Ad slogan: "Keep that schoolgirl complexion"

This American ad campaign spanned at least 30 years, as far as I could document -- try to guess when. Surely it's sometime recent, given how "obsessed with youth" we are, right? Guess again: it started in 1924 and lasted at least until 1953, though probably not long after that. Was it some obscure product hawked only to a tiny niche audience? Guess again again: it was for Palmolive soap, one of the most popular soap brands, and the campaign was commented on in Time magazine. Check the results of this search to see some of the pictures and the Time reports.

Unfortunately I couldn't find pictures online for the next example, but Taschen's All-American Ads of the 30s has an ad for a make-up company called Seventeen that promises to make you look like a teenager again. It uses the word 'teen-age three times in case you didn't get the point. As before, it is a mass market product.

It's typical for skin products to sell "a more youthful look," and sometimes they even use numbers like "5 years younger" or "shave off 10 years." But those are relative numbers -- what number is the ideal age for her skin, the age where she would like her skin frozen forever? They never seem to mention that, aside from these two ad campaigns. Sure, you wouldn't sell well if your slogan was blunt, like "You looked hotter at 17." Still, contemporary ads -- Dove's "real beauty" being the worst offender -- allow women to delude themselves right into spinsterhood. It's high time for a return to tough love.

Nowadays, they'd send a "To Catch a Predator" team to any ad agency who thought of slapping such a slogan on a mainstream product, let alone name the company Seventeen when its audience is much older. And as I showed here, there has been an increasing trend in the age of Miss America winners from 1920 to today, and among Playboy Playmates of the Month since the late 1960s. So I don't know what women past their prime are complaining about -- they've never had better PR in human history. The mollycoddled cougars of today would be driven to suicide if they were surrounded by 1930s ads with their ubiquity of super-girly faces.

On a related note, ever wonder what Angelina Jolie looked like before she developed into a trannie? See here. Yeah, she still had a more masculine face than the average girl, but it doesn't look nearly as strong as it does now.

How to invade a college campus for girls

Over the next week or so, the fall semester begins across the country. If you like college girls, here are a few tips for integrating yourself into their world, enough to be able to interact with them over the long term. Some will slut it up in college, but most girls this age are still too unconsciously aware of their high fertility value to really whore themselves around like women over 25 who go to clubs and bars. So, they need to get to know you better than older women do, and that means you have to be part of their world. It's not quite as strict as with high school girls, though, since they're a bit less inhibited. This is drawn from my experience during the first year of graduate school, although it can be adapted to non-students too.

1) Eat at the campus dining hall, main cafeteria, or whatever it is. It's a pre-evening version of the bar or nightclub -- everyone is there, and their hormones are raging as they scope out the crowd of their peers, but it's not so high-pressure that you can't sit down and run Day Game on them. If you're not a student, you can still usually buy a meal plan, and cafeterias and student unions tend to be cash or credit only anyways. You may not be able to make lunch if you're busy, but that's true for them too. Once classes and work are done, everyone can make dinner, and unless you work very long hours, you can too.

As an aside, this is probably one aspect of your youth that you miss the most: social eating. Even for hardcore introverts, there's something incredibly stimulating about being surrounded by a bustling crowd while you're eating with friends. And unlike restaurants with outdoor patios, in the dining hall it's understood that you're part of the same community and can sit down and talk to strangers without having to disarm them first. You'll find that your unpleasant memories of social eating, like feeling too on-display and self-conscious, pose no danger this time around because your level of anxiety declines pretty steadily from adolescence onward.

2) Enlist allies early on, especially if you look like you don't belong there. Aim for girls only -- college guys are not worth it -- and try for the prettier ones. Really, though, the first priority is getting a group of friends to make you blend in. Lots less pressure here, since you're not trying to game them, and college girls are very open to making new friends.

3) START EARLY ON, like the first day of school. This is probably the most important thing. The freshman girls are a complete nervous wreck and will make friends with anyone as long as it eases their worries about the transition to college social life. As for girls you are interested in, their minds will be open and hungry from the summertime starvation; they want an exciting start to the new year -- "Omigod, I can't believe it's like already the first day of school!!!!!" -- though they will go through a several-week period of window shopping.

Also, during this time you can play the role of "the new boy" -- if you read enough about who girls crush on, "the new boy" always has an advantage. By the time Thanksgiving break arrives, and certainly by Winter vacation, they'll have become pretty habituated to you. Plus once the cold and dark weather sets in, girls will stay in their rooms more, and just be in a less libidinous mood. (Remember to send your daughters to study abroad in Helsinki, not Rome.)

4) Trying to sleep around in a smallish community won't work, as you'll get a bad reputation. Having the rep of someone who sleeps around in the abstract can help -- it proves you're not a loser -- but when girls can put a face on the girls you no longer talk to after sleeping with them, they will stay away. That's why PUAs can only thrive in large, anonymous urban areas. Date around and have fun, but you can really only pick one to get serious with. Look for variety elsewhere, 25+ women at clubs or bars being the obvious choice.

5) Don't get too far into their world. You don't have to take classes or hang out at the library like college students do. If you're not a student, part of your appeal will be that you're from some exotic other world but are gracing the dining hall with your presence. Surprisingly little of their conversation focuses on such things anyway, so you won't be out of the loop. (They mostly talk about their relationships with other people.) The time demands, therefore, are pretty low -- just eating at the dining hall, and the activities that are part of your normal social life (hanging out with friends, going to a club, etc.).

