Peacocking： The History, Science, & Anthropology
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Summary
In this episode, Malcolm Malcolm Gladwell discusses the concept of "peeping" and how it is actually a signal to others that you are willing to do most of the work and/or take on significant risk in order to secure a long term partner.
Transcript
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in the history of peacocking as soon as dishonest signaling has been figured out by a group the
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honest signalers choose a different signal so in humans honest signaling honest peacocking would
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be buying a sports car which is hurting lowering your overall fitness the partner who is the
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gatekeeper is unlikely to attempt to peacock um sales when you are out searching for a long-term
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partner very rarely peacock even if they are familiar with the concept in fact oh yeah take
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heed women yeah when males who have lots of wealth date specifically for marriage they attempt to hide
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how much wealth they have whereas when they date for casual sex they peacock would you like to know
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more hello malcolm i'm so excited to be speaking with you today because both men and women who
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choose spouses based on looks are both telling on themselves and implicitly committed to something
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without realizing it and so we should be really thinking about this and talking about it basically
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when you're being choosy about who you partner with it's because you implicitly understand and may
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actually be signaling to other people that you're going to do most of the work and or take on
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significant risk and i think that that's underrated in discussion wait wait hold on no you got to
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explain this to me in in simpler terms so we can get the hook out because i want to understand this
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concept that you're talking about figure let's say your king is con right you don't really care who
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you are surprise sexing you are just doing it because you're not put at risk by doing that i guess
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stds weren't very widespread at that point and you're not investing in raising the kids he literally
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die having sex with someone i mean he what he apparently did put himself at risk it's just like
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when when when certain what sea turtles or something gets stuck having sex underwater and they're like
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oh no was that king is con or was that no that was who was the one who went into europe the he led the
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huns um attila attila died having sex wow i mean again it's risky but no i mean in general right
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that's that's not the case and so the direction because i had to work this out of her that she
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plans to go is this is a really interesting argument she made to me this morning that i hadn't heard
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before that when you are peacocking is one way to think of it but in women this would be something
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like wearing lots of makeup and acting you know really prissy and putting on that that very gendered
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right in an attempt to secure a partner you are signaling to the partner that you are going to
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expect them to do the majority of the labor within the relationship and a lot of people don't realize
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that this is the signal that they're fundamentally sending and you can be like this is crazy this isn't
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true at all but actually if you think about it for a few seconds i think it's something that's
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intuitive to most people when i met simone i specifically preferred to date women who did
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not wear makeup i actively looked for a partner who didn't wear makeup and didn't put a lot of effort
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into how they appeared to other people who didn't invest heavily in signaling right because to me that
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was a signal that they were dedicating more of their daily effort they'd signal that they were the
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selective ones meaning that they knew that in a relationship they would bring more value than
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their partner and therefore they were the discerning one and that is a really big tell in a relationship
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when i want to divide two categories here just before people misunderstand i am not talking about
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the person who doesn't wear makeup and doesn't because they're a slob because they're a slob or they
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don't have their life together i'm talking about the person who as simone very obviously does and
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did has their life completely together but doesn't need to signal that to potential yeah okay yeah so
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we need to yeah so this and this should be very easy to understand but it's actually really really
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important point that you're making which is there's a very big difference between being a healthy
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specimen and being fit and peacocking in fact sometimes peacocking makes you less fit this is why we use
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peacocks as the as the example of this behavior a healthy peacock doesn't need those feathers right
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a healthy peacock is a robust bird of good size and and you know good plumage right but the the fact
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that a male peacock has these very cumbersome feathers actually puts it at greater risk that is a fascinating
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point and i want to expand it while also defining peacocking because some of our fans may not be in the
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manosphere space or the red pill space and oh right because yeah actually this this term which is is i
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mean historically we have effective altruists who like this show simone i guess they would know what
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peacocking is every but like it wasn't always a manosphere right you know the way ellie eiser
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ukowski dresses constantly that's that's peacocking right like that is he obviously read like a book and
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then decided i'm gonna wear a top hat 24 7 so that i you know have a conversation no but the point that
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you made here look at the way that jordan peterson dresses that's peacocking right like this is i'm
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gonna be the guy that everyone notices in the room right so i think that the really important point
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that you made here that i had never considered before is in peacocks the feathers are evolutionarily
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maladaptive and some species can even go extinct through this sort of a famous one is the irish elk
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which ended up growing horns so long it it killed them it led to their extinction they couldn't i
