You know how they say “smile and the world smiles with you?” Apparently, that’s all wrong, at least according to our dear old friend Vox Day (Theodore Beale). The fantasy author and human shitstain says this old saw needs a rewrite: smile, and the world’s true Alphas laugh at you. As Mr. Day-Beale explains:
Women say they resent it when men tell them to smile. And well they should. An instinctive smile, when one is not expressing pleasure or recognition, is a submissive gesture. This is why attractive women tend to smirk in response to the big goofy submissive smiles sent their way by lower status men.
And then, presumably, those sexy ladies will quickly excuse themselves and make a beeline for the nearest ALPHA fantasy author standing grimly in the corner, quietly judging everyone and thinking unkind thoughts about John Scalzi.
But what if you’re one of those big goofy smiling submissive dudes? How do you capture some of that broody Alpha magic for yourself? It’s simple: Don’t turn that frown upside down.
One easy way to increase your perceived level of alpha is to simply not smile at strangers. Instead, just reply with a nod or a pleasant word. One can be perfectly civil without grinning at everyone like an idiot, and it’s always interesting to see the difference it makes in people’s perceptions.
Just don’t overdo it, lest the ladies think you’re, for example, some sort of weirdo misogynist so filled with fear and loathing for everything female that you’ve actually set up an entire blog devoted to telling the world what an awesome alpha you are.
I’m not talking about walking around glowering; self-conscious anger is much worse than indiscriminate smiling. But women have always been drawn to brooding men, so rather than turning them away with a gesture of preemptive submission, give them something to which they can be drawn.
To be perfectly fair, though, this does work with most Bronte sisters.
@Sorry, Pallygirl! 😀 I do remember now, btw, that I simply accepted lots of really problematic stuff in Margit Sandemo’s “the ice people” series when I was a teenager, so… I probably wasn’t the most feministically aware teenager either. 🙂
Dvärghundspossen,
Sick, isn’t it? None of that stood out to me at the time though. I like Jane Eyre too. (That guy had his wife locked in the goddamn attic!) Nearly every romance novel back in my teens started with a rape and ended with a marriage and a baby. Think about how problematic most romances are in classic film too. As a kid I wanted to be Indiana Jones and he was originally conceived as a child molester. (Marion was meant to be a 12 yr old when Indie “seduced” her and was later changed to a 16 yr old which is still creepy) That’s rape culture. We grew up soaking in it.
I just thought of the perfect example of a brooding sex symbol that women fell for because he was such a lost puppy: Richard Burton.
http://i4.walesonline.co.uk/incoming/article1791584.ece/alternates/s2197/richard-burton-56475284.jpg
He was charming. He was talented. He had that rich voice and was so beautiful and troubled. When did Liz fall for him? When he was too hungover to lift his own coffee to his lips and asked her to do it. As much as those two were reported to have tormented each other, she was clearly fiercely protective of him too. She and his next wife would describe him as “sweet”. They looked dramatic, sexy and interesting in the tabloids, but they were both very unhappy people. Neither of them wanted to live like that. They were both ill with active and severe addictions.
Michelle is right. That stuff only works on the screen or the page because you can get up and walk away at the end.
*liked* Jane Eyre.
I actually enjoyed reading Wuthering Heights MORE as an adult, because it was clearer to me what Bronte was trying to say, rather than it just being a series of strange events in a rural place. There’s race stuff and class stuff, and the bit where Catherine tells Isabella to AVOID Heathcliff because he’s actually not a good person, and the hanging of the dog makes so much more sense in that context.
Also, I think it’s a bit disingenuous to wonder why no one actually leaves the Heights, or once they do, they feel compelled to return. Isn’t that how abusive relationships work? The people in them see no other options?
Titianblue, I’ve started reading some books I read when very young. Amazing how much more there is to them now. My favorite was Moby Dick, of all things – first time, I was so young, I thought it was about whaling.
Bill, that comic was great. I especially liked the bit about the moody, dark wind gusts blowing out the scented candles. And a happy ending after all.
Yamamanama (I hope I got that right), +1 for Prince of Pursuasia.
When I read these instructions to men about how they should rearrange their facial features to attract women (and the last such thing I read tells men to employ a bad-boy smirk), I can’t help but flash on Ben Stiller’s character in “Zoolander” doing his trademark facial expression “Blue Steel.” Of course, the book also suggested that a guy consult, among other women, HIS MOM on what makes him look “hot.”
