I remember, as a boy, seeing strange, old-fashioned advertisements in the backs of comic books. These were the same ones that were printed on the little comic strips you found inside Bazooka bubble gum.

The advertisement was a three-panel cartoon: 1) A muscle-bound bully kicks sand on a skinny guy and his girl at the beach. 2) The humiliated skinny guy goes home and kicks a chair. 3) The skinny guy buys an exercise device, gets muscles, and then beats up the bully.

Like Charles Atlas before him, 20-year-old Clavicular has become a worldwide brand by embodying a new approach to male physical attractiveness.

That’s a popular story. So popular it never goes away. You see it in movies to this day. Man starts out weak. Gets humiliated. Isolates himself and works to improve. And ultimately returns and prevails over his enemies.

It’s a male fantasy. It’s the daydream of every 12-year-old boy. It’s the ultimate form of street justice.

And it almost never happens in real life. Even as a child, I understood that. But it was still a satisfying story. So much so that you could sell stuff with it. Especially to gullible boys.

In this way, Charles Atlas, the inventor of these cartoons and the seller of various body-building regimens, became a rich man.

But even with my child mind, I could tell it was a trick. Because 1) you’re pretty much stuck with the muscles you have. And 2) normal people don’t really care that much about muscles.

Gimme Shelter

By the time I was a teenager, the Charles Atlas era was over. By the late 1970s, male role models were people like Mick Jagger. Or movie stars like Jack Nicholson. These guys weren’t weighed down with muscles.

Even tough guys like Robert De Niro and Al Pacino were much stronger mentally than they were physically. These guys weren’t going to manhandle you with sheer strength. They were going to outsmart you.

The only interesting celebrity of my generation who was somewhat muscular might be Henry Rollins. Though he never had the steroid-infused definition of a true bodybuilder. Besides which, Rollins' persona was never about being a strongman. It was more of a Nietzschean mental toughness. He was a “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” kind of guy.

And of course Arnold Schwarzenegger comes to mind. But in his case, he was a funny and talented actor. His muscles got him into the film business, where he really shone. Before that, most people regarded him as a freak. I know I did.

Chris Delmas/Getty Images

The muscle-man always rings twice

Now, however, the ghost of Charles Atlas has returned. Young men are thinking about their muscles again. And it’s been going on for a while now.

It started with the “you just gotta lift” movement among young men. HR harassing you at work? Women won’t give you the time of day? Media portrays you as weak and ineffectual. You just gotta lift.

This began back in the 20-teens. Maybe the rise of Trump encouraged it. Guys feeling like they could be guys again. Or maybe in the face of decreasing prospects, guys were trying to hold on to their self-esteem.

Steroids and other medications might have added to the trend. Steroids continue to be popular with young males — both for sports and general appearance.

And then there’s the “going to the gym” trend. Both sexes participate in this. Some go to work out, others to socialize and mingle. It has become a place to make friends and find romance. And naturally, big muscles are big clout at the gym.

Enter the looksmaxxers

Now, after a decade of growing physique consciousness, a new generation has burst onto the scene. They call themselves looksmaxxers. And their point man is an internet streamer named Clavicular.

Like Charles Atlas before him, 20-year-old Clavicular has become a worldwide brand by embodying a new approach to male physical attractiveness.

He uses every means at his disposal: cosmetic, chemical, surgical, whatever it takes. There’s an entire science (or maybe pseudo-science) dedicated to this goal. Some aspects of which — "bonesmashing,” for instance—are quite alarming to contemplate.

Clavicular wasn’t the first to think of this. There is a whole community of looksmaxxers that he studied and learned from.

But like Charles Atlas before him, he has the charisma and business savvy to bring his movement to a larger public. At present, he is literally one of the most popular influencers in the world.

When he visits nightclubs or college campuses, Clavicular is mobbed by admirers and detractors. He believes that being (or appearing to be) tall, handsome, and muscular will literally change your life. Watching people mob him in public, it’s hard to disagree.

The beautiful and the damned

Young male conservatives have embraced Clavicular as their own. He has avoided any direct political alliances, but you can hear in his casual conversation echoes of the manosphere and contemporary conservative youth culture.

There are a lot of theories about the rise of looksmaxxing. Some believe it is the inevitable reaction to women reaching new heights in politics, business, media, and entertainment, while at the same time, men have lost ground.

Clavicular has said as much: In a world where the dating market has become increasingly exclusionary to all but the highest-status men, your average guy has to max out any advantage he has and enhance those advantages by any means necessary.

The great inversion

Like it or not, this is where we are. We’ve inverted traditional gender roles. Women, with their increasing access to status and power, are becoming more like men. And men, seeing their own possibilities diminished, are forced to exaggerate their physical attractiveness, like women.

It’s an interesting social experiment. But will the long-term effects be good for society? I kind of doubt it.