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think like their necks would just break all the time obviously it takes an immense amount of fitness
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to just grow horns that big feathers that big and to survive long enough like if you can literally
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survive with those feathers with those horns a long enough to reproduce like wow you're in evolutionary
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biology this is something called honest signaling and this is an important concept for because women
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look for honest signaling in men too right so honest signaling and this is my background biology oh we're
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getting into biology so we get into stuff that malcolm actually isn't making up so honest signaling
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means that the signal of fitness bears a cost that is equal to the reaction that females have
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to or males have in the case that you're you're signaling in that direction to that signal so there are some
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species that will try to cheat right they will try to develop like a growl that makes them sound
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bigger and tougher than they are species that develop cheating mechanisms to use within sexual selection
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typically lose these mechanisms pretty quickly because the females that cannot identify them end up
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breeding with lower quality males and their genes do not end up surviving yeah and so women get very good
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at detecting dishonest signaling so in humans honest signaling honest peacocking would be buying a sports car
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which is hurting you right because financially it's lowering your overall fitness even the overall
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fitness of your family i mean the money you spent on the maserati is money that you didn't spend on food or
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housing or anything and so the fact that you can survive despite having blown through all that
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money for something that does no good to you shows that you are extra fit because you've just taken a
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significant hit as a result and then there's there's dishonest signaling which is buying a fake maserati
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and females need to be good at determining is this a honest signaling male or is this a dishonest signaling
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but in normal peacocking you just dress really crazy right like you just dress in a crazy way that's
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meant to get a woman's attention start conversations etc but you are actually doing a form of honest
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signaling when you do that which is to one signal a degree of personal confidence not everyone can just
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go to a club dress ridiculously no i don't have the balls for it absolutely i used to like develop
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peacocking before it came up in the red pill i just learned that it worked and i like dressing sort of
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crazy and you know and i did this in like high school and stuff and two you signal that you are
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able to be social like they can see often your social status through your friends through etc despite
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the social cost of the ridiculous outfit yeah we're gonna talk about why why some species peacock because
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peacocking as as we've just discussed is actually quite risky it's damaging it's it's not good for you to do
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right so why do why is it sometimes necessary and then we'll look at sort of a history of male and
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female peacocking because i think there's this perception that women are are the the ones who
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do all the signaling with the makeup and the clothing and oh look at me whereas that's not always been the
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case there have been fluctuations and i i actually argue that that we are a rare species in which
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both sexes peacock but in sort of weird lumpy different ways and i i would love to sort of
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hear your thoughts on why and how that is and i also have some just points that you can use to to as a
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sounding board for your own thoughts and analysis mel i i by the way i love that you went into this is a
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very very interesting topic to me and i think it is rife for theory theorizing theory crafting and
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better understanding human behavior well and also the good strategic peacocking is so contingent on a
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variety of factors within your unique society economy time technology etc and so really there is
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no universal rule you have to understand the dynamics and the power of it and so that's why i think this
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is an important episode why i want to divide this into two categories because i think peacocking
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doesn't do this well because let's let's let's retie it to the biology honest signaling and dishonest
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signaling because if if you if you're like yeah but everything i'm going to be discussing is honest
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signaling so let's just focus on that what people really want to learn how to do is dishonest signaling
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but what you want to point out which i think is interesting is when we're going to go through in
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the history of peacocking how as soon as dishonest signaling has been figured out by a group the
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honest signalers choose a different signal that that's exactly it okay continue i think that's
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great it almost doesn't matter i mean unless you you discover what it is and you're the first in
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until the bubble bursts essentially like you can cheat until everyone realizes there's the cheat code
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and then it won't work anymore so you just have to understand that it's a limited time opportunity
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but why okay why do why do species peacock basically peacocking is required when the target market is
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selective and this is just obvious like the the only reason why products have brands that are flashy
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and attractive is because there's a competitive market with choices if there were just bread like we
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had one option bread like there wouldn't be brands there wouldn't be differentiation and there
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wouldn't be a reason to show off one brand versus another brand exactly yeah so female peacocking
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is necessary only when men get sexually selective and and vice versa there are three reasons why males get
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sexually selective the first is that males it they they are sexually selective when they invest heavily
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in parental care so if there's time or energy or risk and they can or they can only mate with a