6) Don't mention your age. As Roissy suggested, make them guess, say "close, and you're... 21?" to distract them from their own question, and change the subject. If you're interested in her, before changing the subject, add in "Ah, that's too bad" -- "why????" -- "Because I usually date older women. They don't play games as much, in my experience." They'll like you for who you are, or shy away from you for who you are -- blurting out your age can only hinder a potential friendship or relationship. And for christ's sake, don't say things like, "When I was in college..." or "When I was 20..."

7) If you're 25 or younger, you can dress like a well-dressed college student would, so that you stand out without standing out. If you're over 25, dressing like a college student will age you considerably, unless you look very young for your age. I advise against what may be the first instinct for looking nice yet mature, i.e. the professional look. This will also make you stand out age-wise, and not in an impressive way -- you look like you're part of the rat race. There are basically two options, then: A) dress like a starving artist or intriguing bum, if the girls you're going for are into that, or B) dress dapper.

Dressing up connotes power and the exotic, and will get their attention before you even approach them. Don't worry, they're not gold-diggers -- they just enjoy the thrill of being around a guy who "looks like James Bond," as they tend to put it. Also, the affected bohemian look is pretty hard to get right -- usually the person ends up looking like a real bum.

8) You will probably have to become somewhat fluent in popular youth culture, but not so much -- you can always play the "I'm too cool to listen to the radio or watch TV" angle. Definitely do not use pop culture references specific to your age range, unless they bring them up first. For example, no college students these days will catch even the most obvious Simpsons reference, let alone anything before the '90s. A simple way to find out what music is OK is to go to nightclubs aimed at college students, listen to the music, and Google the lyrics later. You'd be surprised how good mainstream rap music has been for the past several years, unlike the gangsta era that you may be more familiar with.

9) Frat parties... I haven't been to one here yet, and don't plan to. From the crowds I see there (and I live somewhat near frat row), and who I hear gabbing about them, it looks like high-quality girls tend not to go there anyway. Essentially, the future bar-sluts and their unfortunate friends who get dragged along and don't want to be there or socialize with anyone. At any rate, from what I recall of college, the environment is too unfavorable, aside from the presence of alcohol, and there will be too much humanoid trash to wade through. (A house party is different, of course.) You probably won't meet many new people, there's no potential for intimacy, and the girls are getting hit on too much, which distorts their sense of self-value. Frat parties only happen on the weekend, and you'd do better to meet people during the week and schedule dates or something similar for the weekend.

10) If you don't already have one, you will need to get a Facebook and keep it simple.

11) Attend on-campus arts performances. It gives you something to talk about that makes it feel like you're part of their world, while still being somewhat exciting -- rather than complaining about the homework in the class you share, a typical mistake of younger guys. It provides date opportunities, or bonding events to cement a friendship. If you do the research and organize it for the group, you demonstrate your leadership skills. It may seem miniscule, but if you establish a pattern, they'll think of you as the organizer. Last, they are very cheap, and the performers are usually pretty talented.

I could probably go on, but this feels like enough. Take-home messages: be a part of the central social scene (dining hall, arts performances, house parties or nightclub excursions), remain vague about your age, get female allies first, START EARLY, and resist the urge to sleep around on campus.

Why I hate living with older women

The previous two long-term female housemates I've had were 24 and 21, while my current one is about to turn 30. Younger girls are too self-conscious, but older women feel care-free in introducing awkward conversation topics. Two recent examples (names changed):

1) A couple weeks ago, my female housemate Barbara said she'd run into the guy who recently moved out of our house, Jake. "You know what's funny?" she asked. What's that? "Jake thought we were hooking up the entire time, since our doors were always opening at the same time." Or just because we have the same schedule. "Isn't that funny?" Yeah, what a weirdo. "Nooooo, not weeeeird, just funny." Pause. "I told him we were." Ha.

Barbara is plain-looking below the neck and below-average above, although at least she's active, so she doesn't look gross. (I still thought she was a few years older than she really is.) Just the thought of it made me cringe a little, and it was comletely out of the blue -- I was buried in a book in the reading room when she interrupted like one of those raincoat flasher men.

2) Today she remarked that she felt bad due to "womanly problems." I don't mind hearing that, but in talking about how ill at ease she felt, her mind drifted to other areas of discontent: "I just need to be kissed... really well," she griped matter-of-factly. Oh god, not again with this! "I can't even remember what it felt like with my last boyfriend..." I told her politely and empathetically that she should go to a club.

If the sexes were reversed, I'd be kicked out of the house for sexual harassment, possibly unable to rent another room if they asked for a reference. And again, don't let your imagination distract you from what I've said -- she's nothing special to look at and belongs to the hippie-ish subgroup of the SWPL crowd. * I wouldn't mind if she were twenty and tight, of course, but teenagers and college girls have too much shame to say such things to their housemates, even if they're thinking it, let alone to repeatedly bring them up.

Every time she says something like this, I run up to my room and turn on a YouTube shower of girly videos to flush the burning out of my eyes. Luckily, the past two times happened on the weekend, so I also got to re-join my darlings at the teen dance club soon afterward. Within 5 hours, I'll be gripping firm adolescent skin and forgetting all the things she's said.

* In 10 years, I can easily see Barbara as this tragic case spotted by Roissy, or perhaps even worse as the type of single dating mother described by Udolpho.

Where are girls most likely to dig older guys?

I don't need to sell this idea with a long-winded set-up, so let's get right to it. The data come from David Buss' (1989) seminal study of mating preferences around the world (free PDF), part of which focused on how older or younger the person's ideal mate was. But we need to adjust this somehow to account for the fact that the samples differed in average age -- a group of 40 year-olds who prefer a guy 10 years older is different from a group of 20 year-olds who prefer a guy 10 years older. (My apologies to the 30 year-old guys who I just gave heart attacks to with that example.)

