Hooters and another Lovely Lass...

As is not so uncommon I’m once again indebted to one of the kids crewing my favorite little diner for the thought source beginnings of a post.  I’ve had my head off in me own little world(s) for a while now writing on the stories, hadn’t really been paying much attention to other things, not really.  Anyway, early this morning the lass in question was involved in a chore that put her across from me (sitting at the counter sucking down coffee waiting on the day to begin), and rather than focus on the chore she was rambling a bit.  She’s a good storyteller, an intelligent young woman who’s easy comfortable company, easy on the eyes, end and upshot was directly she’d sparked a thought.

She was telling the story of the time she applied to work at a Hooters.  You know, Hooters, the place where they cater to all the misplaced bottle babies of the world.  She had the job if she wanted it, no issue there, but the manager who interviewed her said he was afraid she might have trouble fitting in being as how she was to intelligent.  Of all things... to intelligent to work where stereotype sexy is the defining job requirement.  As the story went she sat in with the other girls for an hour at a slow spot in their shift and in the end agreed with the manager.  She came to the conclusion that if the most intelligent comment heard in an hour involved a new shade of eye liner then no, probably not an enjoyable place for her to work.  She took a different job, like I said, she is an intelligent lass.

The thought she brought to focus doesn't have anything to do with eyeliner, or Hooters for that matter.  It has more to do with the cultural cliché of sexy dumb, blond or otherwise, and what that says about a significant fraction of the culture.  

Sometimes the mask does slip...
 when she doesn't think anyone is looking

Once upon a long time ago I knew a sexy blond, and yes, she was sexy, I mean drop dead gorgeous sexy, queer check sexy as we called it back in the day (queer check: walk her through a crowd of fifty boys and forty four of ‘em start dropping IQ points for lack of blood supply and the other six are confirmed gay), and she was anything but dumb.  Unless of course there was a strange male in the picture at which point you’d have sworn (if you didn’t know her) that she’d need help unwrapping her bubble gum.  It was so solidly part of her culture it was foundation deep in her personality, all but automatic. It’s the reasons behind this odd cultural convention I’m spelunking in today looking to see what’s to be found, a new rabbit hole if you will.

From Darwin’s perspective the simple facts of the matter are quite a contradiction.  Intelligence is a plus in the competitions for survival, what would cause the convention of dumb as sexy to not only evolve but endure?  Sexy is, bottom line, tied to procreation: sexy gets people laid, getting laid ends up making babies and smarter parents make smarter babies who generally have the edge in surviving and thriving to make more babies.  How does dumb fit with that? Evolution 101, plain and simple.  But, and this is a big but, Darwin can only provide a simplistic one dimensional reference point drawn from the animals.  To understand the behavior and attitudes of humans you have to engage with the functionality of the collective entities, the dynamics of society transplanted into the individuals, and that is a different matter entirely involving an entirely different set of parameters. Only when you frame the issue against the intersection of the collective entities does it make sense.

(For those new to my writings a collective entity is a set of individuals who offer allegiance to and compliance with the parameters and conventions of some unique social construct  that provides them a portion of their vocabulary of self definition... concept better illuminated in the ongoing “Third Reality of Man” essays.)

Contemplate if you will that portion of womankind who play dumb, and sexy, with the intent of attracting a mate, those who are ultimately defined by their soul deep attitude of inherent feminine superiority (by reason of emotional complexity) that allows them the degree of internal security to stage such a charade in the first place.  These are consummately conventional women evolved to not only survive but thrive in the repressive  patriarchies of the older cultures, secretive creatures really, steeped in a very old and deep tradition of bartering with emotional sustenance or wielding emotional manipulation to fulfill her needs, fully networked through her gossip circles (she just ...adores... Facebook),  they who host an almost exclusively feminine collective entity perhaps best named ceBenignEmoDominatrix (ceBED) to borrow (and bastardize) a bit of the fetish folk’s terminology.  She’s as consummate a hunter as she is gardener, patient and perceptive, but more on her in a bit.  For now lets focus on her prey.

Flip your focus onto those who are most often attracted to her: the hard livin’ hard lovin’ macho male, a man’s man, steel hard heartless... and brittle.  All of those males who in all truth are host and home to a socially inhibited emotional structure, the greater the inhibition the greater his vulnerability, those males who for whatever reason (in this day and age more cultural momentum than anything else) base their self definition in terms of their ability to, and responsibility for, wresting a livelihood from the land and defending that livelihood from all comers, he whose life and total self identity is dedicated to providing sustenance and security  for the mate and children at any cost or consequence to the content or continuance of his life.  

This is his ego, his religion, his ethic, it is his justification for existing.  He like the women described above are the product of the same very old pre-industrial, much less pre-information, set of traditions and values.  This is not of necessity a bad thing, but it is an obsolescent thing in the modern world whose domain is shrinking with each generation.  Of course his dedication isn't one sided altruism, of course not.  Contrary to his public image he’s really not that strong.  There are things he needs to maintain that polished armor exterior, and the truth of the matter is what he needs is exactly what ceBED was evolved to provide.

Way before anyone ever filled out a sexual preference profile on some hinky hook-up web site society evolved ways for the same sort of negotiations to go forward.  When you consider such negotiations set in a social rather than a digital context it isn't hard at all to understand how dumb and sexy ended up paired.  Within the context of her culture the woman who becomes the sexy dumb babe in the presence of a strange male is saying quite a lot to the world with her demeanor, she really is.  Her public stance of sexual availability advertised as intellectual inferiority translates as follows:

“If you accept me as your mate then I’ll make sure you never again have to feel what that hard macho exterior of yours tells me you so often do  feel.  Take me for your mate, give me your fealty and you will never again feel like you are what I am presenting myself as: the lesser, the helpless, ignorant dependent and weak. 

“Regardless of my true abilities I present myself to you in this manner so you know I know how you feel matched against a world you don’t understand.  Understand me in this and it will be mine to validate your ego by sacrificing my own in the eyes of your peers.  If you agree to give me the security of never looking beyond me, give me total control and dominion over your heart, your emotions, be mine and mine alone, my one true possession in the world then this I can and will do for you in the life and livelihood you’ll provide to me, give this to you with my words and my demeanor and my willing body to use as you will.”

Sounds pretty kinky doesn't it, this pre-arranged agreement of submissive dependence locked up in socially sanctioned structures of occult dominance?  It does to me too, but that’s how it translates out against the evidence of reality.  Across the centuries the most stereotypical relationship of the culture, the macho man little woman union, resolves down to something that in all truth would be right at home, is ever more duplicated, in the world of my prime enemy bdsm. The only difference is that in the world of the kinky the scenario is open format open gender where the safeguards against abuse are derived from the survival protocols of recreational pain rather than the socially enforced mandates of chivalry, but that’s actually a small thing.  In many ways the control protocols of the kinky probably run tighter than the old ways, but the motives and the methods are the same.  The net result is and will remain the same: both halves diminished and degraded of potential with all the attending consequences for the land, the society and the culture.  The gooks and goons are definitely smiling about this one.

Truth be told I’d never looked in depth at this conundrum until now, the writing of this has brought several sad realizations, first among them how little things really change.  Just slap on a fresh coat of verbal paint, a new add campaign and run it out the door.  The fools bought it the first time, they’ll buy it again.  How deep the roots of dysfunction really run, how ingrained the weakness and wickedness really are.  Somehow I don’t think the Hooters set has anything to sell me, and I know damn good and well I’m not interested in the modern versions.  Oh well.  Idiot, check the load on your weapons, make sure they’re loose in the holster and then get on your horse and ride.  There’s got to be somewhere.