Women are more critical of female toplessness than men, which may be expl (cont) | Hacker News Reader

Women are more critical of female toplessness than men, which may be expl (cont)

psypost.org

32 pointswhack59 comments

Modesty was developed across multiple societies as a way of equalizing physical attractiveness.

There was a counterintuitive study a few years ago that found wearing a hijab improved the wearer's body image: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2014/09/15/3470832...

As a guy, I may never understand the competition women feel about their looks. But it should not be surprising when some of them support the current DMZ.

When the media puts most of your value on looks it not surprising some women might feel like it is a competition.

On the other hand, remember that these modesty norms have existed in many cultures (particularly colder countries), for millennia. Long before there was a "media" creating competition.

> particularly colder countries

Keep in mind average breast size correlates with colder weather.

What is the correlation? Cold weather = large breasts, or the other way round? Or some non linear relation with a maximum somewhere?

The media? Aren't we hard-wired to seek attractive mates because attractiveness is correlated with good health and genetics?

No one is saying physical attractive was not valued before. But it is super charged by some media as basically the main value of a women. Then a literally unattainable image pushed as the ideal via photoshopped pics an video.

That is only if you decided to believe in what media says. Pick your priest.

Country/Culture of media origin is also important ;)

The media serves as a coordinator in what would otherwise be a social coordination problem.

Imagine for a moment, the game of "social value" and it's strategies. What is the Schelling point of such a game? Hard to say, right? It's easy however, to understand that a whichever the dominant strategy is, the cost/reward of following the dominant strategy on average is fairly high given the material constraints that any "social value" game would have.[1]

In fact, choosing a a non-dominant "priest" has an opportunity cost associated with it over choosing a "dominant priest". In our society, media functions as a "dominant priest" or rather a communicator of the dominant strategy. Directing someone to choose a non-dominant strategy is a bit pointless to the people who are instead asking, "shouldn't we be playing a different game instead?"

1. As to what these are is left as an exercise to the reader.

DMZ?

Demilitarized Zone (for example, border between North Korea and South Korea).

Edit @Brian_K_White: I don't either. Bad analogy.

I don't get how that would apply in that context.

Yeah, I know what that DMZ is, just not how it was meant in this context. But themaninthedark explains it well above.

Demilitarized Zone

Basically saying that the agreed upon norms are acceptable to some women because they feel like they benefit from the effects.

Another example would be monogamy, women will treat another woman that cheats harshly because of the worry that their partner will cheat. By policing their in-group they reduce the risk to themselves.

> Modesty was developed across multiple societies as a way of equalizing physical attractiveness.

I would argue that this is forgetting how violent the world used to be. Most people were farmers, which meant most men were stronger than they are today. Meanwhile, women didn't have bras, tampons, or other hygiene products because they didn't exist yet. There was also no DNA testing if you were attacked, no cameras in the area to witness the car, or the attacker running. If you were attacked, say, in a farmer's field with nobody nearby, it was only your word against his. And if he was smart and masked, and you didn't know who it was... well, sucks to be you in every way. Good luck finding a husband. Remember there were also no government programs either - your social circle and (sometimes, depending on era) charity organizations were your only recourse. For those who didn't have a good social circle, all you need to do is crack open Oliver Twist or another Charles Dickens book.

So, if you were a woman, dressing immodestly was (not to be victim-blaming) asking for trouble (especially as that was a trait that only prostitutes in the era tended to do), as was being alone anywhere, or even just not being at home - and if trouble happened to you, seeking redress could be quite difficult if not completely impossible, in part due to the lack of things we have today. So, you probably didn't want to do that...

Wow, so you know precisely where and why modesty came into being? To equalize attractiveness?

Modesty is a cover, a hide, a restriction while also an emphasis. Sometimes modesty is itself an attraction.