For the moment, Clavicular is affecting culture in ways that go beyond being good-looking or having big muscles. He has become a leader and spokesman for a whole generation of young men. Where he ultimately takes them remains to be seen.

'Looksmaxxing' and the war on male self-improvement

If you've been anywhere near social media lately, you have probably heard of the latest oddly named lifestyle: looksmaxxing.

It's laughed at, pathologized, and treated as a digital disease. It is filed under narcissism, extremism, or maladaptation — anything that avoids taking it seriously.

What really offends critics isn’t the vanity but the accountability. Looksmaxxing puts the burden back on the individual in a culture addicted to external blame.

But what is it?

Checklist for Chads

At its most basic, looksmaxxing refers to a loose online movement encouraging men to improve their physical appearance through deliberate, practical self-improvement rather than passive acceptance. In practice, this usually means mundane, unglamorous changes: losing excess weight, lifting weights consistently, grooming properly, dressing with intention, fixing posture, and presenting oneself as a capable human being. It is not a philosophy so much as a checklist.

There are, inevitably, outliers — internet backwaters where bone-breaking routines are discussed without irony, extreme facial surgeries are contemplated, and pseudoscientific measurements of skull angles are treated as destiny.

These exist, and they’re easy to mock. But they don't represent the broader phenomenon. They emerge at the margins, where men believe, rightly or wrongly, that they have exhausted ordinary options. The typical looksmaxxing example is far less exotic. A sedentary man quits junk food, joins a gym, gets a proper haircut, replaces stained hoodies with fitted clothes, and steps out of his mom’s basement.

Scarcity mindset

Looksmaxxing is a response to scarcity: romantic scarcity, social scarcity, economic scarcity. Young men are told relentlessly that confidence matters, that personality wins, that being “yourself” is enough.

Then reality arrives, usually with a swift kick to the nether regions. Faces, frames, height, grooming, fitness, posture — these things open doors long before a sentence is spoken. They decide who gets seen, who gets listened to, who gets to move on to the next round. The lie isn’t that personality matters, but that it matters first.

Critics default to dismissal because it requires no engagement. It costs nothing to tell a struggling man that he should simply “be kind” or “work on his inner self.” It costs nothing to shame him for caring about how he looks, while a culture sells beauty as destiny and desire as status.

The same people who insist looks don’t matter meticulously curate their appearance through filters, lighting, angles, brands, and cosmetic interventions. They publicly reject the rules while privately enforcing them. Everyone else pays for the pretense, most notably the average American man.

And the term average couldn’t be more apt. Overweight. Sedentary. Winded by a flight of stairs, pausing halfway like he’s summiting Everest. He is the product of abundance without discipline, comfort without consequence, a culture of convenience, couches, and calories. And he is told, endlessly, that his problems are emotional rather than physical.

Law of attraction

Looksmaxxing begins where denial ends. It says the body matters; the face matters; presentation matters. It refuses to treat biology as a slur. It doesn’t ask permission to acknowledge that attraction is selective, visual, and often cruel.

In a dating environment dominated by apps, where most singles are judged in a fraction of a second, this isn’t ideology but reality. That honesty unsettles people who have built careers telling men soothing stories about how the world ought to work rather than how it does.

As noted above, looksmaxxing can become obsessive. That pattern is familiar in any movement shaped by exclusion. But remove the extremes, and what remains is entirely reasonable. Lift weights. Lose the gut. Fix posture. Groom properly. Dress like you respect yourself. Sleep. Eat like an adult. Stop looking like you lost a bet with your mirror. None of this is radical. None of it is hateful. It is common sense.

Man up

What really offends critics isn’t the vanity but the accountability. Looksmaxxing puts the burden back on the individual in a culture addicted to external blame. It tells men that improvement is possible, but optional excuses are not. That message is intolerable to systems that profit from passivity. It is far easier to medicalize male dissatisfaction than to admit that a doughy, slumped, self-neglecting body will be judged accordingly.

There is also a class element no one wants to touch. Good looks are increasingly a luxury good: time to train; money for decent food; knowledge of grooming, style, and fitness. These are not evenly distributed. Telling men that looks don’t matter is a convenient way to ignore how much effort the winners quietly invest. Looksmaxxing is, in part, a grassroots attempt to close that gap — crude at times, desperate at others. But earnest.

There is also an undeniable element of misandry at play. When women improve their appearance, it is framed as empowerment, self-care, or self-expression. When men do the same — deliberately, analytically, and without apology — it is framed as an illness requiring immediate intervention. Looksmaxxing, a movement dominated by men, is treated as evidence of a psychological defect. The behavior is identical; the judgment is not. The double standard is structural.

Alexandre Guerra/Getty Images

What about both?

And most straight women, if they are honest, aren’t confused about what they find attractive. Who doesn’t want a good-looking man? Who doesn’t respond positively to a strong frame, a defined jawline, a body that signals health and self-command?

