In part one of this series I outlined the overall framework and how this model works. As you can see from the chart above, hypergamic optimization (The goal of every female sexual strategy) is broken down into 2 major groups. The Ultra Girl adopts either beauty or nurturing, and puts a spin on it in order to increase the perception of scarcity and to differentiate itself from the rest of the market. This has the purpose of targeting a specific demographic of men more closely than a generalized Strategy.
The Anti-Girl rejects one or more aspects of typical feminine traits in order to create a new strategy. The Ant-chick strategies seek to manipulate the perception of beauty and scarcity in order to target a specific demographic. Whereas the “Cool chick” seeks to manipulate the male performance burden and investment costs to target another demographic.
As outlined in part one, this is not a case of strict dichotomies, and it is possible for women to adopt combination strategies and to transition between strategies over time. This is in many ways a dynamic framework that outlines the major groupings I’ve observed.
In the interest of brevity, and readability I’ve selected to do a short section of each, outlining the main traits of the strategy.
Ultra Girl Strategies
The Ultra Girl strategies all take a female trait and make it their focus, seeking to embody it fully in order to target a certain demographic. The Beauties attempt to attract men with a strong sensory focus, through their appearance or sexuality. The Mother Hens seek to attract men who would like to be taken care of in some fashion, either spiritually, physically or emotionally. The Nurturers in this category focus on spirituality and/or physical care-taking, while the Hausfraus seek out men with emotional damage that can be dominated.
The Beauty based strategies
The beauty strategies are focused around appearance. Their statements of appearance is what makes them different as the Fashionista’s statement is “Do you think this just happens?” when asked about her look, whereas the Natural Beauty acts as if she simply rolled out of bed that way.
The Fashionista
Archetype: The Ultra-Girl
Category: The Girly Girl
Main focus: Appearance, beauty, glamour and style
Pop Culture Example: Cher from Clueless
The fashionista is the girliest of girly girls, in love with fashion, make-up, hair, and her own appearance in the mirror, this is a high maintenance woman. Where the natural beauty often shies away from excessive make-up, often opting for a more girl-next door, look, the fashionista knows what makes her look good and will get it. Their major strategy being to land the same type of man who buys expensive sports cars, large mansions and other status symbols. She is in many ways the ultimate status symbol and she knows it.
In many ways this archetype plays the Halo Effect and Scarcity for maximum effect, seeking to be perceived as the rarest commodity in the sexual market place, being the highest maintenance and requiring the highest investment in the sexual market place, yet attempting to be perceived as a good deal.
The Natural Beauty (The Girl next door)
Archetype: The Ultra-Girl
Category: The Girly Girl
Main focus: Appearance, natural beauty, wholesome.
Pop Culture Example: Jessica Biel
The major difference between the fashionista and the natural beauty is that the former is highly fashion focused, whereas the latter seems to be highly attractive on accident. Often seen in clothing that gives the appearance of simplicity and very little though, the plan here is to appear just as attractive as the fashionista, yet as a much better deal. This variant is often combined with nurturer characteristics in order to appear as highly traditional wife material, or with traits from “The Guys Girl” or “The Low Investment Chick”
This variant is focused on male archetypes that are looking for traditional relationships. Where the fashionista is focused on the high fliers among men through becoming the perfect trophy wife, the Natural beauty is often focused on successful and high status males. In essence “The Natural Beauty” takes advantage of neglect of probability in her targets by appearing like what she is takes no effort, yet she will get out of bed 3 hours before you do to make her “natural” look happen.
The Agent Provocateur strategies
The Provocateur strategies are based around exaggerating either sexuality in the case of “Sexual Girl” or ambition in the case of “Career Girl” the former is a promise of untold physical pleasures, whereas the latter an offer of a shared performance burden.
