Caitlin Moran #did not stay at home.

[SqualorVictoria]

If Gillian Anderson is considered average looking then there's no hope for any of us.

Secondly I don't think all men want to marry 25 year old footballers wifes types. Some men do care about personalities

Her 'thing' is probably going to be another dreadful article

 

[NotDumbNotBlonde]

I actually had a thumping crush on Robbie Coltrane as Cracker.

 

[SqualorVictoria]

Snap, @Lanavalentine agree with every word. It's actually a bit of a patriarchal way of thinking that only 25 year old glamour models are desirable as partners to men. I've no doubt that that is the case for some men but definitely not all.

 

[chaiira]

I don’t know, I think most of them are very believable. A lot of those women are both totally gorgeous and incredibly talented, and I have to say most men I know are much more into some of those examples than nameless underwear models. I can see women my own partner, my brother and my brother-in-law all are known to have crushes on in that list (suspect my own partner may have tweeted Sharon Horgan as his suggestion ). I don’t think fancying Gillian Anderson is at all an attempt at being feminist!

I don’t know about you, but my answer wouldn’t be Brad Pitt or similar either. It would be Louis Theroux. I don’t think that’s anything to do with virtue signaling or pretending looks don’t matter, but rather placing importance on other areas as equal to, or higher than, appearance.

Different strokes for different folks, innit? I don’t doubt a lot of the men who follow Caitlin are virtue signal types who largely misunderstand feminism, but I also don’t think there’s anything unusual, or progressive, at a man choosing Nigella over a Victoria’s Secret model.

I admit I'm possibly being a bit shallow here as I think Hugh Jackman is the furthest I can get in appreciating the personality of a celebrity ...

But, even those these women are kind of great on their own terms and no doubt would make actually fun wives, I can't help but think there has been a concerted effort to only choose women who are sufficiently "not too obvious" to make sure no one is seen as falling into pervy territory, and that Caitlin is now going to write some awful "thing" which highlights what great choices they are with the overtone of (because they are older/chubby etc etc) which for some reason gives me a bit of a yuck feeling.

I've just seen men fall over themselves sometimes to claim that no, they actually never found Kate Moss or Claudia Schiffer or Pamela Anderson attractive at all, as if that would be such a distasteful or common thing to do... just a kind of *eye-roll* moment.

Reminds me of this article: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/birth-of-the-cool-guy

Snap, @Lanavalentine agree with every word. It's actually a bit of a patriarchal way of thinking that only 25 year old glamour models are desirable as partners to men. I've no doubt that that is the case for some men but definitely not all.

I totally agree with that, but sometimes there seems like a really obvious choice to not include any such women, to the extent that it actually enforces some kind of icky stereotypes of girls who fit that "stereotypical" mould as being a different type of unworthy.

Just ringing in my ears a colleague saying "attractive girls are generally idiots."

 

[SqualorVictoria]

But @chaiira the question was not who do you fancy, it was who is your ideal celebrity wife. There's a big difference between finding someone attractive and actually wanting to marry them. There's loads of men who I think would be attractive but wouldn't want to marry.

Also, attraction is subjective. If a man went on about how ugly Claudia Schiffer is, that would be utterly ridiculous as she's objectively beautiful. But if he said he didn't fancy her, that's believable. Different strokes

I do agree that this thing will be awful

Your colleague sounds incredibly bitter. Loads of women are beautiful and talented with great personalities

 

[chaiira]

I would generally agree but I don't know...the direct connection between the exclusive choice of a certain type of (admittedly great) women and her subsequently saying "how cheering...you have great taste in imaginary wives" just seems to have the effect of making a judgement of which characteristics of women are sufficiently worthy of appreciation. I don't know, it just ultimately seems to have the effect of assigning different values to different types of women

I'll say one thing though...Nigella Lawson is categorically a class act in every category and I would start a petition if she hadn't been included. I think everyone can agree on that

But summing up, just feel like she's including herself in this superior category of "women of the intelligencia" who reject female stereotypes enough to be cool but ultimately still strongly value that men find them attractive

This reply demonstrates it well...people seem very happy to implicitly denigrate demographics of women by judging certain choices as more correct, appropriate or "heartening" and the men seem to be making concerted decisions to ensure their choices fall into this approved category. Seems disingenuous :/

 

[HotesTilaire]

Did Caitlin pay Sali for her use of the word “cheering”?
I’ve never heard it used outside of journalism

 

[SqualorVictoria]

@chaiira how do any of the women in the list reject female stereotypes? What even is a female stereotype?

