Honestly, some people are just a waste of space on earth. We should send them on a one way trip to Mars :). I'll stop now!

I am going to make a T-shirt that reads "I am not here to decorate your world" lol! Just brilliant mochi!! In fact I am going to use it every chance I get. Bwahahaha *evil laugh*

That is just horrible!

Beth Ann, I get what you are saying. We cannot always control our thoughts. And like Carter said back then, things often pop into my head that I am not proud of or I base opinions on wrong information or assumptions. Core values that we believe in and can express out of kindness and concern and for betterment are one thing. This guy was just being mean. I hate to believe that this is a core value for him..that is really, really scary. But it speaks volumes about his character. I personally don't believe that there is a problem with an opinion if it is constructive or in an effort to participate in something in a good faith effort..but this was utterly meaningless and nasty. It existed for no other reason other than to humiliate someone. Maybe that it is the sense that we have lost. We don't know the difference anymore. Or it just doesn't matter.

Part of me can't help but think; did he think that he was being witty ? And why would such a horrible put down be considered "witty" ? I also agree with you regarding the word. It makes no sense to me. What does it even mean to be ugly as that? I know that I keep asking that. LOL It is grammatically incorrect, non-sensical, and so on. BUT, I have never thought of it as a sexual attack. But it is. Why else use the word ? That is a great observation, Beth Ann. It IS a way of sexually assaulting her. Wow. It is a weapon. And what the heck propelled him to use it ? Was he intimidated by her wit and intellect ?By her unbelievable success at the age of 24 ? So he had to sexually assault her, so to speak ? Is this the best writing that he can do ? And imagine, writing this to a co-worker, particularly a female subordinate ?!!!!

Neel, I want one of those t shirts !!!! When I was on bed rest with my daughter, I used to watch Judge Judy a lot. She would often say, " I am not here because I am pretty, I am here because I am smart." Though she is a very pretty woman. But she is even smarter. : )

I have to say that I have SOOOO much respect for Leandra for not publishing this guy's name. She is not only witty, hysterical, smart AND pretty, she has a ton of class. I don't think that I would keep my mouth quiet.

Isabel, I'm going to disagree with you on a point. Or at least say, I'm not sure. I tend to think that this guy wasn't even intending to be mean at all. That's how pervasive this sense of entitlement is. Ranking women by their looks is something many many many guys do without question. It probably wouldn't have occurred to him that he was saying anything with cruel intent. That could be even more sad, if true. Please feel free to disagree.

Mocchi, I can't disagree with you. : ) Your point is very reasonable and accurate.

I just don't know in this instance. As I asked, was he trying to be "witty" ? What was he thinking ???? He probably wasn't trying to be mean because he liked Leandra and was impressed by her ( like they say, who needs enemies ? ) . But the result was really, really mean. Scumbag mean, to me. That is what is just so baffling to me about how he goes on to use that expression after acknowledging her talent and intellect. As Beth Ann pointed out, that is a really descriptive word. A very sexually, aggressive word. How does it fit as a descriptor relevant to looks? I think that there must be some latent aggression there. Yes, entitlement is a good descriptor actually. A part of him must realize how mean it is. To say that she is ugly is horrible, that is one thing. To say that she is ugly as F, is a whole other level to me. It seemed like not a ranking of women ( though that is a great way to put it ), but rather a ranking against himself. It was as if he needed to put her in her place.....and he used sex to do it.

ETA : I apologize for referring to the male blogger as a "scumbag". I shouldn't have said that. Sorry guys.

Women seem to go farther than men, to do something about their looks, but whatever... I find the whole practice of emphasising appearance one part WASPy (but not preppy) and one part trashy. Women sitting around talking about how funny it is they all happen to be small featured blonds and men looking for trophy wives. Both the men and women of this type tend to be sharks. Not nice and quite amoral. They don't have friends. Instead, they screen for membership; if you get into the club, you keep up or you get left behind...

ETA: Which is all to say, I don't think this guy was being any more misogynistic than the men and women of his shark social set. It wasn't exactly a sexual attack because the shark social set doesn't have sex. They pretty much only have unpleasant violence and vaguely pleasant violence.

I will give you a very personal example of someone who I am sure was not intending to be mean, yet must have felt completely entitled. I had breast reduction surgery when I was about 15. Years later (I mean, I was an adult with a child of my own), I was looking for something in my dad's files and came upon the letter that the doctor has to write so that the insurance company will cover the procedure. This was from my pediatrician, who had been seeing me since I was a small child.

Now, you can imagine that there are a great many reasons why a woman or girl would need to undergo such a procedure, including, for starters, back pain, psychological discomfort, etc. However, this pediatrician decided to write (in a letter my parents would get a copy of!) that the patient was "very unattractive" and maybe this surgery would give her the incentive to start taking care of her looks.....you can imagine how shocked I was to read this, as an adult, and realize that this is how my doctor saw me.

I STILL don't understand his motivation.

