Somewhat off-topic but whatever: the framing I use to understand hypergamy is that men and women are "greedy" in relationships in different ways.
Women are greedy in wanting a man who's better than them by whichever metrics she cares about. For some women this is literally just money but usually it's a mix of traits.
Men are greedy in wanting many women. Most of us would prefer two 8s over one 10, rated by whichever metrics we care about.
Tony and his fellows are plainly greedy in all ways, including their relationships. Their women are as well, with criteria that don't make sense to most women. But most people aren't very greedy. Most women are happy with a guy who's only a little better than them and most men are happy with one woman.
It seems more common today to be greedy, leading to a ton of women thinking they're dating down when they're actually dating slightly up... and a ton of men stringing women along with "undefined" relationships and open-ended engagements.
Yup! I don't know if it was that video of his, but I developed this framing after watching one of his videos. The framing is originally mine (afaik) but heavily inspired by his offhanded comment that the male desire for multiple women is bad for social cohesion.
Dammit Lirpa, I'm simultaneously glad that you posted this while also annoyed that you posted it the night before I have an 8 AM class. But I'm not going to complain too much.
"Tony is so bizarrely the complete opposite of the way he’s portrayed in the essay about his allure that I am starting to wonder if the whole thing was just a big troll, not unlike Tony himself."
I do think I get what the original author was trying to do, I really do. And I think the intent is clear in the title: "The male mind cannot comprehend the allure of Tony Soprano." The thing being put on trial and interrogated is the male mind with all its mistaken fantasies about what women like; Tony Soprano is merely the prop (the gun?) through which to best frame that argument, because if even a fat criminal cheating douche like Tony Soprano can be attractive compared to modern men who just can't take out the dang dirty garbage and get groceries, then that says something about the state of modern man (which the author is all too happy to point out.)
Tony the Sopranos character, is insecure, trigger-happy, yells at or beats up people for questioning his authority, hates his son for not playing football, hates his son in general*, has mistresses, gets income from a strip club, hires a prostitute, all while berating his wife for even daring to have fantasies about another man. Tony the essay subject on the other hand? He's the smooth, disciplined rock of his family who gets things done and likes women, you hear that, men? It doesn't matter that he's fat! Why are men so obsessed with body image, gawd??**
*ok, it's clear that he does love him in the aftermath of certain scenes, which you and I both know, but let's be honest: he's not getting a Father of the Year t-shirt any time soon.
**extra ironic if you've watched the show and you know that Tony killed a guy in part due to remarks about his weight.
So yeah, that was my read on it, and look, I get that writing an article about the differences of what men think women want and what women actually want is a good recipe for engagement. I can respect game. And I get that using Tony Soprano as the subject was intended as a rhetorical device to point out some of those differences in a way that would be less obvious with, say, a Brad Pitt. But as you (and I, and many other people) rightfully pointed out, the problem with using Tony Soprano as a counterintuitive example of peak positive masculinity and a prism with which to explain women's desires to clueless men is that, well, he's motherfucking Tony Soprano. And you end up jumping through hoops to praise a person that inevitably embodies the toxic masculinity and chuddish stereotypes you'd like men to dispense with in the first place.
(Also, I found it somewhat humorous that one of the author's original bars for competence was pointing out that most men can't do the groceries right, whereas Tony is a competent mensch. And I remember racking my brain for any inkling in the show that hinted at Tony Soprano ever being the kind of husband who listens to his wife about how to do groceries. Or anything else.)
"if even a fat criminal cheating douche like Tony Soprano can be attractive compared to modern men who just can't take out the dang dirty garbage and get groceries, then that says something about the state of modern man"
This did cross my mind periodically while I was writing this and wondering if I was falling for a prank, but I thought, how could we use a man who is so blatantly not the things listed to demonstrate that we want the things listed? I'm perplexed!
I also don't remember Tony ever even actually grocery shopping aside from hanging out at the sausage place all the time, lol.
I completely get that basic foundational competence is attractive to women, I really do. But using Tony Soprano to make that argument is like the literal peak example of "Mussolini made the trains run on time" I've ever seen on the internet.
(You also made some excellent points in response to the author's claims that Tony "genuinely likes" women and that his attractiveness totally isn't about his wealth and power, which I could write entire new comments about, but like I said, 8 am class...)