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limited number of females suddenly they are selective whereas normally male species male members of any
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species it's more spray and pray you know you're just going to have sex with anything that moves
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and just hope for the best because there's sort of no risk to you so it is it is relatively unusual
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and when it does happen suddenly you care about who you're sticking it in so for example male seahorses
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who carry and nourish the eggs in a brood and and like they have little brood pouches they get like
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they look preggers it's i think it's one of the few only maybe the only male form of pregnancy
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they're very very choosy about mates and these days i think men have become more choosy in their mates
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because they invest more today in child rearing like american men at least than they have before
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married father's child care time rose from about 2.6 hours per week in 1965 to about 7.2 hours per week
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in 2011 and then 7.8 to 8 hours per week in 2020 to 2021 so it's only going up and that is going to
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lead to more selectiveness with the partner choice so that the second reason why there's why a male
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would be selective is that there's large variation in female quality for example there may be a lot of
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variation in the species fecundity among females or size or health which makes some females a lot
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more valuable than others so to go back to seal horses uh seal horses seahorses male seahorses
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preferentially select larger females because they tend to produce more or higher quality eggs which
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i didn't know but the bigger ones are better with eggs and this leads to obviously better
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like chubby chasers they are they are they're the og chubby chasers and then they've been they've been
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observed actively rejecting smaller seahorses just turning them away male seahorses because they have to
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carry the eggs will reject females because they are the gatekeepers of sexuality in seahorses
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exactly and they're like i'm not going to spend my time on on some small seahorse for like just a few
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eggs like this is i'm going through this i'm going to be careful about it no i i think that you're
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getting to a point here that i think our audience would like delineated which is in humans females are
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the gatekeepers for casual sex and males are the gatekeepers for long-term relationships and with
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that being the case the ways that both parties dress and act when interacting in each of these
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contexts is going to be different i also think that it's just interesting just an observation i don't know
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if this is is is is really good as a comparison but i love looking at old archival footage be it
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recolorized or not a lot of it's resurfacing now because people are using ai to remaster it it just
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looks amazing to see what the streets were like in some random city and you know a the early 1900s or
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what have you what i find to be so notable is that everyone looks so neat and tidy you know people look
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quite healthy on average probably because a lot of people thought like if you were sick you just
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you died now there is actually quite a lot of variation in female quality among humans and i think
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even in recent years this has gotten worse i remember when you and i went to what is it called
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the spring dip or something at saint andrews which is this event where it dawned a lot of people in this
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this university in scotland go run into the ocean take off varying degrees of their clothing and run
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into the ocean and and in winter or early spring so so and we noticed how much more gross looking
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and not just in terms of obese but like morphologically gross looking the females were
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than when i went to school there yeah i was i i was like actually like would not with most of these
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people and yet i'm like an older guy now whatever and so greater male selectiveness again so i just
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that that anecdote i also think i want to delineate a point here that i think is guys remember how
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you made the point that the the partner who is the gatekeeper is unlikely to attempt to peacock
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um sales when you are out searching for a long-term partner very rarely peacock even if they are
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familiar with the concept in fact oh yeah take heed women yeah yeah when males who have lots of wealth
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date they frequently attempt date specifically for marriage they attempt to hide how much wealth they
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have whereas when they date for casual sex they boast peacock and flaunt sometimes even wealth they do
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not have continue that's it yeah and and that was a there was a recent like social media thing that i
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talked with you about on another podcast where men were posting about hiding their wealth on on initial
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dates and asking to go dutch with the women they were dating to see if they you know were hoping just
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to be taken care of or if they were interested in them for being them yeah so there's the other
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big thing i think when it comes to fertility and and basically the the new version of fecundity for
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women which is their willingness at all to have kids but beyond that also the marriage of bait and switch
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where there's a lot of women who are like yeah i'll have three kids i'll have four kids and then
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they have two kids and they're like i'm done i don't want to do anymore and men are who want to have
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big families especially i think are very much in a vulnerable position and at risk and they need to
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be extremely selective about who they marry because even if you find a woman who wants to have kids
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and we know from emails and and messages from our fans who are young men looking to get married who
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want to have families it's really hard to find a young woman who's even willing to think about
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family at a young age which is so i mean like let alone at a still fertile age they start to think
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about family when they hit their third the mid-30s yeah but it's too late then you know yeah yeah but i