Luckily the data also show the average age of the sample, so I refer to "preferred age difference" as the sample's average absolute preferred age difference (e.g., "3 years older") divided by the sample's average age. In the previous example, it would be 25% and 50%, respectively. This is not the same as the average relative preferred age difference, since the ratio of two averages is not the average of the ratio. I would need the individual data-points for that. Still, it's a sensible way to correct for the age of the sample.

Also, because I only looked at averages, we expect them to not be "10 years older" no matter what the sample's age, because the average female probably prefers between 3 to 5 years. We are looking for girls in the far-right tail, the ones who are fine with a much older guy. Buss' data do contain standard deviations, but I trust these less than the averages since it's harder to accurately measure a variance than an average, and I don't know how normal each sample's data is. So we'll have to operate on the assumption that where the average is higher, "extreme" values become less extreme, like finding a 6'10 man among 1 million Dutch guys than among 1 million Vietnamese guys. Small differences in the mean have huge effects in the tails of a distribution.

Moreover, how does she know what her ideal guy is? -- girls surely to underestimate rather than overestimate the age of their ideal guy. She says 5 years older, but in reality she'd be fine with 10, at least if the guy made up for being "too much" older in some way, which I assume anyone who undertakes such a project does. The unreliability of the girls' estimates does not matter when we rank the countries -- all girls provide unreliable estimates, but it's doubtful that some countries are systematically more clueless than others.

The samples are not all probability samples -- some are pretty representative, and some are convenience samples (read the PDF). Buss explicitly says that they are not meant to tell us about the individual countries, but only to get a large sample of humanity to study universal preferences. Lacking better preference data, though, we work with what we have. Small samples suggest college students, but that's who you're after anyway, right? So representative or not, they'll do for our purposes, and we'll put more faith in the data from larger samples.

The table below shows the samples arranged from greatest to least preferred age difference (Diff %), together with average age of the sample (Age), average absolute preferred age difference in the sample (Diff Yrs), GDP Purchasing Power Parity per capita, and sample size (N). I included GDP after examining Buss' data and seeing that it was going to be a strong predictor of preferred age differences (more on that later).

country	age	diff %	diff yrs	GDP	N
Greece	18.71	24.27	4.54	29,172	65
Nigeria	21.13	23.19	4.9	2,035	55
Iran	22.74	22.43	5.1	10,624	27
Indonesia	22.76	20.61	4.69	3,725	55
Colombia	24.34	18.53	4.51	6,724	78
Taiwan	20.54	18.40	3.78	30,126	278
Zambia	22.6	18.32	4.14	1,309	49
Brazil	21.72	18.14	3.94	9,695	355
Bulgaria	23.06	18.13	4.18	11,302	142
South Africa White	19.44	18.00	3.5	9,761	81
Yugoslavia	20.72	17.42	3.61	12,124	74
Israel Palestinian	21.5	17.26	3.71	25,799	55
New Zealand	16.92	17.20	2.91	26,379	76
Israel Jewish	23.29	16.96	3.95	25,799	268
Venezuela	22.52	16.07	3.62	12,166	98
South Africa Zulu	23.52	15.99	3.76	9,761	48
Poland	21.44	15.76	3.38	16,311	118
Japan	19.37	15.75	3.05	33,577	153
Estonia	18.32	15.56	2.85	21,094	150
France	25.83	15.49	4	33,188	91
China	22.46	15.36	3.45	5,292	235
United States Hawaii	22.76	14.50	3.3	45,845	113
Ireland	19.27	14.43	2.78	43,144	67
Norway	22.46	13.89	3.12	53,037	67
India	24.9	13.21	3.29	2,659	144
Germany West	29.14	12.70	3.7	34,181	553
Netherlands	21.65	12.56	2.72	38,486	240
Italy	25.96	12.48	3.24	30,448	55
United States Mainland	20.37	12.47	2.54	45,845	852
Australia	23.12	12.37	2.86	36,258	202
Canada English	23.05	11.80	2.72	38,435	45
Belgium	21.38	11.51	2.46	35,273	90
Finland	24.6	11.50	2.83	35,280	149
Spain	22.75	11.43	2.6	30,120	80
Sweden	26.7	10.90	2.91	36,494	83
Great Britain	21.09	10.72	2.26	35,134	84
Canada French	25.17	7.23	1.82	38,435	71

We're looking for a country high on the list with a large N, although again even moderate sample sizes give us a good feel for what college students are up for. Surprisingly, the first choice is Taiwan. If you like Asian girls, that's where you should go, especially since it's a first-world sample. Brazil is up next, and those girls have enough good PR already that I don't need to add to it. Bulgaria also looks like a good bet -- see my post on Balkan babes if you don't know how great they look, kind of Slavic and Mediterranean (if you know what I mean). Israeli Jews, Poles, and Japanese seem OK. Estonia is misleading because the average girl is barely over 18 and prefers a guy who's less than 3 years older than she is, not good.

While still being cautious about the smaller samples, Greece, Colombia, South African Whites, and the former Yugoslavia also look pretty good. I think we can be fairly confident about Greece and Yugoslavia since Bulgaria and Israeli Jews had large samples and scored highly, so there's probably an "Eastern Mediterranean" pattern here. Ditto for Colombia, based on similarity to Brazil: South Americans who are mostly Mediterranean but with a fair amount of African admixture.

