate. But I’m unnatural. I prefer older women (mid-30s and up). I stopped doing one night stands and playing the “game” 30 years ago. I do enjoy flirting with them all though. The First Mate encourages me in that. She says it makes her hot for me – nothing like competition to make a woman very interested. So in a way the “game” is still on.
I encourage every man to spend a few years with an outlaw biker gang. It does wonders for desirability. You know – the bad boy thing.
I hate to break it to you, but the only thing servers who flirt with you are after is a bigger tip.
But enjoy it
I sure do.
She won’t get it from me; I’m circumcised.
OMG
I’m so offended.
I didn’t think of it first.
When I was in my early 20′s, the 50-ish wife of my 75-ish employer very frankly propositioned me while he was out of town. We enjoyed each other greatly, and old Ben Frankin is right about the satisfactions of your partner being grateful, and not having to worry about contraception. We had a rule – only when hubby was out of town, which fortunately was fairly often. Life was good, especially since I was on the rebound from a failed early marriage to a beauty-queen type, and sick of young women.
But… sic transit amore mundi. It was a family business, and I noticed my lover’s daughter (also an employee) was flirting with me. Having had a tiny amount of sense even at that age, I did not reciprocate. As near as I can figure, her daughter must have mentioned that she was interested in dating me, and asked Mom to help it happen. Mom hit the panic button and made a big mistake – one that was almost fatal for me. She apparently told daughter that I had come on to her, and of course she would not let her daughter anywhere near me!
Unfortunately, daughter then told Dad!
So one day I come into work and the old man meets me at the door and says to get the hell out of his shop. When I asked what was going on, he just repeated himself. When I asked for my outstanding pay, he walked into the office as if to get it, and then turned and said “Look, you SOB, I have a gun right here in my desk drawer, and if you are not out of my sight in 30 seconds, I am going to use it to pay you with!”
I was.
This was back in the days before caller-ID, so my paramour and I had a phone signal we used to see if the other was available: you let the phone ring twice and hang up, and then the other would do the same, and then the first one could call the other in the clear. Worked great. After the old man had threated to shoot me, a couple of weeks went by, and then the phone rang twice. I didn’t respond. A few days later it rang twice again. Then after a week twice again. That was the last time.
Years ago, a friend of mine was training for police work and his instructor ran this film of a hot girl in a small suit swimming across a pool, pulling herself up on the end closer to the camera, then pushing herself about 2/3 of the way. Up. He said before anyone could say anything, the Sargent said “she’s 14.” Dead silence. Then “who wants to fuck her?” No answer. Sargent: “Bunch of liars. We all do. The difference is we don’t and it’s our job to catch the sickos that do.”
Well put.
That must have been a precocious 14 yo girl though. I met a girl like that on a transatlantic flight and was quite surprised to hear she was only 15. I was not much interested in girls of that age even when I was 15 myself.
“This needs to be said: People aren’t hardwired with their attractions.” ~Dave Swindle
This is the fundamental error Swindle is making in his analysis. Humans are hardwired in our attractions. Not saying that we always must act on them. Just that it is very difficult if not impossible for our fore brain to overcome the desires of our hind brain.
No; it is not an ‘error’, but a dangerous idea. Imagine a person who is not hardwired to his thoughts and passions. See how free he is, how adaptive, resilient and compassionate he is……. how fully human……….
Dave Swindle’s remarks sound like the worse racism and antisemitism; he claims to be gifted enough to discern the content of someone’s character by a glance. He reinforces his bigotry using inflammatory, insulting language similar in content to racists and anti-Semites.
I grew up with assholes just like him; people who continually berate anyone with whom they disagree. Like them, he cowers behind the excuse that he’s not really being superficial, but his own words damn him.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s reacting to him this way. He seems far too sanctimonious.
Sexual attraction occurs because of biology. Period. It IS hardwired. Our social norms attempt to change that and criminalize behavior that was normal 200 years ago. I make no judgements on the good or bad of it, it just is.