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mean this this isn't you know just a human thing and in many fish and bird species with biparental care
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when both both members of a of a pairing take care of the young males court inmate preferentially with
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larger or more fecund females and ignore smaller otherwise low quality looking ones because they're
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like i'm i if i have to hitch myself to a wagon i want the wagon that's going to produce a lot of
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kids and i think men are becoming more selective now because they know they can't necessarily trust
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every woman whether or not she physically have the capacity to have kids to be actually willing to
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have kids so i'm wondering if men will eventually start to look for signals of commitment to larger
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families like genuine commitment well yeah anyway this is this is fascinating if you think about how
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culture has shifted in america if you go back to when the purpose of relationships was marriage
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you know let's say like the 1950s or something like that men peacocked or showed off with their outfits
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less than women did the woman was the one more likely to show off with the way she dressed and acted
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than the man was yeah and that was because the men were the gatekeepers when marriage is the point of
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a relationship then the the third reason why a male may be the selective one is is when mating itself
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is very costly to them like there's greater risk of predation or energy loss or disease or increased
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risk from male-on-male competition you know like well if i try to have sex with this gorilla the alpha male
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is going to kill me that kind of thing you know that mating indiscriminately will actually reduce
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the male's total lifetime reproduction success and i am also thinking oh my god like this is absolutely
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the case for men because one there's the legal risk this is one major form of modern predation
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where you know let's say that you marry young and then you think you're going to have kids with
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this woman but then she divorces you and then it costs you a ton of money and a ton of time
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like you're living the lifetime number of kids you're going to have is absolutely reduced so that
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is huge also financial risk that that's a major form of energy loss if we want to talk about energy
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loss you know peacocks like you were saying that you know the example of someone getting a really fancy
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car that's just the new form of of energy you know it's is money and then i also do feel too like
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there there's we we talked about this in our male-on-male romance obsession that some women have the
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yaoi obsession how maybe women are really into male-male romance because men are able to feel
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some kind of pair bonding or true love that women just don't feel experience and so part of me wonders
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too if men are actually rendered more vulnerable from marriage than women are and i think both you and i
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have seen our fathers be more romantically attached to their wives than our mothers were attached
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to them i yeah i think i think men are generally especially in long-term marriages from what i've
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seen more romantically attached than women are yeah when women are like oh i'm so lucky i got a romantic
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guy and it's like no most guys are romantics that is just the way that they're programmed but the flip
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side of that is vulnerability and and that's the thing that scared me the most about falling in love
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with you was like i discovered this whole new way that someone could hurt me i mean i don't really care
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if someone hurts me but if someone hurts you my god i can't you know like i it's it's scary so i
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also see that as a another source of of of danger and vulnerability that many men may be instinctually
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trying to avoid and therefore they're being more selective so again women have to peacock more because
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men are like i don't know if i want to commit to you because these days women kind of screw men over
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like you're going to break my heart and i don't want to risk that so basically the tldr with with the
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sort of the the incentives behind peacocking so long as men have choices and are either made more
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vulnerable by partnering with women or they're more involved in their relationships with women
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typically through child care they're going to be selective but so long as women are also subject to
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these same risks and obligations and women are of course rendered vulnerable by having kids and by
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getting in relationships they'll also be choosy and so what we have is a world and i think a rare
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biological scenario or like species-based scenario in which both sex is peacock and then who peacocks
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more is a product of a broad variety of really interesting social and economic factors and the
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way in which the peacocking is done across genders is also really interesting so i thought we could get
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into the history a little bit because we're talking about that briefly this morning and it is fun but
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basically neither men nor women have stopped peacocking it's it's just the means of peacocking
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for each sex have evolved over time and when you see restrained male dress it's typically attributed
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to peacocking through cultural signaling not through a lack of peacocking so globally speaking even if we're
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talking because i'm going to mostly focus in on western and european examples because that's the fashion
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history i know best but many asian and african traditions start from a baseline where both
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genders can be very richly dressed or even sort of based in the same general garment like a kimono
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style garment or a robe style garment and then both would be very richly dressed both both sexes in
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ritual or elite contexts there wasn't this very strong distinction in ornament and then what is really
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interesting is different cultural trends across these different geographical regions or ethnicities
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led to for whatever reason men specifically and i wonder if this is because they're patriarchal societies