(Ok, one more thing about the whole power and money thing. Some thoughts are reused from other comments, so I apologize for the self-plagiarism. Also mild Sopranos spoilers.)
Let me first say that I appreciated your charity towards Shannon and the original piece (while I found Sadina's reaction undeniably funny, I agree that it would not be an ideal tone for a productive conversation). I feel the same way towards the article- I don't think it's bad, hateful, sexist, or whatever. The author had a point she wanted to make and I think she made it, even if imperfectly. That's something we all have a right to (just as others have a right to respond to those points).
That being said, just like you, I did find her stance on the thorny issue of Tony's power, wealth, and status...inconsistent. As she wrote, and you quoted:
"A few men will concede that Tony is attractive to women, but only because he’s “powerful.” Wrong again. This is only a small part of the story. Tony’s real allure is not related to his success, if you could even call it that."
(I'm going to set aside the later part about loving attentiveness because 99% of the time, those two words apply to Tony only in scenes involving his kids, horses, ducks, or strippers. But I digress.)
Again, I get that this is intended to be the author's attempt to strike a blow against male stereotypes of female attraction, and I guess also against red pill theories of hypergamy or whatever. Guys, it's not about his success, his fancy houses, his cars, his mob boss status. It's because he's competent and self-confident! Don't be a toxic bro who chases success symbols over simply being a good, competent man.
But I think in attempting to poke a finger into the eye of male power fantasies about power-seeking women, the author makes a rhetorical dodge that- if not intentional- can only be called myopic. Yes, you can point out that Tony's mojo is because of his "competence" and "confidence", and not because of wealth or status. But let's point out something obvious- isn't there a huge fucking correlation between wealth/status and being competent and confident? I don't think it makes me an Andrew Tate fanboy to argue that if you're going to say Tony's attractive because of his "competence", aren't the symbols of wealth and authority you handwave also an extension of that competence? And since the original article goes into toxic masculinity, I'll bite: yes, I understand that some men can and do pursue success and achievement in very destructive, off-putting ways. But why is it foundationally unreasonable for men (or anyone of any gender) to believe that achievements/success and feeling at ease in their own skin or feeling basic competence are related?
I’d argue that Tony is hard-working, competent, and determined at some very immoral activities. (That's the same point the original article makes, isn't it?) His success is a function of both that competence and that immorality- which the women in his life are very aware of. And it's difficult to argue that his success and attitude aren't self-reinforcing, in a way; he's confident because he is "Mr. Mob Boss", running construction scams, beating up gamblers, and sleeping with women he "genuinely likes" (that are not his wife). If you take someone like Tony and put him in a position of stress, a position of weakness where his assets, status, or self-worth are threatened (as seen variously with his mother, with uncle Junior, and later with the Lupertazzi war), do you get the confident dude who gets things done and genuinely likes women? No, you have an insecure blowhard who kills his own close associates, crashes and burns his already deteriorating marriage, becomes increasingly paranoid and cloistered to everyone around him, and ultimately has to hide in a safehouse awaiting the end.
This, I think, is the weakest part of the article's argument. You can of course claim that Tony's (or anyone else's) wealth and power are totally different from their basic competence and attitudes as a human being, and men who can't tell the difference have just been reading too much manosphere crap. But with what we know about human nature and reality, that's an extremely credulous needle to thread. And it's one the author's own argument seems to lose in her own haystack, because when she tries to paint Tony as the image of the guy who can get things done, it's hard to ignore the reality that the cars, the house, the pool, the position of power- all of those things are a downstream consequence of "being able to get things done" and succeeding in his chosen field. And dismissing men making a reasonable assumption that women who see those symbols might find them attractive, as just "wrong again", requires a higher burden of proof than I'm willing to grant.
Great piece! Personally, I think the author went wrong in trying to justify her fictional crush. It’s okay to irrationally like someone who kinda sucks, especially if he’s just a guy from a TV show who isn’t real. Why do women feel like we have to explain our attractions? Men don’t really do this. They seem more comfortable with decoupling attraction with personal admiration. IMO there’s this social pressure on women to like the right kind of man for all the right reasons. You’re not supposed to reward bad guys with female attention. This is why people get so angry at hybristophiles. They are seen as “incentivizing” antisocial behavior. But sometimes terrible people are hot! Being okay with that contradiction is probably better than trying to pretend Tony Soprano loves women.