I have to honestly say that is the exact wording I would use to describe myself, although I would ***HATE*** to see it used towards someone else

The shark social set is such a good label, Rachylou! And I tend to agree that his revolting comment probably stemmed more from his smug sense of himself than misogyny, sexism, or even dislike of the blogger's appearance. To him, emphasizing her makeup-less state was probably just a lame attempt to be caustically witty--as was his less than grammatical use of a sexual expletive. I sometimes think we give the originators of these comments too much credit for having deliberate motives when, in reality, the comments are nothing more than squeaks coming out of ignorant minds.

I know women that are only attracted to 'good looking' men and will not date them unless they fill their criteria of looks. Very shallow. And these women are in there 20's and 30's. I do not get it and never have understood the looks thing. AND, I want to know this guys name.

mochi I am trying to pick my jaw off the floor, shocked is not the word. truly awful.

Yes, clara, it was really really stunningly awful. I was also angry that my parents had kept that letter!

This was around 1980. You can imagine that this "she's really ugly" letter from a doctor would not fly with insurance companies these days, but apparently it was acceptable then.

Isabel: My first point was that this man was expressing an opinion that was, in my opinion (hee) uncivil. Culturally, we used to have an inner awareness that saying these rude things that pop into our heads like, "Wow, she's ugly," is wrong. We also sometimes, as in my example of Prez. Carter, attempted to minimize these unkind thoughts before we could harm others by acting upon them --- the thoughts themselves were considered a problem, much as Jesus taught that thinking hateful thoughts about your brother (or sister) was just like murdering them. Our media saturated culture, where everyone is filling out buzzfeed surveys and posting comments on social meeting, um, just like I am now, makes us feel powerful and important --- and we speak things that hurt instead of things that build up. I'm trying to be more vigilant myself, so I don't become hardened in my thinking like this guy. You know, learn from the jerk's example so I don't become one!

I didn't mean to imply that he didn't intend to hurt anyone, or that you shouldn't speak out about it. He's completely morally culpable and anyone has the right to confront him with it. I suspect he is so hardened to the mean thoughts in his mind that he's made a nice big comfy couch for him in his head. He indulged the misogynistic thoughts in his head and made them public. An apology -- and not of the "I'm sorry your feelings are hurt" variety, would be place to begin making things right.

I just think sometimes men are just base creatures and I wonder how their mothers/women in their lives have interacted with them but then I'm blaming women generally and that's totally wrong! aren,t men responsible for their own behaviour?i would never call a man ugly as @!"£$ privately or publicly.it just makes me sad it feels like women move on and men are still children all their lives....what mochi said about her doctor makes me want to cry how can healthcare professionals say that I will never know.

One thing that always bugged me about the Judd Apatow type comedies is that you had these regular schlubby guys, and then the women who were their friends or costars or love interests were gorgeous and carefully made up, but the whole movie pretended that they were 'regular' looking too. I'm thinking of 'Knocked up' and the Kristin Wiig and Katherine Heigl characters being denied entrance to a club -- but there were several other examples of this (thank you Melissa McCarthy and Rebel Wilson for proving women could be funny in movies, have romance, and look like regular folks too). It's like a mass delusion that both genders buy into if they haven't stopped to question it, hence the association of Kim Kardashian with 'natural' beauty,

Sometimes I think it's the online porn effect. A certain kind of guy sort of starts expecting that real women look like that, complete with the non existent body hair and wildly implausible proportions, and they feel entitled to judge because they are douches. They don't get called on it often enough, maybe because like you say, they are swimming with other vacuous sharks, or alternately, they don't know any real women.

Mochi: I am, sadly, not surprised by this. Doctors used to be considered all-knowing. As a musician, I still have male colleagues who will evaluate female singer's professional potential by their looks. Many men feel entitled to voice an opinion as if it was objective truth.

Then there was this last week: Fat-Shaming in Opera.

ww.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2014/05/20/314007632/in-2014-the-classical-world-still-cant-stop-fat-shaming-women?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20140520

She looks like, what, about a size 12/14. Of course, the opera opened with a svelte Marschallin naked in the shower. Kind of sets up a different sort of expectation. What's even worse? These critics kept justifying their "reviews." Mezzo Alice Coote had a marvelous response, I think, and the NYT printed a good retort, also.

Mochi, that is horrendous! I am appalled and so sorry. What an awful thing to say in any capacity.

Ditto the other comment.

The true ugliness is in the speaker's character, as has already been noted so eloquently.

Beth Ann -- Related to this do you know the story Malcolm Gladwell told in the book 'Blink' about a female trombone(?) player auditioning for an orchestra in the 1980's? Here's a comment he wrote in Slate about unackowledged sexism in orchestra hiring and how simply putting up a visual screen in auditions started to change it: http://www.slate.com/articles/.....wds/the_bi

I'm on the "men are stupid" bandwagon. So many stories.

