Such a powerful and well-written essay! Please read it through, internalize its message, extend that to clean drinking water, housing, physical safety, and realize the many millions of people who can't reach their full potential because such mind fog pervades their entire day, every day. That's ignoring their time & physical effort.

Then try to imagine how much human capital is wasted this way. Because for 'reasons', humans won't let their fellow humans enjoy the most basic necessities of life. While it would be so easy to fullfill them.

Oh btw for the "AI generated!" naggers: https://aeon.co/about

I was curious about this claim "... that any coverage of a woman’s appearance, even flattering coverage, diminishes voter perception of her competence. "

So I skimmed the linked oxford academy article. I can't see where it supports this exactly l, although it does match my intuition...

Did they also compare perceived competency of men that receive relatively more commentary on their appearance?

It also occurs to me that one reason a person, regardless of gender, may have a higher ratio of commentary on their appearance rather than policy, is because they are in fact less competent, giving the media less meaningful content to discuss.

Just to be clear, I'm not dismissing the discrimination women face daily or stating a conclusion, I just didn't see where it was proven here.

> "This was not limited to one childhood, or one decade. A male politician can change his tie and he is ready for the cameras."

If the politician is too old to capitalize on their sex appeal, or has none to begin with then sure. The same is true of women in that category though.

Otherwise? Come on. You think Zohran Mamdani just rolls out of bed looking like that? Sure the "ideal" presented to men is different than the one to women, but both are incredibly unhealthy in different ways. Instead of constantly making this about some kind of asymmetry between the genders why not recognize that this is a commonality being inflicted on us by ignorant people, tradition, media, social media, but most of all ADVERTISING.

Female thinness emphasis is also associated with fascism.

https://www.leejamiller.com/episodes/2025/11/24/the-fascists...