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cousin_it comments on Sayeth the Girl - Less Wrong
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What evolutionary reason could a woman have for wanting to signal being rich and cultured to other women? 'Cause it doesn't make those other women want to become her allies; rather, it aggravates them. And do you consider it a weird coincidence that all the things I listed (tan, lipstick etc.) also increase the woman's attractiveness to men?
Pecking order.
Evolutionary reason? Sounds like you're automatically discounting the possibility that the specific status games of a specific group of people in our specific society are a result of cultural development that has no particular basis in evolutionary psychology.
I'm sorry, but that's just a wierd question. Why wouldn't women want to play status games?
Most of those things were originally developed as seduction aids and do double duty, but they have been adopted as status aids and probably are more important in that role. (Signaling only to men, women can get away with much less work - compare porn.)
In their original pure seduction aid role, some stuff - lipstick and perfume for example - used to be extremely disreputable.
Also some obvious fashion fetishes are void of signal to males - handbags are an example.
It seems to me a lot of this has to be female-female signaling as proposed. Most men do not seem to care what I'm wearing, and would probably prefer it was 'nothing'. I have NEVER had a guy bring up something I'm wearing unless it was clearly being used as an opening for chatting me up.
For the record (I don't think this is objectifying, but my calibration's pretty confused lately), yes we'd probably prefer it was 'nothing,' but we still notice what you're wearing and respond strongly to it, and no, it's not as simple as "less is better".
Well, I wouldn't say that women can not wear clothes that men find attractive/unattractive, or otherwise interesting. But I know from conversations that many men consider a good majority of what women wear to be pointless and stupid looking. All the guys I know are practically offended by those baby-doll dress, or stuff like shoes with bows on them.
I have to agree. I mean, I like dressing up, but there is definite limit of like an hour which I will not go beyond. If an hour of work can't make you look good, no amount of time will.
I assume 'chatting me up' is being used here to mean something involving dating? An internet search for the expression just turned up synonyms for "making conversation", which wouldn't make sense in context.
Curious... where are you from?
ETA: thanks to anonym below.
In that case, it seems odd to me that guys you know never bring up anything you're wearing. Do you have many male friends? Maybe this is a cultural thing, or am I the 'odd one out' here?
"Chatting me up" == "hitting on me". It's a British colloquialism.
Thanks! I'm a student of the British language, but I'm hardly fluent.
I'm residing in the northwest USA. Pretty much all of my friends are males. No, literally all of them.
You didn't answer. Why would women play status games? Men play status games to rise in the dominance hierarchy and ultimately get many girls; that's the obvious evolutionary reason.
My working hypothesis for now is simply that women claim they strive to look good primarily to show off to other women, and you're accepting this claim uncritically. The reason they claim that (and actually believe that, evolution's weird) is that explicitly admitting that you dress up to steal high status men from other women would make those other women feel threatened, so this behavior has evolved into a harmless "game". That also addresses your objection why women adopt those ornate displays instead of just undressing.
There actually are reasonable-sounding evolutionary hypotheses behind status competition for women in addition to competition for males: competition over food, particularly food for infants.
Further reading: Male, Female by David Geary Mother Nature by Sarah Hrdy
Also recommended: Anne Campbell's A Mind of Her Own: The Evolutionary Psychology of Women, which has chapters on status, competition, and aggression amongst women.
Thanks! I found this review, and at first look it seems to support me more than y'all: unless I'm reading it wrong, it says that women's desire to look good is explained only by competition for good mates. Now, I'm a total amateur and would love to be corrected, but the arguments offered so far just aren't very convincing.