Interesting Google stats
When I Google stuff, I generally don’t look at the number of results. Which is a shame, it turns out, because as Figleaf discovered, you can find some solid evidence for the importance that we place on attractiveness for women versus attractiveness for men.
“Results … about 120,000 for attractive-woman.” “Results … about 42,900 for attractive-man.”Roughly 3 to 1 ratio of references to attractive women vs attractive men
“Results … about 586,000 for beautiful-woman.”
“Results … about 74,600 for beautiful-man.”Roughly 8 to 1 ratio of references to beautiful women vs beautiful men
“Results … about 25,800 for worthy-man.”
“Results … about 5,720 for worthy-woman.”Roughly 4.5 to 1 ratio of references to worthy man vs. worthy women.
Fair at all? No. Comparable at all? Not really. Coincidence, though? Not that either.
Also see Sinclair at SugarButch Chronicles (includes ads that may be NSFW) for some further analysis of how femininity is perceived as an invitation.
Posted by Jess McCabe on 4 March 2008, at 7:58 PM | Comments (4)
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Suzi K said:
Having read the blog article... I agree. Looking and dressing to a stereotype of what femininity attracts massively different behaviour.
I have gone to college dressed in skirt, tights, heels and make up and also gone in jeans t shirt hair in a scrunchie no make up. I discovered that on the whole, people are more inclined to start uninvited conversation with me, more inclined to notice me when I am being 'femme' than when I am not.
Posted on 04 March 2008 at 8:39 PM
Rachel said:
If you need any further evidence of the way society views women try going into google image search, with safe search off, and googling women's names. then try men's names. you'll see what i mean...
Posted on 05 March 2008 at 8:47 AM
Lindsey said:
Have any of you tried using googlefight.com? It searches pairs of words to see which gets the most mentions. I just did:
Woman vs Man
Man scored:1,370,000,000
Woman scored: 374,000,000
Over 3.6 times more man references
Girl vs Boy
Girl scored:603,000,000
Boy scored:438,000,000
About 1.5 times the number of 'girl's
Ladies vs Gentlemen
Ladies scored:147,000,000
Gentlemen scored:25,300,000
5.8 times as many ladies
Posted on 05 March 2008 at 10:02 AM
Andrew Heenan said:
Just says that we tend to use different words for different genders; handsome is much more a 'male' word, while 'beautiful' is female. But they are not directly equivalent, so a 'count' will tell us little.
Google counts tell us about web words - not about web content.
Posted on 07 March 2008 at 1:30 PM