If I had to bet, I'd say Greece is the optimal place. Not only do they score the highest, but their sample is so young -- barely legal, as we say. The average girl in this sample is 18 and claims to want a guy who is 23, and tacking on a couple years for people's lack of intuitive precision, I think you could say 25. And this is just the average girl -- you might have to search 100 or even 1000 Greek girls, but it wouldn't be that hard to find an 18 year-old who wanted a 30 year-old, to sleep with, to marry, whatever. I can't recall where I read it, but I distinctly remember some online forum on this topic where a world traveler said that Greek girls were among the most willing to associate with older guys.

And aside from Greece's climate, history, culture, bla bla bla that you really care about, it's also a first-world country and member of the EU, so the girls can easily afford to wax or laser-remove their body hair (hey, no ethnic group is perfect). I've never been there, but judging from the Greek international students I saw at college (somewhere between 20 to 40 of them), they're pretty nice, and they along with the Turkish girls had a reputation for it. The only other group reknowned for their looks were, of course, the Brazilians. It will not escape the reader's notice that where girls dig older guys, the girls have big butts. Somehow it all works.

Another thing to bear in mind is the country's population size: if you're looking for a 1 in a million girl, she'll be easier to find in Brazil than Bulgaria.

Look at how bad things are at the lower end of the table: sure, it's only a moderate sample size, but the average French Canadian girl is 25 and claims to want a guys who's 27, and Finland's pretty bad too. You'd think that as girls got older, they'd want increasingly older guys, but it looks like just the opposite happens on a group level. Here is a graph of the country's preferred age difference by how old the average female is:



Disgusting. The older the sample is, the closer they want the guy to be relative to themselves. On the other hand, thank god for those adventuresome youngsters! The Pearson correlation between these two variables, each point weighted by sample size, is -0.32 (p two-tailed = 0.0552). I tested two hypotheses, so this is more of a "trend" than a "significant" finding, but it depends on how religious you are about p-value cut-offs. We've already hinted at it, but let's take a look at preferred age difference by GDP:



Sure enough, in richer countries, females prefer males who are closer to themselves in age. This is part of the spread of middle class values, culturally and genetically, that began with the emergence of merchant classes during the Late Middle Ages and really took over during the Industrial Revolution. Some middle class values are fine, but I can't stand how segregated these societies are by age, and seeing lovely nubile girls holding hands with losers their own age is just part of it. (Another aspect is that adults are completely clueless about what's going on with youngsters and rely on rumor as their news source.) The weighted Pearson correlation here is -0.63 (p two-tailed = 0.0001), so it's strong and significant. Still, there are some points that are above the trend: Greece is the strongest outlier above and French Canada the strongest outlier below, confirming what we've already said about their suitability.

Worry-warts may say that this shows that girls in poorer countries "really" want guys their own age, but alter their preferences toward even older guys for increased security. Maybe, and maybe there's another explanation. In any event, you're meeting her preference and therefore making her happy if you're an older guy. Why she likes you doesn't matter, as long as she does. Indeed, that's their response to my disgust at the 18 year-old who's dating a 19 year-old -- it's what she wants. The worriers will counter that a small age difference is what the girl "really" wants. But she wants whatever she wants. It certainly isn't the "deep down preference" in the sense of what's been true during human history and evolution -- the alarmists' wishes characterize the developed world.

So there you have it. Again, the data aren't perfect, but let me know if you've got something better. This is just a guide, so you can't sue me if your efforts based on it don't pan out.

What kind of girl goes into porn?

I've read through the bio blurbs of pornstars on and off for the past couple years to see what kind of females would willingly take a dick up their ass on camera for all to see -- it's obviously not normal. I don't think IQ has much to do with it, as they seem representative. If anything, I'd say their average is marginally above the population average, maybe 100 - 105, capable of getting something out of community college. Personality seems to make most of the difference: all have short attention spans, high time preferences, and profound exhibitionism and excitement-seeking. They also seem more assertive and dominant than the average female, which is probably why their faces tend to look masculinized.

Here's a video interview with Audrey Bitoni that sums it up: part 1 and part 2 (images but not sound safe for work ). She peppers her responses with SAT words like "plethora" and "reticent," has always liked to dress to provoke people, bosses around the interviewer even if jokingly ("You're supposed to ask me 'who are you?'..." and "Oh, so you suck, so why are you here?"), and entered "the industry" on a whim -- I mean, why not? Shocking fact: she's unable to orgasm no matter what she tries, and the one time she almost did, she put an immediate halt to it because it creeped her out.

The icing on the cake is, of course, her story about seducing a male teacher when she was a junior in high school. He was recently fired for sleeping with other students, so she thinks she started him on a downward spiral -- further proof that it's the all too savvy young girls who corrupt older guys, the lucky bastards. She wasn't even in his class -- she saw him and wanted him, simple as that.

Yeah, her bone structure looks a bit masculine in that interview, but the picture from her Wikipedia entry or this one show that when she was 20, she looked pretty girly. She's almost 22 now -- these changes happen early and quickly. Just compare Natalie Portman from her late teens to her late 20-something look. Instead of wasting money on finding a cure for AIDS, which barely affects anyone, we should be spending those R&D dollars to help women retain their gracile features as they age.

Porn has not become mainstream

I present the data over at GNXP. Comments closed here; comment there instead.

Why I hate living with women

I've had three long-term female housemates who weren't related to me by blood. The central problem to these arrangements, including the unfortunate souls who co-habit with their girlfriends, is that men and women are evolutionarily designed for different levels of social interaction: men for big-group stuff, including altruistic acts that benefit a large number of strangers, and women for small-group stuff, typically themselves and their immediate family. I won't review the literature, but if it interests you, the social psychologist Roy Baumeister covered the main results in his talk to the American Psychological Association, titled "Is There Anything Good About Men?"