This thoughtcrime nonsense needs to go to DailyKos or something, I think PJ Media is better than this. Dr. Smith is great for men’s issues and interesting to read. Reading about yet another person telling me what I should or shouldn’t be attraxted to is as repellant as nanny Bloomberg telling me what I can or can’t do.
I got that impression of him after reading his first article here at PJM. That’s why I seldom bother reading anything he writes.
This was my first article here at PJM: http://pjmedia.com/blog/sinking-the-flotillas-with-the-weight-of-the-law/ I don’t see the connection between it and my advocacy for mature sexuality.
My opinion is that you come across as an a$$hole. I don’t have time to waste on a$$holes.
The sentiment is mutual.
I analogize the perceptual pleasures, described above, to music. It is impossible, but rarely, to listen to much rock and roll any longer, with so much indispensibly lovely early Renaissance and late Baroque music to be enjoyed, before one crosses the Styx or/and the Jordan. It’s not a matter of snobbery; it’s a matter of aesthetic and moral pleasure: wisdom. Besides, the intensity of intellectual pleasures, including those of enjoying the opposite sex, are incomparably better, with knowledge. No comparison. But even among 20 year-olds, companionship, friendship, is preferable to impersonal, sub-personal sexual attraction. Most 20 year-olds simply do not know this fact. Cuz they don’t read much any longer.
I am at an age, nearly 66, that can be difficult. I still watch a young lady walk by with great interest, but they look back at me to see if I need help to cross the street.
Too young to date, too old to adopt.
Sorry to hear that, but it’s a health thing, not an age thing.
My grandfather married at 65 for the 1st time, and had 3 healthy children.
If the Swindles of this world had had their way, I would not be around to tell you about it; but fortunately, they don’t stand a chance.
The Instahusband is instantly on it! <a href="http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/145033/"The story that is, not the seat!
On Fathers Day, let men proudly stand.
Apparently lots of middling aged women in the public school districts think that what’s sauce for the goose is also for the gander. At some point it becomes criminal, as it should be.
I went cold turkey on sex in my mid 50s after several screwy but very sexual relationships went TU. Just stopped.
It wasn’t worth the bother. The dynamics were absurd.
But even ten years before that my perspective on the desirability of women had shifted as I matured (I guess that’s the word, as peace and clarity became more important than physical pleasure with a high price tag).
“Would I want her to be the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning” became a bit of a litmus test and an interesting one. Some very pretty women didn’t make the bar on that one and some very ordinary looking but really good sorts with a lot of lifee in them did.
I went about 8 years sleeping peacefully on my own before meeting a woman that I thought worth the potential bother. During that time I wondered if I still had the capacity to let someone new into my life. I found out that, in this instance I did. She has been a blessing and she feels the same way about me,
Things have opened up in my mind/soul/psyche that I had deliberately turned off many years ago.
I am blessed. And she feels the same way.
I had told my last previous “partner” on the occasion of her tempestous departure that, “The next time I want something to pat, I’ll get a dawg”. My much patted companion critter was wonderful company for my time alone and continues to have a special place in my life.
But in the end the dawg just wasn’t my type.
Living alone was the best option for a long time and now it isn’t. I always thought it was unnatural to live alone but the price of companionship was too high. Now there is so little cost and so much mutual benefit there is no contest.
Sex! I have prostate problems. There is none per se. Pleasure? Lots and often, head to toe and mutual.
Getting old is an incomparable experience if you remain open to life and accumulate some wisdom, as in learning to see things as they really are.
Perhaps it helps if you live long enough to outlive your dick as Willie Nelson so succinctly pointed out. Or perhaps he meant outlive your egocentricity.
Looong long long time ago I saw a cartoon in the Saturday Evening Post. (I said it was a long time ago.