Women can be stupid too, of course, but man, sometimes men take the cake.

rabbit, I read that at the BSO (Boston Symphony), they not only use a visual screen, but soundproof carpeting so that when the musician walks into the audition space, there's no way to tell what kind of body weight they have.

I remember that from Blink. Was it also Blink where they talk about the studies showing that ugly babies get less care from their own parents? People put a huge amount of weight on the visual.

I wonder about the effect of my being nearsighted on this.

p.s. Mochi, I had a ridiculous doctor in the '80s who showed me a video about how radiation would turn me from being a morose dark-haired punk into a perky blond cheerleader. Yeah. No. I wasn't morose because of the hyperthyroidism. I was morose because of people like him.

Mochi, that is awful. Awful isn't a strong enough word, really!

I've always been amazed by male entitlement about females' appearances. I've known too many males who were no prizes in the looks department who thought they "deserved" a model perfect girlfriend. I pity the regular women they married, honestly, because boy is that attitude going to come through in other ways.

Times like this, I am very grateful for my lovely, mannered husband.

A few thoughts ran through my mind as I read through this thread:
- Wow, that was a rude comment on that guy's part.

- People are pretty cavalier about language these days. I hear people throw around phrases like that a lot, with no sense of sexual aggression. They use this type of language without being aware of what it actually sounds like. Not trying to excuse the guy's language, but I would beware of reading too much behind it, particularly when we don't know the full context.

- Women can be as bad (or worse) than men.

- I think our reaction to beauty is hardwired, a biological/evolutionary thing. This article mentions that study Rachy mentions:

http://www.economist.com/news/.....and-why-ma

Rabbit: I had heard of that event, but hadn't read Gladwell's detailed account of it, thanks! Of course, opera singers have to deal with the "acting the character" part, but, an opera where a woman sings the part of a boy who dresses up as a woman to get the girl? Well, realism is pretty much already out the window --- all good art should help us see things in a new way. Whose to say that a less than buff teenage boy (the character Octavian) couldn't transfix a woman or two?

In Opera, it's still worse for women, but even among rare Tenors, the kind that can sing Wagner well, Jonas Kauffman (pic 1) gets much difference press than Ben Heppner (pic 2). They both sing very well.

Interesting article, cciele.

I think that women need to be active in changing this sort of attitude. The numbers of teens involved in abusive relationships is astounding, and emotional/verbal abuse like this sort of fixation on looks is a big part of it. We need to teach our girls (and boys) well, and that means teaching them that the very first time someone raises a hand to you, you WALK AWAY for good and never turn back. When he raises his voice, you walk away because you value yourself more than to allow yourself to be treated in such a manner. Teach them that they are beautiful no matter what. These things should be non-negotiable, and men who think and act in the way talked about in this thread would find themselves alone, surrounded by turned backs.

The woman who received this email will not call him on it. I am glad Leandra did. It might be too late for him, but not for others. We need to restrict media to children and be aware when/if our boys are objectifying women. There is an 8th grade "promotion" dance coming up at the middle school my kids attend. The girls in 6TH GRADE are acting like the back-stabbing housewives of whatever county about which boy will go with them, etc. They learned this sort of thing from somewhere, and dollars to doughnuts they learned it on the telly with parents who thought similar programs were funny.

I despise "Dr. Phil", but his statement that we teach others how to treat us is correct. We all need to begin being assertive about teaching others that we demand to be treated with respect.

Mochi, your dr. behaved criminally, and the fact that your parents allowed it is equally horrible. The fact that it happened in 1980 is just mind-blowing, since many of the girls born around the time I was assumed that sexism didn't exist and was never as serious as older women made it out to be. This was part of the backlash against feminism. Women made things so much better that younger women had zero concept of the reason why they had to fight for it in the first place. stories like these remind us that the fight is far from over.

biscuitsmom: I can tell you with absolute authority that you. are. WRONG. You are a truly beautiful person, inside and out. I'd love to have a word with the people who taught you not to believe that.

Ugh, I just googled, and this doctor is 83 and still practicing (part-time) in Port Lucie, FL. To be honest, I was kind of hoping he'd died. Painfully.

Yes, Echo, I also felt incredibly betrayed by my dad (or both of them; I'm not sure who got the letter). I never spoke to either of them about it. I can't believe my father just filed it away like any piece of correspondence, and to be honest, they had both given me a lot of crap about my looks when I was growing up. I suspect that they saw nothing inappropriate in what the doctor had said. If it had been my daughter, I would have been outraged.

I've moved on and it no longer stings the way it did, but obviously it's something I'll never forget.

I want to chime in and say I don't think restricting media but explaining media is the answer. I'm very clear with my daughter when we watch someone do something on TV etc. that I think is cruel, stupid, or wrong; she knows the women in fashion magazines are just as much special effects as the orcs in Lord of the Rings; and if I catch her turning mean girl, she is in for it. But without the opportunities to engage from books, tv, songs, and movies, I feel like I wouldn't have had the chance to prepare her for what she will inevitably encounter in life.