Well, isn't there a whole competition about the size if genitalia between guys? That doesn't seem so different from physical attractiveness competition

Don’t forget the terrible dynamics at play between having a full head of hair (hair density in terms of grown follicles per unit area to be technical about it) as an obvious signal of youth/health while there’s also the common perception that bald men are better lovers, which is backed up by research and makes obvious sense since the hair loss is (outside of more specific circumstances) caused by testosterone slowly killing the hair follicles on the scalp and higher testosterone levels being well associated with mate selection not just in people but across primates in general!

There was also something with zinc being used to produce hair and something good in love making (I do not remember if it was on the semen or elsewhere).

So less hair = more zinc for that other thing

A friend of a friend [1] used to walk topless around NYC on occasion. She would frequently get "stopped and released" by police. She knew the laws better than they did. She did say that she got far more verbal criticism/abuse from women as she walked around, than she did from men.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly_Van_Voast

Women get very upset when another woman is giving away for free what they expect men to pay for!

It even has a name. Women policing other women is called 'slut-shaming'.

Every community that has ever existed self-polices, and (I believe) this is basically insurmountable - the only thing that can be changed is what they self-police for. Even here, Hacker News, we shame incompetent programmers. We shame misinformation spreaders, particularly those among us. We shame politicians who write laws we don't like. Self-preservative self-policing is pretty normal.

I think it is different. Woman cannot stop 'slut-shaming' any more then men can stop 'objectifying' women.

Remember, women are trapped in a zero-sum competition for a limited number of acceptable mates.

A programming analog would be commercial software programmers shaming open-source programmers. That doesn't seem to happen.

>women are trapped in a zero-sum competition for a limited number of acceptable mates.

Odd, since the majority of men seem to be ones losing out on that though since "acceptable mates" for most women is the top 20% of males.

This reminds me of the stat that is meant to guilt society into considering how horrible it is that 1 out of 4 homeless people is a woman.

Or even better, the famous Hillary Clinton quote: "Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat."

> commercial software programmers shaming open-source programmers. That doesn't seem to happen

this is a funny comparison : ) But it actually did happen for a while! Ballmer: "Linux is Cancer".

This seems like a pretty sound finding:

>It was really clear that the driving force in how someone is likely to respond to seeing a topless woman in public is not the setting, region, or the legality of where the toplessness occurs, but rather the characteristics, traits, and opinions of the person who is doing the reacting in the first place,” Harbke told PsyPost. “Even though prior surveys have shown that many people feel that being able to go topless in public should be within women’s legal rights, these findings suggest that that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will react favorably to seeing it around them.”

* these findings suggest that that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will react favorably to seeing it around them.”*

Well, yeah. Either you're going to be the type of person who thinks it's shameful, or the type of person to ogle them and make them uncomfortable, or the type of person who now has to try very hard not to ogle them. None of those are good reactions. Personally if I were in a place with topless women I would leave. Not looking would take too much willpower.

> Either you're going to be the type of person who thinks it's shameful, or the type of person to ogle them and make them uncomfortable, or the type of person who now has to try very hard not to ogle them. None of those are good reactions. Personally if I were in a place with topless women I would leave. Not looking would take too much willpower.

Are you certain that shame and ogling are the only reasonable choices (while on a topless beach)?

Also, the latter seems like the result of objectification (the focus of the article).

I’ll let you in on a secret: attractive people actually like being looked at, it’s a sign their work paid off. It builds self esteem.

As a corollary, it is rare for someone to want no one to find them worth looking at.

You ogle for about a minute and then you get over it and grow up. Good grief.

This attitude that women must be modest because men are helpless and not in control of themselves is not exactly beneficial to men, and also not true.

This attitude that women must be modest because men are helpless

I'm not saying women have to do anything. Women should be allowed to dress however they want. I'm just saying I'm going to avoid participating in situations or places I find onerous.

As someone who regularly goes to mix gendered, clothing optional spaces; you get used to it really quickly.

... when the topless women are young, white, and conventionally attractive. And also the judginess correlates to local laws around the matter. I wonder if the men & women would flip if it was fat topless grannies.

In reality I kinda doubt age and color matter that much.

Humans be humans. Our bodies aren't inherently anything but human. Let's all grow up and normalize allowing being comfortable in any situation. If a human feels constrained by the clothes that they currently have then they should be able to be comfortable and not wear or wear whatever they want. Life is hard.