This doesn’t negate the need for depth. No one wants a handsome face paired with the emotional range of a vacuum cleaner. But the inverse is no more appealing. Emotional intelligence struggles to shine when it is housed in a body that signals neglect. The idea that a man must choose between substance and appearance is false. It is entirely possible — indeed reasonable — to demand both.

Looksmaxxing doesn’t promise eternal happiness, but it does promise leverage — a chance to be seen before being dismissed. A chance to compete rather than be invisible. For the overweight man incapable of doing a single pull-up, it offers something rare: a clear target and a measurable path.

Looksmaxxing exists because the social contract broke first. When institutions stopped offering stable work, when dating turned into a market, when community receded and screens advanced, men adapted.

Mock looksmaxxing if you want. Call it vain. Call it sad. But don’t call it irrational. It isn’t the sickness but the symptom. And until we are willing to tell the truth about attraction, status, and the price of neglect, young men will keep gravitating toward the only strategy that abandons pretense.

My parents ‘arranged my marriage’ at 16; maybe I should have taken them up on it

I met Natalie Carlson at a big Christmas party for my dad’s clinic. It was in a big house. Everyone was dressed up. I was 16.

There was a roaring fire, a big Christmas tree, and a basement where the younger kids could play pool.

During my 20s, I went through a nightclub phase. Hanging out in clubs, I encountered very few cheerful women with bright faces and plaid skirts.

Natalie was the daughter of one of my dad’s colleagues. She had long dark hair and wore a plaid skirt. My memory is that she was cheerful, smart, fun to talk to.

Since our fathers were both doctors, our lives were somewhat similar. We had a lot to talk about. We had other things in common as well. We were both good students. We were both looking forward to college.

A week later, at dinner, my parents informed me that a marriage had been arranged between Natalie and me. They laughed when they told me this. It was a joke, of course.

My parents had run into Natalie’s parents, and everyone agreed how comfortable we looked together and that we’d be a perfect match.

A dowry and an exchange of goats had been decided on. Everyone thought this was very funny.

First date (or lack thereof)

Not long after that, in a quieter moment, my mother actually suggested I contact Natalie. Maybe she would want to get together.

I wasn’t totally against this idea. In fact, I was excited by it. I hadn’t really thought about going on “a date” with Natalie. But now that I had, it seemed like a good idea.

Unfortunately, there were logistical problems. She went to a different high school. She had her own friends. I didn’t have a car. I was too shy to call her.

I mean, I liked girls. I’d had girlfriends. But I didn’t have to arrange “dates” with them. We just ended up together. Through school. We’d meet up at dances or beer parties.

The idea of going on an official date with a girl ... a girl I met through my parents ... that seemed too weird. And not natural. And like too much pressure. So I never got around to calling Natalie.

Lingering dreams of love

Still, this idea of Natalie and me lingered within my family. Natalie continued to come up in family conversations. When she did, everyone at the dinner table would look in my direction. It wasn’t an inside joke exactly. It was just something we were all aware of. My parents seemed almost wistful at the thought of it.

Oddly enough, I was wistful too. I have a very clear memory — one of the most vivid of my youth — of walking across the front lawn of my high school and imagining myself, years in the future, with Natalie Carlson as my wife.

What a calming, comfortable thought this was! Having this decision made for me, having the choice of a female companion removed from my troubled adolescent brain and put safely in the hands of responsible adults. Who else would know better what was best for us?

‘Free Bird’

Perhaps I sensed, even then, that an early marriage to someone like Natalie was my best chance for a sane, reasonable life.

Natalie was an attractive, intelligent, good-natured person. How many girls like her would I come across in the future?

Of course, being a teenager, I assumed the answer was: a lot. Millions. An unlimited amount.

Which is why I didn’t need to get married young. I could put it off. Live a little first. And how did I know I would even like being married? I was into Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith. And punk rock. None of my musical heroes was advocating the joys of marriage.

Quite the opposite. Being single and free, that was the best life. Just ask Lynyrd Skynyrd!

Besides which, I had ideas of becoming a writer. Wouldn’t marriage get in the way of that?

Men going their own way

And so, conforming to the norms of the late 20th century, I did not marry Natalie, or even speak to her again. I continued with my life, following my own tastes and inclinations and not my parents.

The girls I socialized with for the remainder of high school were mostly upper-middle class, intelligent, college-bound. Much like Natalie. They drove Volkswagen Rabbits and took Advanced Placement classes. They went to nice suburban high schools like the one I went to.

At college, the idea of marriage was even more frowned upon than it had been in high school. The women at my college were there to start their own lives, their own careers. They weren’t looking for husbands, like the women of my parents’ generation.

As college progressed, I played in bands and lived an increasingly rebellious and dissolute lifestyle. I began to gravitate toward more dramatic girls, young women who were prone to dark moods, who drank and did drugs.

During my 20s, I went through a nightclub phase. Hanging out in clubs, I encountered very few cheerful women with bright faces and plaid skirts.