Old couple at the beach. She’s sitting up, reading a magazine. He’s laying down sleeping. She looks up and notices something off frame, and nudges her husband. He sits up just as a gorgeous babe in a bikini walks by. Then he looks at his wife and says, “Thank you, dear.”
That pretty much encapsulates how I feel about it all. I’m nearly 60 now, and I still enjoy looking at young ladies.
Especially if they are well drawn? /I kid, I kid
“I kid” is just sort of gutless. At least have the courage of your cheapshot, Bill C.
I don’t think you have any idea what I am talking about. But go on being the internet tough guy. God knows we need more of them.
Anyone who’s ever followed Den beste knows what you meant, and can judge for themselves. I judge that you threw out a cheapshot, while simultaneously trying to draw back from it with “I kid”. Nothing very respectable.
What’s the point of telling men what they should or should not find attractive? It’s attraction: it can’t be reasoned with. It’s like telling someone: That steak is not good for you–you’re bad for even thinking about how it tastes.
What’s the fear, that men will lose their minds to obsession with young girls? Sheesh, if fantasies are detrimental, then pretty much the whole of humankind is messed up and has always been messed up.
” It’s attraction: it can’t be reasoned with.”
Yes, it can be reasoned with. Attraction is malleable and it can change.
And that steak isn’t good for you. You can reset your food cravings too. I used to crave steaks. Now I crave good fruits and vegetables.
Human beings are wholly capable of reprogramming themselves to be better, healthier and happier — if they want to. Most don’t. See the conclusion of my review of Dennis Prager’s book, linked in the posts.
1. Humans are perfectable.
2. I, Dave Swindle, and my enlightened colleagues, know exactly what is perfect for YOU, which is the same for everyone, everywhere, regardless of time period or circumstance.
3. The ends justify the means.
4. Godwin!
I guess you believe in the New Soviet Man as well.
Not to gang up on you, Dave, but I’m not sure I agree with the whole “reprogramming” business. Yes, it is possible to develop better thoughts and habits with effort. But “reprogramming?” I don’t think a man who’s “reprogrammed” himself to not be interested in younger women and only be interested in his lawful spouse is someone to be admired.
Maturity, to me, means among other things knowing your limitations and your “dark side” and being wise enough to do the right thing when tempted by them. I’d prefer to be a man who can appreciate a beautiful woman, whatever her age, and NOT try to hit on her – not because I’ve programmed myself not to, but because I’ve made a decision not to do that to my wife. Moment by moment, decision by decision – that’s how we live as fully free, fully moral human beings. Reeprogramming amounts to mental and emotional castration. No thanks.
As others have pointed out, the kind of reprogramming you seem to believe in is a leftist shortcut. They don’t want to actively feed other human beings, they want to “end world hunger” by monkeying with “the system.” They don’t want to take street people into their homes, they want to “end homelessness” by monkeying with “the system.” If I reprogram myself to “end extramarital lust,” I’m monkeying with my own “system.” Eventually, all these systems get tighter and tigher, less free, more under “higher” control, and harder and harder to live in. I want a system in which I can choose to do the right thing, not one that leaves me no alternative.
“I don’t think a man who’s “reprogrammed” himself to not be interested in younger women and only be interested in his lawful spouse is someone to be admired.”
The issue is not younger women, the issue is girls. A man can change so he’s no longer attracted to girly young females. I don’t have a problem with men being attracted to an 18-year-old who looks like a woman. I have problem with a man being attracted to an 18 year old who looks and acts and thinks like a teenage girl.
I have never posted here before but was compelled to do so by the disconnect between the article and the comments.
Like the author of the piece I see no sin in desiring young women over the age of consent (I am an Englishman in my fifties). The commenters who choose to turn this into a debate about the wisdom of the mature man versus the inanity of young girls make me suspicious. It looks like they are keen to qualify their own sexuality to fit the constraints of politically-correct feminism. Actually, conversation with young women is often wonderful. They bring a joy and freshness to the world which older women often lack. In turn young women often enjoy the confident worldly understanding of older men. It can be a fun and interesting (and sexy) exchange.