That is absolutely not true. There is a minimum level of clothing for each environment and category. There is a standard limit on expression based on where you are and what you are doing. No freedom loving movement can ever walk away from or argue against this.

And these limits are placed by a variety of subjects such sexuality, expression, weather, relationship, etc.

We are humans who bounce between these subjects, categories, and environments. That is what makes us human and not animal.

If someone feels "constrained" they are the issue.

Clothing, I would argue, is one of the things that give a human dignity, and raise the human above an animal. Work is another thing that falls in this category, as does not raping each other (some animals don't care). This is something that our ancestors understood well - look at how well they dressed despite the great economic difficulties in doing so for many of them. Animals don't wear clothes - and humans who get angry about wearing clothes make themselves animals, as do humans who despise working, or humans who attack people. These are fundamentally animal-like traits that we should be above.

Animals are not meant to be an inspiration for tolerable human behavior. They attack each other, kill each other, eat each other, commit incest, and so on. Just because an animal doesn't wear clothes, and that humans are a form of glorified animal, does not mean that it follows in any way that humans should be okay with doing the same.

Well at the very least, there is a level of clothing in many circumstances required to be sanitary... Don't really want completely nude people sitting on the bus seats.

those limits can be removed by changing societal norms, but feeling constrained by clothing is something that someone can not change about themselves.

"People are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them." --Epictitus.

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." --Shakespeare.

One one side you said

  changing societal norms

but at the same time you said

  one cannot change about themselves.

Strong contradiction. How does society change if people don't? Get them while they are young?

its more like 'dont get them while they are young'. when society teaches children from an early age that public nudity is shameful, they are going to grow up having an aversion to it. i doubt this aversion is innate, its taught by society. on the other hand, preferring the feel of nakedness is going to be an innate preference i believe.

I could have seen this is where this was going.

You have zero clue on how the systems we have today originated. Yet you want to hypothesize on what a made up world would be like if we didn't teach certain things.

Answer the first question: Are you suggesting society change while arguing at the same time a person cannot change?

> Humans be humans. Our bodies aren't inherently anything but human. Let's all grow up and normalize allowing being comfortable in any situation.

A reasonable takeaway from the article is that objectification of women is a primary barrier to that normalization. Therefore, that normalization can't happen because objectification keeps getting a pass from us.

'Objectification' is built into the human OS.

Straight men objectify women, gay men objectify men, women objectify babies. Puppies and kittens are objectified by all.

I'm a supporter of women's beach-dress equality. Guys should totally cover up that pasty man flab.

But then those same guys could also wear thong bikinis if they wanted by that logic.

They already can.

I don't get it. What flab do men have?

The one that comes when you are reaching 40ies

That really doesn't clarify it for me... I'm a man. I'm not 40 yet but I don't know about any flab a man grows when reaching their 40s. Am I crazy?

Spare tire

I wonder if the same thing would hold in countries where women wear the hijab or niqab.

Specially if they are married.

I find this kinda hilarious. For years, decades even, women have been fighting for desexualizing breasts and now we learn that men are more tolerant of naked breast, compared to women, because of we tends to sexualize them.

I can't believe anyone truly thinks that social rules are all remnants of a past patriarchal society where woman had no say or something. I am sure woman always had a strong influence on social norms. Personally I think men have a much more flexible morals and generally are kept in check by woman :) but I digress. Anyway you can see in the past the temperance movement for example was lead by woman, well before they had the right to vote.

They specifically limited the pictures to young white women of "similar" appearance which I'm guessing means "conventionally attractive." Going by the men I know, that's exactly who they want to see topless. I'd be curious if the findings would stand if the pictures featured wrinkles, flab, and saggy boobs.

I honestly think it's cultural, and most don't care in my area. The beach 5min from home have a lot of topless women on it, especially in summer (a lot less now) despite being packed with city dwellers, tourists and kids. I do sometimes take a look, as do a lot of people probably, but never heard of someone being a creep or being shamed.

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