A previous post on this sub introduced me to Kevin Samuels. And wow, is that guy on point! I highly recommend this one for his explanation of Pretty Privilege:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEZUz\_Dzks0

This is an incredible video, where he spends over an hour talking to a woman, poring over the details of her life, and actually makes her realize how much danger she's in i.e. the thin ice her entire life is built on which can come crashing down at any minute.

And it gets to the fundamental point we make here at WAATGM: women, especially pretty women, live their life with an intrinsic safety net: that there will always be a man to bail her out, no matter what shit she gets into. The WAATGM moment is when she needs that bailout and finds, to her horror, that it's gone, no one is left, and she's going to have to actually live with the consequences of her decisions.

Guys understand this very early in life. We have no bailout. Even with all of the Patriarchy in place [sic], it's not like some grand poobah hands every guy a 6-figure job and a lamborghini on our 18th birthday. Even the most rabid feminist has to admit that the only thing Patriarchy supposedly does is keep everyone *else* out of the applicant pool. But there are plenty of white, cis-het, male, <pick your privileged group> who pose plenty of competition even if you exclude women, minorities, transgenders, or whatever other oppressed group you support.

And so we learn very early on that no golden life is waiting for us, unless we start building it *now*. Typically, this realization comes in high school (sometimes earlier, when the bully beats you up on the playground and everyone laughs at you rather than rushing to help, and you realize even your physical safety can't be taken for granted). And we begin the long, hard process of building a good life, knowing that if we don't succeed, we can easily end up on the streets (men comprise 70% of homeless in the US).

This sense that there is no safety net means that, for all of the risk-taking supposedly embedded in toxic masculinity and testosterone, we are remarkably conservative (not necessarily in the political sense) when building our life. Sure, we might engage in some high risk behaviors like sports, but we also save money, plan for the future, and generally limit our risk-taking to stuff that can't actually bring our whole life down.

Women, especially beautiful women, are the real risk takers. They may not go skydiving (it'll mess up my hair!) but they mess with their lives in much riskier ways. Every guy who has dated at least a few drop dead gorgeous women has had the same epiphany at some point: as beautiful and kept together as their appearance might be, many of their lives are an absolute mess. Usually no education, shitty job, no meaningful career prospects, minimal family ties, living in some filthy hovel with a few equally deadbeat and crazy (but hot) roommates, stunning rates of alcoholism, drug use, mental health issues (SSRIs, anti-depressants), who can only afford ramen noodles on the nights she doesn't have a dinner date lined up. Which brings up the concept of Pretty Privilege (Samuels's term for it).

Any guy who lived like that would either shape up quick, or be on the streets soon. But pretty women don't have to shape up. Because a guy will always rescue them. Can't afford dinner tonight? A guy would starve. A pretty woman can fire up Tinder and be eating steak in an hour. Hate sleeping in your apartment because the whole building reeks of urine? A guy sticks cotton balls up his nose and hopes it's enough. A woman calls up on of her FWBs and spends the night under his silk sheets with a gorgeous view of the city when she wakes up. Can't make rent? A guy gets thrown out. A pretty woman begs her rich sugar daddy, her actual dad, or one of her numerous orbiters, who gives her the cash.

This extends to nearly every part of their life, which is why, in the years that men are building their lives (usually their 20s, and sometimes their 30s for some careers), women -- pretty women in particular -- are not. Why should they, when the high life is open to them already, and they can't fathom a time when it won't be?

The closest analogy in the male realm is probably trust fund kids who are born into wealth. They start with all the privileges of wealth, including stability, popularity, the ability to buy friendships, women, whatever you want, and the ability to recover from major mistakes (like bad education, drug use, crime, etc.) that would normally torpedo a regular person. The only difference is that wealthy kids can reasonably hope that their wealth continues throughout their life, and for many, it does. But women, no matter how beautiful, can always bank on that beauty going away at some point.