Here in England we live in a country saturated in socialist political correctness. Part of that is a constant reminder that politically-correct people (lefties) are more open and tolerant than conservatives. The implication, supported wholeheartedly by the media, is that politically correct people are both better at sex and more sexy. That masculine sexuality, unmediated by socialism, is wrong. This seems to me to be the problem with a lot of the comments here. In my view “wisdom” (in the comments) seems to be a self-imposed justification for closing off male sexual desire, for fear of a negative reaction from the politically-correct.
My experience of lefty men leads me to believe that the reverse is true, with regard to their supposed sexual prowess. On social occasions where I have expressed masculine sexual preferences I find that lefty men become uneasy, often acting as though sex was distasteful and not hip. Often, their immediate response is to look to any women present, to get a steer on how to respond about sex. Neutered poodles spring to mind.
As mentioned I am new here and I am guessing that the “Angry Chihuahua” commenter is a regular on this site and so feels entitled to make a cheap crack about Chateau Heartiste. Firstly I do not see how the comment she (he?) responded to is so off topic, given how so many others are. Secondly, Cheateau Heartiste has made a huge contribution to men and his intelligence and generosity deserve the highest of praise. I doubt the Chihuahua has done as much.
Like the author of the piece I see no sin in desiring young women over the age of consent
This would be more convincing had Dave actually said that. Unfortunately for your argument he saiod rather the opposite — that it was in fact bad, evil, sinful, and unholy to feel sexual attraction for a “girl” even if she was over the age of consent.
OMG Ms. Smith my post was more than you could bear? I understand why but you still atonish me.
What a bunch of forked-tongues. Sure and you guys only read Playboy for the articles.
Dave Swindle, you lose.
cue the notes from Ravel’s Bolero.
Remember Dudley Moore stalking his “10″ in Bo Derek?
Her undulating breasts trying to burst out of a tight yellow one piece suit while she ran on the beach were, supposedly, a vivid fantasy for many men. The young woman and the elderly man … the ultimate conquest.
But Dudley ran into a generation gap and a distasteful new morality from young Bo and decided to return to his age-appropriate main squeeze. (Not a bad fall back since his babe was a still smoking Julie Andrews.)
I think it’s great to “get a rise” when a perky young thing passes by. But it’s usually better to stick with the one on your arm.
Ms. Smith, I’m a goat! I see that I posted to the other discussion. May I offer an apology if anything in my last post to you was in the lease offensive?
Thank you for the heads-up on the Pressfield book. I have like this author for a long time and will get and read this latest by him.
I’m 50. A hypothetical daughter of mine could therefore be 30 or older.
I do enjoy looking at attractive women who might be younger than that — but I know without having to think about it that I would not find them interesting to talk to, in the least. Pursuing any kind of intimacy with a member of the opposite sex requires an investment of time and interest that, at my age, the potential sex simply can’t justify. And then there’s the whole going-to-prison thing, if they’re (in Georgia) under 16.
Doesn’t mean I’ll stop looking.
I still try to catch the eye of the pretty young women. Although, at my age, this would be like a dog who always chases the fire truck and doesn’t know what he is going do with it if he ever catches it.
Reminds me of the old joke about two elderly gentlemen sitting on a park bench in the summer, watching the scenery jogging by in their skimpy outfits. One turns to the other and says, “I remember I used to enjoy chasing them, but I can’t remember why…”
I am a 64 year old happily married male. Yes, I do still find younger women to be attractive. But I have to admit that I find certain women my age, who I would have formerly found old, to be pretty darn attractive also. And if I found myself single I am sure I would be more comfortable with women my age. Can I assume that this is part of the normal aging process?
Shaming men … it just never gets old, does it?
Thread winner!
Seconded. Firmly.