In my 30s, I calmed down a bit and eventually established myself as a writer. But that was not particularly conducive to stable relationships either.

Also, my “wild years” had extended a decade longer than most people’s, and this had left its mark. I was still an intelligent, college-educated person. But I was pretty rough around the edges.

By the time I was in my late 30s, even if I did come across a Natalie Carlson, I wouldn’t have known what to do with her. Nor would she have known what to do with me.

Marriage, at last

At 44, I finally tried my hand at marriage. It was a risky match, to a complicated person. Not surprisingly, it didn’t last.

But I learned something important from the attempt: that the actual state of being married was not nearly as constrictive as I’d imagined. Even for an undomesticated person like myself, married life was full of subtle joys and small comforts.

When this first attempt failed, I assumed I would marry again, now that I understood the institution’s many benefits.

But that didn’t happen. Maybe I waited too long. Maybe I was too comfortable being on my own.

In my own defense, I had grown up in a time in American history when married life, family life were not valued very much. It was uncool. It was boring. It was oppressive. It was the mistake your parents made.

Other people — smarter people than me — ignored this cultural messaging and started families anyway. I did not.

Photo by Amy Humphries/Getty Images

Nostalgia for Natalie

And so I sometimes find myself thinking of Natalie Carlson. Sweet, enthusiastic, 16-year-old Natalie. With her smiling face and plaid skirt. What if that arranged marriage had actually happened?

It’s a pretty intriguing idea. If we’d been born in a different time, in a different culture, she might be in the other room right now as I write this. With her graying hair piled on her head and her feet up, sipping a cup of tea.

We’d have grown kids by now. They’d be off at college, or beginning their careers, or starting families of their own. If they happened to call, we would both hover over the speakerphone, eager to hear their voices.

Would I trade that life for what I have now? I might.

From what I can tell, marriage is not so much a process of finding the perfect person. It’s more of a process of growing into each other over time. Which probably works better if you start early.

And it probably wouldn’t hurt to get some input from elsewhere. From someone who knows you. Like your parents.

We shared interests, humor, and great chemistry ... then she asked about our 'values'

I matched with Jane on OkCupid. Not Tinder (which is for hookups). Not Hinge (which is for hookups with intellectuals). But OkCupid, which is — in the online dating world — a kind of normie land.

That’s where the more ordinary, more boring singles go to meet people they can do boring things with (meet for coffee, etc.).

'You don’t have to live like this. You can just have coffee with a person.'

Jane was above average in looks. She had a job. She liked stuff I liked. She didn’t have pictures of herself doing sexy poses on a yacht. Or sneering and holding up her middle finger to the camera.

She seemed nice. Like genuinely nice. And normal. Possibly sane. That’s a serious win in the online dating realm.

The fine art of small talk

We texted back and forth on the OkCupid app, chatting, getting to know each other.

When our conversation reached a natural lull, I proposed a coffee date for later that week. I suggested a quiet café in the city. She said yes.

For the next couple of days, I daydreamed about our meeting. I felt like even if we didn’t fall in love, it would still be nice to have coffee with a relaxed, easygoing person.

This is often the best part of dating: those moments of happy anticipation, of feeling pleasantly excited about a date.

A surprise message!

But then, on the night before our date, I got a new message from Jane. I thought she was going to cancel. That happens a lot. People get cold feet.

Before I even opened her message, I considered how I might convince her to go through with our meeting. I often got cold feet myself before internet dates. Everybody did.

I would remind her it was just coffee, just a half-hour of her time. And the café was nice. You could look out the window. Why not? You only live once ...

I opened her message. It wasn’t cold feet. She was writing because we hadn’t discussed our “values” in our previous messaging. Shared values were important to her in a relationship, she said. She wanted to confirm that we were “on the same page” in that regard.

Bridge Entertainment Labs

How to respond?

I was surprised by this message. This didn’t sound like the person I had been texting with before. She hadn’t mentioned her values in our previous conversation. She didn’t put them in her profile. That’s why I liked her!

I hadn’t put my values in my profile either. Like what kind of values was she even talking about? Did she mean things like being an honest and upstanding guy? I try to do that.

Or did “values” just mean political positions? Like on immigration reform, or abortion, or mail-in ballots?

This was a tricky situation. I would have to think about it.

Boys vs. girls

The problem was, I’m a guy. When I think of “values,” I think of things like being “good on your word.” Like if you say you’re going to help your buddy move, you help him move. Even if it’s raining.

Or like when you’re a kid and you get in a fight. You don’t try to really hurt the other guy. Once somebody wins, you let up. You act in an honorable way.

Which is different from the qualities women value: compassion. Empathy. Helping people who can’t help themselves. These are also excellent characteristics for a person to have. But they are a little more female-coded.

But what if Jane was thinking of specific things, like she hates Trump and insists that I hate him too? That doesn’t seem fair.

The truth is that men and women approach politics differently. In the past, that was considered a good thing. That was the yin and yang of heterosexual relationships.

