Whether it is advocating being pushy to the point of sexual assault or ranking people according to stupidly contrived numbers, there is something deeply pathetic about the cult of so called Pick Up Artists.
Jack is a five. On a scale of one to ten determining how attractive someone is, he is smack bang in the centre, a middling Mr Average. That’s according to Jack – if I was the kind of person who ranked people using numbers I’d be more generous.
He was telling me this on Saturday evening, and explained that the number is not so much a definitive rating, but contextual. Your number can go up or down, but according to Jack, in most social situations, he is better looking than half the men present, but not as handsome as the other half. To compensate for this supposed lack, Jack has taught himself “game” and is a devotee of the pick-up artist and author Erik Von Markovik, better known as Mystery.
When I first learnt this I was flabbergasted because, well, it all seems somewhat unnecessary. Jack is nice looking, smart, personable, and he plays in a fairly well-known band. In other words, he is exactly the kind of man you wouldn’t think needs hocus pocus Jedi mind tricks to bamboozle women. But, hey, what do I know? I’m just a woman, and therefore I presumably know less about what the ladies like than a gangly Canadian seduction guru with a silly name.
I’ve read bits of Von Markovik’s tome, The Mystery Method, but I don’t believe his self-aggrandising hype. There is not a chance in hell that Mystery is as successful a pick-up artist – or PUA – as he claims to be. Seriously, Google his picture. Mystery has a penchant for furry hats, too much eyeliner, ugly ass earrings and he rocks a soul patch. Mystery is also a magician, so his personal shtick involves magic tricks. But no amount of alcohol, illegal drugs, abracadabra or even involuntary celibacy would make me want to get within ten feet of him. He looks like a man that smells of three day old sweat and patchouli oil. But then, I have standards. Not many, but some!
Having said that, unlike many PUA teachers, Mystery’s advice is not terrible. He doesn’t advocate sexual assault like Julien Blanc. Nor is he an alleged rapist like Owen Cook. Cook is one of the founders of Real Social Dynamics, which offers PUA workshops internationally. In the PUA community, Cook is known as Tyler Durden, and he was caught on video during a workshop bragging about raping a stripper.
Roosh V writes “bang” guides supposedly detailing his sexual exploits around the world, and runs the misogynist hate site Return of Kings. Mystery has also never shot a woman in the face like Gunwitch, whose seduction method is “make the ho say no.”
Instead, Mystery is all about flamboyant clothes, being the most amusing guy in the room, looking for indicators of interest and working on your self-esteem. Does it work? Probably, at least some of the time – and it has definitely got to be more successful than waiting until you’re so drunk you can barely stand, or staring longingly at someone across the room. However, Mystery is also the man who popularised the number scale.
In PUA lore, women are “hot babes” and given a number ranking. A skinny blonde with big boobs, wearing a tight dress, stilettos and surrounded by friends and admirers is an HB10. Her friend with the greasy hair and a curry stain on her top is perhaps an HB4, or if you’re feeling especially shallow, an UG – ugly girl. It doesn’t matter if the HB10 is as dumb as a box of rocks or a self-entitled princess; nor does it matter that the UG has spent 18 hours on shift as a junior doctor and hasn’t had time to glam up. Looks are all that count and hitting on anyone ranked lower than HB6 is known as “dumpster diving.” Ugh, the whole thing makes me want to scrub myself with a wire brush and disinfectant.
The number scale is insulting and dehumanising because it reduces people to a collection of body parts, and features and ranks their worth accordingly. That’s a pretty shitty thing to do to anyone, including yourself. As well as ranking members of the opposite sex, this reductive attitude to attraction forces you to rate yourself in relation to everyone else and to see others as potential competition – that’s depressing as hell.
I was thinking about how I would rank myself and frankly the whole exercise was a rollercoaster – troughs of despondency, brief periods of confidence, momentary flashes of vanity, followed by soul-crushing despair.
If the number ranking is contextual at the moment I am a HB10 because I am the best-looking woman in the office. Okay, I am also the only woman in my office; the only person in fact, as I am working at home alone. This is just as well because if you put me out amongst humans, my ranking falls off the cliff. I’m wearing a short skirt and a form-fitting top, so my outfit is pretty cute, but my hair is wet, I’m wearing glasses, and a battered pair of Converse sneakers. I would have ranked myself as a 4 or possibly a 5, but the dog came over for a cuddle and left hair all over my tights. At most, I’m a 3.
On Saturday night with my hair done and wearing red lipstick I was surely a solid 7. Maybe not – there was lots of pretty girls around so perhaps I barely scraped a 5. Whatever my score, I was with the Australian and feeling good. Things only got better as the night went on. On early Sunday morning, naked with post-sex mussed up hair, sweaty skin and melted mascara I was a goddamn glorious goddess of a 10 – at least in my own mind. And as I was the only woman in my bedroom, the context was working in my favour too.
I have a number of lady friends who are objectively better-looking than me – girls with glossier hair, smoother skin, and better fashion sense. But if I were to choose my friends based on how their looks compared to mine, well then, I’d have a lot less friends. I’d also spend a lot more time worrying about how I stacked up compared to strangers. Neither of these would be good for my confidence or my social life.
Beauty is culturally determined, and it is often narrowly defined, but attractiveness is much broader. We say someone is beautiful when their looks conform to what our culture prizes; but attractiveness is the effect somebody has on you. Put it this way – beauty is whatever culture says it is; attractiveness is whatever your groin tells you it is.
I was certainly not beautiful when I woke up after three hours sleep on Sunday morning. From dizzying heights I had fallen straight down into UG territory – a 2. The pimple on my chin didn’t help. The fact that I got laid again, did. Luckily, the Australian has seen me looking like a particularly rough extra from The Walking Dead on more than one occasion and still manages to find me attractive.
Maybe that’s because he was cross-eyed from lack of sleep; or maybe, just maybe, it’s because he see me as a person and not a damn number. He was exhausted, and his hair was sticking up at weird angles, but he was still as sexy as he was the night before. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he’s a total 10...
Nope, that doesn’t hurt at all.