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Now getting to the video. It's a long one, so I'm going to give you the most important timepoints:

27:50 - The call starts. And the girl asks "I don't know if me having standards is getting in the way of finding the man I want." Right away, you can sense her attitude: she's perfect. If she can't find a decent man, it's because there are none that fit her "reasonable" standards. Samuels biggest point is always "are you the type of woman, the man that you want, is looking for?"

Samuels also asks her her age, height, weight, dress size, which establishes that she is good looking. Pretty.

29:00 - Samuels cuts to the point and ask her what level of income she's looking for in her partner. And that helps him make his first point. Women have no idea what it takes to provide the type of life they say they want. Why would they? If you're pretty, such a life is just handed to you. You never had to ask "how much".

32:20 - The delusion is laid bare. The caller wants to be a stay-at-home mother with 3 kids in the most expensive area of the nation (Bay Area) and thinks that can be done for $80k.

38:45 - Samuels says, okay you're hot. But after we have sex, what else do you offer? And the caller stumbles. That's all she has ever needed to offer.

43:55 - The caller says she's going through life by trial and error. And Samuels defines Pretty Privilege: the ability to make catastrophic mistakes in life, that would sink other women who are less pretty, and still survive.

54:30 - Samuels starts exploring the catastrophic mistakes she's made in her life.

58:50 - Interesting point about how easily women will lie and expect to get away with it (post for another day :-)

[The next 20 minutes are a great piece about the importance of fathers in raising sons]

So to tally up the mistakes this woman has made:

  • no education
  • single mother
  • Moved far away from her son's father for no good reason
  • unskilled, poorly paid, highly insecure (i.e. can be fired very easily) job, essentially competing with illiterate recent immigrants
  • no family support

This is a very risky life. If an ugly woman had made these mistakes, she would have to resign herself to a very, very difficult life with diminished prospects for happiness, and most likely a grueling struggle just to provide the bare necessities for herself and her son. And even then, she has a high risk of falling off for any type of adverse event (job loss, sickness, unplanned expense) and ending up homeless, destitute, or having her child taken away from her. Samuels tries to convince her that at this point in her life, she can barely take care of herself, let alone her son, and that she is in danger of messing things up royally not just for herself, but for her son.

[And let's forget about men in this situation: most of the welfare system in the U.S. is centered around helping single mothers. A man in this situation is usually much worse off and much more likely to end up homeless or dead from an illness he can't afford to treat. And his chances of improving his life are basically nil unless he makes a Superman-level effort to start correcting his mistakes]

But a woman as pretty as the original caller doesn't see this until Samuels points it out to her. Because until then, she's always been able to rely on her beauty to bail her out. It takes about an hour of additional talking to finally make this break and get through to her about how precarious her life really is. Even now, rather than focusing on the risks she's facing, she expects that, even from her current position, after all her mistakes, her beauty is enough to carry her to an entirely different life: a stable marriage to a high value guy, kids, luxury, and a white picket fence in the most expensive region in the country.

And the truth is, it still might. She's only 26, apparently still quite attractive. As Samuels tells her, if she sends her son to live with his father, she still has a chance of attracting the guy she wants and getting the life she wants. But that window is closing.

IOW, she's on the cusp. She's starting to ask WAATGM because she hasn't been able to find one yet and is starting to get nervous. If she makes some changes in her life she can still recover from her mistakes and get rescued (unlike her less attractive counterparts). But if she waits a few more years and her beauty and fertility starts to fade, those guys she's after will no longer be interested.

The true WAATGM moment will come when her beauty fades and she realizes just how much she was relying on her pretty privilege, and what it means now that it's gone and will never come back. Living her life "by trial and error", with no real plan or work on creating a stable, safe life, relying on your looks (and the men that are drawn to them) to rescue you from any mistake you might make, is a terrible life plan once the looks go away. But many women never realize that, so blinded as they are by their pretty privilege, until it's too late. And then their desperate OLD posts get featured on our sub :-)