The trouble with your rationale is that 1) it all remains highly subjective and open to interpretation. On person's "when they're clad in a dress so tight you could remove the dress and use it as an ass mold" is my "comfy skirt" perhaps. My "floor length jean skirt" is another person's "gawd she's hawt, gotta have her". And 2) I could accept this argument(even with the "highly subjective" flaw) that the way women dress is allowing or inviting comment or vocalized interest from a guy, if it stopped guys from hitting on us when we purposely dressed unsexy/dressed down. If we could wear our sweat pants and t-shirts to the gym, or our comfy jeans on that bloated PMS day and not get hit on, if we could don a different costume or different armour and finally be free of the come ons and commentary at least for a break. Then I could by your arguement. As it is, this doesn't happen, we're fair game at any time.

You have always considered yourself a bigger guy, you speak honestly and openly about this, and have made some wonderfully successful strides in your fitness and diet. How would it feel to you to be seen as wearing a suit of bulk (think the wearable sumo wrestler suit) an extra 50 pounds more than you are, all the time, despite your success, despite your hard work? How would it feel to not be able to show anyone your hard work, because all they see is the sumo suit? Even days you don't want to be seen as a sumo wrestler, all there is for the world to see is that suit. Your self confidence falls, your motivation leaks away, your defensiveness increases, your anger and not being able to be seen as anything else surfaces.

It's easy to dimmiss a pretty woman as having no cares, and deserving what she gets because she's pretty or dressing well, or even dressing sexy. Sometimes, it's just nice to get rid of the "sumo suit" and have everything else seen.

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It's not that I don't think that it has disadvantages; I just think the advantages largely outweigh it. If someone was seeing me as a sumo wrestler, that'd be fine if I was getting paid like a good one.

Beautiful people have been statistically shown to earn more, live in nicer homes, and be treated generally better. I'm not saying that there aren't drawbacks, or even that those drawbacks are trivial, but on the whole I think being pretty and occasionally vexed by requests is superior to being ugly.

As to "You're fair game at any time," that's a fair point but you're also free to say no, and as I understand it the hotter the outfit the more you get hit on. (I could be wrong on this.) Personally, I support the social criteria - make it so that nobody says yes in certain circumstances, and most guys will learn not to do it.
Problem is, if someone breaks ranks, you could have issues.

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As to "You're fair game at any time," that's a fair point but you're also free to say no, and as I understand it the hotter the outfit the more you get hit on. (I could be wrong on this.)

Ya, tis not correct. I can count on getting hit on in a tshirt and jeans or in a sun dress or in leather. It has to do with circumstance and environment, if a guy feels safe (ie in a pack of guys, in a bar which is geared for that, while infused with alcohol, or in a vehicle to drive away in) more than how I'm dressed. Thus, the "you've dressed for it' or 'you're pretty and you should put up with it' arguments are little more than ...excuses or rationalizations, IMO.

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in a bar which is geared for that, while infused with alcohol,

You know, I was kind of following you until you complained about getting hit on in bars.

What precisely does one DO as a single person in a bar? You aren't there to drink, because anybody can buy a bottle of booze and turn up the stereo at home. You're there for the social aspects. And for the majority of the people in the setting, that's cruising the opposite sex to pick up dates. I think it's a moronic place to select sexual partners but I am in a distinct minority. It's like complaining about finding meat and blood in a kosher butchershop.

WTF did you walk in the door for?

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I think you misread.

I was listing environments where a guy appears to feel safe dropping pick up lines. If it helps, bullet the list insitead of the commas
"It has to do with circumstance and environment, if a guy feels safe
(ie - in a pack of guys
- in a bar which is geared for that,
- while infused with alcohol,
- or in a vehicle to drive away in)

you'll note I even went so far as to say "in a bar which is geared for that"

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Oh. Well, what I meant was in that bar, dropping pickup lines is an expected behavior, even if it does evince bad breeding and poor taste.

Pack scenes are, in my mind, somewhat different. Although even there, I still think the problem is less about his initial comment than the possibility that if shot down, the presence of his buddies might egg him on to try to disregard the initial disinterest.

You know, it occurs to me that a lot of behavior that is complained about basically revolve around the collapse of what were formerly called simply "good manners." I once read a copy of Emily Post from the 1920s, and what impressed me was that as archaic and perhaps sexist as some of the rules are, a lot of them revolved around protecting women in one form or another.

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complaints are always when one intrudes on socially excepted mores, in 1920 there were just as much complaints only over different things, instead he asked me out 15 times even though I said no, people complained for example that the man only made a 1/3 of a bow instead of a half bow. very different but to them insulting. People have always complained about the collapse of good manners. when they merely change.

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What precisely does one DO as a single person in a bar?

It's all about the mixers, baby!

Kidding.

When I was single and in college, my female friends and I would go out to the bars because there simply wasn't anything else to do in this town. We could dress nice, go someplace that wasn't the dorm room, and watch people go by. We weren't cruising for guys, we weren't looking specifically to pick someone up. If we met someone cool, then good deal. But if we didn't, we were no less for our lack of male attention.

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As a data point, I go to bars because I want to have, say, a single frozen margarita, or even two, and not have to buy a blender, the separate ingredients, make it, and clean up after myself. Sometimes I go to a piano bar, or a bar with live music, because I want to hear live music, and have a drink. Or I want a single drink of something that I don't want to buy. (Have you looked at the price of some single malt scotches? I don't necessarily want to lay out $300 dollars for a bottle of something that I may only want one glass of.)

Hell, sometimes I go into a bar alone because I know the staff, and want to say hello. And sometimes I go in because I feel like being a character from a book, moodily sipping a classic cocktail alone, while other people socialize around me. I think it's a highly erroneous assumption to make, that the only reason people go to bars is for the social aspects.

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I think his point was not that it was the only reason, but it was a general reason. Although you personally haven't gone to that bar to pick up, but I'm sure you'd be aware of the fact that other people in that bar may be there to pick up, and one or more of those people might decide to try and pick you up.

It's not the only reason, but for a lot of people, it is one of the reasons (arguably one of the major reasons).

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Mmm....sun dress.

No, really. I get funny looks from folks when I talk about how I can find a sun dress sexier than lingerie, but it's true. Depends on the person, depends on the dress, and, of course, it depends on if there's a hat involved.

But, as someone somewhere stated: Everyone is someone else's fetish.

This content-free message brought to you by the letter B (as in "bored").

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You're comparing being a sumo wrestler with being pretty; I suspect it would be more accurate to compare it with being female. And females, pretty or not, do not earn more, live in nicer homes, or get treated better than males, statistically.

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amen

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the hotter the outfit the more you get hit on

That's definitely the way it works for me. I also notice that men don't pay as much attention to me when I'm not wearing makeup, despite how many of them claim they prefer women to not wear makeup.

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