I always say: Men get older, but women stay the same age, and pretty soon they’re the same age as your daughter.
Precocious puberty in America is such that 14 to 16-year-old girls of 2012 have the physical development — in terms of signs of female fertility — which young women of 18-21 had 30 years ago (AKA 1982). As young women like Kendall and Kylie Jenner make readily apparent.
See:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2610353
Nearly half of African-American girls start showing signs of puberty by 8 years old, and some American girls are developing as young as 5, even 4 years old, experts say.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/magazine/puberty-before-age-10-a-new-normal.html?pagewanted=all
Puberty Before Age 10: A New ‘Normal’?
Published: March 30, 2012
One day last year when her daughter, Ainsley, was 9, Tracee Sioux pulled her out of her elementary school in Fort Collins, Colo., and drove her an hour south, to Longmont, in hopes of finding a satisfying reason that Ainsley began growing pubic hair at age 6. Ainsley was the tallest child in her third-grade class. She had a thick, enviable blond-streaked ponytail and big feet, like a puppy’s. The curves of her Levi’s matched her mother’s.
Neither the Law nor social mores have changed to match this physical reality.
In fact, the laws have regressed in terms of active misogyny in reaction to those changes.
I’ve heard that some people suspect steroids given to cattle to help them grow quickly with minimum fat are what are causing early puberty in young girls. They believe that the steroids are still residually present in beef (and perhaps other meats like pork or chicken?) and cause the female to mature ahead of schedule.
I’m not sure if that’s ever been proven one way or the other though. I first heard this idea years ago so you’d think there would be proof one way or the other by now….
There’s actually a simpler and more preferred explanation, which interestingly is also the explanation for the “epidemic of obesity”: we all get enough to eat. Starvation delays menarche and impairs fertility; the organism doesn’t have energy to spare on reproduction. When we all have plenty to eat, then the organism wants to get right on with that whole reproduction thing before things go bad again.
In 1982 I was in 8th grade, and the girl behind me in English class had a set of… that I still recall to this day. She was as fully formed as any adult women. She did end up pregnant before her 8th grade year was out, but that is neither here nor there.
This is counter intuitive. It is said that it takes much longer to raise a child to adulthood in today’s world than it did even 100 years ago. Kids go to school longer, they live with their parents longer, they wait longer to get married(if at all), and they don’t usually have any kids until their early thirties. Contrast this with indications that kids are reaching puberty at an earlier age. I always thought that, compared to other animals, human offspring are very late physical bloomers because it is a natural adaptation involving the long period of time needed to develop a child’s mind to adulthood.
Part of that is our definition of “adulthood” has changed. See, for example, California’s definition of the age of consent as 18. Go look at birth and marriage records from 100 years ago, and it’s clear that, even with later menarche, by 18 an awful lot of California women had been married for a good while and had kids.
Death and Hell are never full, and neither are the eyes of men.
J. Cash
It seems as if no one else has mentioned this song, Jack You’re Dead, as a response to the question posed in the article so let me do the honors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6GbmrYud58
The performer is Joe Jackson but the song was actually written a generation earlier by Louis Jordan. He makes the point that when you’re no longer noticing girls, you’re dead – or you may as well be. I couldn’t agree more.
My 1969 high school US History teacher said it best: “When I was 16, all the girls 16 and under looked good. When I was 21, all the girls 21 and under looked good. When I was 40, all the girls under 40 looked good. I can’t wait til I’m 80. They’ll ALL look good to me!”
Precisely. I’m 54 now. When I was 16, 16 year old girls were unbelievably hot, but 54 year old women were ancient hags. Now I do find (some) 54 year old women attractive, and also (some) 16 year old girls. But I steer clear of the latter, since their fathers would probably beat me up or worse.
Not to mention the fact that they would probably consider me an icky old perv.
“At what moment in your life did you stop finding young women attractive?”
Hasn’t happened yet, and I’m almost 40. If it ever does happen, take me to the doctor cause something is surely wrong.