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and men are the ones who are involved in culture and therefore they're subject more to cultural trends
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i'm just not sure but it is cultural trends that have led them to align male public dress more with
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restraint and practicality which is really interesting because this is not typically what you see you know
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with like you know ducks right male ducks are the pretty ducks male peacocks are the pretty ones
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so specifically in china it was confucian ideology which led to that streamlined look in japan it was
00:24:14.800
the samurai like sort of aesthetic that led to this more simplified disciplined look stoicism or forms of
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stoicism stoicism i'm going to argue because i mean bo bremmel which i think you mentioned this who you
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mentioned this morning was a major pioneer in the very streamlined look it didn't actually have to do
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that much with that he was he was not a stoic he like died a pauper from gambling debts this is not a stoic
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guy or like someone who held back and we can talk about that but in general it's that or at least it's
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societal trends that have led men to peacock in a different way but there's more to it than just
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that but let's talk about europe before the 1800s before there was this renunciation of flamboyance
00:25:00.660
essentially in fashion for men because there's some hilarious examples that i'm sure you'll be very
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familiar with like of course famously in in tudor england there was the codpiece which was a an
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exclusively male form of you could argue peacocking which was also like directly tied to male dimorphism
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but also sexual prowess because a codpiece was for those of you unfamiliar with it a little part that
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went over your your as our children call them whippies your dongle your of like armor outfits yeah and
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i think i can't remember what museum it's in it might be it it's it's in one of the famous royal
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like maybe it's the tower of london you can see the various costume pieces or you know like
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court dress and also armor of king henry the eighth i think it's his armor and what's really interesting
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is is they have pieces of his armor from different periods in his life and as he gets older he not
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only gets fatter but his cod pieces just get larger and larger and you see these like erections that just
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like i think these men are walking around with these massive basically massive boners
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metal erections like on their armor i mean this was on their armor but like also just in normal
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everyday wear they were they were and they you know they were embroidered you know they're very
00:26:23.480
they're very nice you know it's like like men today wear rolexes back then they had very fancy
00:26:30.280
of course rich fabrics but you know these cod pieces so that's that's one example of dishonest
00:26:35.000
signaling by the way very easy to face yeah i mean i don't actually think when i remember when
00:26:41.480
looking at the armor when you were i when you and i were in london looking at that exhibit i was like
00:26:46.540
man he's compensating like but no i actually think it had more to just do with exaggerated fashion and
00:26:52.320
how fashion kind of iterates and becomes more extreme over time i don't think he was actually trying
00:26:57.200
to insinuate that that his dongle had grown that much here's here's what i suspect happened in
00:27:04.560
henry the eighth's cards okay some people started wearing cod pieces that like explicitly looked
00:27:09.940
like members and then imagine you show up at a party and that's now normalized but another guest
00:27:16.280
has one that's larger than yours oh god yeah and yours is small and with like what yeah yeah i guess
00:27:21.500
and now you're like i gotta get a larger one made i can't be the small one at the party
00:27:26.380
because i've explicitly made the reference here right yeah and i'm i'm actually pretty sure you
00:27:32.900
don't want to be the one who accidentally walks in with a larger con piece than king henry the eighth
00:27:38.620
oh yeah i'm sure yeah there must have been whisper networks on like
00:27:41.760
what is the size of of his majesty's con piece we must know but anyway like there there were all
00:27:48.120
it got much more interesting in terms of uniquely male styles that were that were flourishes that
00:27:55.140
were very visually distinct in the baroque and rococo periods in europe this was the era of the
00:28:01.520
sun king this was it was just so fun it was so flamboyant and men were so pretty and we had for
00:28:08.140
example high heels the famous red-soled shoes that were worn in the french court which which now you
00:28:16.260
know been sort of well now the pope wears them right does he well did you know though that actually
00:28:21.920
for roughly two popes ago the first 700 years of high heeled shoes experience they were only for men
00:28:28.040
and do you know why why think about cowboys writing think about cowboy yes exactly yeah they were they
00:28:36.400
were for warfare and this was specifically that it came from persia modern day iran rest in peace
00:28:45.100
it was it was a functional tool for the persian cavalry who were famous for their skills as horse
00:28:51.060
mounted archers but what do you have to do as a horse mounted archer you have to both ride and not
00:28:57.140
have your hands on the horse so you need feet that can really securely sit in stirrups as you're
00:29:03.480
riding that means you're not just sitting in stirrups you need to have you the ability to stand in stirrups
00:29:08.200
with a lot of control and that is where that the heel allows your foot to lock in to the stirrups
00:29:15.100
and when there was i think there was oh yeah in 1599 the persian shah sent a diplomatic mission to
00:29:22.680
europe in the high heel boots that were worn by the persian soldiers just caused this massive fashion
00:29:28.280
craze like oh these are so cool but why why obviously they they were associated with these
00:29:36.480
badass warriors so one it was just very masculine to wear heels but two you got the height that's a
00:29:44.880
really big thing in fact i'm gonna say you have to look at these there's this whole thing in china
00:29:52.040
where young men wear risers on their really yeah watch these videos don't trust the height of chinese
00:30:02.120
men because most of them use special tricks to make themselves look taller they use super shoes that
00:30:07.100
can add 20 centimeters to their height because in china short men will difficulty to getting a
00:30:11.140
girlfriend yeah and they can make you significantly tall and they're actually the shoes that these men
00:30:15.960
are designed quite well to obscure just how thick they are and there's this really funny short that
00:30:23.140
shows men waiting in line for a roller coaster or some kind of ride that has a height requirement
00:30:28.780
and sadly the right operators have have grown wise to the fact that risers are endemic and tragically
00:30:36.580
you have these teenage boys who are asked to remove their shoes to get on the ride to to measure
00:30:43.180
many chinese are self-conscious about their height and need high shoes to enter the attraction but at
00:30:50.080
the entrance they are asked to take off their shoes as soon as they do it turns out that their height is
00:30:55.340
significantly reduced because of this complex in china even teenagers often wear platform sneakers to
00:31:01.840
look taller but these guys couldn't hide their real height and now that everyone could see that they
00:31:06.640
weren't as tall as they seemed they were embarrassed wear new rock boots as a kid and they made me
00:31:12.980