Nailed it! I totally find terrible guys to be hot sometimes, almost entirely for their villainy, but I'm not trying to project admirable qualities onto them to justify it!
Also, today I learned what Hybristophile means, lol. I had no idea there was a word for that, but of course there's a word for that.
My sympathy to young men that read Shannon's essay. I suspect they are already (as are young women) overwhelmed with someone or something telling them how to be.
Though you should hopefully not be thinking about the divorce when getting married just imagine trying to leave Tony with his secrets and now being forced to testify against him. Want to date again? Just make sure any man you look at knows his life expectancy just got much shorter.
My only comment is that confidence in a man is a double-edged virtue in that it makes him a good liar… he appears more capable than he is because he can cover up his shortcomings with chutzpah. Is Tony capable of being a faithful husband, or just confident about his inevitable indiscretion?
Great piece! As always, love the insights, the humor, the writing, and the honesty (eg “I don’t even fucking know anymore, man”). The biggest takeaways for me - from Shannon’s piece, your response here, and others’ responses:
1. Where you and Shannon agree (you: “capability + confidence”; Shannon: “competence”), a critical distinction is made. More so than the usual Redpill default mode of “confidence” and “power”. I think men know this to be true — but the lack of precision in the definition can be misleading. I think men assume power is better than competence, but I no longer believe that’s the case for all women. Also, I used to think I could fake confidence. Looking back I cringe at the memory of my younger self trying to do this. Women’s intuition on this character trait has been honed by a million years of evolution to be nearly infallible. I tell my sons, don’t ever try to fake it. They always know. Better to develop true competency, even in a narrow niche.
2. I hope your commentary on romance isn’t lost in the bigger discussion on power, wealth, competence. Women seem to vary in their appreciation for romance, but they all seem to appreciate it to some degree - and this is not as frequently mentioned on their wish lists as, say, confidence, kindness, sense of humor. But it’s an important one, and can go a long way in off-setting the role of power/wealth in the accounting. More importantly I think men sometimes underestimate women’s willingness to make irrational choices, including risky or harmful behavior, if they are deeply in love and feel it is “us against the world”. I once had a gf who said she would gladly go on the road and rob banks with me if I chose to - and I knew she wasn’t lying. No higher compliment as a man.
3. At the end of the day, What Women Truly Want remains a bit of mystery, and I suppose that’s a good thing.
"Women’s intuition on this character trait has been honed by a million years of evolution to be nearly infallible."
Men with sufficient narcissistic/sociopathic tendencies regularly circumvent women's honed ability to suss out confidence or the lack thereof with ease, though. This is probably the reason these antisocial tendencies developed in the first place; they're an effective reproductive shortcut.
It's a frustrating state of affairs: feminists have spent the past decade+ devoting their time and energy to the task of diminishing the confidence of men in general.
What most of them seem incapable of grokking is that that the men who actually do significant damage to women are all but immune to these initiatives. On the contrary, narcissistic and sociopathic men often thrive in the context of social chaos, which is exactly what all of the convoluted cancelling, browbeating, scolding, condemnation, and admonishment have brought about.
Meanwhile, ordinary men, and especially men who bothered to listen to the feminists and take their points of view seriously, have been conditioned to approach the opposite sex with excessive caution and a neurotic sense of unease.
So my suspicion is that this whole transition has in fact pushed young women closer to "toxic" men, which of course reinforces the general distrust of men that started the transition in the first place.
It seems like people have started to get wise to some of this over the past two to three years. Here's hoping we can break the idiotic cycle.
One important dimension of attraction that I think often gets sidelined by the focus on specific traits or behaviors is the extent to which these traits or behaviors violate our expectations. Characters like Tony Soprano benefit enormously from the context in which their behavior is presented. Murderous, greedy, selfish, power-hungry monster is the default model for a mobster, so anytime Tony seems to show more than this, it has heightened significance (literally measurable in increased dopamine neuron firing). For some--like Shannon, perhaps--it may be so significant that it overshadows all the negative, expectation-conforming stuff. This is, incidentally, why gambling is addictive; we over-learn from rare wins because they surprise and under-learn from common losses because they don't. That is what keeps us playing.
