Lisa Hilton: Do women judge men by appearances

So you still think women are interested in men for their sense of humour? Sorry boys, you must be joking. As their wealth and power increases, women are happily owning up to checking out men's taut pecs and tight six-packs - or lack of them. Contrary to much critical opinion, there is at least one good joke in Martin Amis's recent novel, Yellow Dog. Readers of his fictional tabloid, The Morning Lark, are invited to make an 'invidious comparison' with the help of a 12-inch ruler on the paper's front page. The ruler has been renumbered to make it appear six inches long, and the Lark's readership suffers a sudden, suicidal downturn. Bad news, chaps. As ever, Amis is on the money when it comes to men worrying about their courting equipment. He's right. Size does matter. Women laugh at your dicks. Behind your backs. All the time. Of course, we would never be so ill-bred as to mention it. Men are allowed to mention it. Apparently, they write in to the readers' page of Razzle, with lurid descriptions of passionate encounters on the three-piece while hubby's off fetching a takeaway, and they never fail to note the frenzies of abandon provoked by their seven, or eight, or nine inches of love muscle. Gay men are allowed to mention it, and look at lovely pictures of it in the magazines, often accessorised with nothing more than white towelling sports socks and a cheeky smile, but straight women are supposed to be above that sort of thing. Yeah, right. When I shared a flat with girlfriends, and one of us staggered in at breakfast time with her knickers in her handbag and last night's mascara smeared all over her face, she was usually met with a laconic 'big one?' (If we weren't up to talking, a hand gesture akin to that used by boastful anglers and a raised eyebrow sufficed.) 'Average' and 'respectable' were used if you thought you might see the guy again, there being something cringe-making about introducing your new boyfriend to your friends knowing that they know that you know that they know he has a teeny todger. But one night specials were fair game. How we roared at 'pinkies', floppy foreskins and peculiar pubic hair. Of course there's more to a man than his penis. We're not that shallow. We also laughed at dodgy teeth, receding hairlines, incipient paunches and spotty shoulders - but of course none of it really mattered so long as he had a sense of humour. Women are always claiming that a sense of humour is the most important quality a man can possess, but to paraphrase Patrick Bateman, Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, who wants to fuck a guy with a sense of humour? He's only got a sense of humour to make up for being so ugly. A highly scientific international straw poll among my girlfriends revealed that for one night only they'd always go for the dumb stud over the kooky Woody Allen type. Such aesthetic exigency doesn't apply to life partners, in whom one naturally searches for serious qualities such as kindness, intellect and fidelity, but in the short term, modern women prefer a well-buffed ab to a well-turned aphorism. So far, so Cosmopolitan. If the covers of many women's magazines are to be believed, women are now just as concerned with men's physical appearance as has traditionally been the reverse, and since men are now spending more than ever on grooming products, beauty therapies and cosmetic surgery, they are clearly heading towards the same tedious insecurities as women on the subject of their looks. Honestly, couldn't we have come up with something better as a compensation for millennia of oppression than making men worry they might have cellulite? All the G8 countries being simultaneously led by women, perhaps? Still, this purported inversion of the 'male gaze', that process of insidious, all-pervasive objectification based on their conformity to a male-determined physical standard, which has been discussed by numerous feminists and elaborated upon by Naomi Wolf in her powerful study The Beauty Myth, lacks conviction beyond the context of celebrities and giggly pieces about sex toys. To claim that ogling Travis from the Calvin Klein ad is somehow a form of equality is as convincing as those tiresome women who still persist in lurching about in stilettoes while claiming they dress to please themselves. New-style women's mags may talk the language of Loaded, but how many women really walk the walk? Women's traditional disregard for men's physical appearance, or at least a reluctance to give that appearance status above and beyond other features, has been a function of wealth and power. If women were dependent on men for financial stability, social status and the security of their children, then it was necessary to be as alluring as possible themselves while keeping their own counsel about the size of Mr Right's gut. Ergo, as women become more financially and politically emancipated they can literally afford to select partners based on attractiveness. The much-trumpeted phenomenon of successful women such as Demi Moore taking up with scrumptious little pieces of trouser like Ashton Kutcher has been used as a case in point. Yet Moore is a flawed example in that she is not only rich and famous, but beautiful, and is therefore not entirely trading the former two attributes for the latter. Fat billionaire midget Sol Kerzner has dated famously beautiful women such as Christina Estrada, who were no doubt enthralled by his insider knowledge of the hospitality industry, but until Hello! magazine can keep a straight face while photographing some hideous old boiler and her 20-year-old 'model' lover relaxing in their Caribbean hideaway, it's not possible to claim a transition has taken place. (Ivana Trump has a younger lover who aspires to star in action movies but she's not ugly enough and he's not pretty enough to qualify.) The 'male gaze' is an accepted trope of much feminist writing, but does its female equivalent really exist? Two psychological studies suggest it could. In a 1978 study women were given isolated pictures of male features such as eyes or hands and asked to rate them in order of attractiveness. Unsurprisingly, qualities such as height and slimness scored highly, but characteristics such as strong jaws and thick necks were also highly rated. Apparently, a firm chin and wide collar measurement indicate high testosterone levels, suggesting that men in possession of those features are likely to be good bets for breeding. Reassuringly, hirsuteness, or lack of it, does not appear to affect a male's subliminal testosterone score. A second study asked a group of female students to score photographs of naked men based on their attractiveness. Again unsurprisingly, saggy flab, chicken chests and stringy legs