Influencer-era self-help literature frames women as male-optimization trophies

Evidence

Ferriss treats women as objects or trophies, every now and then tossing a bone to his female readers (“to the ladies, for whom peanut butter seems to be like crack, the tablespoon scoop should be no more than a small mound”). … I met “The Kiwi” in Buenos Aires, Argentina … his obsession started when he saw a professional samba dancer in Brazil balance tequila shots on top of each butt cheek in a dance club. Lamenting the lack of similar scenes in his own country, he set off on a mission to isolate the best exercises to create buttocks worthy of tequila shots … In four weeks, he took his then-girlfriend, an ethnic Chinese with a surfboardlike profile, to being voted one of the top 10 sexiest girls out of 39,000 students at the University of Auckland. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 456

Categorization

• XREF: Male self-optimization literature overlaps ideologically with pick-up artist culture — connects to the ‘seduction community’ genealogy of online masculinity. — connects to: Instrumentarian social engineering principles produce chronic self-comparison among young women online — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1426; Women fuse male sexual vigor and social success into one myth of sovereignty — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1760; Influencers present divergent glamorized and grim self-images across platforms — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory: A Marxist…, 204

Broader Connections

• Instrumentarian social engineering principles produce chronic self-comparison among young women online #complicates (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1426
• Influencers present divergent glamorized and grim self-images across platforms #expands (0.80) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 204
• Women fuse male sexual vigor and social success into one myth of sovereignty #expands (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1760