Career girl
Archetype: The Ultra-Girl
Category: Agent Provocateur
Main focus: Appearance, competition, accomplishment
Pop Culture Example: Miranda from The Devil Wears Prada
The career girl strategy can in many ways be described as the “Bitch in heels” strategy. While often retaining large amounts of femininity in her appearance, her attitude rejects traditional feminine submissive qualities, in favor of competition, accomplishment and being very goal oriented. This is Patrick Bateman taking your face off while wearing a pencil-skirt and a $600 haircut.
The major demographic for this target is the submissive male, as this woman wants to be in the driver’s seat, and does not want any competition. She will expect her man to put his own career, goals and aspirations aside to favor hers, and many partners here end up as stay at home dads. If they become mothers, this is often as an afterthought, and they tend to give birth after 35, not having been conscious of the expiration date on their fertility.
This is often seen as a combination strategy with “The Pusher” or “The Guilter”, but especially early in their lives, they may adopt traits of “The Low Investment Chick”.
Sexual girl
Archetype: The Ultra-Girl
Category: Agent Provocateur
Main focus: Sexual forwardness, submissiveness, indirect manipulation,
Pop Culture Example: Lolita from Lolita
The Sexual girl often comes in two variants, depending on her preference for cunning. This variant can be said to have weaponized sex in a manner above and beyond what most women do, or even think to do. Their goal is to overwhelm your senses completely by catering exactly to your fantasies whatever they may be, thus creating a bond and planting the thought “I will never get sex like this ever again.”
Marilyn Monroe, a sexual girl with high levels of “Fashionista” and “The Pusher” traits, demonstrates this in that everything from her manner of dress, her body language and her way of speaking all ooze sex.
This strategy is in essence a mass market strategy in that it appeals to a very wide variety of men, however it tends to largely focus on those men that have high levels of Dark Triad traits, combined with a predilection for sensory experience. However, you will also find that a large amount of the “stable and trustworthy” salt of the earth men who cheat on their wives after long marriages do it with this type of woman.
The Mother Hen (care-taking and nurturing strategies)
The Mother Hen strategies takes the quality of nurturing to a whole new level, the major distinction between the two is that to the true Nurturers it is an end in itself, whereas the latter two use it as a means to an end.
The Nurturer Strategies
The Nurturers come in two major variants, “The Mom” and “The Muse“. The former focuses on physical and emotional care-taking, in a more traditional nurturer role, whereas the latter is highly focused on creative and/or spiritual nurturing. This is why “Mom” types are often found in traditional relationships while The Muse is often found in relationships with creative types such as musicians and artists.
The Mom
Archetype: The Ultra-Girl
Category: The Nurturer
Main focus: Care-taking, nurturing, traditional wife.
Pop Culture Example: Carol Brady
The Nurturer competes through being a very efficient and competent caretaker, in many ways when you say “She will make a great mom” this is the variant you are talking about. This type also makes great wives as they tend to compete by providing men with nurturing and caring. This is the girl that shows up to your house with home-made soup if you cancel your date because you’re sick, who, after staying over just happened to clean your place while fixing you breakfast in the morning while you were still asleep.
Their major focus in life is taking care of their loved ones, and they may appear co-dependent in some cases. This strategy may be combined with “The Natural Beauty” or may transition into “The Pusher” or “The Guilter” later in life. If faced with a divorce, or early death of a partner, they will often transition into a more overt strategy such as Sexual Girl, in an attempt to get their groove back.
The Muse
Archetype: The Ultra-Girl
Category: The Nurturer
Main focus: Care-taking, inspiration, encouraging ambition
Pop Culture Example: I could not really find one.
The Muse strategy differs from “The Nurturer” in that rather than taking care of physical needs in the form of a traditional wife role, it is focused on encouraging the ambitions of her man, and acting as a source of inspiration for him. This strategy often targets a demographic consisting of artistic men, such as musicians, painters and other artists, but it may also on occasion target what is seen as artistic ability in other fields.