This fundamental rift between male and female brains colors all of the interactions between housemates, the most salient and motherfucking annoying of which is that the females rarely pitch in to do housework. Oh sure, they keep their rooms, cars, and bathroom shelf immaculate -- that's the small-group focus showing up. But taking out the house's garbage, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor or cleaning countertops, or worst of all cleaning the bathroom, you can just forget about. Forget it too if common-use supplies need to be bought. They maintain a full stock of organic toothpaste, a cornucopia of moisturizers, and eco-friendly laundry detergent jugs for themselves, but they will rarely buy dishwasher detergent, plastic bags and aluminum foil, or lightbulbs. All of this they expect to magically materialize from their daddy replacements.

Lecturing them or bringing it to their attention is no help. That only treats a single symptom. Right afterward, they regress to their instinctual disregard for the group's welfare. You also risk creating a house war if you're too stern and your female housemates too emotionally touchy, which is very likely.

I don't wish to be too hard on women -- again, if they're designed to act that way, there must be a reason, and it is this: until very recently, highly migratory patterns and mixed-sex cohabitation among total strangers was not the norm. She lived with blood relatives or a spouse. In that traditional setting, she is providing her husband with children, the ultimate evolutionary pay-off, so it's fine if she doesn't go around helping strangers. However, female housemates are not providing their male housemates with anything of value, unless they're unusually attractive and give the guys something nice to look at. But such women understandably would never want to live with males anyway, for fear of being leered at all day.

Perhaps the best thing to do is create a formal schedule of household responsibilities that people rotate through, just to make sure the women contribute their fair share to collective goods. But if you have the option, do not live with women, except in the case of being married. You may think it's cool and progressive to flout traditional living patterns, but they exist for a reason, and you'll find out the hard way.

The temptation of Saint Agnostic: 1

I've already mentioned that it's the youth who corrupt the adults and not the other way around. I suppose anyone can travel down the path toward ruin by indulging their vices, but in most of these cases, the person themselves is to blame. In a handful of cases, though, their vice actively seeks them out. I wish my vice were inanimate and could be kept at bay by simply not buying it. This mini-series, which should only take two posts, will show how easily my kind of temptation can sneak up on a person and how active of a role young girls have played in tempting me.

In part, this is just to collect and arrange my thoughts, but it's also dispel the myth that guys who like teenagers began with some sort of fetish which they nurtured and then acted on, trying to prey on helpless girls. At least in my case, the first one established contact with me first, and in all cases they provoked me, unrelentingly at times. A love of adolescents may, over time, come to occupy such a guy's thoughts, but that's not at all the "born monster" image that the lazy-minded are content to believe in. It's also a truism that if social sanctions forbid X, only those who are more risk-taking and liable to indulge their vices will seek X. Just as one example, in the Southern Slavic countries at the beginning of the 20th Century (or if we believe the commenter Gannon, in today's Argentina), a late-20s guy who prefers teenage girls would have been completely unremarkable, while it would have been strange in England, even going back several hundred years.

It should go without saying that vice here means "something that makes personal ruin more likely," and not something that is evil. Having now re-discovered the too taut texture of adolescent flesh, could the pleasure centers of my brain light up if I were forced into a relationship with an older-aged woman? It will happen some day, after all. (I plan to marry a very young girl, so that by the time she reaches that stage, I'll be too bogged down in paternal duties and the occasional discreet affair with pretty young things, paying for it if need be, to care about her skin condition.)

Although I didn't always have an eye for teenagers, they ambushed me almost as soon as possible. I was too insulated from the real world during college to have any contact with them, and besides -- college girls. I evaded them my first year after graduation; even during a three-month living-and-teaching stint in Barcelona, where I recall seeing them swarming around the city center, I was still too fascinated by my college-aged students. And after most people's fun year after college, they insulate themselves even further from the world of adolescents, obviously to their health.

It was that damned desire to teach. Satoshi Kanazawa and Mary Still looked at the General Social Survey and found that male teachers were more likely to be divorced than men in other professions or women in the same profession, and really this only held for secondary school teachers or college lecturers. The inference is that they're faced day after day with the sight of The Teenage Thigh, and cannot be content with women their own age. Anyone who's ever worked with teenagers knows that, while their faces look younger, and their muscles a bit more fit, it's the impossibly tight and luminescent skin on their thighs that is the most jarring to older males, who had previously become accustomed to steadily more slackening and opaque skin in women their age. And of course it's also the part they are happiest to display: regardless of the churning of fashion's wheel, young girls will always remain eager to show off how great the skin on their legs looks (damn them).

In the next part, I'll recount some specific instances. There are far too many to cover, but they're all pretty similar and reviewing just a few will serve to make the point: if you had seen, heard, felt, and smelled the things I have, you'd understand how easy it is to be tempted by and to fall for teenagers as an adult.

Stuff White People Like: Bars that are not bars

[In imitation of C. Lander]

All white people need to refresh themselves after a vigorous game of adult kickball, though the choice of bar is not so clear-cut as you might think. Because there are too many bars that cater to the wrong kind of white people, savvy owners had to unambiguously signal their bar's status as a haven to the right kind of white people. And thus was born the creative uniqueness bar.

Simply adding "wine" or "martini" before "bar" reassures white people that they can safely discuss Michel Gondry there, and that the bartenders who they can make an awkward pass at will be girls with bangs.

Still, white people crave complicated fusion, and a bar that serves alcohol just won't satisfy this desire. No, they can only get their fix at the local juice bar, coffee bar, tea bar, or smoothie bar. Also acceptable if the white person is hungry are the falafel bar or perhaps the cupcake bar for dessert. Only if your indie cred is unassailable should you ironically suggest hanging out at a sports bar.

