We're not suddenly framing a discussion in such a way that women necessarily turn to marketing ploys when it comes to understanding men, relationships or sex?

That is a very important question. This does seem to often be the assumption -- not only when women try to understand men, but in many other areas of social activism. It's beginning to seem to me that this is a part of the nurture-nature dichotomy, and the tendency (ever since the beginning of cultural relativism) to emphasize nurture (and therefore external, non-essentialist forces) in defining the Other. The reason is probably that this emphasis makes it easier to imagine that the situation could be changed -- we just have to change the sociocultural elements that 'create' the 'discourse' that 'supports' the 'power structure' in question (say, the media). Other, non-social sources (psychology, physiology) are not only harder to figure out, they also smack of 'essentialism' which is often understood as implying that 'it can't be changed, we're stuck being like that forever', which progressives always dislike.

I too am interesting in exploring the mechanisms that contribute to people's feelings of inadequacy here. The potential pecuniary forces behind over diagnosing hypoactive sexual desire disorder are pretty obvious. But, in looking at the role defining the "disorder" is playing in its proliferation, I fail to see how TCF's discussion of double standards sheds any light on the subject.

Ms Clark-Flory's approach seemed to me to be the traditional one from progressives: 'normality' is hard to define given variation, so attempts at doing that usually smack of social stereotypes that make it hard to see the many factors involved -- usually external (from the media to work-related stress) and hide our underlying similarities ('it's just a human thing'). So it does seem she thinks this 'disorder' may ultimately be an illusion, or something caused by society.

Does this shed any light on the mechanisms? Maybe not. But I'm not sure I know what would.

while many of the images we get from the media overlap thematically, we still get (in my opinion at least) a wide range of images that qualify as beautiful or universally beautiful

That's possible to an extent (it sounds a bit like Jungian archetypes), but as far as physical beauty is concerned, my experience with Amazonian Indians suggest that, for those who had little or no contact with us, female beauty standards would differ markedly from what Western Society offers us (they like fatter women, and blonde, blue-eyed faces arouse surprise and more than a tad of disgust). So which images of universal beauty do we actually get to see in the media?

I believe there a certain traits that are fundamentally human. No external pressure is needed to expose people to or reinforce those tendencies. [...] Looking for examples of photoshopping debacles that conform to a preconceived patriarchal narrative sidesteps self-examination completely. How much of what contributes to our responses to these images is really worth fighting?

Indeed, that's another important question. We're again in the nature-nurture/culture problem: how much of what we will see in self-examination came from the outside (and if so, from where exactly)? But anyway, it is true that not everything there is worth fighting -- it may have a number of other functions that would be harmed as a consequence of fighting against them.

I suppose what you're basically asking for is that always-elusive little thing, a theory of what a human being is and how s/he works, so that we can understand both what we introspect and what we extraspect, what we see inside and what we see outside. Apparently we don't have that, so we're always left speculating. The Socratic nosce te ipsum (actually γνῶθι σεαυτόν) is good advice -- know thyself -- but it's often so hard to see what is me and what is external...

So, some women (not those in the situation of the one now repulsed by the touch that used to arouse her -- she has a more legitimate problem) feel hyposexual. Is this internal--a feeling that there's something missing that should be there? Or is it something external--because they compare themselves with oversexed vixens in the media and assume this is what they 'should be'? In either case, is the problem the actual level of sexual desire, or the fact that it makes them feel uncomfortable? For a given case (or can it be generalized to many/all such women?), what is better: try to accept your level of desire as it is, or try to change it?

Maybe the problem is that we don't really have a theory of human beings, so we can't really tell (other than by guessing) how exactly external and internal factors interact in us to generate the patterns of feelings and behaviors that we have.

Indeed, where does insecurity come from? Hasn't someone (I think Sartre) claimed that insecurity is an unavoidable consequence of existence as a separate entity? If there's an Other, there's a potential Better, which means I'm Missing On Something and should therefore be unhappy about it?

My current take on it is that people should ask themselves what they want and why. We can't always be sure that we know the answer -- external/non-'legitimate' factors may have influenced us, so we may be 'lying to ourselves' at some level -- but if we ask ourselves these questions, at least we have some working answers to refine further. As we pursue the realization of 'what we want' with an open mind, we may learn more about ourselves, which will change our understanding of 'what we want' and 'why'.