I have a question about the women

[BeccaGrim]

So, watching the Duggars and Bates (and then Anna and Ashley, I don't count Whitney because she wasn't Fundie heavy before she got married) I'm wondering about how these girls keep themselves up.  I haven't seen a girl who wouldn't be considered to be pretty in the bunch. (Even if the girl wouldn't be everyone's type, she's attractive.)  Is this a Fundie thing? What do they do if the girl isn't pretty? Does Gothard give the girls dressing and primping lessons?

[nausicaa]

I think some of it is we're looking at a skewed sample. The more attractive Fundie families are going to have more media coverage and be promoted by the group. The boys in these families, now having more power within their relative social circles have more options, and also because they are most likely young, perhaps immature, and horny, will choose equally or more attractive partners.

I also think staying thin and doing one's hair and makeup is heavily emphasized within Gothardism. I believe we had a thread once talking about this within ATI and if there were plastic surgery pressures, but I can't find it now. 

I can think of a few Fundies we've followed who were not conventionally attractive but they didn't gain much social media traction. 

[libriatrix]

There is absolutely a trend in all fundie marriages towards the conventionally beautiful girls getting picked off first. If you put the power of choosing in a young guy's hands, condition him to believe he deserves everything good (he's a man isn't he?), and set him loose, he usually conveniently feels led to marry the attractive young woman rather than the plain one. Another contributing factor I think is the emphasis on how any Christian man can marry any Christian woman and you don't need to worry about compatibility, personality, anything, because God will magically take care of all that as long as you devote yourselves to him. If any woman will do because she's basically going to be an accessory/slave, then why saddle yourself with a plain one? 

[unsafetydancer]

On 13/05/2016 at 5:54 PM, libriatrix said:

There is absolutely a trend in all fundie marriages towards the conventionally beautiful girls getting picked off first. If you put the power of choosing in a young guy's hands, condition him to believe he deserves everything good (he's a man isn't he?), and set him loose, he usually conveniently feels led to marry the attractive young woman rather than the plain one. Another contributing factor I think is the emphasis on how any Christian man can marry any Christian woman and you don't need to worry about compatibility, personality, anything, because God will magically take care of all that as long as you devote yourselves to him. If any woman will do because she's basically going to be an accessory/slave, then why saddle yourself with a plain one? 

Never actually thought about this aspect of it. Wow that's disturbing.

[FundieFarmer]

The Duggar girls all do their hair and makeup to JB's standards and to "enhance the countenance", as it were. They and the Bates are attractive. Then we have other families like the Rodriguii, who put the same if not more effort in, and achieve very opposite results. They have a wide range of canvasses to work with, so it depends, I suppose. But we see there that a lot of time and effort is put into being presentable and beautiful whether or not it is actually successful.