The Ratings Game

Young Chinese Girl has lost my interest. I penned a reply and was dismissed. Fair enough, why should she listen to a 50 year old who was the very target of her missile launch system. But then when she demonstrated she was also incapable of listening to anyone’s opinions, including the young guys who wrote in, and merely continued on her already established track I thought this is no debate, it’s just an emotional rant.

But one thing we did still share in common was that I had been trying for some time to actually write in defense of western women and have never been able to quite pull it off. It wasn’t about subjects like alimony and property settlement or even domestic violence allegations that can be unfair to ridiculous at times. My knowledge of life was lots of men had it coming to them (my apologies to some who didn’t) and lots of men get out of these responsibilities completely. It was about my experience of western women being largely ok. Criticisms from Stickies that they (the women) are fat, old, grey and frigid leave me as cold as YCG’s assertions about fat, old, balding and perverted males. It’s called aging dudes and we all do it in our own style.

So I started thinking about all this ratings stuff and it occurred to me how simplistic and narrow minded the debate of it on here all was. The ratings scale seemed to be largely about physical attractiveness with the lesser theme of how money can maybe buy me love despite what the Beatles might have said otherwise.

The ratings game is far more complex at any age and becomes more so as one moves on in life. When I was young I think it was mainly about looks, but even then, reputation and status factors were fairly operative.

As I have aged I have had experiences of different types of women and how they relate to my particular needs and desires and my rating scale is far more defined and peculiar to my own personality.

Even at the simplest level it has its nuances. In a gogo bar we are all going to be largely in agreement as to who are the 10’s 9’s and so on. But a gogo bar is a gogo bar and not the reality that we all deal in. So let’s say we had a gogo bar for average people and lined up 100 naked women spread across the age groups and there were 25 women in each decade age group 20 – 30, 30 – 40, 40 – 50 and 50 – 60 (maybe we could stop there). And within each category we had the range of body types. So you had the 20 year old absolute stunners but also the skinny and the fat or the great body ugly face or great face dodgy body types. And this applied across all the categories. Some of the hotties even in the 50 category might out class many of the 20 year olds in term of sexual desirability.

If you like you can even imagine a 100 naked men lined up in the same fashion but perhaps the average Stickman reader may not wish to do this. The women would surely be interested and I can bet a fit, attractive 45 year old would outclass a pimply flabby unattractive 25 year old.

And that is just the beginning. I have played these games with myself sometimes over the years listing the various women I have had or may have and developing categories and rating these girls accordingly. Categories like

1. Personality (under this heading come innumerable sub categories)

2. Interests (see above)

3. Income and type of employment

4. The child factor (have they had them, do they want them, what kind of relationship do they expect of me with them, do I like them and so on)

5. Intellectual capacity

6. Humour

7. Habits and lifestyle

8. Sexual proclivities

9. Where they stand on the feminist bell curve or we might just call this one attitude

10. Honesty, reliability and so on

11. Ability to speak our language, cultural differences and so on

12. Their physical attractiveness and how this relates to my physical attractiveness

Look I could go on but you can fill in the blanks yourself as I know we all play this game and we often play it daily in our relationships and in our future hopes and wishes.

So let’s cut the nonsense and not buy into Miss Twilight's 11-13 year old mentality that judgments about losers and winners can be made on the basis of how they ‘look’ to her or indeed how they ‘look’ to anyone else. And let us equally also not buy into these notions that the only value of a women lies in how she bumps and grinds on a male totem pole erected to please the ephemeral and short lasting god of physical beauty. That goddess may be a gold digging murderer with HIV and herpes.

OK this was a bit preachy but hell I am getting bored. 3000 out of 6000 submissions about hot chicks and ‘I’m not defensive’ dirty old men are enough. Bring back Dana’s ‘Sometimes in Thailand I don’t know whether to be Happy or Sad type stories’. Maybe I’m a dreamer but I’m sure I am not the only one.

And on a personal note (as it is obvious I have an emotional investment in this) this is my defense of the western woman and in particular of my western girlfriend who is a granny just as I am about to be (grandpa that is). But let me tell ya we can kick up our heels as well as any of you can in those crazy Thailand bars.

As always

Have a nice day

Bon Jovial