This strategy is often combined with “The New Age Chick” or “Career Girl” where in the case of the former, it will focus very strongly on her man’s spiritual and creative needs, while in the latter she may very well find herself supporting her 38 year old boyfriend who is in a band “and are about to make it man“. If the combination has the trifecta of a primary Muse strategy, supported by “Career girl” and “The Nurturer” she may find herself very prone to being taken advantage of by high Dark Triad men.
The combination of “The Muse” with “Sexual Girl” and “The New Age Chick” is often kryptonite to a large male demographic, especially the type of man who has spent his entire life “doing the right thing” and being a stable and reliable person.
The Hausfrau strategies
The Hausfrau strategies are in a sense perversions of the nurturer strategies, where a woman appears to be nurturing physically, emotionally and creatively, but what she is actually doing is pushing or manipulating her partner into acting out a script for her. A typical example that you frequently can observe is a Career Girl or Fashionista that transitions into a pusher or guilter when her man fails to live up to what she perceives as his potential.
The Pusher
Archetype: The Ultra-Girl
Category: The Hausfrau
Main focus: Care-taking, nagging, pushing
Pop Culture Example: Lois from “Malcolm in the Middle”. Kathy Bates in “Misery”.
The Pusher is often a transitional strategy that a woman adopts after having locked a man down. If you look at a typical “Hen-pecked” husband, odds are his wife is a pusher. The Pusher is often a “Nurturer” that has suffered some setbacks and is no longer feeling content with her life, and therefore she attempts to change what she does not like through direct conflict.
Rather than being a distinct sexual strategy to get a man, “The Pusher” is a transition from another female sexual strategy used to “get a man”, to one where her man is used as a means to an end. The transition from the original sexual strategy to “The Pusher” often results in the man either ending the relationship or becoming the stereotypical doormat.
The Guilter
Archetype: The Ultra-Girl
Category: The Hausfrau
Main focus: Caretaking, manipulation, guilt trips.
Pop Culture Example: Debra and Marie from “Everybody loves Raymond”.
The major difference between “The Guilter” and “The Pusher” is whether they prefer indirect or direct conflict. While “The Pusher” is very comfortable utilizing direct nagging and brow-beating to punish behavior and correct her family, “The Guilter” prefers using subtle guilt trips or covert shaming tactics to get her way. Combinations of “The Pusher” and “The Guilter” are quite common, as many guilters will switch to using overt browbeating and nagging if they are not getting the result they desire by their preferred methods.
As with “The Pusher“, many men who end up in relationships with “The Guilter” will elect to leave the relationship. At this point, “The Guilter” will often transition back into her previous sexual strategy, or will utilize her children as targets in lieu of a partner. A thing to keep in mind is that both of “The Hausfrau” variants are utilized by women who are unhappy with their life at present and seek to change it to better fit their vision.
The Anti-Girl Strategies
The Anti-Girl strategies all seek to manipulate the performance burden, scarcity and investment costs in the Sexual market place. The Anti-Girly and Anti-Beauty seek to manipulate the scarcity variable to some degree, with an addition of the investment costs variable. The Guy’s girl focus on investment cost and performance burden and the Low-Investment Chick seeks to utilize investment costs and sunk costs.
The Anti-girly
Both of the “anti-girly” strategies seek to reject nurturing in favor of intellect and spirituality in order to adopt a new trait that increases their perceived scarcity in the market. The Brainy Girl adopts intellect as her weapon, seeking to carve out a niche for herself, often among highly intellectual men who experience high scarcity of women with equivalent intellects. The New Age Chick seeks to carve out a niche for herself among men who are either spiritual or creative themselves or among men who seek a break from their traditional roles.
Brainy Girl
Archetype: The Anti-Girl
Category: Anti Girly
Main focus: Intellectual performance, her own interests
Pop Culture Example: Alex from “Modern Family”
“The Brainy girl” is a girl focused on her own interests, and very much caught up in her own world. This is not so much a sexual strategy of its own as it is a type of woman who focuses very strongly on her intellectual performance and as a result often neglects enacting a sexual strategy at all. The way to capture a brainy girl is through her mind and interests, often through a similar tactic as “The Gamer Girl“, in essence adopting her interests.
