[Hoodlum]

Has anyone got a good link to the evolutionary psychology behind (or can provide a good explanation of) the phenomenon whereby girls feel the need to put "gorgeous" and "stunning" on each other's pics on social media all the time? (when usually they're anything but)

At a guess... I'd say it's something to do with presenting their best face in their social circle, to try and avoid being pulled to pieces by the rest of the girls behind their backs, thus lowering their social rank and making it less likely high value males will mate with them.

Thoughts?

[Grit]

Girls advertise themselves. The girl is going to fall behind her peers if she isn't routinely broadcasting her existence.

Wouldn't you want to be associated with the cool and sexy social circles? Beauty seeks out beauty because it makes male entry much more intimidating. The guy who is aggressive for one hot chick will probably bang a few low hanging fruit on the sly.

Etc

[Ensam]

It's not just on social media sites. I routinely overhear groups of wall victims or fatties in bars talking about how gorgeous each other are and lamenting the lack of quality men. My favorite is the 4s and 5s who complain about their orbiters. Even those chicks have orbiters and they'd rather stay celibate than fuck them.

[Hoodlum]

(06-27-2013 04:48 PM)Grit Wrote:  

Girls advertise themselves. The girl is going to fall behind her peers if she isn't routinely broadcasting her existence.

Wouldn't you want to be associated with the cool and sexy social circles? Beauty seeks out beauty because it makes male entry much more intimidating. The guy who is aggressive for one hot chick will probably bang a few low hanging fruit on the sly.

Etc

I don't get the impression they are doing it to try and convince men of the veracity of their own beauty necessarily. It's more like a fragile-ego-propping-up mutual masturbation session. And they all so patently don't mean it, you know they'd just as soon be tearing stripes out of one another.

[Hobnob]

I think it's stroking their own ego:
Inner monologue: Janice is so fat and unattractive, I'm much hotter than Janice
Spoken words: Janice you're beautiful!
Inner logic: Janice is beautiful, I'm hotter than janice, therefore I'm the most beautiful.

[iknowexactly]

I would speculate that in the tribal societies our genes evolved for, there is a conflicted competition-dependency link between women.

Women need social support during pregnancy and are very vulnerable, so they need to keep social connections superficially "positive" at all costs, resulting in the "frenemies" concept-- someone they really just don't like but still maintain the niceties with.

When men were more completely dominant, the guy who's fucking a particular woman could change and she would have no say in it. So the loyalty of men was more questionable, whereas she would hopefully have her sisters to fall back on.

[Hoodlum]

This seems like a reasonable explanation. I'm always inclined to lean towards evo psych based interpretations of these social phenomena.

I'm pretty sure one of the 'sphere heavy hitters has weighed in on this, but I couldn't ferret out the article.