My brother and Iwere talking about dating last night. He has been working the apps hard and having a steady stream of dates. Unfortunately, he’s having the same trouble I usually have–falling for people who aren’t currently emotionally available. But, that’s not the point of this post. We were talking about the criteria we would have for a dating partner. He has graduated college as his base education level. He said that he knew it was probably cutting off some women he would click with, but he felt it would at least indicate a level of conversation he wanted.
I could tell that he thought I would argue with him though we have talked about this before. He had said some of his other critieria, and I had been critical about it. For example, he likes really skinny white women. Which, ok. I firmly believe you like what you like. However, it’s undeniable that media affects what is and isn’t considered beauty, and it’s not coincidental that skinny blondes are considered the ideal.
What I DID push back on was when he talked about heavier women in disparaging terms. Saying obese like it was an epithet, for example. Or when he put down Asian women with accents as sounding less intelligent. Yes, internalized racism is a thing, sadly. I did not brook with either of these especially as there was a hint of ‘fat women are gross’ to the former. In addition, he’s not skinny himself. And my brother likes skinny. No boobs, but with hips. No ass, though. I had to let him know that what he liked wasn’t that achievable for most women.
Also, I do not truck with hearing how gross he thinks big boobs are. I have massive tits! They are not gross. They might not appeal to everyone (but, honestly, they do to most people), but they are not disgusting–which was the vibe my brother was giving. Not about my boobs, obviously, but about big boobs in general. I tried to get him to understand that I wasn’t saying he hated to date fat women or women with big tits, but he might want to mind how he talked about them. And take into account how deeply sexisst our society was in the demand that women take up less space.
I did emphasize, though, that of course he was attracted to whomever he was attracted to. I didn’t like the castigation from people saying everyone should be attracted to_______. I read an article by a trans woman who said that if you did not want to date a trans woman, you were transphobic. Or that if you did not want to date black men, for example, you were racist. Which might or might not be true, but why the hell would byou want someone to be guilted into dating you?