(Thanks to Deepa for alerting us via the Tip Line!)
Back in college, a single guy friend had a taxonomy of the type of women attracted by the different bands of the political spectrum.
He argued that the average attractive & approachable gal on campus was a soft lefty. She’d advocate things like national healthcare out of a semi-fashionable, prima facie concern for her fellow human beings. Of course, she felt this concern naturally extended into politics & was blind to the economic logic.
Angry, granola gals oppressed by the patriarchy often filled out the far left, weren’t exactly the most dateable & he avoided them like the plague. Being famously politically incorrect, he’d remark that these gals were “either angry cuz men always treated them like sexual objects or angry cuz men never treated them like sexual objects.” I’ll reserve my comments.
By contrast, the few & far between campus Right Wing gals tended to be a tad too country club / prep school for our tastes.
But Libertarian activists? Well unfortunately, a libertarian rally is possibly the only gathering that scares gals off faster than a Star Trek convention. As a self-described libertarian, ’twas a pity.
BUT, enter the first, and possibly the most attractive Desi libertarian female activist I’ve seen in a long time. Govindini Murty was recently profiled in the Washington Post for hosting a Conservative / Libertarian film festival in the People’s Republic of Hollywood –
The festival was organized by a husband-wife duo of young filmmakers, Jason Apuzzo and Govindini Murty, and underwritten by the Foundation for Free Markets, which likes privatizing Social Security, cutting taxes and issuing school vouchers. …Murty, an aspiring actress, says the impetus was, in part, the cool reception she and her husband have received in Hollywood for their own screenplays and their film “Terminal Island,” which premiered at the festival.
You can read more about the film festival here and the surprising press coverage here. If all you want to do is ogle at Govindini a bit more, you can skip to the photos here.
She also writes sharp-tongued movie reviews for the Hollywood Republicans – for ex – her take on Troy –
Someone’s given Hollywood the dangerous idea that it can actually make historical epics the way it once did back in the 1950s. The result is Wolfgang Peterson’s expensive turkey “Troy,” which has more in common with “Dude Where’s My Car” than “The Ten Commandments.” The central love story is shallow and insipid. Orlando Bloom’s Paris and Diane Kruger’s Helen come across as teenagers fumbling in the back seat of a borrowed car, not epic lovers. And when the two actors stand together, I can’t tell them apart. Which one’s the female?
Heh. She sounds like quite the character. Rock on Govindini.
UPDATE – the Govindini’s IMDB entry. This gal rocks!
Govindini and her younger sister began working in their early teens in order to help their mother, and made a number of financial sacrifices in order to keep the family going…When Govindini was fifteen, she lived a year on the island of Borneo, Malaysia… Govindini next received a scholarship to attend Yale University. In addition to working two jobs to pay for her education, Govindini wrote a column for the Yale Daily News, and served as Chair of the Women’s Caucus and Vice-Chair of the Independent Party of the Yale Political Union. …Govindini speaks English, French, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and some Hindi and Malay. She has also studied Latin, and spoke Bengali and Manipuri as a child.
Oh, and of course, more photos
that’s hilarious.
i think the most hilarious thing is desi guys’ “emasculated” asses feeling “offended” by sixteen candles and indiana jones! hahahha!
Q: How many libertarians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. The lightbulb has to take personal responsibility! No hands up, no hands down and it can certainly screw and unscrew itself out of the socket!
She reminds me for some reason of Merle Oberon. Something about the hair and the sweep of the brow….
Merle Oberon has an interesting desi-type history, should you all care to google. Sepia mutineers, a Merle Oberon post would be mighty interesting. Anglo-Indian, she tried to hide it because you couldn’t be open about these things and still star with Laurence Olivier in something as charming as the Divorce of Lady X.
And now back on topic, libertarians are lovely, and this one especially so.
Wow GC, why are you wasting your elite cognitive powers on angry ethnic socialist communist granola activist leftist(liberal for short). You should be out there on TV or in the press and one day, dare I say you would be a…pundit! And who know you might even have an action figure. I mean sure what you write often sounds like demagogic rhetoric often laced with racist and homophobic invective, but I think it’s just that we are not at your cognitive level. Sigh I can still dream….
I was just thinking why stop the free market beliefs at economic policies, why not at all levels. Say for instance cars: get rid speed limits, seat belts, traffic signals, etc…my god think of efficiency. Why stop there what about sports? We don’t referees do we? Get rid of the rules everything would end within 15mintues, no longer will I have to suffer the long games on tv because of stupid regulations….wow
What about police, we don’t need them bothering people do we? All we need is guns and dogs, I’m sure that with everyone carrying guns around then no one would want to do anything wrong….
sluggo, while i appreciate the effort, you remind me of the special ed kids who spend all day coloring in the wrong section of their coloring books.
what exactly did that disjointed mumble about markets have to do with the topic of this thread?
well, didn’t you just kind of illustrate the belligerence that vinod was alluding to?
And here I thought your elite cognitive powers would deciphered my dijointed mumbling, sorry to have gone off topic
whoa! Already time to color?
About mating choices:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/14/health/14men.html
As to height, GC, you’re looking at the one thing that a man can’t change. My question was, to what extent are men judged professionally on the sexual characteristics that they can change, such as their muscularity. You flipped things around by saying that you work hard to raise your hookup prospects. I’m asking you whether your professional prospects depend on your muscularity — it’s a simple question.