I thought back to past girlfriends. Had we always agreed about politics? Of course not. Had it caused problems in the relationships? Not really. In some ways, it made them stronger.

Beware the friend group

I still had to respond to Jane. What should I say? I went back through our original text conversation. There she was: nice, agreeable Jane. Just like I remembered.

So why the sudden need to clarify our values?

I concluded this was probably her friends. Or maybe her co-workers. Or maybe her therapist. Jane had told somebody about our date and they were advising her not to meet me until she had questioned me about my political orientation.

The response

I didn’t know what to write back. I started texting different things but then deleted them. And then I felt sad. Sad for her. Sad for myself. An invisible wall of toxic politics was being forced between us, blocking us from the simple pleasure of meeting up.

I finally texted: “I try not to discuss politics on the first date.” And then I said something like: “You don’t have to live like this. You can just have coffee with a person.”

She didn’t respond right away. Maybe she was thinking about it. I hoped she was.

But then the next morning we were unmatched. She had disappeared. Maybe she had blocked me? Then I felt even more sad. And I felt bad for her.

What could have been

But I still think about Jane. What if she had been the one? In another time, a less political era, we might have met for coffee, gone for a walk, made a connection.

She would put up with my male perspective. I would put up with her female perspective. Like men and women have been doing throughout human history.

Who knows what might have happened?

Misogyny? Please: Our real problem is female entitlement

With sensitive subjects, I believe it’s best to be direct, so let’s rip the Band-Aid off: This article is about female narcissism.

It’s not about men’s faults; those are catalogued and exaggerated around the clock, every day of the year. This piece is about a truth that many people know, and have noticed, but that almost no one will dare say.

I spent decades being the 'gay best friend' in platonic female friendships. Men like me know things about women that many other men don’t.

Since the rise of feminism in the 1960s, American women have entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers, overtaken men in college matriculation (58%), and become the vast numerical majority in every industry related to childcare and instruction.

But a strange and contradictory thing has happened along the way. The more "equality" American women have gained, the more solipsistic, entitled, self-focused, and immature they've become.

Exiles in gyno-ville

We are told that women have it worse than ever and that the average man is a misogynist. Not a “sexist.” Not even a “male chauvinist pig,” as the ladies in "9 to 5"would have called such men in the days of “women’s lib.” Nay. Men are now misogynists, a word that means roiling hatred for women because they’re women.

It is a term that, until the past 15 years, was only used to describe the most depraved men, psycho-sexual serial killers such as Richard Ramirez (the “night stalker”) or Ed Gein (“the butcher of Plainfield”).

Now, it’s glibly tossed off by self-confident but dissatisfied women toward men who don’t symbolically kneel and kiss their Manolo Blahnik shoes.

Men don’t want a second date with a woman? Misogynist. Male colleagues complain about women in HR censoring their conversations and managing their tone and terminology? Misogyny. Women with part-time jobs, or women who take time off to nurture their newborns, complain hilariously about the “gender pay gap.” They claim falsely that women are paid less for the exact same work with the exact same years of service. It’s not true. Not even a little bit.

But if you point that fact out? You guessed it: misogynist.

Hag-iography

I’m in an interesting position when it comes to commenting on the never-ending war of the sexes, a war that is being waged mainly by women against men. We men didn’t ask for these hostilities.

As a 50-year-old gay man, I spent the majority of my adult life as a leftist liberal before I matured and found grown-up conservatism. This meant I spent decades being the “gay best friend” in platonic female friendships. Men like me know things about women that many other men don’t.

When I was enacting an everyday version of Jack and Karen on "Will and Grace," I was the toast of female society. But when I began to notice the entitlement, the diva-like behavior, and the “give me stuff for free and expect nothing in return” attitude of many modern women, I was thrown to the curb.

Former friends called me — wait for it — a misogynist. And not just a misogynist but an especially virulent one. “Gay men are the most misogynistic men on the planet,” such women say in between sips of mimosas and texts to their gay BFF about what color they should ask for at the nail salon.

Some even speculated that my “anger at women” foretold a future career as a spree killer (I wish I were joking).

The fog of feminism

We’re not experiencing an epidemic of male misogyny. We’ve been living in a gynocracy for decades, and we’re saddled with a bumper crop of women who have never been told “no.” They’ve never been denied a participation trophy or a promotion to HR manager. They’ve never been told they’re not a “10.” They’re not even expected to say “thank you” when a gentleman holds a door for a lady.

Some readers think I exaggerate. They’re constructing an image of me as a “bitter” or “frustrated” man. This is where the modern female mind (and the minds of too many feckless, gelded men) go when women are held to the same standards of deportment and adult behavior that men are expected to maintain.

It’s a fish-who-doesn’t-know-what-water-is problem. Since the flower power era, feminism has been the oxygen that all Americans, liberal and conservative, breathe. We think outsized female self-regard and entitlement is normal, but it’s not. It’s recent, and it’s at the root of huge societal problems, “wokeness” being the biggest.