I personally think the question itself is ridiculous.
Of course it is. It’s the straw man distortion of the original question posed.
Dave, go back under your rock.
‘Swindle is “revolted” by Kendall and Kylie Jenner (who are 16 and 14, respectively) posing in bathing suits…”
I saw the pictures of the older girl in her swim suits.
They’re totally fine.
Girls wear swim suits. Deal with it.
When we were that age, the kids in my clique used to go skinny dipping any time we could get away with it (sorry, I don’t have any pictures). At least these kids are wearing something in the photos.
Its stops when you have a son of that age and start thinking “Boy I’d like my son to end up with that girl”
If you do any serious genealogy you will soon find that most of your female ancestors were married and bearing children by 18-20 years old and often sooner. My family tree has dozens of 14, 15, and 16 year old brides, and even a few of 13. And for the most part, they were marrying older men, often fifteen or twenty years older.
Moreover, with better nutrition in the last few generations, the age of puberty is creeping lower and lower. A girl of 13 may now be as well developed as a 16 year old a hundred years ago.
Nature, or God if you prefer, ABSOLUTELY intended pretty, fully-developed girls of 14-16 to be wildly attractive to normal men of all ages. Likewise those 16-18, and 18-22. Nothing that screeching feminists or moralizing religious scolds may say will ever change this fact.
American society has chosen to draw the line when we are free to act on our impulses at age 16 to 18, depending on what state you’re in, but there is not the slightest justification for this in Nature or the Bible. I have been faithful to my wife since the day I married her nearly 30 years ago, but I admit that I will savor a glimpse of a shapely 15 year old in a bikini. As a civilized man, I am able to control my gaze and my thoughts and my natural instincts, and it is all harmless and perfectly natural. And I tell you that any man who denies having similar reactions is a liar or a homosexual.
Without doubt the best comment to this article. I would add that “cute” and “sexy” as in the article’s title are not the same thing. I’m not particularly attracted to women in the age group described, mostly because I give more points for experience, not out of “guilt”.
Generally true as far as geneology goes- but not in all families.
In my family tree, I noted that as far back as I can trace (mid-1500′s) my direct line ancestors, male and female, were marrying and bearing children at 21 and older, which I undserstood to be unusual for the times. They have also been lving into their 80′s and 90′s when lifespans were much shorter- also unusual.
And there’s this fruit fly experiment where they doubled fruit fly lifespans in just a few generations, not by breeding the longest lived, but by delaying the breeding age in each successive generation. Which I thing explains a lot about average lifespans among varous subgroups in America today…
One thing I noticed in my family tree, and though my wife was loathe to admit, in her’s after I traced her’s back, is that way back in the very moralistic 1600′s, 1700′s, and 1800′s, there were an awful lot of premature first children in both our family trees. Purely co-incindental, I’m sure.
So a mature man is one who ignores his biological instinct to notice the physical attributes that indicate a healthy mother. So then, a girl becomes a woman when she ignores her biological instinct to notice the attributes that indicate a defender/provider?
So men are supposed to be attracted to woman who are attracted to starving artists?
When my grandfather’s 80+ friend, Dewey, went to a family gathering, one of the younger men asked him how old a man is when he stops looking at women. Dewey replied ” How the hell would I know.”
If there was a like button for comments here, I’d press it for this one.
+1
WHY would I limit my desire for attractive women of any age. Im 56 and I still stare at any lady who meets my template of attractive-ness. 40 somethings are actually my Hot zone but age be damned, I just like a pretty woman.If she gives me an argument Im in love.
I don’t stare. It upsets my wife. Not to say I don’t take a few glances.
I blame the Feminist movement!