did not come out well. A control group was then shown pictures of the same men, clothed, with descriptions of their income, career and interests. Beauty, it seems, is sometimes in the eyes of the bank account, as men who had been rated 'very unattractive' in their birthday suits moved up the scale when decently disguised and boosted by a six-figure salary. This result suggests that women's assessment of masculine appearance is still culturally governed. Women appear to feel insecure about appreciating male beauty for its own sake, which is perhaps why the pretty pin-up boys of More et al are usually successful actors or singers. The 'female gaze' is somehow justified or permitted if its object has a purpose beyond looking lovely. There are few equivalents of the 'page three stunna', whose entire raison d'etre, as her admirers are happy to acknowledge, lies below the collar bone. Are women simply ashamed to admit how much attractiveness matters to them, participating in a form of judgment by which they themselves have traditionally been demeaned? Karl, a male model, concedes that being stared at is part of his job, but observes: 'When I go to castings, if the guys are gay, they're quite happy to have a laugh or give me a compliment. If it's a woman, she'll just say, "Take your shirt off, please, turn around, thank you." Very cold and businesslike. It seems they're afraid of causing offence.' One woman I know admitted shamefacedly that she knew her marriage would end when she confessed to herself that she didn't want her husband's children - in case they looked like him. Another confessed that her feelings about a lover, who had a large bottom, changed when she caught her mates doing impersonations of him with cushions stuffed down their jeans. 'I laughed along out of embarrassment, and then hated myself for being so shallow, because he was a lovely guy. But I'd never been that attracted to him sexually, and after I saw my friends taking the piss, I was mortified. If I'd really loved him I would probably have taken no notice, but in fact we broke up soon afterwards.' Yet if this reluctance to admit that looks matter indicates a degree of kindness, an unwillingness to criticise men as they so casually judge women, or a kind of shame that such judging still takes place, the female gaze feels no compunction when directed at its sisters. Women are vicious about other women. A whole industry is run, if not controlled, by women whose aim is to make other women feel insecure so they buy more stuff. Naomi Wolf's contention that the beauty industry reflects a sublimation of the male gaze imposed by patriarchy doesn't quite ring true when confronted with the acres of gleeful newsprint devoted to J-Lo or Gwyneth Paltrow looking less than perfect. Women may sneer at men's looks in private, but in public we're still happy to let them strut - and work off our frustration by criticising celebrities we still spend fortunes trying to emulate. If women were prepared to be more honest about the critical objects of their own gaze, they might waste less time bitching about each other. About 10 years ago, there was a cinema advert for a teenage make-up brand that featured a jaunty young drill sergeant drilling her female recruits. 'This is out!', she snapped briskly, tapping her swagger stick on a slide of a saggy stomach, 'This is in!', on a beauteous six-pack. Of course, as is current with most advertising directed at men, all the ad did was suggest the right kind of mascara could get you a better class of snog, but I loved it for its openness. Women do judge by appearances, but few are confident enough to admit it. So I felt a bit sorry for Tracey Emin, who cheerfully confessed in a recent interview that she'd applied the 'try before you buy' method to a recent prospect, requesting that he indicate the length of his penis in relation to the beer bottle she was holding. He lied. Full marks to Tracey as a liberated woman, but maybe her oppressed side needs a little work. Perhaps the guy wasn't running because he had a puny pecker but because he thought he might catch something nasty from her bed linen. No one, it seems, can escape the gaze. · Lisa Hilton is the author of Athénaïs (Little, Brown), a study of Athénaïs de Montespan, mistress to Louis XIV. She would like to point out that the above article 'makes no reference to Sex And The Bloody City'. Hunks and chumps: adverts and the female eye The increasing commercial power of the female gaze has been recognised, naturally, in advertising where men are increasingly portrayed as walking - occasionally talking - washboard stomachs. It's not so long ago that the objectification was all one way - women provided the beautiful bodies on which all manner of products were displayed. And, sure, advertising has hardly abandoned the charms of the barely dressed woman. But it's now more of a balancing act. In fact, complaints about the negative portrayal of men to the Advertising Standards Authority have soared in recent years as men on billboards and on-screen become musclebound hunks with a brain-cell deficit. In 2001, one of the Lambrini Girls - those feisty, take-no-prisoners, 'strong' women who just want to have fun with the help of the 'semi-sparkling party drink' - announced that she had just lost '14 stone of useless fat'. Not an endorsement of Atkins or Slimfast, the punchline was: 'So you dumped him then?' It would be difficult to imagine the conceit hitting the screens with the roles reversed. A Fiat Punto advert sold its navigational features with the line (spoken by a woman) 'Because if you can't find your way around a woman's body you won't be able to find your way around Birmingham.' A poster for Bravo radio station read extravagantly: 'An ugly man with no money might as well cut off his penis.' The contrasting response to the likes of Eva Herzigova in the 'Hello Boys!' Wonderbra advert and Kelly, a well-endowed 24-year-old male model (and precursor to Calvin Klein's Travis) who featured in an advert for Brass Monkeys underwear shows the extent of the turnaround. Eva was deemed to be in control of her body, whereas the chaps are 'too big' or, according to the Advertising Standards Authority, presented as a piece of meat. While men are now objectified, crushed (literally under a woman's stiletto in the Lee Jeans 'put the boot in' advert) and cowed into submission, they are waking up to the fact. A recent survey by the Chartered Institute of Marketing found that only 14 per cent of people surveyed believed men came over as intelligent in adverts compared to 25 per cent who believed women did. But, as the Nissan Micra advert with a faceless man doubled over in pain clutching his genitals clearly shows, the boot is now on the other foot. And it hurts.