Dumping on men

Let me give you an example from the real world. This will indeed seem like “no big deal” to many readers, and it’s true that it’s a mild incident. But consider whether you would react that way if the sexes were reversed.

I went to the city dump to unload a car full of branches and lawn trimmings. As I hauled the leaves over to the pile, two late-middle-aged women in twin-set sweaters and pearls were doing the same about five feet from me.

One said to the other, knowing full well that I was standing there, “Where are the men? Why should we have to do this? Do they do anything?” They both gave a soft, suburban chuckle. Her friend responded, “At least when women are around we know work will get done.”

Were I to respond to those women the way they would have responded to me in the reverse, I would have shrieked, “Misandrist!” and run home to tell my wife how unsafe I felt at the town grass tip. The point is, it would not even occur to most men to be so gauche about women in mixed company. Not only are most men not inclined to give women social offense that way, they know damned well they’d be punished if they did.

NurPhoto/Getty Images

Expired tarts

This brings me to, of all people, Taylor Swift. The biggest pop star in the world became a household name by singing forgettable songs about inadequate men and the trauma of a teenager’s dating life. Thing is, she’s still singing about this stuff at age 35. And her concerts are packed not just with teen girls, but with suburban moms well into their 50s, crying the way adolescent girls did in the early '60s when the Beatles first washed ashore.

This is not normal. This infantilized girlboss pose by mothers and career women has no historical precedent. For all the talk of shiftless, video-gaming boys and young men, we spill precious little ink on the fact that adult women think nothing of dressing like 16-year-old tarts and waxing about how they’re in their “soft girl era.”

It’s undignified and so is the direction Miss Swift is taking with the publicity for her new album. Take a look at the photo she released on social media.

It’s too generous to call that garment a teddy; it’s closer to a gownless evening strap (pacé Shirley Bassey). Her rump is exposed, and she’s bending over to stick out her backside while leaning against what looks like a truck stop bathroom wall. Even the lighting looks like grimy gay male pornography from the 1970s.

Aging like milk

What does this have to do with the state of ordinary, everyday, non-Taylor Swift women? A lot.

Miss Swift is doing on stage what millions of workaday women are doing on the street. She is refusing to age gracefully, and she’s getting raunchier as time goes on. This has been a pattern with women for the past 15 years, as mothers don’t want to be seen as mothers but as the older, more ... experienced version of their nubile daughters.

This is the friction point where we can see that modern female narcissism is an expression of extreme insecurity in women. These ladies have a terribly sad belief that the only thing of value they have to offer is sex. And no, it’s not the "male gaze” or “male producers” who are at fault. Taylor Swift — and Linda Smith down the street — are doing this to themselves.

Women call it the “invisibility” problem. On leaving youth and entering middle age, they say, men stop looking at them as desirable. This is a double-edged sword for most women. Many express relief at not having their breasts and backside ogled (men are cads; women aren’t making that up), but at the same time, they complain bitterly about no longer being perceived as sex objects.

Lust for life?

They blame this on “patriarchal” male tastes, but that’s just feminist cope. If fault there be, it is the fault of nature, not social constructs. Women lose their sexual appeal after youth in a way that men, largely, do not. This is a fact. No, it's not a fun or favorite fact. But it is a fact.

Women seem to believe they are entitled to be lusted after and desired at 45, 55, 65, the way a fresh-faced college girl turns men’s heads. It’s ridiculous. Look at Madonna (67), Cher (79), or Jennifer Lopez (56). That’s the road Taylor Swift is on, and mind-bogglingly, it’s the road way too many normal women seem determined to travel.

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The problem these women are facing, I believe, stems from the fact that so many have stayed adolescent girls their whole lives instead of learning from the example of their grandmothers. There is an arc to a woman's life. Some have called it Maiden, Mother, Crone. If you don't like that, label it some way you find pleasing.

Grande dames wanted

There is a role for middle-aged and old women, at least there always used to be. It was upheld in almost all societies before the mid-20th century. Even the actresses of old Hollywood, beauty queens in youth like Joan Crawford, assumed this role as they aged. Our grandmothers assumed this role.

It is the role of the grande dame. It is the carriage of a mature, put-together, self-confident, and wise woman. A true matriarch. Hair goes up, and hems go down.

Youthful beauty and sex appeal are natural to the young part of a woman’s life; this tracks with evolutionarily programmed facts of reproduction. When one is past one’s reproductive prime, life offers new roles to men and women.

But not in the 2020s. But it doesn’t have to be this way for women. Dignity is available to those who will step into it.

Even before it burned them, Tea was toxic for women

The viral women-only “dating safety” app, Tea, was a digital doxxing site cosplaying as “women empowerment” — and a reputational weapon against men everywhere.

But in a delicious twist of irony, after not one but two massive data breaches, it’s the women behind the screen who are now quaking in their boots.

