I want the culture to value smart women more than ‘hot’ women

It was a simple and innocent question, but I didn’t know how to answer it.

“Was she hot?”

I had met a woman earlier in the week who had impressed me and I told someone about her. This was the man’s instinctive question about the woman. He didn’t intend any disrespect. He apparently thought it was the obvious question about a woman who had impressed another man.

He didn’t ask whether she was brilliant. He didn’t ask whether she was funny. Or insightful or interesting or creative or loving. Or a dozen other things that seemed more obvious to me to ask. He was asking about how she presented herself sexually — because that’s what our popular culture has taught most people to value.

I didn’t know how to answer his question, because the things I found impressive about the woman didn’t start with superficial sexuality. Yes, she was very attractive, so she could have presented herself as a “hot girl” if she had wanted, but that was the wrong frame for this discussion.

I love physical beauty in women. And I appreciate sexuality in women. But all of the other things I appreciate about women are lenses which modify whether a women is attractive to me. Unfortunately, something in our culture now teaches men to see women as “hot” or “not,” irrespective of those other factors. And it leads more and more women to present themselves as mindless “hot girls” in order to gain approval and desire from men who have bought into that frame of judgment.

This mindset is dangerous and wrong — for both men and woman.

This is not a critique from a feminist point of view. Many postmodern feminists actually seem offended if we notice that a woman is physically beautiful, but that’s not what I’m objecting to. I’m perfectly happy to value a woman’s physical beauty — and her sexuality — but I see sexuality as something best saved for a partner in private, not something to be flaunted to the world.

My views about this are very much in line with traditional values, but the cultural values that came with “sexual liberation” starting in the 1960s have left the world looking at my values as quaint and out-of-touch.

When the sexual revolution started, feminists celebrated this change as “empowering” for women. The idea was that women could now be allowed to live with the values of men. What this view overlooked was the simple fact that it took the values and practices of the worst kind of man — and turned those into mainstream cultural values.

As this overtly sexual way of presenting women became the cultural norm, things got worse for women, not better. The men and women who had all previously agreed that sexuality wasn’t a woman’s top value were marginalized. And as the culture adopted this “sexually liberated” view, the other things about women who were truly amazing and laudable were increasingly pushed to the side.

By this point, the culture unconsciously promotes the notion that you should value a mindless bimbo — someone whose real value is her sexuality. Just a few minutes ago, I asked an AI image generator to give me a picture of a “hot woman” and then I asked for a picture of an “intelligent woman.” The two images you see above were what I got.

The woman on the left — who doesn’t really exist, of course, since she’s made up by software — might theoretically be just as intelligent and loving and funny and successful as the woman on the right. But what are the impressions they leave on others by the images they present to the world in these ways?

Even though these two women are created by software, they represent the way our culture sees women — and they represent the differences in what our culture values in women. Men are taught to look for a woman who presents herself to the world as the woman on the left does — and women are often taught that they have little value unless they try to fit this superficial image.

To a large degree, we are often controlled by our basest instincts when there are no limits placed on us by culture or religion. A straight man is typically going to be aroused by the woman on the left, especially if his culture teaches him that this is how a beautiful woman ought to present herself.

But ask yourself this. Do you think a man with healthy values would prefer his wife to present herself to the world like the woman on the left? Or like the woman on the right? Which of these images would such a man want for the mother of his children? Which sort would he want as his sister or as his friends?

A man who’s driven by his hormones is going to prefer the woman on the left. A man who’s driven by healthier values — the kind that make a society cohesive and safe for all of us — is going to prefer the woman on the right.

I don’t want politicians or religious leaders to have the power to enforce what I believe about how men or women should present themselves to the world. But I do believe we’re better off when more of us believe that sexuality is something best saved for a partner in private — and that our children need to grow up being taught to value more than superficial sexuality in women.

We need a culture (or a new subculture) that isn’t so hung up on “hot” women. We need a culture that’s far more impressed by women who are smart and witty and confident and competent.

If you can find a woman who has these other sort of attributes — and then who is sexually attractive on top of those things — that’s a “total package” worth celebrating. She’s the kind of woman who a smart man with healthy values wants to marry and start a family with — instead of with the bimbos who the culture seems to value so much.