so effing tall compared to other guys and i bet it made you feel good i bet it right goth boots right
00:31:19.020
oh i loved it i love it they were my go-to footwear for the longest time what's so embarrassing for
00:31:24.600
these boys who are going on the roller coaster in china is they're you know with their girlfriends who
00:31:30.160
are laughing their butts off as they take off their shoes and like lo and behold they're like a foot
00:31:35.480
shorter they're like this is like asking a girl before she gets on a ride take out your stuffing
00:31:39.720
like yeah take off your cut yeah take out your cutlets take out your like oh my god how embarrassing
00:31:45.480
and it's funny that we are talking about all this while we're redesigning my outfit
00:31:49.660
i'll describe her back from the etsy seller about the because i decided that i should dress in more
00:31:53.760
medieval inspired outfits the same way simone does because it looks weird that only she's doing it now
00:31:58.560
and we pointed out in one of the videos that like it actually while a lot of cultures only have women
00:32:04.120
dress in a unique fashion it's better when they both do like an orthodox jewish culture yeah so we should
00:32:09.620
make up like a unique so what do you think of this vest simone is this they they said that they
00:32:14.180
could do it in this this red color or is that not right enough i like it no i like it that's like
00:32:18.860
it's a deep burgundy and it's good it's similar to my stays that i'm wearing it's a little more wine
00:32:23.540
yeah but yeah it's it's good in fact actually can you see the tearing on this
00:32:28.640
oh no not at all okay well this i'm literally wearing this these stays to shreds and this is actually
00:32:35.540
part of a larger historical fashion misknower a lot of people when they go to costumes to
00:32:40.240
institutes and museums and they see historical outfits they think that people in the past were
00:32:46.480
super super small and yeah they were a little bit shorter but there are tons of historical examples of
00:32:52.280
men who are six plus feet you know like people weren't that much tinier there's some malnutrition
00:32:56.860
the reason why people often misattribute historical people to being very small is because the few
00:33:04.840
surviving clothes that existed belonged to children because the children grew out of them before they
00:33:09.600
could be worn to shreds and so the these beautifully preserved costumes and court dress and everything
00:33:14.800
that people have were children's clothes and so people see them and they're like this looks like a
00:33:19.640
child well that's because it is because it was a it was a child's dress it was a little
00:33:23.840
a little boy's outfit you know and they don't realize that they think it belonged to an adult
00:33:28.360
because you know they're very nice or whatever and then they think that people were small
00:33:32.240
and like i'm realizing like with clothes like these they do you do just wear them to shreds because
00:33:36.900
they're good you wear them every day and when you wear them like people historically wore clothes like
00:33:40.440
that they would just even like even if you didn't wear the same style of a dress you would reuse the
00:33:46.380
fabric and so the fabric is is being worn to shreds and being passed down like first the lady of the house
00:33:51.660
would wear it and once she couldn't reuse the fabric enough like it stopped looking good she'd pass it
00:33:56.660
down to a servant and then the servant wouldn't wear different like threads and then someone below that
00:34:00.240
and that's why we don't have that many historical adults outfits anymore because it was just
00:34:05.720
devastated anyway also just the impracticality of heels was something that both for men and women
00:34:12.480
eventually became very very useful as a costly signal right like if you can afford to walk around
00:34:18.240
with heels because the heels evolved fashion wise to become to have much finer points there's no way
00:34:24.000
you could walk around on cobblestone streets or muddy streets or on lawns with them so it just meant
00:34:28.100
that you could afford to not walk anywhere and then eventually the red heel of king louis the 14th
00:34:33.220
was one subject to sumptuary laws so literally you couldn't wear that type of shoe unless you were a
00:34:38.940
fancy person so it was a really big deal in that sense there were also powder gray wigs which were
00:34:44.220
were worn both by men and women but men wore them too silk and lace and all the ruffled cravats and
00:34:49.360
stuff there was just very very very expensive to make and men would wear it because it would show
00:34:53.700
that they had wealth it was just a way to signal wealth which even by that point in history became
00:34:58.920
of course a big proxy for fitness if you could afford to feed your family or give them shelter if
00:35:03.580
you have the money to do all that your kids are more likely to survive and you probably were going
00:35:06.940
to have more on average so around the 1800s in europe is when men's fashion turned towards simplistic
00:35:12.200
and it wasn't just because beau brummel this man who lived in england who was friends with prince
00:35:18.680
regent and therefore very socially influential until he fell out of favor was so famous and and
00:35:25.760
influential as a fashion icon because he was really the one who popularized the fashion that has now
00:35:30.720
evolved into the modern men's suit things went away from these frilly fancy late 1700s costumes which
00:35:38.320
really much more resembled women's dresses just they were slightly you know malified to the modern suit
00:35:45.920
the precursor to the modern suit it wasn't just him it was also the french revolution which really was
00:35:52.860
one of the the an early driver to stealth wealth all all these these like nobles and stuff were getting
00:35:59.480
killed and suddenly it wasn't so cool to flaunt your wealth you were like getting a little nervous just
00:36:04.460
subconsciously of signaling your wealth to peasants and you're like you know what like i'm gonna pare
00:36:09.180
this down maybe i don't want to make them so mad because i thought i could just do this and make
00:36:13.740
everyone jealous and nothing would happen and i guess maybe maybe that's not how it works anymore so
00:36:19.860
let's just be a little more careful so that was a genuine factor another big factor was just industrial
00:36:25.480
capitalism shifting and men especially in this focus more toward actual like productivity and
00:36:31.980
competence and utility suddenly we were able to do things at scale there's this whole new world of
00:36:37.560
productivity that's opened up by technology and automation and industrialization there's also the
00:36:42.340
rise of the enlightenment which really made it cooler to be rational and useful rather than decorative
00:36:47.860
yeah and then we're the ones involved in that primarily and so they also got caught up in that
00:36:52.920
and then there was furthermore and this is very important back to your point of false signals
00:36:57.360
the democratization by the industrial revolution largely of textiles such that fancy textiles just
00:37:03.360
weren't the expensive thing they used to be and so you you didn't really you know a rich brocade it
00:37:11.120
wasn't the same anymore lace could be more automatically made so we didn't need to wear the frilly lace stuff
00:37:17.120
and we didn't need to wear all this no like suddenly it was you had to see you had to find new ways to
00:37:23.120
signal wealth and a bunch of poor people were now wearing the fancy looking stuff so you don't want to
00:37:26.860
wear that because that's poor person stuff no and so that that was a big thing though brummel really
00:37:31.520
actually didn't very much represent this what was the word like oh stoic approach well it was a very
00:37:39.900
streamlined look literally he would have people watch him get dressed regularly and it would take
00:37:46.280
him like two hours of multiple hours maybe more than two hours just to freaking get dressed and he
00:37:51.480
would just fuss with his cravat and it was impossible to perfectly tie your cravat and all these things
00:37:56.500
so no it really wasn't it wasn't a disciplined efficient man's way of getting dressed he was
00:38:03.940
very much a dandy even though he didn't dress like dandies and and and macaronis as as they were known
00:38:10.260
in various periods so basically like he he followed this period in which there were well he was a dandy
00:38:17.040
I guess in which the the the fancy fashion men dressed really insanely like very over the top in in terms
00:38:25.160