@Michelle: Thanks for the compliment. The thing is, I’m not big on symbolism. I tend to read and watch everything literally. That’s just the way I am! The thing is, there’s usually tons to discuss and think about with that approach as well to literary classics… As I think my Wuthering Heights posts showed.
I also like Jane Eyre, although I didn’t read that one until I was an adult well-versed in feminism. I expected to dislike it and I particularly expected to hate Rochester, so I was really surprised. So here’s my (very literal) take on Rochester and the whole locking-one’s-wife-up-in-the-attic-thing:
Rochester does eventually come clean with Jane and tells her the whole story about his marriage. Now, we might of course speculate that he’s still lying, but I see no particular reason for that suspicion, so I’m gonna assume that he’s telling the truth. Assuming that he does, his father had decided to marry him off with some rich woman, and the choice fell on Bertha. Bertha did come from a family with lots of problems with alcoholism and mental illness, and Rochester’s father deliberately hid this from him. He and Bertha were only allowed to meet at parties and the like, they were both very young and didn’t know each other that well, and they got married. Some time after the marriage Bertha started drinking more and more and become gradually more psychotic and violent. The fact that she’s actually violent and dangerous seems to be omitted from lots of feminist articles discussing Jane Eyre and the wife in the attic, but she really is according to the book. She’s not just a troublesome and difficult-to-control woman, she’s a violent psychotic. So Rochester ends up more and more just locking the door at her in order to protect himself (he does say that he’s physically stronger than her but doesn’t want to get into actual fights with her, preferred to just sneak out the room and lock the door after him when she was having a fit). He also gets really depressed and even suicidal. I have a psychotic disorder myself, and really feel for Bertha, who suffers this kind of problem in an age where psychiatry and psychiatric medication wasn’t even invented yet, but I do feel sorry for Rochester as well.
Anyway, he pulls himself up from his depression when he manages to convince himself that the following really shitty plan is a good one: He’s gonna go back to England, hide the fact that he’s married from everyone, start a new life as a bachelor, meet some woman who truly loves him and whom he loves back, eventually tell this future Miss Right about Bertha, Miss Right will understand his situation, and he’ll get married again (despite the fact that the marriage wouldn’t actually be valid under law, but Miss Right is gonna be understanding about that as well). The thing is that although this plan is morally wrong (since deceit of everyone, including Miss Right in the beginning, is part of it) it’s still comprehensible that he’d come up with this given his desperate situation.
Regarding the fact that Bertha is kept in the attic of his mansion, I do not actually think that that is morally wrong. It is clear that Rochester thinks that this is the least bad solution. He resents Bertha for destroying his life, but still tries to come up with the least bad possible solution for her (probably because he realizes at an intellectual level that it isn’t her fault, that she really ought to be pitied, even if he can’t help feeling resentment). As “the attic” is described it seems more or less like a proper upper floor. Rochester does state at one point that he’d considered having Bertha in some of his other houses (which would have been more convenient for him), but these other houses were too drafty, he thought it would be bad for Bertha’s physical health. Considering she also has this 24/7 nurse hired whom seems to be able to calm Bertha and handle her better than other people, I do think it’s pretty safe to say that Bertha is better off where she is than locked up at an actual mad-house for violent psychotics. It’s not really Rochester who’s being terrible here; it’s the time-period, with no psychiatric care available.
What Rochester does that is horribly wrong is the deception. But this isn’t really text-book abusive boyfriend wrong. Rather, it is “I will procrastinate dealing with Difficult Stuff forever, rationalize the procrastination and hurt people around me in the process because I desperately want to avoid Difficult Stuff”-wrong. (The Difficult Stuff here of course being telling Jane the truth, which he keeps convincing himself is better left off to some later point in time, until he’s even convinced himself that he should save the Big Talk until after the wedding.) This is absolutely no excuse, of course, but still worth pointing out, since I think it makes Jane and him eventually ending up together more acceptable. I don’t think that a text book abusive boyfriend who wants to control his girlfriend is likely to change just because he says that he’s sincerely sorry, but I do think that it is fairly likely that someone who used to lie in order not having to deal with Difficult Stuff and rationalize it all the time is likely to have learned his lesson when all those lies crashed down on him the way they crashed down on Rochester. So, given that time has passed, water under the bridges etc, I buy that they end up together.
One thing I also really, really like about Jane Eyre, from a feminist standpoint, is how the power differential between Jane and Rochester is presented as a problem. It’s not “how lucky this girl from humble circumstances is to have met a rich man”, it’s “how is this supposed to work out, when he’s so much more powerful than she is?”. At the end, of course, the power differential has been evened out, since Jane has inherited some money and Rochester has become ruined and disabled.