More generally, do you think that a man’s looks (those that he can control) play a bigger or smaller role in his professional advancement than a woman’s looks (those she can control)?
Interesting… An Indian-American libertarian commentator – and a woman! This is perhaps the first time that I’ve come across someone like that. I would like to know more about her…
More generally, do you think that a man’s looks (those that he can control) play a bigger or smaller role in his professional advancement than a woman’s looks (those she can control)?
I think there’s a fundamental asymmetry you’re neglecting. If you poll men & women, women will consistently rate their family life to be more important than their career and vice versa.
In every society around the world, men with wealth trade their wealth and status to hook up with beautiful women. You don’t find the converse happening – do you think Carly Fiorina would marry a male secretary, for example?
Just to put this on an empirical foundation:
If table formatting is messed up, see here.
Your failure to include this behavioral asymmetry is the underlying flaw in your analysis. To boil it down (and oversimplify a bit):
1) Men have an easier time getting money (due to innately higher aggressiveness).
2) Women have an easier time getting sex (see above).
3) But men will trade money for sex, and women will trade sex for money. This is what marriage is all about 🙂
4) Thus complaints about the male advantage in acquiring resources must take into account the fact that the nontrivial advantage of males in acquiring resources due to higher aggressiveness is balanced by the fact that any reasonably attractive woman can have as much sex as she wants whenever she wants. Heck, it’s more than balanced.
Judging from the above Hatfield & Clark study, a reasonably attractive woman could hook up with a hundred guys a year if all she was interested in was sex, whereas a reasonably attractive guy would be doing well to get 10. But a moderately competent male couldn’t get 10 times the earnings of a moderately competent woman.
I’m confused as to why that’s relevant to professional success. Perhaps, as you say, men need to earn money in order to get laid. Are you saying that this justifies judging women’s professional performance by their physical attributes? Are you saying that women should be held back from competing with men professionally because men need the money more than women do in order to ensure their reproductive fitness? If men are more aggressive anyway, why do they need to handicap women?
My original questions remain:
Is your professional success contingent upon your muscularity or other aspects of your physical attractiveness that you have control over?
Do you believe that women’s professional success is more dependent upon their physical attributes than that of men?
You’re raising lots of other interesting points, but not addressing these.
Perhaps, as you say, men need to earn money in order to get laid. Are you saying that this justifies judging women’s professional performance by their physical attributes?
What I’m saying is that it is impossible to wipe out the fact that women will be judged disproportionately on their appearance, and men will be judged disproportionately on their accumulated resources.
The point is that money & sex are not equally important or equally easy to get for the two sexes due to biological predispositions. Men are more aggressive and have higher libidos. Women are more cooperative and have higher nurturing instincts. These are mean differences that can and will play themselves out in the world of work.
Again, this is the key point. You insist on putting a Marxist frame on the issue (exploiter vs. exploited):
If men are more aggressive anyway, why do they need to handicap women?
But women handicap themselves when it comes to work through their lack of aggressiveness. Example:
I ask you, is that the fault of men?
re: your questions…
1) Is your professional success contingent upon your muscularity or other aspects of your physical attractiveness that you have control over?
Of course it’s a factor. Try coming to work unshaven, ungroomed, in t-shirt and shorts, etc. and watch how rapidly you’re booted out of the building. Guys who have to wear suits to work every day at investment banks don’t complain about “female gaze” or the “beauty myth”. They do it b/c they know it makes them look better & more professional.
Also, the qualification you appended – “an aspect of appearance you have control over” is irrelevant. You’re against the idea of women being judged on mutable or immutable characteristics related to their appearance at the workplace.
But whether the mostly immutable/innate variables are height or intelligence or looks or what have you, it will determine your success (albeit the weighting is different for different genders):
example 1:
example 2:
2) Do you believe that women’s professional success is more dependent upon their physical attributes than that of men?
Sure, but that’s true for better and for ill. Attractive women have an advantage over similarly attractive men in all kinds of one-on-one sales & service fields. You’re framing this uniformly as a disadvantage for women, but it’s not.
“Why…it’s like she’s protesting metabolism itself.“
Well, what the modern feminist is typically after is doing away with the Yin and the Yang.
It is a protestation against genetics, “The attributes of mothering and fathering are inherent parts of sex differentiation that paves the way to reproduction. This is where the sociology analogy so often drawn between race and sex breaks down in the most fundamental sense. Genetic assimilation is possible through interracial mating, and we can envisage a society that is color blind. But genetic assimilation of male and female is impossible, and no society will be sex-blind.” (American Sociological Review, Vol. 49, No. 1, Feb., 1984. Gender and Parenthood Alice S. Rossi :10)
Why would anyone want a sex-blind society? Is having separate bathrooms or clothing deparatments for men and women “just like” having separate departments based on race? Is every Romance movie “just like” a movie promoting stereotype and discrimination?
I do not want a sex-blind society. I like feminine women and most women like to be feminine. Generally men desire women, women desire to be desired…as the Yin and the Yang are complementary patterns.
The modern feminist (who actually seems to be some sort of masculinist) often seems to be dealing with some type of personal gender identity disorder through their politics. For some, it’s really just their own neuroses.
Why do all these people think that men and women are out there to exploit each other? why do we forget we are codependent and ont independent? why do women have to be sexy in a low cut blouse to attract men? why do men have to be rich to attract women?