of their ornamentation and that's where the song yankee doodle comes from which is kind of making
00:38:30.220
fun of the concept of the dandy yankee went to town put a feather in his cap and called it macaroni
00:38:35.640
they're just making fun of this man who's like well there's a style of macaroni which is a style of the
00:38:42.760
period that was very effeminate and very like over the top yeah but it's it's just quaint that a man
00:38:47.100
would think that he could just put a feather in his cap and yeah but but basically the idea was
00:38:50.600
anything slightly over the top was being macaroni so yeah so the thing is I actually feel like maybe
00:38:57.480
things are changing now in terms of men trying to signal through their utility and logic because
00:39:05.120
there are several male trends focused around costly signals that are are notable and very noticeable
00:39:14.880
and they're doing this more so than I think women are at this point we've sort of gone past
00:39:20.060
sort of peak women insanity in terms of investing in looks the fillers are over the bbls are over
00:39:26.020
there's there's less signaling and now we're seeing more at least in terms of media coverage and social
00:39:31.300
media trending stuff that that's in favor of men so what we have looks maxing I mean you talk about
00:39:36.620
like cutlets you know like women taking fillers out of their bras we have clavicular who's probably right
00:39:45.720
now the public face of looks maxing online famously slapping those very same cutlets that women use
00:39:52.100
in their bras on his shoulders to give that more muscular look um interesting yeah so we have yeah
00:40:00.340
clavicular is most famous I mean among other things like just literally using meth to like focus or
00:40:09.860
something like extreme dieting a lot of cosmetic procedures but also most famously just for hammering
00:40:15.960
his face just hammering his face because why not to do that and and ironically it's so funny he just
00:40:21.520
ends up looking a lot like and he I think he looks pretty good he looks weirdly like a family member of
00:40:26.860
Falcum's but then there's not just this it's uncanny there's not just this we do have the similar
00:40:33.820
morphologies which is funny because she means like if you go around my family they all sort of look
00:40:38.880
like this so there's this look when I pass somebody I'm like are we related yeah it's funny if it's
00:40:45.520
worked for him though no it worked no if you look at before and afters he looks good now no no but I
00:40:51.740
mean like is he is he married no no but he's like a kid oh it's like 23 years old or something like he
00:40:58.900
doesn't know anything he's and also I mean like but I I don't imagine his regimen is really helping
00:41:04.400
him think straight yeah he's only 20 years old yeah so let's see he he's very young give him time
00:41:10.200
okay that is that is shockingly young yeah yeah yeah so I mean good for him you know in terms of
00:41:15.560
what he's done so far and then maybe he'll oh my god I look at the old pictures of him I can see why
00:41:19.820
he may have hit his face with a hammer right I mean listen I actually I have an immense amount of
00:41:26.100
respect for looks maxers so there's there's both like very public I would say we'll say this the
00:41:31.180
the public social media influencer autist looks maxer who's just very open about it and happy to
00:41:36.980
talk about it and it's a game for them you know it's it's not it's not dysphoria about the way they
00:41:41.600
look it's euphoria in the excitement of knowing that by mewling and and hammering your face and
00:41:47.560
doing all these different procedures and and using all these different supplements you can shape your
00:41:52.300
body you can take ownership of your appearance there's also the more stealth ones and one example
00:41:58.540
in this that you can see is in in the height surgery is is trending upward I'm going to send
00:42:04.720
you oh my god whenever I see height surgery I just think of gadiga and I'm like no no no his profile says
00:42:11.420
he's 6'1 so I can wear lifts even with lifts you're not that tall
00:42:19.340
Jerome never questioned my commitment again huh because the height surgery in gadiga where he has
00:42:28.660
to get a few inches at it and you they've got to break your your bones to oh he doesn't I forgot that
00:42:34.660
it's just such a depressing movie it's it's just like and and he's obviously I've talked about this
00:42:42.020
in other episodes he's obviously the villain of the movie like the main character if we had an
00:42:47.580
astronaut who on like a multi-billion and I think the move trillion dollar mission yeah about their
00:42:52.980
health their heart health like a fake heart meter crucial mission to space yeah we'd be like wait so
00:43:00.300
he puts everyone else on the mission's life at risk over a real heart condition yeah he actually
00:43:06.700
has out of this weird like genes aren't real even though we know that that's why he has the heart
00:43:12.920
condition yeah but anyway this I just sent you the google trends for the that that leg lengthening
00:43:19.880
surgery which is what when people are looking up height surgery it is absolutely trending up in fact in a
00:43:25.680
recent much discussed movie called the materialists that came out which is about a new york-based female
00:43:31.580
matchmaker one of her two main love interests in the movie himself got um leg lengthening surgery
00:43:39.260
and was very wealthy this cost between 75 and 250 thousand dollars it's very expensive you have to be
00:43:44.960
wealthy to do it so again even in that it's a costly signal but then it's a costly signal to do the signal
00:43:50.240
of looking tall which is also a false signal which I think is very interesting it's this very confusing
00:43:54.600
kind of what what is it it's both a a false signal and a costly signal so I guess it balances out
00:43:59.600
but there's a scene in the movie it's just a false signal I mean it's costly in that it costs a lot
00:44:03.840
of money yeah but if you can afford to do it doesn't that kind of balance out yeah I guess and be bedridden
00:44:08.700
for the period and blah blah blah if you can afford to do it then they're clearly you've some
00:44:13.980
advantage you're a privileged person either shoe inserts man like come on well but what about when
00:44:20.940
you are on a roller coaster growing you're not wearing any clothes when you take someone home
00:44:27.400
notices then I'm just saying the global market was valued of leg lengthening surgery valued at one
00:44:36.000
four point one to four point one eight billion from 21 to 23 and then it's projected to reach
00:44:42.080
eight point three to eight point six billion by the 2030s like or 2030 2031 so this is a growing it like
00:44:49.120
if you want to invest in a surgical center jesus invest in this very painful very yeah excruciating
00:44:57.180
recovery process this is body dysmorphia right here come on well yeah or I mean I there there
00:45:04.920
are there we know people who plan on if they if they can afford to get this procedure and I I say
00:45:10.440
power to the people I mean I guess I can't understand right like I wasn't yeah you're born sufficiently
00:45:15.960
like taller than average so whatever you know don't do it like you have some privilege right
00:45:22.520
genetic legacy right then right I mean you you use naltruxone to experience a state that I experience
00:45:28.320
every day I don't like act like oh you shouldn't take naltruxone like no you should do it because you
00:45:33.920
can be more efficient that way anyway I I do think and and there's this scene in the movie where the
00:45:39.980
there are two matchmakers who are like yeah that's absolutely a worthwhile surgery because women just
00:45:46.240
won't consider men under a certain height like it's a logical choice to make yeah can we please not
00:45:51.560
worry about a couple inches right now because you're about to die alone there's a surgery for
00:45:56.740
that you break your legs and extend it it's definitely worth the investment and you can get
00:46:05.880
around this when a kid's growing if you give it to them at the right time human growth hormone and
00:46:09.780
then of course you have to consider that in in Asia ton of men have pretty elaborate beauty routines
00:46:15.120
makeup routines if not cosmetic surgery procedures that are super common and then on the other side of
00:46:20.980
it like you could say that oh well this is all very effete but then you have to look at the like
00:46:25.240
bronze age mindset slash man's world bodybuilder aesthetic thing that's going on right but that's
00:46:32.140