In the old days, people accepted the idea that it was normal for men to want to have sex with every attractive woman they saw, while women were much pickier about which men they’d have sex with. Women just shrugged and said “men will be men”. Then came the pill, and women were able to engage in casual sex without fear of getting pregnant. So all these women had their share of casual flings, which enabled them to pass judgement on men’s promiscuous nature by saying “hey, I’ve had my share of casual flings, but at least I’m picky, not like men, they’ll jump in bed with any woman….MEN ARE DOGS”.
You see, one of the main themes of Feminism is that men and women are basically the same. Except for one small caveat. Men are less evolved versions of women. So the fact that modern Feminist women are willing to have casual sex, but are pickier than men, means that men’s natural promiscuous nature can now be interpreted not as a fundamental difference from women, but as evidence of their inferiority to women.
This is why modern men are supposed to feel ashamed over their sexual desires. Forget about their actual actions. Just the desire itself is something to “tsk tsk” about. It didn’t used to be that way. In the old days, a man wasn’t supposed to cheat on his wife, but he was EXPECTED to lust after other women. And in the old days, wives knew it was their responsibility to prevent their husbands from straying. These days, men are not only chastised for their desires, but wives now think that if they don’t want or need it so much, why should their husbands want or need it so much?
What is so difficult to understand about the word ‘fantasy’ ?
Let me update it for you:
The year is 2030, computer generated virtual reality
is indistinguishable from the ‘real thing’, and you,
oh middle-aged married male, have the opportunity
for completely anonymous, completely safe sex with
a sixteen year old virgin girl. What will you do ?
Probably go take a nap, since I’ll be 77 years old, if I’m not already dead.
One word, Dave: Androgel.
Why not make her twelve and have her call you “daddy”?
“When do cute and sexy young girls stop looking cute and sexy?”
Depends on whether they exercise, smoke, use sunblock, dress well, take care of their appearance . . .
Oh, wait, you mean when do I stop seeing cute and sexy young girls as being cute and sexy?
Can you become gay later in life? I suppose then they might just look cute . . .
Or, maybe as soon as she calls me “daddy.” Yup, that would chill things out quickly.
But, your title suggests “death” as an answer? Not if you’re a Muslim guy.
This conversation is perennial – from the opening of Republic, Book I: Cephalus quoting Sophocles on the waning of love’s tyranny:
There too was Cephalus the father of Polemarchus, whom I had not seen for a long time, and I thought him very much aged. He was seated on a cushioned chair, and had a garland on his head, for he had been sacrificing in the court; and there were some other chairs in the room arranged in a semicircle, upon which we sat down by him. He saluted me eagerly, and then he said: –
You don’t come to see me, Socrates, as often as you ought: If I were still able to go and see you I would not ask you to come to me. But at my age I can hardly get to the city, and therefore you should come oftener to the Piraeus. For let me tell you, that the more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation. Do not then deny my request, but make our house your resort and keep company with these young men; we are old friends, and you will be quite at home with us.
I replied: There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travellers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to enquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult. And this is a question which I should like to ask of you who have arrived at that time which the poets call the ‘threshold of old age’ –Is life harder towards the end, or what report do you give of it?
I will tell you, Socrates, he said, what my own feeling is. Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says; and at our meetings the tale of my acquaintance commonly is –I cannot eat, I cannot drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled away: there was a good time once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer life. Some complain of the slights which are put upon them by relations, and they will tell you sadly of how many evils their old age is the cause. But to me, Socrates, these complainers seem to blame that which is not really in fault. For if old age were the cause, I too being old, and every other old man, would have felt as they do. But this is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known. How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles, –are you still the man you were? Peace, he replied; most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master. His words have often occurred to my mind since, and they seem as good to me now as at the time when he uttered them. For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men’s characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.
This question hits upon a flaw in modern American culture that I have long despised and that I feel gets very little attention. That is the presumption that there is little or no difference between want/desire/thought and action. A seeming correlary of the “if it feels good, do it” maxim is that people are expected to act instinctual without limit or self discipline. Thus, it is completely unfathomable to some how a Christian might even suggest that a person who feels attracted to the same sex could choose to actually not engage in gay sex. Likewise, the paedophile-phobia that would rather damn all men than accede that it is entirely possible for an adult male to recognize a young girl as being pretty or, dare I say it, a sexually mature but underage girl as attractive without having a desire, compulsion, or need to do anything improper or illegal.
