Debate continues across several dozen weblogs regarding Theory Six (about which I posted my own ideas a week ago). Numerous critics (all female?) have taken issue with the assertion that the Boring Swan paradox is not just a matter of straight men seemingly preferring boring women, but also of straight women seemingly preferring boring men. The latter is untrue, they say: dullness is good for the goose but not for the gander. I had a conversation with one critic today, which went something like this:
"So if your idea is that non-boring men disproportionately pair up with boring women, what happens to the boring men? Do they end up alone, or with the non-boring women even though they'd really prefer someone just as boring as themselves?"
"That presumes that there are the same number of boring women as boring men."
"Are you saying there are more boring women than boring men?"
"Yes. Because lots of women make themselves boring because that's what men want."
Which settles that, I guess. Next time I hear "Surf City" with the line in the chorus about "two girls for every boy," I'll suppose the surftopia Jan & Dean were envisioning is consistent with the empirical sex ratio of boring folks, although I've never personally noticed any such surfeit of boring women before. Perhaps I am somehow fortunate to have interactional travels that happen to avoid some vast tundra of tedious females.
Meanwhile, concurrent to this debate, seeing ESotSM again has caused me to resume the friendly argument where I think it was implausible that unambiguously-unboring Clementine* would want to go out with boring-Joel, while a couple of my female friends regard boring-Joel as the more appealing member of the relationship, with their rationales seemingly to find much allure in his withdrawn and boring ways.
* Of course, I suppose one could claim that Clementine was actually boring, she was just extroverted and bold and boring-in-her-extroverted-seize-the-day-break-into-a-beach-house-boldness, while Joel was a quiet cauldron of intrigue or whatever.
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