It amazes me that we are not all collectively exhausted with the “women are objectively better to look at” line. Maybe I just hear it more than most given my line of work. But why is it that men are so quick to disavow their own aesthetic appeal? Is it an attempt to exonerate themselves from the tyranny of grooming and preening rituals undertaken by women? A sort-of “I’m never going to look good anyway, so why bother?” It comes across as a transparent attempt to legitimate their pleasure when looking at women—which doesn’t need to be legitimized anyway—by implying that their interest in/response to women is a sign of connection with a more transcendent and profound beauty, beauty-is-truth beauty, wonder-and-glory-of-the-world-of-forms beauty, not “I’d like to unzip my pants in front of her.” I don’t know what their own appearance has to do with any of that, but that’s how it seems to me: the instinct to gawk dressed in emperor’s clothes.
Please no more. You can be in thrall to the universe’s brilliant raw material and want your skin to touch another human being’s, both at the same time. Or you can just want the rubbing. Or just the looking. You can find someone captivating without being less than her, or him.
I love the flat planes of a man, how smooth and hard the surfaces are, the strong jaw and the hair. The chin stubble, the love trail, the pubic thatch, the occasionally downy curls over an ass. Male asses, by the way, are far more appealing to me than females’: shapelier, more powerful, good to punch and bite and sleep on and spank. My antler man sent me a picture of a male gymnast in a tiny blue bathing suit that settles this unequivocally. And the penis is not ugly any more than vulvas are ugly. Enough penis-bashing.
All bodies have some remarkable aspect. They function well or poorly, they give us our pleasure and pain, they are one of a kind. The comparisons don’t matter. You can’t elevate one at the expense of the other. My body is the first and the last. Your body is the last and the first. I don’t even see how “better to look at” is relevant.
