NOTE: This post will make a lot more sense if you read this first.
When it came to petting cats, as a slow-moving human with a soothing voice, I had no problem getting headbutts from Chicago’s most beautiful cats.
I could have any cat I wanted. I met some nice adult cats, but invariably I went for the fluffiest, most adorable kittens I could find.
My life was pretty much this:
I petted as many as three kittens a week, many of them cute enough to be kitten gif models, but eventually I realized that petting the cutest young things had its drawbacks — I found them flighty, silly and vapid.
I mean, look at these ridiculous creatures.
Adorable kittens who get a fair amount of attention get full of themselves. Eventually, I was dreading booping them on their tiny kitten noses because they were constantly being distracted by whatever shiny thing entered their field of vision. Literally.
Looking for a cat with a greater attention span than a gnat, I started petting a couple of cats who aren’t cat calendar models. The two are now living in my apartment with me and occasionally vomiting on things. I met them at a local cat shelter.
People like me who don’t mind talking in a baby voice and who aren’t given to sudden, startling movements have the pickings when it comes to petting cats but eventually I found that I wanted a cat of substance, not a ball of fluff.
The cats I pet now couldn’t be gif models, but they are still pretty kitties aren’t you yes you are!
When people get to a certain age, they realize that it’s important to pet kitties that don’t spend their entire waking life careening around the apartment knocking things over. Just part of their waking life doing that. All right, 80%. But come on, you’ve got to admit that kittens are kind of exhausting.
Weatherwax, did you intend for this line to sound vaguely creepy?
Piling on….
So they used to date people for looks based on objectifying social beauty standards, and they found the people they were with to be socially incompatible. That just sounds like statically likely events to me. “Cause women/female person” comes off as projection coated interpretation of experience to me (among other things).
Models tend to be young, in their late teens and early twenties. When I was that young, I thought I was clever by partying with ex-con outlaw bikers. They had drugs! I could work out my daddy issues by making out with the Minnesota equivalent of Merle Dixon! Motorcycle rides wheeeeeeeee! I was a dumbass. If I was as stupid now as I was then, I’d probably be dead (shut up, I know that didn’t entirely make sense).
I was also damn cute then, too. A dead ringer for Kate Winslet in ‘Holy Smoke!’ I wasn’t stupid because I was cute. I was stupid because I was very young, and I was cute because I was very young.
(Not that all people in their late teens are as dopey as I was. The resident bard of WHTM is a teen, right? Troubelle? I was nowhere near as smart as Troubelle is.)
Moggie was saying the piece read like an advertorial; it basically was.
But David, publishing an advertorial without clearly marking it as such would be dishonest, and I’m sure a quality Murdoch organ like the Post would never lower its standards that way!
Three universities, and one of their “studies” looked at a sample size of 20 people? Give all the students involved Fs.
@Kootiepatra
Didn’t you read the article? She’s 30! SHE HIT THE WALL!
@Moggie,
“I gave him my card and said I have the perfect girl for him,” recalls Janis, founder of Serious Matchmaking[.com]
Ninja’d by David!
Looks like an article based wholly on an industry press release. Or, its an article by a journalist with undisclosed links to the company.
Is it about ethics in matchmaking “journalism”?
*is distracted by all the kittehs*
Patti Stanger from that Millionaire Matchmaker show made the matchmaking industry look shady enough already. That New York Post shill piece isn’t really helping me change my mind about that.
It’s basically advertising the matchmaking service to older conservative white guys who probably have a source of disposable income. The sort of people who read The New York Post, in other words.
Here’s a thought: maybe, now stay with me here, just maybe all those “super hot” but “vapid” women he used to date picked up on his weird, backward values and didn’t put any effort into conversation or interaction. Why would they? Some guy asks them out, it becomes obvious that he doesn’t give a shit about them as people, just their hotness, so why spend any effort on the douchebag?
But yeah, dude, it’s totally them and not you.
Their take on beauty is an economy of enforced scarcity; like fiat currency, it’s entirely invented, but culturally enforced.
Also, according to the WHTM article, this channel shouldn’t exist:
So women who are too beautiful are shallow and have silly priorities, but clearly he requires a beautiful woman. So, he has to settle for a slightly less beautiful woman, isn’t she lucky?
But women are shallow…
Women are…
????
Meanwhile,
Natalie Portman has a graduate degree from Harvard, has been published in scientific journals, speaks 4 languages and is an activist.
Charlie Theron is an activist, producer, dancer, actress who is fluent in two languages.
Isabella Rosillini worked as a translator. She acts, produces, writes and directs. She is also an activist.
All of them have been models.
So, I guess great beauties can also be talented, passionate, interesting and intelligent.
Well, the truth is that I gave up most knitting due to a neurological problem; I can just about go round and round in stockinette these days. The former stash went variously to nursing homes and as pet toys. Yarn makes awesome toy.
There was a snippet in that article from a model who was like “It sucks that guys are more interested in you for your looks and not your personality”, and then a guy goes on and ON about how “vapid and shallow” these women are.
Srsly.
Reminds me of this:
@LindsayIrene
Can confirm, 17 and somehow in college full-time. I still make my share of silly mistakes, yeah, but I mostly keep to myself.
There was an exception today, hence my lateness. I couldn’t resist a Smash+Kart back-to-back tourney.
NY Post article summary:
Dave,
What’s your kitten n-count? The four kitties on the jeans were HB9s. A player like you giving it up…
😛
Atrocious informercial article. But seems tame compared to other stuff on the internet these days. Sigh.
Thanks! I come here for moral support or hope sometimes.
I think I remember reading a worse “ad feature” in the Daily Mail, but I didn’t particularly want to remember it.
After a couple of catless years, I crumbled under the onslaught of “I wanna kitty.” So we went to the pound. Got a little black and white one. Took it home. Decided to introduce it gently to our two poms. So I held her up so she could see them.
B-i-i-i-i-i-i-g mistake. She sank her fangs into my finger. And she was too young to have had her rabies shots. So I did the only sensible thing. Started working on a list of people to bite.
The pound was running a twofer on kittens. AKA “crazy cat lady” discount. So a few days later we got another one. This one, I just put the carrier down, opened the door, and said “Survive.” She sauntered past the dogs as if to say “What are YOU looking at?”
B&W cat is still a cynical user. If I’m lying down on my side she parks on my hip. I feel so objectified.
Vain guy stops dating swimsuit models because a matchmaker set him up with her still-pretty-damn-hot daughter?
Sounds legit like a trend, you guys!
(Or at least a Serious Thinkpiece. Or a serious piece of…well, SOMETHING.)
PS: My pretty kitty adopted ME. Not sure what kind of a trend that spells, but she is so sweet.
Also, for some odd reason, this song is in my head tonight:
Everyone finds this article stunningly awful about vain people now, it made The Young Turks
I also have been a
catkitten tree, up to my shoulders.Their tiny claws…
If that NY Post article wasn’t satire, then whoever wrote the picture captions slipped in some worldclass sarcasm in there!
The caption in question: “Dan Rochkind used to date swimsuit models, but he’s happier now that he’s engaged to a merely beautiful woman, Carly Spindel (right).”
No matter how I try to read that the word “merely” just comes out so sarcastic and/or snarky.
As for the advertisement angle, four of the five links are to sites that aren’t necessary for the article, and name drops two other businesses for no apparent reason:
* They name Bumble instead of saying “an online dating site”
* They mention the wedding at “Wölffer Estate Vineyard in the Hamptons”
I would ask what has journalism come to, but the answer to can be found at the NY Post 😛