intersexual signaling women don't actually want that no they don't but it it is still I feel like
00:46:38.900
the instinct to signal comes from something like a feel that you need to be chosen among a choosy
00:46:45.500
populace and and and I think that it's misguided but I do think a lot of men that get into
00:46:50.040
bodybuilding think that women are gonna like it I think a lot of women who are really into makeup
00:46:55.700
think that it actually attracts men even though they're they're using literally makeup application
00:47:02.620
methods that were pioneered by drag queens so whatever but I just I think it's very interesting and I think
00:47:14.360
we just have to remember when we engage in these these acts of signaling that one this this is you
00:47:22.400
acknowledging that when you're the choosy one it's because you are the one bringing the value to the table
00:47:32.000
when you're signaling you're trying to attract someone who you're going to use um and we should just be
00:47:39.440
aware of that that's the dance and if you are choosing to date someone who is clearly signaling
00:47:45.980
the tacit understanding between you needs to be that they're going to use you if you're and this
00:47:54.080
is the back this is why I I mean I think sane guys understand this is why sane guys when they're
00:47:59.240
looking for a wife they do not date girls who wear lots of makeup they do not date girls who wear
00:48:03.040
expensive clothing because when I see that I'm like oh this is no she's telling me she expects
00:48:09.360
me to buy this stuff for her yeah and and yeah that that's going to be the expectation that the
00:48:15.840
expectation is that you're going to be a provider and that she has you know a ton of choices and if
00:48:19.800
you won't be the provider she'll probably leave you and that you are made vulnerable by this choice
00:48:23.440
and and and also if you see that you're at a point in some society or in some subculture because
00:48:29.040
this is going to be different across all societies and there are various periods about history and if
00:48:32.860
you alluded to this like in the 1950s where it appears to be that one sex is signaling more
00:48:37.360
than another you need to be aware of what side of the equation you're on and the social contract
00:48:42.820
you're getting into as a result that oh if you appear to to if everyone's trying to market to you
00:48:49.120
you need to be a lot more careful about your choices because they're they're after something that
00:48:56.860
you have and you're committing to maybe more than you you might expect and here's the final point I
00:49:03.740
wanted to make because guys can be like well even with all of this you know you say that I the male
00:49:07.920
am the chooser in the long-term relationship marketplace so why aren't I finding options on
00:49:14.560
this marketplace and the answer is that many modern women modern audience modern women have decided to not
00:49:22.220
even play in a marketplace where they don't have a structural advantage and so they don't even enter
00:49:29.860
the long-term relationship marketplace meaning there's such a dearth of women within it at least in terms
00:49:36.580
of of getting the type of partner they have come to believe they think they deserve because of the
00:49:41.420
advantage they've had on the sexual marketplace not realizing that all they've really done is burn part of
00:49:46.600
their own value on the marriage marketplace you're even engaging in the sexual marketplace
00:49:50.400
absolutely yeah yeah all right well I love you Simone I love you too you are a spectacular wife
00:49:58.760
that's a really clever episode I like that well thanks for helping me explaining the context
00:50:04.400
good concept because I just it's it's it's complicated and and it's it's extra complicated today
00:50:10.620
and with humans because I couldn't find examples of other species where both are engaging in in costly
00:50:18.940
signaling in forms of peacocking normally it's just one it's just one and just one more reason why
00:50:26.700
we're so boned is usually a species it's either like monogamous or you know sleeps around a lot you
00:50:34.580
don't often get bimodal relationship strategies within one species or or the females are owned by
00:50:42.420
one male you know you'll you'll see those in like chimps or something like this and we can go over
00:50:45.580
cross but but but we there's like multiple relationship and sexual strategies being implemented
00:50:51.240
within humanity at the same time but one of those strategies which is going to be bred out of the
00:50:55.620
population is purely masturbatory the one that is downstream of arousal because these women rarely end up
00:51:00.960
actually conceiving and carrying your child right so the the whole thing is just masturbation with
00:51:06.140
another person right uh and you know more moral downsides yeah it's you know I I think for this
00:51:12.980
younger generation it's easier to understand why that's a bad thing if you frame it as being what it
00:51:17.940
actually is yeah uh and I think that you see you know this wider thing that you're talking about
00:51:24.040
you see for example in context where people know that the relationship that they are dating for
00:51:30.700
is gated by the males um like they because it will almost certainly you know you are dating for a
00:51:38.000
long-term relationship an example of this would be mormon dating for example yeah yeah yeah you know
00:51:44.000
everyone knows the goal is marriage yeah the women peacock more than the men in those scenarios they
00:51:50.880
they spend a lot more time oh yeah dressing up getting themselves looking nice everything like that
00:51:55.360
than the males do in those contexts yeah and this is why mormon women look so dressed up whereas I was
00:52:01.520
literally searching for somebody who wasn't doing that and I suspect a lot of women and men are doing
00:52:05.520
the same but this is because I'm coming from a different cultural context where I value you know work
00:52:10.280
ethic above all else and I didn't want to see an austerity above all else so you were literally
00:52:15.700
peacocking your austerity to me in the way that you presented yourself by the way if we have thoughts on the
00:52:22.620
medieval wear that I should get I've already ordered a number of them I think I need to do
00:52:26.680
measurements tonight because I want to send it to the companies just to make sure we get it right
00:52:29.480
I'll help you yeah I'll get my measuring tape out I used it on sea turtles when I was 13
00:52:33.680
no I'll use it on you I'll measure you like a sea turtle yeah and so we'll send them my measurements
00:52:40.120
just to make sure we get it right and I have my cool medieval wear and then people can say like
00:52:43.700
Malcolm you look ridiculous on stream but that's so many big streamers like dress like clowns and stuff
00:52:48.220
or like gothy or like I know you gotta have a lot of makeup it's distinctive we need a thing
00:52:52.900
we're techno puritans so we gotta do right I gotta I gotta have more of a distinctive look than I do
00:52:58.380
and right now it's just nerdy lesbian right and you know well you're my nerdy lesbian okay would
00:53:05.680
you mind grabbing the kids and then I'll handle I would find nothing less I'm very excited and I
00:53:10.700
love you a lot Simone you are a great partner and a very deep intellectual thinker yeah so I love you
00:53:18.580
all right bye bye bye bye bye bye bye oh okay now I have to find where to put the outline
00:53:30.340
hello Simone what are we doing for dinner tonight
00:53:39.100
because I don't know what we have I think we're going through also I'd be up for curry tonight if
00:53:44.320
we have some old curry to go through yeah I would love to make more curry for you I don't have new
00:53:49.680
I used up all the peppers we have so it would just be I can try to find mango curry though which
00:53:56.520
I think would be fine on its own or I actually you know what I have I think I have a bunch of
00:54:02.480
rendang would you like some rendang or would you like me to try to find a mango curry
00:54:18.540
okay if you do the mango curry remember to mix in some of the
00:54:30.400
mango curry yeah no hoisin you don't want to because the mango curry has that like rounder warm you don't want that
00:54:36.360
yeah I don't know how to I don't know how to word that but
00:54:48.360
this clip needs a little context the kids decided they were going to try to distract me or lure me
00:54:54.320
using things like teddy bears on strings so that they could run around and steal the chips I was eating
00:56:13.200
I don't think Torsen's a man what are men Octavian