The same dynamic often works against the "nice guy" (however sincere he really is in that presentation). In creating an expectation of being unfailingly kind and attentive and selflessly giving toward women, he ensures his inevitable human slip-ups will be the most salient things about him. His good deeds, however many, are just the taken-for-granted background against which his less-than-selfless acts stand out. Likewise for the men who go for the stoic, self-sufficient, I'll-be-the-rock-in-the-relationship kind of presentation; they ensure inordinate attention will be drawn to any moment of weakness, however fleeting (I think it's pretty telling how women often talk about getting "the ick" as if it were an encounter with the uncanny valley).
The redpill types saw all this and decided the lesson was that women secretly despise kindness and love being treated like shit because [insert preferred evolutionary just-so story here]. But the real enemy of attraction is *predictability.* The good news is you can be kind in ways that don't get stale or create superhuman expectations. And you can keep others interested in you by means that don't require being an asshole most of the time.
"I literally cannot fathom being anything other than afraid of a man like Tony Soprano."
Women find it hard to leave abusive men, and easy to leave passive men. There's a fear of retaliation, but that doesn't explain "he really loves me". Managing her single core fear of him overwhelms the emotional impact of the many lesser fears that would otherwise exist day-to-day.
In contrast, the passive man leaves the woman feeling exposed to all these little fears, and she will construct a narrative that blames him not just for not protecting her but also for the things she fears. To her, there seems to be little cost to going it alone and thus she feels free to leave. Modern society exacerbates this because the government promises to pick up the slack, which also serves to downplay the un-exciting value a passive but diligent man brings.
[Political aside: laws that were intended to help women escape abusive relationships are more often used to escape mundane ones]
There is of course a third category - men who are both assertive & kind. They exist, but they are also in high demand.
Instinctively, most women are attracted to competent, powerful men. Sorting out "good" vs "bad" can get lost in the noise - or in the fantasy she builds around the man. The male analogy is men ignoring "red flags" because a woman is sufficiently hot. Though in general, men are less competent at weaving a plausible self-narrative around these decisions.
I have two different theories on why Shannon finds him attractive. The first is that she (and others?) might legitimately see a man who's mean, powerful, and puts women down to have rizz and allure. Which is to say that she mistakes him being an asshole and getting away with it as high status (or it isn't a mistake because he is high status).
The second is that he's attractive because he's on TV. He's the main character of his own story and you see everything from his perspective so you feel like you understand him. So while he's not actually buying groceries we the audience know that he can if he needed to because he does more complicated things. The problem is that his wife or anyone he's with still has to do her own shopping in practice. Which is to say that the result of his competence is money for the people around him. But I don't think Shannon imagines what it's like to be with Tony in practice, she imagines what it's like to be with the Tony "she knows".
(Note that I haven't watched any of this show and am going purely by second hand retellings)
Good point- Tony, by nature of being a media protagonist, has to be agentic and competent in order for the story to progress. He isn't necessarily attractive in the way that Brad Pitt (or more recently, Glen Powell) might be, but he certainly appears better at "problem solving" than the average man on the street whose life we know nothing about and who we are free to make the worst assumptions about.
That being said, given the opening anecdote of men being unable to comprehend why Tony, a fat mobster, is attractive, coupled with Shannon's references to men not showing competence on buying scallions, and the line about women getting to turn their brain off because society is dangerous, I suspect there is more than a touch of her working backwards from her premise: that modern men are both uninformed in womanly desire and also somewhat bumbling and unempathetic, and Tony Soprano happened to be a convenient vehicle to write an article expressing that point.
I think a better question would be what would Tony think of Shannon? Would he find her attractive or would he be a total dick to her, or both? Would she like it if he was? The reason that question is important because if she thinks men are incompetent it could just be that it's the kind of men she attracts. Given her desires to have men handle things for her and her brain off, I wouldn't be surprised if the competent men she described just generally avoided her
Finally read this essay. Really good and really thoughtful. I can’t speak for women or The Sopranos (never watched a second of it) but you lay out your case very persuasively. Well done.