The Brainy Girl variant, is somewhat of a “Switch Hitter” when it comes to her demographic, as the variant either goes for high status males, attempting to endear herself as an advisor, or for highly intellectual men, who she perceives as higher status than herself based on their intellect.
The New Age Chick
Archetype: The Anti-Girl
Category: Anti Girly
Main focus: Spiritual interests, New Age, “Out there”
Pop Culture Example: Dharma from “Dharma & Greg”
Where “The Brainy Girl” is focused on intellectual pursuits, “The New Age Chick” is focused on the spiritual, she is the hippie girl with crystals in her hair, wearing home-made deodorant and who sees bodily grooming as oppressing nature. This strategy targets men who seek spiritual enlightenment, and who are attracted to the esoteric and unpredictable nature of the “New Age Chick“. You may often see this variant in combination with “Sexual Girl” and occasionally with the “All Beauty” variant.
This girl marches to the beat of her own drum, and will either target men who are overly uptight by challenging their values and static nature, or men who fall into the “New Age” category themselves.
Anti-Beauty
Both of the Anti-beauty strategies seek to undermine the male esthetic preference to some degree. The “No Beauty” type does so by reducing her own sexual market value to such an extreme level that just about every male will optimize her hypergamic needs. The “Everything is beauty” seeks to manipulate the competition into reducing their sexual market value thus, making her appear more scarce than she actually is.
The No Beauty
Archetype: The Anti-Girl
Category: Alt Chick
Main focus: Rejects beauty standards, believes there is no beauty.
Pop Culture Example: Carrie from “Carrie”
The “No Beauty” archetype rejects the beauty standards of society, and seeks to either change them or reject them outright. This is often demonstrated in her complete disregard for esthetics. Often her strategy seeks to target men who are rather desperate, and she does this through setting the bar extremely low for herself. Some men are attracted to her as a “fixer upper” in that she may be a woman who would be attractive if she put in minimal effort.
In the variant with “The New Age Chick” she seeks to have men accept her for her “inner beauty” rather than for an externally pleasing visage. In the variant combination with “The Brainy Girl” she seeks to have men be attracted to her based on her intellectual qualities rather than her appearance. In a sense, this strategy bases itself on men perceiving her as “Low hanging fruit” and as a result frequently attracts men who have self-esteem issues, or are low-SMV.
From a hypergamic standpoint, the goal here is to optimize hypergamy by reducing her own SMV to the point where any male she traps with her strategy will be a near optimization levels.
The Everything is Beauty
Archetype: The Anti-Girl
Category: Alt Chick
Main focus: Rejects beauty standards, believes everything is beautiful
Pop Culture Example: Lady Gaga
This strategy is probably the most contradictory strategy in the entire model. Where “No beauty” seeks to diminish the concept of beauty to the point where it does not exist, the “Everything is beauty” strategy seeks to make everything beautiful. The goal of the strategy itself is the same principle as behind the concept of “over 80% of drivers think they are above average drivers“, in essence by calling everyone above average it eliminates the concept of averages.
This variant often attracts the same men as the “No beauty” strategy, but unlike the “No beauty” strategy, the “Everything is beautiful” strategy is often enacted by women who are quite stunning. Thus while remaining attractive themselves, they seek to reduce the attractiveness of other women and men by encouraging them to unwittingly adopt the “No beauty” strategy.
The cornerstone principle being to exploit the contrast effect to appear more beautiful, while also appearing to be a highly tolerant and accepting person.
