On an ancient custom of the Babylonians

Dear M,

Montaigne once said he could find something attractive on nearly any woman, but this is far too upbeat for me.  Amy Schumer had great legs, but who wants to think too much about them?  They're attached to Amy Schumer; and the package deal is too painful to really be called a deal -- it has all the qualities of the bargain bin.  You buy the legs and you've bought the mouth.


However he is right on some level; and if you look hard enough you can find something beautiful on almost anybody.  It might be hard but it makes the day go by easier; and some of these things take thinking, which means you can enjoy the process.  The ancient Babylonians, according to Herodotus in a story which nobody believes, used to make up for their less attractive women by 1) putting all the maidens for sale, 2) ranking them from least to most attractive, 3) making the prettiest women the most expensive, and 4) using the funds therefrom to pay the dowries of the ugly.  In short if you didn't get someone gorgeous you'd get paid for it, and the less you wanted their bodies the more you could count on their wallets.  I took a look at Schumer's husband and he's a looker.  I believe this has lots to do with her being rich and famous.  I have a hard time believing it's for her comedy. 

I said above that her mouth was the downside, and I meant it.  Lesser men have said it's her face but the mouth is what eventually gets you.  Besides I never make fun of a woman's face -- not if it's the worst face in the world.  Her size, if she has a bad personality, is fair game; but a man who makes fun of a woman's face is a cad.  It was given to her by God, and there's almost nothing she can do about it.  It's the same reason I won't make fun of anybody missing a leg, or for being a burn victim.

God has also seen fit to make the face the center of the woman.  Leftists fight about the body but they leave the face alone.  I believe it's because, aside from plastic surgery, we know it's beyond help.  A great body on a plain face goes a long way, but it does almost nothing for an ugly face.  A great face on a curveless body can win a woman millions -- the opposite policy of the Babylonians.  It made Kate Middleton into a princess. 

The question we've all asked is, why?  The body, as we all know, is where the baby is made, which makes you think at first glance it would have priority.  The fat deposits mean nutrients; the skin the state of her health.  But bright eyes will tell you about the soul.  A kind smile will tell you about the mind.  We know what we need to get a woman pregnant, but what do we need to raise a baby?  These are two different biological needs; and in the higher forms of humans the latter is just as important as sex appeal.  You can tell more about a woman from her voice than from her body.  The underclasses of every language, raised in poverty and prone to failure, give themselves away because they have the ugliest voices.  And when you hear the voice you look, and you nearly always find a face to match it*.

Your mother has told me, repeatedly, that I have the plainest taste in women.  What she means is that I'm a man.  I was raised in these States, and if you take a thousand random white women and blend all their pictures together you get what I like -- and what all other white men of taste and patriotism like: a normal, healthy American woman**.

Outlandish features get a big pass.  Flat noses, I suspect, are only really popular around the Congo; and big lips get more attention in Papua New Guinea than in Ethiopia, where the black women have Arabic features, and are the most beautiful on the continent.  Familiarity is nature's way of keeping us in line.  You get too far away from your average and you're threatening the gene pool.  A love of the average protects us from defects.  The idea of woman in general is the only thing we can base mating on.  Aside from Ingrid Bergman, there's no ideal woman in the sky.  Healthy men are built to like women, and since we're herd animals, we oftentimes go with the herd -- we tend to like our national brand better than the others.
Ingrid Bergman, goddess

There are of course deviations from this principle.  Interracial romance is common and natural but still unusual; I myself and most of my cousins are bi-racial; and from the time of Alexander the Great the Greeks admitted the Persian women were better looking -- which is hard to deny once you've seen enough of them.  In general, black men are nearly the only men I know of who jump ship when they've got the chance.  It's a running joke in the black community to everyone but the black women.  We have no idea whether it's cultural or biological, but black women (alongside Asian men) have the hardest time finding dates online -- even with their own race.  I believe it's because black women, on average (note: beautiful black women of quality, I am not speaking about you), are the most masculine-looking women, and Asian men on average are the least masculine-looking men***.  This of course is all speculation, but the facts themselves are hard -- and the inquisitive mind requires answers.

I read this week that conservatives, "according to science****," are on average more beautiful than leftists.  This much is common knowledge; but the reason they gave was interesting.  The right-wingers, being more beautiful, were used to getting treated better.  Thus they thought that things were fair and ought to be left alone -- the hallmark feature of conservatism.  The left-wingers, on the other hand, finding their recruits among the ugliest of the ugly, felt that life was far too biased -- and needed someone strong enough to fix it.  The Greeks used to argue about whether beauty or virtue was more important, but they never considered whether beauty deeply affected your idea of virtues.

Your father,
-J

*Your mother objects to this by adding that some women have great voices and are poor as dirt.  I agree, but you rarely see it go the other way around -- unless the woman (or her husband) has recently struck gold.  The longer a family is rich the more they speak with a sense of art and dignity.  They can't help it once they start spending their time around the dignitaries.  Iron sharpens iron, they say.  The Translatlantic accent, probably the finest sound that ever came out of Christendom -- the Beethoven of English itself, second only to maybe well-spoken French and Italian -- was primarily for the educated.

**White skin has a whole load of glories and problems.  In youth it's the finest thing in the world, comparable in terms of brilliance only to snow -- and muddied just as easily.  Nobody can glow like a white woman, but nobody else ages (as the other races claim) so closely to the banana.  A white woman's glory is never in her tan; yet we've somehow allowed ourselves to believe that we're not beautiful unless we're shaded like the Mexicans -- something which not only ages us quickly and unmercifully, but is likely to give us cancer.  We say blacks feel forced to "whiten" their hair -- but do black people, en masse, try to ruin their own skin?  It's all insane to me: white legs, alongside blossoms and birds chirping, are of the one finer glories of spring.

***How else could the Thai, above anyone else, be known for their passable cross-dressers?

**** "According to science" is a phrase used by tyrants to cow morons.  There's science, but there's no "according to science."   There is "according to scien-tists."  And as we all know, between quantum theory, medical practice, climate change, and racial issues, scientists widely disagree.

"According to science" is used when someone knows they aren't talking to scientists.  It's employed when someone doesn't want to or doesn't know how to explain the methods and the evidence. It shows up in the middle of a controversy, relies on the authority of a white coat, and ignoring that the process of science is always a fight, denies that there are other white coats fighting it -- and people paying white coats to find things.

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Comments

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