Thank you! I definitely recommend giving it a try if you're into that sort of thing. It's really a great show even if the main character is a mean, murdering man whore lol
I did like The Godfather, Goodfellas, and a few other mob movies, but generally I hate the mafia and want to see them all get gunned down by the police whenever I watch a mob-related piece of media. So I don’t think I’m the target audience.
Your conclusion about women wanting to support their men's crazy dreams reminds me of a subset of women that I don't see discussed much anywhere: the bankrollers, for lack of a better term. I was fascinated learning about the 80s hair metal scene just how many of the guys were being supported by women who paid their rent, bought their clothes/food etc. They were supporting them because they wanted to see them succeed--the opposite of the "gold digger" that you might expect these guys would attract, but that would probably be a post-success thing. Outside of that specific venue there's a lot of women who pay for their artistic men to be able to do what they want, which supports your theory. (My mom was one of them, it backfired tremendously for her.)
I had to laugh at your wondering if you were watching a different show entirely because I often feel that way when seeing general cultural/celebrity analysis. I don't remember who wrote the piece about Glenn Powell but it seemed to just be PR fluff and projection, he also was defined as someone who "loves women" -- and while I don't think his public behaviour is anything like that of Tony, he's also a celebrity whose public persona is highly manicured so what on earth are we even talking about?! I could be wrong, but it seems like we're all grasping wish projections into reality by simply finding enough agreement. Maybe we were always like this, and it's just more noticeable these days.
I had no idea about the way the 80s metal scene was financially supported like that! That IS fascinating.
To your later question... I think maybe we have always been this way to an extent, but it just comes out more noticeably now during the heightened battles of the gender war we can't seem to ever escape 😅
I loved, loved, loved this piece. You went sniper on all the nebulous reddish flags I had experienced reading Catherine's article – which I love too, don't get me wrong. I'm not engaging in some "teams" crap here.
And speaking of teams, your take on hypergamy? Chef's kiss.
I'm endlessly irked by these entomology-adjacent takes on relationships that look at us from above and insist on keeping us harshly classified apart, in as if men and women were different species, strike that, *adversarial* species. Soul mates indeed, if people just understood that better.
However (you knew one was coming), in your brilliant dissection of Tony the character, you left out the proverbial elephant in the room: James Gandolfini, the actor.
Women aren't attracted to Tony, they just like Jim!
Dude was the prototypical "big scary guy with a tender core", on the one had. On the other, like many men of girth who used to be hunks in their youth, he just carried himself a certain way. I can see it.
I distinctly remember my wife (my soul mate) back in the day after watching Get Shorty, where Gandolfini has a pretty unglamorous part, going "That big guy Travolta kicked in the nuts, he's kinda hot." "Is he now", I said. "Yeah, he has kind eyes, and he's, I don't know, sort of handsome in a way." Again, I could see it.
Granted, the fact that I may or may not be a big bald guy in his fifties whom nobody has considered anything even approaching hot in over a decade may be casting a rosy tint on my reading glasses, but all the same, I'm pretty sure that the secret sauce in some women's baffling attraction to Tony is just good ol' Jim.
That said - my wife wolfed down The Sopranos like there was no tomorrow. It's become an inside joke in our household that maybe Dad needs to go out and extort some people just to get Mom in a romantic mood.
You are so right about James Gandolfini! I didn't write about him, the actor, at all, but it was mostly because I'm actually not really at all familiar with his work outside of The Sopranos. He must not have been in the kinds of movies I tend to watch 😄
Somewhat off-topic but whatever: the framing I use to understand hypergamy is that men and women are "greedy" in relationships in different ways.
Women are greedy in wanting a man who's better than them by whichever metrics she cares about. For some women this is literally just money but usually it's a mix of traits.
Men are greedy in wanting many women. Most of us would prefer two 8s over one 10, rated by whichever metrics we care about.
Tony and his fellows are plainly greedy in all ways, including their relationships. Their women are as well, with criteria that don't make sense to most women. But most people aren't very greedy. Most women are happy with a guy who's only a little better than them and most men are happy with one woman.
It seems more common today to be greedy, leading to a ton of women thinking they're dating down when they're actually dating slightly up... and a ton of men stringing women along with "undefined" relationships and open-ended engagements.