The Guy’s Girl
The Guy’s girl strategies both seek to reduce both the performance burden and investment costs of a relationship, through adopting male traits. In doing so, they are seeking to target a demographic that either dislikes “typical female behavior” or someone who dislikes having to adopt his interests to cater to a partner. Their statement is “You would not have to change at all to be with me”
The Best Buddy
Archetype: The Anti-Girl
Category: The Cool Chick
Main focus: Rejects female behavior patterns and interaction styles
Pop Culture Example: Vasquez from “Aliens”
“The Best Buddy” variant rejects female behavior patterns and seeks to adopt males ones. They often define themselves as opposed to the typical female behavior such as gossip, and appearance, and instead focus on being “The chick you can take to the strip club for beers” this is often adopted in order to gain entry to a male group, where her target is a member, and her target demographic are often high status males, that have typical male interests.
Rather than attempting to be a complimentary partner to her beau, she seeks to be his best friend first, yet often finds herself in the friend zone. She can be a valuable asset in your male group, as she will readily and happily point out the female sexual strategies enacted by women seeking to nab one of the males in the group, however she will most likely also damage group cohesion as the less dominant members are likely to fall for her owing to little more than availability bias.
The Gamer Girl
Archetype: The Anti-Girl
Category: The Cool Chick
Main focus: Rejects female interests in favor of male interests.
Pop Culture Example: Kate from “Hackers”
Where “The Best Buddy” adopts male behavioral patters, yet may often maintain her own interests, the Gamer Girl often retains female behavioral patterns, but adopts male interests. This is often to seek out a sexual market niche where there is less completion, thus avoiding the contrast effect, while utilizing shared interests in order to get close to her target demographic.
While there is considerable overlap between “The Best Buddy” and “The Gamer Girl” and the strategies are very similar, you will frequently see “The Gamer Girl” utilizing female behavior patterns in a classically male space, whereas “The Best Buddy” will frequently engage in female interests on the outside of the male space.
The Low Investment Chicks
Both of the low investment strategies seek to manipulate the male performance burden in order to secure a mate. The Slut seeks to reduce the performance burden to get sex and once the male is hooked, increase the burden slowly as in the story of the frog being boiled alive. Whereas the Cool Chick may have a higher initial investment cost, but is presenting an offer where the on-going cost of a relationship would be minimal.
The Slut
Archetype: The Anti-Girl
Category: The low cost chick
Main focus: Low initial investment for a relationship
Pop Culture Example: Samantha from “Sex and The City”
The slut is a variant on the “anti-girl” strategy, which seeks to utilize low-investment as the chief strategy, often supported by “The Sexual Girl” and “The Fashionista” as secondary strategies. This strategy has as a goal to attract the market through requiring a low initial investment cost. The additions of “The Fashionista” and “The Sexual Girl” results in a sweeter deal for the potential target as they feel like they are getting a high quality product for a much lower than anticipated investment.
The variant that contrasts “The Slut” variant’s low initial investment cost, is “The Cool Chick“, that instead of utilizing a low initial investment cost is focused on a low running maintenance cost for a relationship. There are combination variants between these two, and it appears to be a growing strategic choice in the days of Tinder and “Netflix and Chill”
The Cool Chick
Archetype: The Anti-Girl
Category: The low cost chick
Main focus: Low maintenance in relationship
Pop Culture Example: Robin from “How I met your Mother”
Where “The Slut” requires low initial investment for sex, “The Cool Chick” is running a strategy based on appearing very low maintenance in a relationship. This is usually done by adopting some traits from “The Best Buddy” and “The Gamer Girl” to create the illusion that you will have to give up very little in order to be in a relationship with her. After all, if you behave in much the same manner and like mostly the same things, then you don’t have to give up anything, and you can keep living like you used to.
The flipside are frequently the hidden costs, when her inner female manifests and the costs suddenly skyrocket. The Low-maintenance chick often turns into a Hausfrau variant, as she gets older, as the strategy is not her true self, it was a gambit to get you into a relationship so that she can exploit sunk cost in order to keep you in it.
Summary and conclusions
This is the overview of the strategies I have identified up to this point. My observations are largely based on an experience with women from the United States and Europe, and therefore may not be applicable on a global scale, though I suspect that little global variation exists.
As this post is already the longest I have ever written on this blog, I’ll leave it here, please leave any questions or comments in the comment section.
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