Does white people's love affair with non-bars take place beyond the realm of food and drink? Of course -- that just makes it exponentially more pointless! For example, when their Mac laptops get sick, they swaddle them in a hemp tote bag and take them to a techie veterinarian at the Apple Store's Genius Bar. Also, because white people shun conspicuous consumption, they require a discreet yet hip way of dropping the name of their $250 jeans supplier. "Oh these? Yeah, I stopped by Denim Bar last week and had to get 'em -- my old ones began looking too new."

It remains to be seen how much further the empire of faux bars will extend, but wherever white people demand a unique and creative way to plod through their daily routine, there will be a specialty bar to brighten their faces. Indeed, white people might even be persuaded to use smelly public restrooms as long as they are re-named "toilet bars."

How can you profit from this demand? Obviously by opening a bar, but not so obvious is what to name it. You could torpedo yourself by giving it a grunge-inspired title, when indie was called for instead. Let us walk you through the fine art of branding your anti-commercial business, focusing on which sub-demographic of white people you will be serving.

Bicycle mechanics or bike messengers

HandleBar and Bistro

Liberal arts college: students who read literature

Remembrance of Things Plastered

Though the reference is French, the setting should remind them of the Irish pub where they got embarrassingly drunk with the other Americans and Australians during their semester abroad in Portugal.

Liberal arts college: students who read literary theory

Subaltern Chai Tea Bar

Note: must not be staffed by European-Americans. In an authentic teahouse, white people demand to be waited on by Indians instead.

Foreign film buffs

Labyrinth of Passions Tapas Bar

Should be located in a still-gentrifying gay neighborhood.

Indie rock groupies

The Insert Ironic Name Here Coffee Bar

Get it? It's so deliciously self-referential that it will serve as a lighthouse in the urban sea, calling in lovers of all that is meta.

Although the names above may sound a bit goofy, remember that all white people love puns, especially ones whose discussion among the group will allow them to finally get some mileage out of the comp lit and film classes they took in college. Also, a certain amount of unhipness is necessary for white people to pass the time by complaining about how much cooler they are than their favorite bar, rather than by socializing or dancing. A bar that they feel is over their heads will not draw many repeat customers.

"Awwwww"some

[Girl-haters may want to skip this one.]

I'm pretty good about containing my enthusiasm for girliness in its myriad forms (and if that sounds funny, you have no idea what this place could look like). Of late, though, my restraint has been weakening, and I have to get this post on girly cuteness out of my system. It's reading those damned blogs by Lemmonex and Alias Clio, who've been on a girly streak recently, as well as getting several long letters from my close college chick friend (via Facebook, naturally). All three are tough women, so girliness from them appears even gushier against their basal brusqueness. I've collected and analyzed the international data on preferred age differences that females have for their partners, so while I write that up, why not recall what we're willing to travel to strange lands for.

I realize this post will be like one of those emails about "Omigod, my baby turned 137 days old today, and just look at him!!!!", which I get regularly now as a new uncle, and I may very well come back and erase this post when I recover my senses. Unlike the staying girly posts, there is no advice here, just some random observations and celebrations of girly nature. I'll start with high culture and quickly devolve into YouTube clips (not slutty ones).

While google image searching, I stumbled upon the painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau, who was obviously an inveterate girl-lover. Here is his 1880 Jeune fille se defendant contre l'amour -- Young girl defending herself against Cupid -- (see a large, high-resolution picture here):



It's hard to imagine a closer portrayal of the ambivalence that adolescent girls feel as they adjust to high hormone levels -- the chemical source of falling in love -- by both seeking out and pushing away their crushes. The girl's middle and lower back are bent away, but her upper back, shoulders, and head are leaning forward as though to embrace him. If she truly wanted to keep Cupid away, her entire upper body would be straight as a bolt and angled back. Also, she is facing him directly, as opposed to turning away like you do when you smell something foul or want to avoid a kiss from your relatives, and her mouth and eye expressions don't show fear, disgust, or anger -- at most, anxiety and bashfulness.

It may be hard to see, and perhaps I'm imagining it, but it also looks like her arms are slightly bent at the elbow, as if she didn't want to lock them into place to really keep Cupid back. More suggestively, although her legs are crossed at mid-calf, which appears to be closed body language, her legs are akimbo above the knee, allowing him to gain a... not a foothold, but I suppose a kneehold in his advance toward her. And while covering the most sexual part of her body, she still bares her breasts, making her heart vulnerable to the arrow aimed at it.

Now compare the profiles of the two faces. With her rounded jaw, large eyes, full lips, and somewhat chubby cheeks, she appears babyish. But Cupid has all the hallmarks of a babyface, including a bulbous forehead, negligible chin, and a nose that's upturned and with a low-relief bridge, whereas her nose is more pronounced, her chin a bit more prominent, and her forehead flatter. Her skin is also a shade or two darker than his, and her hair much more so. Combine these with the more obvious secondary sex characteristics, and it's clear that she has transformed from little girl to nubile.

We are uncomfortable thinking about a girl of -- what is she, 15? -- as designed to fall in love, enter courtship, take a mate, and start raising a family, during the next five or so years. Yet Bouguereau reminds us that most natural signals do not lie: the leaves in full bloom on the tree in the background testify to its readiness to begin reproducing. Regardless of how we feel about it, this is the same signal given by the girl's outward appearance. This comparison with the tree is perhaps the most jarring aspect of the painting to contemporary tastes, as likening a teenage girl to a blossoming flower or ripened fruit will immediately trigger the paranoia of the panic police and draw the ire of Blank Slaters, who must shout down all discussion of the constraints that genes and hormones place on human outcomes.