That framing makes a lot of sense. The last part reminds me of this hoemath video:
https://youtu.be/CN_BDrVjWvU?si=ywd-qEp22etEpDSO
Yup! I don't know if it was that video of his, but I developed this framing after watching one of his videos. The framing is originally mine (afaik) but heavily inspired by his offhanded comment that the male desire for multiple women is bad for social cohesion.
A friend just introduced me to the guy's youtube channel and I've been obsessively watching the videos. It's all so spot-on and very intuitive, too.
Dammit Lirpa, I'm simultaneously glad that you posted this while also annoyed that you posted it the night before I have an 8 AM class. But I'm not going to complain too much.
"Tony is so bizarrely the complete opposite of the way he’s portrayed in the essay about his allure that I am starting to wonder if the whole thing was just a big troll, not unlike Tony himself."
I do think I get what the original author was trying to do, I really do. And I think the intent is clear in the title: "The male mind cannot comprehend the allure of Tony Soprano." The thing being put on trial and interrogated is the male mind with all its mistaken fantasies about what women like; Tony Soprano is merely the prop (the gun?) through which to best frame that argument, because if even a fat criminal cheating douche like Tony Soprano can be attractive compared to modern men who just can't take out the dang dirty garbage and get groceries, then that says something about the state of modern man (which the author is all too happy to point out.)
Tony the Sopranos character, is insecure, trigger-happy, yells at or beats up people for questioning his authority, hates his son for not playing football, hates his son in general*, has mistresses, gets income from a strip club, hires a prostitute, all while berating his wife for even daring to have fantasies about another man. Tony the essay subject on the other hand? He's the smooth, disciplined rock of his family who gets things done and likes women, you hear that, men? It doesn't matter that he's fat! Why are men so obsessed with body image, gawd??**
*ok, it's clear that he does love him in the aftermath of certain scenes, which you and I both know, but let's be honest: he's not getting a Father of the Year t-shirt any time soon.
**extra ironic if you've watched the show and you know that Tony killed a guy in part due to remarks about his weight.
So yeah, that was my read on it, and look, I get that writing an article about the differences of what men think women want and what women actually want is a good recipe for engagement. I can respect game. And I get that using Tony Soprano as the subject was intended as a rhetorical device to point out some of those differences in a way that would be less obvious with, say, a Brad Pitt. But as you (and I, and many other people) rightfully pointed out, the problem with using Tony Soprano as a counterintuitive example of peak positive masculinity and a prism with which to explain women's desires to clueless men is that, well, he's motherfucking Tony Soprano. And you end up jumping through hoops to praise a person that inevitably embodies the toxic masculinity and chuddish stereotypes you'd like men to dispense with in the first place.
(Also, I found it somewhat humorous that one of the author's original bars for competence was pointing out that most men can't do the groceries right, whereas Tony is a competent mensch. And I remember racking my brain for any inkling in the show that hinted at Tony Soprano ever being the kind of husband who listens to his wife about how to do groceries. Or anything else.)
"if even a fat criminal cheating douche like Tony Soprano can be attractive compared to modern men who just can't take out the dang dirty garbage and get groceries, then that says something about the state of modern man"
This did cross my mind periodically while I was writing this and wondering if I was falling for a prank, but I thought, how could we use a man who is so blatantly not the things listed to demonstrate that we want the things listed? I'm perplexed!
I also don't remember Tony ever even actually grocery shopping aside from hanging out at the sausage place all the time, lol.
I completely get that basic foundational competence is attractive to women, I really do. But using Tony Soprano to make that argument is like the literal peak example of "Mussolini made the trains run on time" I've ever seen on the internet.
Hahaha. For real, though!
(You also made some excellent points in response to the author's claims that Tony "genuinely likes" women and that his attractiveness totally isn't about his wealth and power, which I could write entire new comments about, but like I said, 8 am class...)
(Ok, one more thing about the whole power and money thing. Some thoughts are reused from other comments, so I apologize for the self-plagiarism. Also mild Sopranos spoilers.)
Let me first say that I appreciated your charity towards Shannon and the original piece (while I found Sadina's reaction undeniably funny, I agree that it would not be an ideal tone for a productive conversation). I feel the same way towards the article- I don't think it's bad, hateful, sexist, or whatever. The author had a point she wanted to make and I think she made it, even if imperfectly. That's something we all have a right to (just as others have a right to respond to those points).
