There's a post someone on here made recently that resonated with me. Basically, we have conditioned the new generation of men into believing women only magically become sexy at the age of 18, and even then, if you're over 35, anyone under the age of 23 is "still a child", even if they can legally vote, drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes.
And this is just weird to me. I grew up when men, including my own father would actively wolf-whistle to some of my teenaged female classmates, and although I chastised him for it, never thought it was out of the ordinary. They wore skinny jeans and yoga pants, had shapely posteriors and in some cases, big boobs. Legally, there's an obvious problem but societally, I don't think it's that big of an issue.
Let's say for the sake of example you're a recently-married man, you're both aged 21, and one day, your wife sits you down to go through some of her old photos.
We start with photos of her as a baby. Now, you'd have to be one sick fuck (or Ian Watkins) to find her hot in her infancy. A normal male brain would find her adorable.
Then she shows you a picture of when she was 20, a year earlier. Perfectly fine in finding this one hot, as this was when you already knew her quite well.
Then she shows you her toddler photos. Again, nothing to find attractive, only cute.
19 years old, just before the pair of you introduced. Largely the same woman you knew the first time you met her, just slightly younger. Sexy, right?
Then Grade School.
Then College.
Until eventually she converges around age 10, before any of her body has matured. You shouldn't be finding that attractive, purely because she's still evidently a child and none of her assets have yet bloomed.
Now, society wants you to think 18 is your cut-off point. The point just before sexy becomes adorable.
But I'd willing to bet any man in this hypothetical scenario wouldn't call 18 the earliest your wife looked "sexy". Let's imply her birthday is one week after Halloween, and one year, she decided to dress as your favorite fictional character.
Only problem is, she was 17 when those photos were taken. Or 16. Or perhaps even 15.
She still has fully-developed boobs with visible cleavage and thighs. Her height is well into 5' territory. But she's underaged in those photos.
Would you still find her sexy?
Let's do a bit of an experiment here. This scene from the 1991 movie Career Opportunities.
This is basically the only scene in the entire movie people remember. A 19 year old Jennifer Connelly riding a coin-operated horse. I know she's half Jewish and all that, but I would say that this is as close to "objectively sexy" as you can get. Her body is nubile and fully developed. She's hot.
So if you found her hot here, what's stopping you from feeling the same way towards her appearance in the 1989 movie Étoile, filmed in 1988 when she was 17?
How about this performance from a French TV show of the singer Alizée?
Granted, this was filmed in early 2003, and she was born in August 1984. So she's 18 here. Everything is fine and above board, although there are a lot of moralfags who think even this is wrong nowadays.
So here she is in June 2002, aged 17.
Now we're enter "problematic" territory again. She's not of legal age in the US, yet she still looks basically the same as she did in the 2003 video. A very similar body with accentuated thighs and chest. If you found her sexy in 2003, there's no reason you shouldn't also find her sexy here.
But 17 isn't that big of a deal, all things considered. So how about we look at something like this, "Cherry Bomb" by The Runaways?
Lead singer Cherrie Currie was born in late 1959, music video came out early 1976... you do the math. She's 16 here. Find her hot, you are statutorily a pedophile.
Or how about the most famous music video of my generation, Britney Spears' One More Time?
Yeah, she's 16 here too. You're a pedophile if you find her hot.
All The Things She Said by t.A.T.u?
Both of them were aged 15 in this video. A million sexual awakenings, but not because of faux lesbianism. But because you secretly had a thing for kids, you filthy pedophile! Off to the woodchipper!
Granted, a lot of this has been caused by over-sexualization of our culture, of people wearing things they shouldn't because they've been pressured into wearing them. But even if you take those items of clothing and make-up away, mid-late teens still have fully developed bodies. They are ovulating. Their breasts are ready to nurture an infant. The only reason you aren't allowed to be interested in females that age is because legally, they cannot be held responsible for actions they might initiate. We as men have to pretend not to be interested in them and the way we're going, any fully grown man won't be allowed to find anyone under the age of 26 sexy by the mid-point of this century.
So what gives? Anyone agree with me here?
I agree that Jennifer Connolly is objectively sexy.
Gotta say, I'm always suspicious when people push this shit, though.
Of course you're right...to some extent. It is arbitrary, and there are logical issues, like the mentioned seventeen year old the day before their next birthday.
But you can make the exact same argument the other way. If a fifteen year old is sexy, why not fourteen? Why not thirteen? Twelve? What if they have early puberty? Eleven, ten, nine?!
I'll take an arbitrary line versus the evil that a more fluid one could allow. 'If she bleeds, she breeds' is psychotic, because you have to admit you're not magically mature just because you hit puberty.
Speaking of, what about other things? Can a fifteen year old vote? Drink, smoke, join the military, drive, or any other currently age gated things? Be completely free from parental oversight, and be treated as a full adult?
Age difference also comes into account. A thirty or forty year old dude who is into sixteen year olds, especially if it's a specific interest, is pretty creepy. People pushing for 'find this fifteen year old sexy' are often pushing a specific agenda.
Regardless, I think the current system is somewhat close to correct, although we can argue exact implementation or age in some cases. But it prevents a lot more harm than it causes.
As law, I'd take 'no sex with minors' over 'some sex with children is alright,' but that's just me. You have to draw a line somewhere, or people do get hurt.
