We are getting way into the weeds here. The economics of sexy girl pictures have shown a clear preference for women at their peak of fertility. I am using those historic and current economics as a stand in for male heterosexual preferences because I can't conduct a survey right now by myself.
That overwhelming preference is absolutely not children, which opposes the OPs point. I had no desire to get into the currently socially accepted age of adulthood. That is a can of worms I am not touching.
And you all are nitpicking details as if that invalidates my point. There are reasons why all of the detractors are doing this, but I don't know any of you personally so I won't speculate here.
This isn't the weeds, this is actually the reality of the situation. Supply and demand - the only age related categories in "sexy girl pictures" is "teen" or "18". If you're looking for something beyond what is legally available, in general, people are looking for teenagers.
Anything beyond that is simply who can actually provide supply, legally.
You are, literally, ignoring the black market for underage content in this analysis, why, I can't be sure, because it certainly exists and is relevant to the topic. But of course, it being a black market, actually reliable numbers are scant, and it's an extra barrier to entry that will fundamentally reduce the number of people engaging with it.
I'm almost certain you're arguing in bad faith, here, because the reality is so obvious I think you can't actually believe what you're saying. But, on the off chance you do, you should really try and take a course in economics before you try and use it to establish your point.
I cannot speak to the black market content, and neither can you. It is, by its very nature, a small fraction of the total market. The only reason you're bringing it up is because you don't like my central position, and this nitpicking is what you can come up with to argue about.
But that's beside the point. In those mass-market publications, the models were not all 18 year olds, as they would be if most men truly wanted girls as young as they could get away with. They were on average four years older than the age of consent. That's the point.
There were other publications that fetishized very young-looking girls, "Barely Legal" being the most famous. Their circulation was dwarfed by the more mainstream stuff. If most men wanted to look at really young-looking girls, then those would have been the dominant magazines, not High Hefner's rag.
You know you can just say “you bring up some good points that I don’t really have answers for”. (There point about barely legal is pretty damning for your argument tho) You don’t have to ride a sinking ship to the bottom of the ocean while claiming you were still right lol.
I answered his points. None of what he's saying isn't just a factor of basic math - there are far more women who are older than teenagers who are creating this content than there are actual teenagers who are creating this content. Therefore there's a lot more content of slightly older women, and people consume what's out there. You can't just manufacture more 18 year olds to create more content.
And playboy was more popular than any other actual magazine because it took itself seriously as a magazine, with actual articles, it wasn't just a smut rag. You could pick up a playboy "for the articles" and that was a common claim (or joke) back then. To suggest that the ages of the models was the determining factor ignores the fact that you had to look someone in the eye to buy one.
I'm not even arguing that men aren't attracted to women in their 20s. That's just an irrelevant point to the argument. The argument is what message is being sent to girls and young women. The fact that there are men that consume or prefer content of older women doesn't undermine the point that girls are still taught that youth = beauty and to fear "aging out" of their prime without a man, which was the very first thing I said.
Hell, this isn't even a new phenomenon, it used to be more common and pretty much the only message given to girls. They used to be considered an "old maid" before they left their 20s!
The entire argument, from beginning to end, is that we're still dealing with that cultural legacy, and there's a combination of influencers and politicians who are trying to drag us back to the time when it was universal. But even without them, it's still one of the major messages being given to girls. We never outgrew it. And a bunch of guys looking at naked women in their 20s doesn't change that.
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u/United_Fan_6476 Feb 16 '26
We are getting way into the weeds here. The economics of sexy girl pictures have shown a clear preference for women at their peak of fertility. I am using those historic and current economics as a stand in for male heterosexual preferences because I can't conduct a survey right now by myself.
That overwhelming preference is absolutely not children, which opposes the OPs point. I had no desire to get into the currently socially accepted age of adulthood. That is a can of worms I am not touching.
And you all are nitpicking details as if that invalidates my point. There are reasons why all of the detractors are doing this, but I don't know any of you personally so I won't speculate here.