To quote Michael Scott, “Well, well well, how the turntables.”

Tea wasn’t a step forward. It was a symptom. A glitch in a culture that’s forgotten how to talk to each other face-to-face.

The Tea app was marketed as a breakthrough for women’s safety — a sleek, viral whisper network dressed up as a tech solution for the modern dating world. It promised a digital sisterhood: a space where women could vet men, anonymously share “red flags,” and crowdsource protection in the Wild West of dating apps and swiping right.

But beneath the branding and the TikTok testimonials was something much darker: a platform that enabled digital doxxing with zero accountability, all under the guise of empowerment.

A Yelp for men

Through the app, women could upload a man’s name, number, or social media handle and attach either “green flags” or “red flags” — a kind of Yelp review for men. The intent, we’re told, was noble: Women warn each other about bad actors before wasting time or falling into danger.

But Tea offered none of the structures that real accountability requires. No requirement for evidence. No obligation to identify yourself. No meaningful way for the accused to defend themselves. It’s little surprise that what began as a tool for safety quickly turned into a tool for revenge and humiliation, based on pure speculation in the emotionally charged world of online dating.

And when Tea went viral on TikTok, launching it to the No. 2 spot on the Apple App Store, the stakes got even higher. With millions of users and near-instant exposure, a single anonymous red flag could follow someone indefinitely — without trial, without appeal, and without context.

Twisted irony

Tea just had another viral moment — and it wasn’t because of TikTok. The self-purported anonymous app had not one, but two major data breaches. Though the company reported that the breach exposed 72,000 user images (including driver’s licenses and selfies), other experts weighed in, claiming the breach was bigger than the company was letting on.

A security researcher, Kasra Rahjerdi, told 404 Media that he was able to access more than 1.1 million private messages from Tea's users. The messages included "intimate" conversations about topics ranging from rape and divorce to abortion and infidelity. Rahjerdi also said that several chats included personal information like phone numbers and locations to meet up.

However ironic the data breach is, it’s largely beside the point. Tea was flawed at its very core. No matter how noble the marketing, the model was always built on anonymity, unverified accusations, and reputational risk without recourse. It didn’t just fail to protect women — it encouraged them to wield unaccountable power over men and called it justice.

Digitized gossip

In the past, warning a friend about a man’s character came with weight. You did it face-to-face. You had to stand behind your words. You risked being wrong. You risked being held accountable. It wasn’t anonymous — it was personal. And because of that, it was taken seriously.

Tea tried to digitize that ancient role of communal discernment and strip it of all responsibility. But accountability without cost isn’t accountability — it’s just gossip. And digital gossip, unlike the whispered kind, doesn’t stay in the room. It stays online. Forever.

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Sure, women can be vengeful or petty. But Tea didn’t explode for that reason. It went viral because so many women are profoundly alone. We’ve lost the webs of embodied community that used to help us navigate love, danger, and everything in between — sisters, mothers, friends, pastors, neighbors. Into that vacuum stepped the algorithm. And it offered us the illusion of safety, in exchange for the erosion of truth, accountability, and community.

Tea wasn’t a step forward. It was a symptom. A glitch in a culture that’s forgotten how to talk to each other face-to-face — and how to seek justice in public, not in secret.

In the end, Tea didn’t just fail to keep women safe. It made all of us — men and women alike — more exposed, more suspicious, and more divided.

NY Times shocker: Lovelorn feminist in open marriage blames men

Jean Garnett’s recent New York Times screed, "The Trouble with Wanting Men," poses as cultural critique. It’s not.

It’s a bloated confession, narcissistic navel-gazing wrapped in feminist jargon.

If heterosexual relationships are fundamentally broken, what, one wonders, is the solution? Lesbianism by committee? Celibacy as political statement?

The article reads like a therapy session conducted in public. Unfiltered, sure — but more like a late-night voicemail from an unhinged ex. And painfully personal, without ever brushing up against anything profound. It’s Lena Dunham with a thesaurus, mistaking self-exposure for substance.

Fatal attraction

The premise is absurd. Women are "fed up" with the “mating behavior” of men. So fed up that they need a fancy name for it. Heterofatalism — the academy’s latest made-up spew. A term coined to canonize female disappointment and package failed flings as compelling commentary.

The term suggests fatal attraction to heterosexuality itself. As if being straight were a terminal diagnosis. As if desire for men were a character flaw requiring academic intervention.

Consider the writer's "case studies," if you can call them that. A man cancels a date because he’s anxious. This, we’re told, is proof of masculine failure.

A lawyer takes too long to text back. Suddenly it’s a crisis in male communication.

Then there’s the polyamorous sex enthusiast — honest, up front, emotionally literate. And yet even he disappoints. Too clear. Too composed. Too self-aware to project fantasy onto. His failure, it seems, is not failing enough. In Garnett’s world, men can’t win — not because they’re cruel, but because they’re human.

