What I want to know is why isn't it possible to pay the same amount of money and eat your sushi off of a semi-nude MAN? Imagine the lovely bachelorette parties we could all have. Why do the restaurant owners assume that women are going to want to stare at another woman all during dinner? Where's the fun in that?

Also, what does the woman who serves as the "platter" (god, that is so contemptible) do/say/look at while people are picking things off of her? Does she keep silent or make polite conversation? Enquiring minds and all that...

Bristol Man -

You ask where in the media this man's opinions can be seen? I can think of a few:

- countless films in which very young actresses are paired with much older leading men (see the recent Shop Girl for one of more odious examples of this.)

- news programs that have male and female anchors: the males are usually in their 30s, usually older, the women appear to be in their mid-twenties at most. (They may get to look 30ish on national news programs if they're pretty and unwrinkled.)

- television commercials in which unattractive men are, inexplicably, shown being lavished with attention by very young, beautiful women.

Now it's true that, no doubt due to federal laws, the females mentioned above are all above 18, but do you really think that if the people who produce this media could use teenaged girls they wouldn't? No, I think the media is rife with the message that men are acceptable to watch at any age and with any kind of looks (from ugly to the "ideal" of masculine beauty - which we actually see very little of.) Women are acceptable to look at as long as they are young and close to traditional western norms of beauty. If you're a woman and you happen to be older or average looking (or even trollish as are many of the men you seen in films or on television) you're just out of luck. And yes, I do see it being the younger the woman the better.

Miriald admits in her post that the IDEAL of masculine beauty is rarely seen, as if half of all men resemble Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise but there is a conspiracy to stop women from witnessing it.

Okay, first things first: I'm not a she. I'm a he. Take that.

And no, there's no conspiracy to stop women seeing these men, it's just that the majority of mainstream media is aimed at men, so we get lots of young, nubile women and very few young, hot-looking guys. A real pity.

Now onto your other comments:

Since the time we were all monkeys, women have sought out older higher status men over the young monkey males. Higher status males sought out younger, more fertile females over older crone female monkeys.

Trotting out this tired old theory doesn't make it true. And even if it were true thousands of years ago, it doesn't hold today. Most women can support themselves. They don't need a big, violent male to protect them from the world. Most choose their partners for other reasons. (I always find it fascinating that evolutionary theory is used to reinforce traditional gender stereotypes. We have no evidence at all that complex human thought or behavior is controlled by natural selection. Do yourself a favor - don't get ahead of the data.)

Miriald would posit that society should show the reverse, in defiance of logic and reality. Cater to the ugly, old woman contingent if you will, really, at the expense of everyone else.

I have no idea what letter you were reading that said this, but it certainly wasn't mine. I said no such thing.

Society DOES actually show the reverse, the 'hot' thing in Hollywood is old women with young guys

Oh yeah, this has been "hot" for about a year, mostly due to Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. The fact that these kinds of relationships are considered "news" demonstrates how rare they are.

Darwinism is the law of the jungle.

Spoken like someone who has only a shallow, biased view of what "Darwinism" really means. You also ignore completely the one thing that makes homo sapiens distinct from other primates: the huge area within our brains that is uncommitted cortex - it's not pre-programmed with instincts that must be followed. That's what allows us to be flexible and change when the physical or social environment calls for it. (And if you want to make the argument that men are driven only by these Darwinian instincts, then I suggest that we men hand over the reins of government and business to women, who, in your Darwinian paradigm, are affected far less by their "guts" and would no doubt work more efficiently.)

Men's HONEST opinions are rarely if ever aired in the media, most of the men in the media talk the way the women around them want to be talked to. Hence, men are basically SLAVES.

Bullshit.

Up until the 1970s women's views were hardly ever aired in the media. It was all men's views. In the past thirty years we've made some real strides towards balancing that, but it's not anywhere near perfect. And please, men are slaves? You take a good look around at real women and real men and tell me that women have it better - and then tell me how eager you are to take on menstruation, pregnancy, labor and childbirth, breastfeeding, sexual harassment at work and on the street, gender bias in education, date rape, forced sex of any kind, and countless rants like yours.

Get over your male ego and join the reality-based community.

Hear, here, Sara. Your point is well taken.

Toshiro -

The women here have been perfectly honest. Just because you disagree with what they've said doesn't make them dishonest.