On Polarization

weirdmaxxing as a dating strategy

The writer Sarah Haider wrote the following tweet thread in response to this video of Tom Holland:¹²

Posting this because many women are signaling otherwise: He is an excellent dancer and seems like a wonderful partner but ngl this is a huge turnoff. It is much the same as women cutting their hair short. "Flex" for the hotties, yes, but only because it really does have a cost.

If your goal is to settle down / start a family, it is stupid not to maximize your pool wherever it isn't too costly to do so. The bigger the pool, the more you can afford to be selective with what is on offer. This is why I think counter-signals are nearly always dumb.

This tweet profoundly misunderstands the dating value of professional-level male dancers who are both heterosexual and under 45. I assure you, straight male dancers can easily replace you with someone who isn’t uptight about contra skirts or his star turn as Dr. Frank in the Rocky shadowcast.

I didn’t see people reblogging that video of Tom Holland dancing to Umbrella 346860268 times for someone to say with their whole chest that women don’t like Tom Holland in drag. Tom Holland dancing to Umbrella is, in fact, the only video I have ever seen from Lip Sync Battle, a TV show that apparently ran for five seasons. The video didn’t go viral because of some weird virtue-signalling. The video went viral because a lot of people—a lot of women—think it’s hot when Tom Holland crossdresses.

To be sure, Tom Holland has a fantastic body. And he’s a skilled dancer: he actually has professional training in both ballet and tap. No doubt the video wouldn’t have gone viral if he had a dadbod and couldn’t do a one-arm handstand. But Hollywood suffers from no shortage of men with great bodies who have professional dance training. The crossdressing also helped!

I think Haider’s tweet actually says something interesting about attraction. Here are two models of how attraction works:

1. Everyone basically agrees on what’s attractive. Everyone likes (say) physically fit, charming, funny, rich people with symmetrical faces.

   1. The problem is getting the best partner you can.

   2. The right strategy is to improve yourself as much as you can, then settle.

2. Everyone is a unique and special snowflake with their own idiosyncratic opinions on what makes for an attractive partner. I like blondes, you like brunettes. I like bookworms, you like party girls.

   1. The problem is matching with people who are compatible with you.

   2. The right strategy is to filter out incompatible people as efficiently as possible.

Obviously, both are true. Equally obviously, both are true in different degrees for different people. Some people care primarily about the stuff everyone cares about; some people care primarily about their own idiosyncratic preferences; some very lucky people even prefer conventionally unattractive traits. But whether you think the first or the second model is the more accurate viewpoint on dating in general changes how you should behave.