Men’s Physical Preferences Are Not A Truth Nuke · Storyflo

The latest discourse is so up my alley that it would border on professional negligence for me not to cover it. Fellow Substacker Aria Schrecker, who has in the past released guides for feminine sexiness based on what she believes to be a scientifically proven, objective male preference, created an AI mockup of the ideal woman and posted it to Twitter as covered in *Many Such Takes *this week.

I have no problem with her work, her endearingly geeky special interest in beauty aesthetics, or this topic in general. After all, I wrote about gorillas who can’t get ass, so who am I to judge? We also likely don’t disagree that much on the average, pooled male sexual preferences. We both agree men like youthful faces and hourglass figures, and may fantasize about an unrealistic ideal. We “disagree” in that I believe there’s more type-based and culturally influenced variety than what your average sex-doll-designer creates, and that men who like non-anime-proportioned women are not virtue-signaling when they say so.

(For example, I once had to defend—not to Aria, but to someone else—the idea that JFK Jr. was genuinely attracted to Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and not just choosing her willowy physique and narrow face to virtue signal and appear “high status.” Unfortunately, he cannot be here with us today to confirm, but I’m gonna make a wild guess and assume that JFK Jr., a man who had no need to settle, just dated who he found hot.)

All that said, my issue is not with Aria’s work or her theses, but of the framing around it (often by other people) that she (and J. Sanilac, who inspired most of her work) are presenting forbidden knowledge and busting lies. Sanilac even titles his own manifesto—also full of broadly true things, to his credit—as “dispelling beauty lies” and encourages readers to send this truth nuke to women everywhere who may use this dangerous knowledge to their advantage. They believe women have been “lied to” about feminine beauty and male preferences, and that only through these controversial, uncomfortable, facts-don’t-care-about-your-feelings truths can women be enlightened in a way that they can use to their advantage on the marriage market as some kind of secret weapon.

*This *is where I strongly disagree—not with the content, but with the framing this content as a big, world-shattering secret that will meaningfully change life for women. I do not believe that “men like young, pretty, slim women with hourglass figures” is forbidden knowledge, nor do I think women are oblivious to this. If women have “failed” to emulate this ideal, it’s likely not because they’re clueless about it, but because it’s nearly impossible to look that way, and most women are not interested in undergoing multiple major surgeries to do so, especially if looking like regular women is not hampering their love lives in the first place.

Enjoy the analysis if you like, but “straight men think Sydney Sweeney is hot” is not a truth nuke.

Men’s Physical Preferences Are Not A Truth Nuke · Storyflo