Louise Perry is one of my favorite writers. Her most recent book is A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century. We covered a lot of ground in this discussion:
Louise brought up a fascinating tradeoff some women make: they’d rather be seen as cool by their female peers than be more attractive to men
Whether the obsession with self-improvement is partly driven by the need to be seen as a “safe bet” in a chaotic dating market.
We talk about why the “grindset” self-help movement might actually be a modern male mating signal—especially in a world where traditional signals like military service or homeownership are out of reach.
How delayed adulthood—endless university, postponed careers—is disrupting relationship formation for both sexes.
I explain why simply creating more well-paid jobs for men might not be enough to bring back marriage rates—and why cultural norms matter just as much as economics.
Employment itself used to be a sign of male stability—but as more women enter the workforce, men now need new ways to prove their value.
I brought up a thought experiment: if you traveled back in time to 1945 and told people that abortion and the pill would be widely available in a few decades, would they predict that there would be more children born to unmarried parents, or fewer? Would the number of fragmented families increase or decrease? Would the number of children in foster care rise or fall?
Pushing back on the romanticization of pre-modern life, pointing out the sky-high child mortality rates of pre-industrialized societies
Data showing that modern hunter-gatherers report the same levels of happiness as people in wealthy societies—suggesting the mind adapts to whatever context it's born into.
Modernity causes new kinds of suffering—but it also eliminates some ancient forms of suffering we’d rather not bring back
You know the meme: a guy lifts weights imagining women admiring him, but the reality is it’s just other guys saying “looking good, bro.” Louise said women have their version—getting buccal fat removal from their cheeks not to attract men, but to get compliments from other women
We discuss the comparison Louise made between women getting obsessed with their looks and men falling into compulsive porn use.
From her essay in The Spectator: “Women want to be beautiful as fiercely and obsessively as men want to get laid.”
The difference between resisting temptation in the moment vs. designing your life so the temptation isn’t there to begin with.
Louise suggests that, ironically, it’s not the plain women who suffer most from fading looks, but the “pretty mids”—women who’ve had just enough beauty to get a taste of the status it brings before their looks fade
I’ve seen a similar pattern in men—good-looking guys in their 30s are more anxious about aging and appearance than the average-looking guys
The more your social currency depends on beauty, the more stressful it becomes to watch that currency depreciate
A reminder that paid subscribers can access these recordings on Apple Podcast and Spotify.
See my previous discussions with Louise Perry:
Sexual Morality and Societal Progress
How Luxury Beliefs Hurt the Poor