I liked Jane Eyre too. But I stopped finding brooding males fascinating as soon as I got to know some in real life.
weird — as i was reading such awesome advice for how to win friends and influence others, i was developing a one word response …
“Heathcliff!”
and then i read your last line.
@pecunium — as one who spent much of my twenties weaving in and out of the ‘bermuda triangle’ in the 80s, i think your friend may be on to something. i’ll check out that link.
@Dvärghundspossen: thanks 🙂
I don’t tend to read fiction anymore, as I have so many fascinating non-fiction books to read that aren’t even study-related.
On a completely frivolous note, I have been trying to do consciousness raising of my cats by telling them to check their pussy-cat privilege* when they sit in front of my keyboard so I can’t use it, or stand in front of my screen. However, this appears to be a lost cause. I feel they understand what I am saying, but don’t want to lose the benefits of their privilege.
*it could be cute-and-fluffy privilege instead. I would need to do an experiment to determine which one it actually is.
** the experiment does not involve shaving cats bald, but substituting animals that are:
1. cat-sized and cute but not fluffy and
2. cat-sized and fluffy but not cute.
Dvärghundspossen,
Have you ever heard of the book that was written from the wife’s pov?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Sargasso_Sea
Sorry pallgirl, hairless kitties are still adorable.
http://thefeaturedcreature.thefeaturedcreat.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/12765811151276581146l2.jpg
So it appears that it is pussy-cat privilege then. I shall keep calling them out on it, as I pet their little furry heads, and snuggle them, and smooch them, and tell them they are gorgeous and wanted.
Yep Lea, since it seems to come up whenever there’s a Jane Eyre discussion. From what I’ve heard though, they’ve changed some stuff, so it doesn’t really line up with Jane Eyre after all. Idk, might read it some day.
I liked Jane Eyre (the character, that is) right up until she started really interacting with Rochester. Then it was all ‘ugh, really?’. But then, I was also 13. After that, I had such a suspicion of all Bronte novels that I never read another. OTOH, I loved Jenna Starborn, which is a sci-fi adaptation of the book, and was properly entertained by The Eyre Affair, which is… sort of a sci-fi adaptation.
My mother once forced me to watch a black & white version of Wuthering Heights. Ugh. Never again.
I feel like nothing would upset this guy worse than to hear that most people actually think nothing in particular when he doesn’t smile, and walk on past with a completely neutral impression.
Don’t want to smile at women? Okay. You go ahead and do that, you rebel you.
Cliff, that reminds me of my favorite line from The Fountainhead (actually, the only one I like). IIRC, Ellsworth Toohey and Howard Roark are together, and Toohey tells him, We’re alone now, you can tell me what you really think of me, and Roark replies, somewhat confused, But I don’t think of you.
Beale doesn’t realize that, at best, he’s the Westbrook Pegler of his generation.
??!
What’s his mom gonna say? That well, he got this sunburn as a kid, that was awfully hot at first, and then there was the time he had the flu…
“Of course, the book also suggested that a guy consult, among other women, HIS MOM on what makes him look ‘hot.'”
…ummm…
Questions most people would really rather not have with their parents, Part One.
Conversations, I mean. Actually I’m pretty sure that parents probably don’t want to hear “hey, does this make me look fuckable?” from their kids either. It’s just awkward.
Urgh, damn it. Does this mean I’m going to have to train myself to smile as a neutral expression in order to avoid being mistaken for an MRA?
I’m not brooding – that’s just my face, awrite? Bah!
Alright, so now I’m brooding, but only because I’m all self-conscious and grumpy.
I actually used to think that Heathcliffe was a kind of Mr Darcy-type character. I’m not sure if I was selling Darcy short, or massively overselling Heathcliffe, but somehow, I think I was wrong about that. I know Darcy’s nothing like perfect, but at least he’s not an overtly abusive gender specific asshole.
Mind you, I was also confused over the idea that James Bond was really all that misogynistic, even when I came to recognise how completely shitty it was that about half of all the women he sleeps with end up fridged… but then I saw Thunderball… wikipedia makes it sound perfectly innocent:
Yeah, Bond seduces Fearing. How? By telling her he won’t complain about being locked into the traction machine if she comes with him to his room (or something like that). Urgh. I’m not overreacting in thinking that’s pretty deeply awful, am I?