Tramp stamp

Garnett’s romantic history tells the real story, though she frames it as a feminist awakening. She and her husband enjoyed an open relationship, a setup that gave her license to chase new highs under the banner of sexual liberation.

What follows isn’t empowerment. It’s a slow-motion train wreck of bad choices, dressed up as theory. She blows up her marriage for a man defined by his “incapacity to commit” — J., the sad-eyed drifter who all but hands her a warning label. He’s detached, clear about his limits, uninterested in anything lasting. She pursues him anyway, certain she’s the exception.

When it all falls apart, as it inevitably does, she blames him for being exactly who he said he was. Garnett might be a capable writer, but she’s adrift — romantically, intellectually, and morally. Deluded, self-excusing, and painfully detached from reality, she isn’t just a product of modern feminism. She’s its poster child.

Soft boys

The "good guy" phenomenon reveals the deeper pathology. Men, having internalized decades of feminist scolding, now perform contrition. They soften their edges. They distance themselves from anything deemed traditionally masculine. They over-apologize, over-communicate, and tiptoe through relationships as if masculinity itself were a moral failing.

But this softness — the very quality they were told women wanted — has become the new target. Too hesitant. Too self-conscious. Too accommodating. In trying to be safe, they became invisible. The irony is brutal: Women spent years dismantling the masculine ideal, only to mourn its absence once it was gone.

Whine tasting

Garnett and her dinner companions ask, “Where are the men who can handle hard stuff?” They drove them out. They turned strength into suspicion, decisiveness into something diabolical. Now, faced with the results of their own demands, they sneer at the men left behind.

The restaurant scene is a window into this cultural mess. Four women, past their prime, wine in hand, mocking male inadequacy, giggling over penis jokes like it’s political commentary.

This woman's work

Then comes the grievance inflation monologue. Women, apparently, are now burdened with interpreting “mystifying male cues.” They call themselves “relationship-maintenance experts,” as if carrying the emotional weight of a partnership is a modern injustice. But relationships have always required attention and effort, from both sides. What was once called being an adult is now considered a form of oppression.

And then there’s the pièce de résistance: “hermeneutic labor.” A term so overstuffed that it buckles under its own pretension. It’s academic nonsense for what used to be called understanding your partner.

Women read signals. Men retreat. That’s the rhythm. One leans in, the other pulls back. Not because of patriarchy, but because intimacy is uneven, unpredictable, and often inconvenient. This dynamic didn’t arrive with gender studies. It’s been around since the first couple argued under a tree.

Rebel without a cause

Garnett's sexual encounters reveal the true dynamic. She wants dominance from men. The guitar player who makes her wait, who calls her a "bratty sub." This excites her. Clear masculine authority works.

Yet she simultaneously resents male confidence as problematic. It never occurs to her that the contradiction isn’t societal. It’s entirely personal. She’s not uncovering a grand cultural flaw. She is the flaw.

The contradiction is stark. Feminist theory demands male sensitivity. Female biology craves male strength. Women caught between ideology and instinct blame men for the confusion. "Heterofatalism" becomes the convenient scapegoat.

Consider the broader implications. If heterosexual relationships are fundamentally broken, what, one wonders, is the solution? Lesbianism by committee? Celibacy as political statement? The heterofatalists offer no answers, only complaints. So many complaints.

The real tragedy is simpler. Modern dating culture has poisoned romantic relationships for everyone. Apps reduce people to profiles. Hookup culture eliminates courtship. Endless options prevent commitment. Both sexes suffer equally.

But women have weaponized their suffering into theoretical frameworks. Men's pain remains invisible, their struggles dismissed as weakness, their anxiety mocked as inadequacy.

Intellectualizing idiocy

The solution is not new terminology. It's old wisdom. Lower expectations. Accept imperfection. Stop treating romantic disappointment as social pathology. Recognize that good relationships require compromise from both parties.

"Heterofatalism" is not a real phenomenon, of course. It's a fancy name for ordinary human disappointment, a way to intellectualize personal failures, to repackage private mistakes as cultural critique. To turn individual shortcomings into a shared burden everyone else is expected to answer for.

Academia enables the absurdity. Professors build careers on cataloging female dissatisfaction. Students earn degrees studying their own disastrous dating decisions. The circular logic is perfect. Every bad date becomes data. Every ghosting proves the theory.

Meanwhile, actual problems go unsolved. Birth rates collapse. Marriage rates plummet. Loneliness epidemics spread. But sure, let's focus on heterofatalism. Let's give hyper-liberal women another reason to avoid commitment. Another excuse to blame men for everything.

The real fatalism is accepting this story of victimhood, thinking half the population are powerless against their own desires. Women deserve better than this pseudo-intellectual mush. Men deserve better than being cast as villains in every failed relationship. And society deserves more than recycled heartbreak dressed up in academic drag.

We need honesty about modern romance. Not another made-up term for problems as old as desire itself.