Very simple actually. As you get older, the range of women that you find attractive increases – so that now you consider mature women sexy like you didn’t when you were 20 years old. Of course, you still find the younger ones and all of them in between attractive, so the pool just keeps increasing.
“When will men stop finding young women attractive?”
Say what? Is the person asking this inane question stupid?
As I get older, with three daughters of my own, my fantasies diminish. I can, though, appreciate the beauty of a pretty woman in the same manner I enjoy a beautiful sunset, an appealing flower, or a flight of butterflies.
If I can’t eat in the restaurant I don’t bother looking at the menu.
My fantasies (other than of my wife) consist of past encounters, which consist of a lot of pleasant memories.
Here! Here! That’s all I’m saying.
Dave, if that were all you were saying, we wouldn’t be having this argument.
Might have been all you meant but if so, you sure fooled a bunch of us.
A poor analogy. If every restaurant’s menu was posted everywhere in sight, not looking at them would be impossible. That’s a realistic analogy. And Mr. Swindle would want us all to feel guilty for liking anything on those menus.
Those who the gods would destroy, first make guilty. (to coin a phrase)
I’ll keep looking as long as I’m breathing. Swindle is the one with the perverted sense of morality here not me! ’nuff said! This is a link to an interesting column by Fred Reed explaining why men of my age, I’m 59 in 5 weeks, would marry a woman who happens to be 9 days younger than my daughter. It’s a good read,
http://www.ejfi.org/family/family-16.htm#pgfId-1456870
The attraction is tempered by experience and realism. When you’re 20 and looking at a 20-year-old woman, anything seems possible. When you’re my age, common sense kicks in. “Get real,” it says, and you do.
The only things that will hook a man my age up with a 20-year-old are money, fame, and power. Well, I guess there are women with daddy issues, too. I wouldn’t want to hook up with a woman who’d hook up with a man for any of those reasons.
Case in point: Monica Lewinsky.
Growing up on the Gulf Coast all the sun rays and BBQ’s caused young ladies to have fully formed 20 year old figures by the time some were 12 or 13 at the most. I know from family stories it was common some of these fully figured young ladies were married before 15 prior to 1940. Now I understand those beautiful young ladies married men 5 to ten years older that could support them in a lavish life style.That hasn’t change much even with their sisters over 18. I don’t think they were called jail bait until later and off limits for all guys over 21 until social mores changed.
‘When Do Cute and Sexy Young Girls Stop Looking Cute and Sexy? Death.’
The two kids (Kendall and Kylie Jenner) look cute, but not sexy.
Dr. Helen, OTOH…wow!!!
I haven’t seen anyone make the distinction between attraction and action.
Attraction is spontaneous. It just happens.
It’s what you do with it that matters. Engaging in a fantasy is an action.
The ninth commandment is not to covet your neighbor’s wife. By extension, it applies to any sexual fantasies about anyone besides your spouse.
Therefore, fantasizing is a serious thing.
Umm… could you have sounded any creepier using the words young girls rather than young women? and young women are mature after 22? and playboy is a guage for normal? I think a diet of silicone and pulp is not a guage of normal but a guage of immaturity…unless one looks at the cadaver in a smoking jacket as a man to be admired.
At 56 young ‘Babes’ now have a ‘daughter’ feel. Even the ones that obviously flirt with me. Have been thinking this way for perhaps 7 or 8 years? Was a gradual ‘slide’. Still, have noticed in my dreams and fantasies, a ‘mid 20′s lady still rules the erotic scene. Strange…am attracted to ladies in their mid 30′s through early 50′s. Such is life.