That being said, just like you, I did find her stance on the thorny issue of Tony's power, wealth, and status...inconsistent. As she wrote, and you quoted:
"A few men will concede that Tony is attractive to women, but only because he’s “powerful.” Wrong again. This is only a small part of the story. Tony’s real allure is not related to his success, if you could even call it that."
(I'm going to set aside the later part about loving attentiveness because 99% of the time, those two words apply to Tony only in scenes involving his kids, horses, ducks, or strippers. But I digress.)
Again, I get that this is intended to be the author's attempt to strike a blow against male stereotypes of female attraction, and I guess also against red pill theories of hypergamy or whatever. Guys, it's not about his success, his fancy houses, his cars, his mob boss status. It's because he's competent and self-confident! Don't be a toxic bro who chases success symbols over simply being a good, competent man.
But I think in attempting to poke a finger into the eye of male power fantasies about power-seeking women, the author makes a rhetorical dodge that- if not intentional- can only be called myopic. Yes, you can point out that Tony's mojo is because of his "competence" and "confidence", and not because of wealth or status. But let's point out something obvious- isn't there a huge fucking correlation between wealth/status and being competent and confident? I don't think it makes me an Andrew Tate fanboy to argue that if you're going to say Tony's attractive because of his "competence", aren't the symbols of wealth and authority you handwave also an extension of that competence? And since the original article goes into toxic masculinity, I'll bite: yes, I understand that some men can and do pursue success and achievement in very destructive, off-putting ways. But why is it foundationally unreasonable for men (or anyone of any gender) to believe that achievements/success and feeling at ease in their own skin or feeling basic competence are related?
I’d argue that Tony is hard-working, competent, and determined at some very immoral activities. (That's the same point the original article makes, isn't it?) His success is a function of both that competence and that immorality- which the women in his life are very aware of. And it's difficult to argue that his success and attitude aren't self-reinforcing, in a way; he's confident because he is "Mr. Mob Boss", running construction scams, beating up gamblers, and sleeping with women he "genuinely likes" (that are not his wife). If you take someone like Tony and put him in a position of stress, a position of weakness where his assets, status, or self-worth are threatened (as seen variously with his mother, with uncle Junior, and later with the Lupertazzi war), do you get the confident dude who gets things done and genuinely likes women? No, you have an insecure blowhard who kills his own close associates, crashes and burns his already deteriorating marriage, becomes increasingly paranoid and cloistered to everyone around him, and ultimately has to hide in a safehouse awaiting the end.
This, I think, is the weakest part of the article's argument. You can of course claim that Tony's (or anyone else's) wealth and power are totally different from their basic competence and attitudes as a human being, and men who can't tell the difference have just been reading too much manosphere crap. But with what we know about human nature and reality, that's an extremely credulous needle to thread. And it's one the author's own argument seems to lose in her own haystack, because when she tries to paint Tony as the image of the guy who can get things done, it's hard to ignore the reality that the cars, the house, the pool, the position of power- all of those things are a downstream consequence of "being able to get things done" and succeeding in his chosen field. And dismissing men making a reasonable assumption that women who see those symbols might find them attractive, as just "wrong again", requires a higher burden of proof than I'm willing to grant.
Great piece! Personally, I think the author went wrong in trying to justify her fictional crush. It’s okay to irrationally like someone who kinda sucks, especially if he’s just a guy from a TV show who isn’t real. Why do women feel like we have to explain our attractions? Men don’t really do this. They seem more comfortable with decoupling attraction with personal admiration. IMO there’s this social pressure on women to like the right kind of man for all the right reasons. You’re not supposed to reward bad guys with female attention. This is why people get so angry at hybristophiles. They are seen as “incentivizing” antisocial behavior. But sometimes terrible people are hot! Being okay with that contradiction is probably better than trying to pretend Tony Soprano loves women.
Nailed it! I totally find terrible guys to be hot sometimes, almost entirely for their villainy, but I'm not trying to project admirable qualities onto them to justify it!
Also, today I learned what Hybristophile means, lol. I had no idea there was a word for that, but of course there's a word for that.