Alongside the solidification of the "age of majority" we've also psychologically attached the idea of when it's "safe" to go after a woman sexually to that same time. I think it's entirely female-led. There isn't nearly as much moral posturing regarding military recruiters hanging out in high school lunch rooms or libraries (I saw them every year of my high school, large area, well-developed, not poor at all), but there is a distinct outrage about waiting for a woman to hit legal age so you can "be allowed" to see her sexually. I know Emma Watson's (Hermione from Harry Potter) birthday because there was a YTMND page that had it listed and people were counting down the days until you were "allowed" to say things about her. I remember hearing people talking about that sort of behavior being dangerous and untrustworthy, the proof of a predatory mindset, etc.
I really don't know where the 'anger,' for lack of a better term, comes from regarding a woman's maturity. Only they get these social protections. Everyone knows the "She was 17 years, 364 days, 23 hours, and 58 minutes old, you sick fuck!!!" meme, and it really highlights the impossibility of socially navigating an entirely arbitrary legal cutoff. 18 is such an odd number, why not a nice round 20? Why not 15 like it was for so many other cultures? Jews do Bar/Bat Mitzvahs at 15, the Mexicans have Quinceañeras, and probably tons of others that established adulthood as when you were sexually mature. In the modern day we know a lot more about neurology and brain development, so we moved the bar up more, but hundreds of thousands of years of evolution are not going to play nice with a piece of paper declaring what's allowed. Let's not get started about countries where it's younger than 18, so you have people from countries where it's higher going to countries where it's lower being treated like psychopath criminals (but legal drugs are A-OK!).
It's a really difficult subject to discuss due to the keen emotional response everyone has to the predation and violation of children, combined with the performative outrage that most women have pertaining to mate selection. Women today know they can call a man creepy, rapey, predator, and destroy his reputation permanently by attacking his evolutionary attraction to sexually developed women. Women into their 30s and 40s continue to have tantrums about male mate selection, like that chart that shows men of every single age past 18 finding 20-22 year olds the most attractive, while women found men their own age most attractive.
There is a distinct sensitivity around being able to acknowledge that a minor is attractive without necessarily saying "I want to have sex with that person." I think that's the hypersexualization you're talking about in your ending paragraph. I don't know how to reconcile that behavior with the very obvious degeneracy that allows Walmart to sell pants in the 8-12's section that says "juicy" on the ass in sequins and glitter, or Cuties being on Netflix and not resulting in a public hanging, or the continued pushing of 'gay and trans kids' in the years where they have zero sexual development. What a nightmare.
I thought Bar/Bat Mitvahs were 13? Not a huge difference or anything. Also it should be noted that while the federal age of consent is 18, some states have lower ages of consent. So you can find 17 year olds attractive there unless it's across state lines.
I think the general trend of pushing "child" further and further into adulthood is intended to make every new generation feel more helpless and be more easily exploited. A hundred years a go, a sixteen year old could easily take care of things that a 30 year old today would be crying on Reddit about.
That said, young women are everything that's wrong with women in general, but to a greater degree. Easily the least accountable group in society.
When I see a chick who’s 17 years, 364 days old :🤢🤢🤢
I don't think I'd ever be in support of relaxing the law in such a way that someone more than 2-3 years older can pursue a romance or sex with a younger teenager. It's just not necessary and I'm totally fine setting that as the cutoff.
That said, I think most of what you're getting at is a newer phenomenon, it's a product of feminism, and it only applies to men. It goes much further than just oogling or "locker room talk" as Trump might validly describe it. I think it's a concerted effort by feminists to shut men out of influence on children entirely. They sell it as protecting young girls to the subset of women that are only mildly feminist.
Some specific life examples--I've always been spectacular at relating with teenagers. I don't know why and it's not something I did intentionally. I've been told it's because I always just treated them like anyone else. So when I'm at a friend's gathering and their 14 year old son is just kinda stuck there, guess who they look for? I had to learn really quickly to be guarded. One case where myself, and friend, and his son would often go to sporting events, at this point probably been to a dozen or so with the three of us. Friend had to back out for something last minute, so I asked, "hey does your son still want to go, I don't mind picking him up, it's on the way." He said yes, I did so, fun game, etc. I heard after the fact some women got all fussy about that, "why would he want to hang out with a kid, that's so weird, what's he up to?" All for taking a teenager to a fucking ballgame. His Dad basically told them to stfu for me and I only heard about in passing, but that's their mindset. Of note, the kid is damn near 30 now, has a wife and a kid, we still talk occasionally, good guy.
That's with the boys. I wouldn't let one of my girl cousins that age ride along to go pick up something from the grocery store despite trusting all involved. They've created an environment where one incorrect assumption about a man and a girl is life ruining.
IMHO: Because men, deep down, understand that woman are just overgrown children, have no capability to be responsible for their actions, and need strict control and protection from predatory elements(men AND other women) in their lives.
Sadly, this argument can only be made up to a point. We've made 18 a sort of gross, lossy goal because that's around the point where we can start shipping men off to kill and die for their country, and because we're so equal nowadays, we have to give that to women, as well.
The anger might very well come from how we're supposed to treat the matter(she's 18, that means she's an adult) and how the reality actually is(becoming an adult requires trials and responsibilities), and people really hate having to live with blatant lives.
I suppose this rules and cut offs are made so we can be sure we don't traumatize children and prosecute men for pursuing women younger then 30.
If you really want societal sexual honesty, look to the pajeets where any age, looks, and even either gender is on the menu. Oh and species too.