Now, by means of segue, watch this YT clip of 15 year-olds dancing to "Do You Believe in Magic?" in the park. It's pretty clear that the hourglass-shaped Turkish girl and the tall blond will not want for suitors even if they put off marriage until their late 20s or beyond. However, look at the homely and pudgy redheaded girl -- she may not be anyone's top choice, but imagine how bad she'll look at 30, basically untouchable. Also, she at least smiles and laughs a lot, much more than she will later in life, and that's got to have some feminine appeal. I'm not saying she should marry right now, but it's girls like her who are most destroyed by prolonging the before-marriage part of their lives, as their value decays incredibly rapidly, and from a not very high level to begin with.

I may've posted this before, but here's a clip of some adolescents dancing at the mall and in their home to "Do You Wanna Dance" by The Ramones.

Part of the appeal of teenagers is their vulnerability and emotional helplessness, which prevents you from treating them too badly. I don't treat them like princesses by any means, but it takes a 6-sigma sociopath to treat them as thoughtlessly as a normal person would treat a 25 year-old who you fuck and leave. (Moreover, teenagers have a built-in defense against getting pump-and-dumped -- not giving it up easily.) I sometimes feel a certain confusion around them, as they trigger my protective older brother and paternal instincts. But then you see them dancing around in the snow in their bikinis (starting at 0:50) and nearly forget all about it.

Next, Miley Cyrus and dancer friend Mandy Giroux have uploaded a new video to their YT channel, where alpha Miley plays a prank on naive Mandy, who senses the entire time that something is going to pop out and scare her. Adorable. And speaking of Disney Channel stars who I've never seen on TV before but can't avoid on YT, here's Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato scared shitless by a flying bug. Aww. Something Fragonard may have painted. And don't let Selena Gomez's extreme babyface fool you: she just turned 16 and is older than Demi Lovato and Miley Cyrus.

Last, have you slipped into the fuddy-duddy belief that teen girls are harmless, naive creatures, or that it's mostly men who suppress female sexuality? Nothing could be further from the truth: watch this clip of a girl giving her best friend a ruthless and funny teasing for making out with a boy. She emphasizes that it was her friend who "starts molesting" the boy, so that her friend can't write it off as being swept away by the moment. The friend's howls of embarrassment, and the police girl's wonderful choice of words -- "we're here on the site again," to make it sound like a crime -- are just great. As usual, when the friend gets called a slut, she tries to defend herself by accusing the police girl of being inexperienced, but everyone knows that being a slut is worse than being a goody-goody or a tease. These girls are 13, by the way -- the little angels begin emotionally torturing each other, with a smile on their face, right after their hormone levels change, years before they're even sexually attractive.

I'll end it there. Click on the channels of those I linked to for more: girly girls tend to upload more than just one capsule of their cuteness.

Another benefit of living in the mountains

It's after midnight, and I'm wearing an undershirt, merino wool sweater, and cotton twill pants. The nighttime temperature is about the same here as back in Maryland (high 60s), but the much lower humidity here -- 29% vs. 78% -- allows you to wear more in the summertime, at least at night when the temperature drops. I don't care about how I look, as it's just me and two housemates here right now. It just feels more civilized to wear thicker and more layered clothing. Colder-feeling weather also makes me more productive, and even if I couldn't quite wear a suit and overcoat outside, I'll take any relief from the lassitude of summer.

Don't get me wrong: estivation is fun for awhile, especially for getting into club-going mode, but I'm not going to tear my academic field a new asshole by devoting that much time to girls. The fall semester begins soon, and I can't wait to pick off a wide-eyed freshman girl, hopefully a ballet dancer, as a girlfriend and not have to rely on clubs or malls for girl-attention. That only gets you so far with youngsters: you can dance dirty with them, even kiss them, but no matter what your game is, a 17 year-old is not going home with you.

It's also nearly impossible to start a relationship with them if you meet in a club, even when the circumstances are most favorable. That 16 year-old who was infatuated with me has returned to the club quite a few times since our first encounter, as fawning and friendly as before, nervous if I still remembered her, reiterating that I was "the coolest guy in the whole club," touching me a lot, and so on. I said we should hang out at the mall sometime, and she enthusiastically agreed -- "For sure!" -- but she could never commit to a time when I pressed her with concrete times ("I guess it depends on my work schedule"). While we still see each other there, I've pretty much let it die rather than risk appearing clingy, which is a shame since she's very cute and has a somewhat precocious mind. Those fickle girly girls will get you every time.

Yeah, I could return to the club for people more my age and get a quick fix during this dry spell, but I've buried myself too deeply into the world of young girls to dig myself out now. Before the month is over, though, I'll be in command of the campus dining hall again, and with my alpha female friend by my side, will get enough dates that I wouldn't need to go clubbing at all, although I likely still will just to maintain some sensual variety.

Some self-deprecating cocky funny lines

Even those as ubermenschish as me have their flaws, and the better you can brush them away with one-liners, the less she'll hold them against you. Below are two that always work, and one that probably does not, for comparison.

Your facial expression in each case should be a barely visible smirk, where you have a restrained smile, and the left corner of your mouth slightly moves up and to the left. Your eyes should be fully open, but your eyebrows should be neutral (neither raised nor lowered), looking at her seriously. Slowly and slightly nodding your head while saying something ridiculous strengthens the contrast between facial and verbal expression, and this outta-whackness is 80% of success with cocky funny lines. For the same reason, the tone and rhythm of your voice should be deadpan and spontaneous.