 

[Mbella]

On a related note, maybe it's just me but I'm very tired of journalists "crowdsourcing" content for their articles via Twitter.

Reason 1: Twitter is hardly representative

Reason 2: Do your own bloody work; you're getting paid enough!

 

[SqualorVictoria]

Also I'm sorry to say but I think you yourself denigrated certain demographics of women by claiming they were average looking and middle aged and just used as virtue signalling props

On a related note, maybe it's just me but I'm very tired of journalists "crowdsourcing" content for their articles via Twitter.

Reason 1: Twitter is hardly representative

Reason 2: Do your own bloody work; you're getting paid enough!

Totally. It's ridiculous.

 

[emm]

If Gillian Anderson is considered average looking then there's no hope for any of us.

Secondly I don't think all men want to marry 25 year old footballers wifes types. Some men do care about personalities

Her 'thing' is probably going to be another dreadful article

I also don't get the whole concept of "average looking" women.... why is she still focusing on appearances?!?!?! wow. so feminist. So men like "average looking women", no idea that really attractive women could also be clever etc.... so so so many problems with this

 

[SkylarWhite]

Also I'm sorry to say but I think you yourself denigrated certain demographics of women by claiming they were average looking and middle aged and just used as virtue signalling props

Yes, that is problematic.

 

[Eurgh]

Did Caitlin pay Sali for her use of the word “cheering”?
I’ve never heard it used outside of journalism

It was quid pro quo for using her daughter’s song on that terrible hush ad.

 

[cholulamare]

If Gillian Anderson is considered average looking then there's no hope for any of us.

You took the words out of my mouth!

I also think there's an element of adolescent crushes in a lot of the replies, if you consider most of the men replying are probably older millennials / younger gen X. My husband would probably say Gillian Anderson or Lauren Laverne as well, he wouldn't even know the name of a 25 year old underwear model.

 

[SqualorVictoria]

It's also a bit rich to state the following "This reply demonstrates it well...people seem very happy to implicitly denigrate demographics of women by judging certain choices as more correct" after having stated that Nigella is a class act in every way and a petition would be started if she wasn't included. Is that not you deeming Nigella to be more correct than the others? Are the others not worthy of inclusion? Again, attraction is subjective. Everyone likes different things and people. Caitlin's throwaway comment about people having great taste shouldn't be taken seriously. I'm not sticking up for Caitlin but it's meant as a compliment to the women chosen, not to denigrate others.

 

[SkylarWhite]

Yes, the men following her will be a certain type. I know enough middle age ex lads following boobie accounts on Instagram.

 

[chaiira]

Also I'm sorry to say but I think you yourself denigrated certain demographics of women by claiming they were average looking and middle aged and just used as virtue signalling props

I disagree with that...I was making an observation that most of the choices fell into one or more of those categories and were *specifically* chosen for those reasons, based upon the suggestions and approvals of female replies to the thread which very pointedly indicate that these types of women are "good" choices, clearly indicating that there are "bad" choices of women.

I think it's worth observing why some women seem to be discarded as vapid, superficial, unimpressive choices by both the men and women in the replies.... this does not seem to be fully inclusive to me.

And clearly Caitlin was fishing for these kind of responses for whatever thing she is working on which - which I imagine is now going to include these normative judgements about "good" types of wife material

Nothing is a judgement of the desirability of the women who mentioned who are all obviously great in their own ways. It just seems notable that types of women were clearly excluded in an unrealistic and pointed way

 

[emm]

Yes, the men following her will be a certain type. I know enough middle age ex lads following boobie accounts on Instagram.

exactly! this 100%, I mean SO many other stupid issues with this "survey".. as I have said, but HOW does she think somehow her following is toally representative of everyone?!

 

[SkylarWhite]

Haha. Soul patch strokers gonna *stroke.

*Admire Lisa Tarbuck **et al.

** I have inadvertently participated in the categorisation of women.

 

[Mbella]

exactly! this 100%, I mean SO many other stupid issues with this "survey".. as I have said, but HOW does she think somehow her following is toally representative of everyone?!

I have a hunch that Caitlin isn't very bothered about statistically representative surveys.