People try to match their partner's emotions, so if you look serious, while she wants to laugh as a reflex, she'll have to bottle it up in order to mirror you. Bottling up exciting urges, of course, puts her a heightened state of arousal, and the longer you keep her there, the more she'll associate being around you with feeling tingly and irresponsible. This is what girls mean when they say they like a guy who makes them laugh. This may be doubly true for older women, for whom a bout of the giggles will allow them to relive the sunshine of their youth.

The successful ones below can be adapted to your own flaws, as long as they are ridiculous and your facial expression serious (with a slight smirk or twinkle in your eye). They work on all types of girls, but especially on alpha females, whose masturbatory fantasies always begin with the guy signaling his boldness and baiting her into a mock fight, having at it, and then having at it.

1) Flaw: you're pale. I'm not sure when the fashion for tanned skin will go out, although it must as it inevitably becomes associated with tacky girls who frequent cheap and effective tanning salons. For now, though, lacking color counts against you.

Cocky funny line: At some point in the conversation, she will ask you what you've been up to lately. Make no mistake -- she is not just curious, but intends to judge your value based on your routine. "Nothin' much" = loser. Mention the exciting and ambitious things you do, of course. Before that, though, list a few boring things and add in, "X... um, Y, and... working on my tan...." She will start giggle-laughing a lot, and may respond with something like, "I can tell!" An optional rejoinder now is, "I know, it's hard to get anything else done..." But only add that if she's a really chatty girl; otherwise, less is more.

2) Flaw: you're skinny. I think guys exaggerate the importance of getting hyooge -- this is mostly to compete with other guys, not to attract girls. The extreme is the lunkhead who wanders around the club wearing a mean expression and chewing gum to make his jaw jut out. Do not be fooled: these guys never, ever get to talk or dance with girls and will never be sought out by them. At the same time, having some muscular bulk is good, and if you're an ectomorph, this will be nearly impossible. If you're also 6'1 or above, they may cut you some slack or even prefer that body shape -- "tall and lanky" -- but otherwise, it counts against you.

Cocky funny line: While probing what you do, again to evaluate whether you're a loser or not, she'll ask what activities you like. Same as above: before getting to the exciting things you do, list a couple boring things, and follow with, "X... um, Y... and... Olympic weightlifting..." This too will provoke plenty of giggle-laughter, and again she may feel compelled to respond with, "I can tell!" If she's chatty, you have the option of prolonging it a bit with, "Yeah, it's just a hobby... don't want to make the other guys look too bad."

And now for comparison, here's a line I tried out Friday night which didn't have the right effect. In self-deprecating humor, the goal is to show how bold you are to highlight your own flaws in a serious way that says you don't care. With the serious smirky look on your face, you're daring her to object to whatever ridiculous thing you just said. Though less aggressive than guys, girls are by no means gentle -- they love being baited into a play-fight. If your line produces ha-ha laughter, then it failed: you've entertained her, not engaged her.

I was at the teen dance club, and it was about 15 minutes before closing. Around this time, especially when it's not crowded, a girl who's been watching you from afar may come up to you before time runs out. I decided to test something out -- if it failed, big deal, I'd already had an OK run during the night. Two girls came up to me, one who I saw checking me out before, and her friend ("C'monnnnn, I don't wanna go over there alooone!!!"). The interested one approached me from the side (I guess she'd read a PUA manual for English class), patted me on the shoulder, and asked shyly, "Hey... can we dance with you?"

I paused like I was considering it, and said, "I dunno... I'm kinda busy." At this point, I was dancing by myself, and had been for the previous 15 or 20 minutes at least -- the result of few people plus being after 1am -- so it was obviously a joke. Trouble is, the girl found it too funny: she grinded her ass on me for a moment, and I turned her around to dance face-to-face, but during these 20 or 30 seconds, she couldn't stop giggling, and perhaps feeling self-conscious about it, walked away. It wasn't because I made myself look bad, as everyone was dancing by themselves at that point. Cocky funny lines shouldn't stick in her mind like that: they should produce some giggle-laughter, and that's it.

Thursday 31 July 2008

Up and to breakfast, forgetting my protein drink, but having some ham nevertheless. Trying to revive my senses while the water did boil for tea, I took the bottle of once a day vitamins and did notice it lacks much potassium, which, I have read, can cause my 2400 IU of vitamin D to go right through the kidney and into the urine. And so to Roissy's, there to read news of a Canadian who during a journey by bus was stabbed, cut of his insides, and beheaded, he looking, I am sure, as cheerful as any man could do in that condition.

At night to a 1980s dance, I being in a white shirt, dark-coloured jeans, and black tie of very fine silk. Those assembled there methought a typicall crowd that come not to dance with men but to display their shorts over leggings to each other, these of course fitting their bodies quite nicely, but not, I was afeard, enough to be worth the journey; till three girles 'de dix-huit ans au plus,' one being very pretty, stopped in front of me, the pretty one approaching me with her back turned. Thus she with her rump in my lap did move to "Billie Jean," I pushing myself against her so that she did 'sentir el calor de mi miembro.' Wanting more still, I did spin her around to face me, placing my leg between hers, and 'con la mano a su' lower back did press her to me: thereupon did she stroke my tie 'avec sa main' and withall did 'frotter sa chatte fortement' along the length of my thigh, the scent left there lasting, I pray, through Saturday night, that the next group of 'jeunes filles' may know I come pre-selected.

To home for some almonds, cheese, and pear, which were all very good. And so to bed, planning to rise betimes tomorrow, at noon, to finish a chapter of Mr. Turchin's book on historicall dynamics, having neglected my schollerly obligations today.