My sympathy to young men that read Shannon's essay. I suspect they are already (as are young women) overwhelmed with someone or something telling them how to be.
Though you should hopefully not be thinking about the divorce when getting married just imagine trying to leave Tony with his secrets and now being forced to testify against him. Want to date again? Just make sure any man you look at knows his life expectancy just got much shorter.
Great article!
My only comment is that confidence in a man is a double-edged virtue in that it makes him a good liar… he appears more capable than he is because he can cover up his shortcomings with chutzpah. Is Tony capable of being a faithful husband, or just confident about his inevitable indiscretion?
Great piece! As always, love the insights, the humor, the writing, and the honesty (eg “I don’t even fucking know anymore, man”). The biggest takeaways for me - from Shannon’s piece, your response here, and others’ responses:
1. Where you and Shannon agree (you: “capability + confidence”; Shannon: “competence”), a critical distinction is made. More so than the usual Redpill default mode of “confidence” and “power”. I think men know this to be true — but the lack of precision in the definition can be misleading. I think men assume power is better than competence, but I no longer believe that’s the case for all women. Also, I used to think I could fake confidence. Looking back I cringe at the memory of my younger self trying to do this. Women’s intuition on this character trait has been honed by a million years of evolution to be nearly infallible. I tell my sons, don’t ever try to fake it. They always know. Better to develop true competency, even in a narrow niche.
2. I hope your commentary on romance isn’t lost in the bigger discussion on power, wealth, competence. Women seem to vary in their appreciation for romance, but they all seem to appreciate it to some degree - and this is not as frequently mentioned on their wish lists as, say, confidence, kindness, sense of humor. But it’s an important one, and can go a long way in off-setting the role of power/wealth in the accounting. More importantly I think men sometimes underestimate women’s willingness to make irrational choices, including risky or harmful behavior, if they are deeply in love and feel it is “us against the world”. I once had a gf who said she would gladly go on the road and rob banks with me if I chose to - and I knew she wasn’t lying. No higher compliment as a man.
3. At the end of the day, What Women Truly Want remains a bit of mystery, and I suppose that’s a good thing.
"Women’s intuition on this character trait has been honed by a million years of evolution to be nearly infallible."
Men with sufficient narcissistic/sociopathic tendencies regularly circumvent women's honed ability to suss out confidence or the lack thereof with ease, though. This is probably the reason these antisocial tendencies developed in the first place; they're an effective reproductive shortcut.
It's a frustrating state of affairs: feminists have spent the past decade+ devoting their time and energy to the task of diminishing the confidence of men in general.
What most of them seem incapable of grokking is that that the men who actually do significant damage to women are all but immune to these initiatives. On the contrary, narcissistic and sociopathic men often thrive in the context of social chaos, which is exactly what all of the convoluted cancelling, browbeating, scolding, condemnation, and admonishment have brought about.
Meanwhile, ordinary men, and especially men who bothered to listen to the feminists and take their points of view seriously, have been conditioned to approach the opposite sex with excessive caution and a neurotic sense of unease.
So my suspicion is that this whole transition has in fact pushed young women closer to "toxic" men, which of course reinforces the general distrust of men that started the transition in the first place.
It seems like people have started to get wise to some of this over the past two to three years. Here's hoping we can break the idiotic cycle.
Well said. Hoping indeed — that comments like yours can eventually counter the wall of destructive feminist messaging that put us here.
One important dimension of attraction that I think often gets sidelined by the focus on specific traits or behaviors is the extent to which these traits or behaviors violate our expectations. Characters like Tony Soprano benefit enormously from the context in which their behavior is presented. Murderous, greedy, selfish, power-hungry monster is the default model for a mobster, so anytime Tony seems to show more than this, it has heightened significance (literally measurable in increased dopamine neuron firing). For some--like Shannon, perhaps--it may be so significant that it overshadows all the negative, expectation-conforming stuff. This is, incidentally, why gambling is addictive; we over-learn from rare wins because they surprise and under-learn from common losses because they don't. That is what keeps us playing.
The same dynamic often works against the "nice guy" (however sincere he really is in that presentation). In creating an expectation of being unfailingly kind and attentive and selflessly giving toward women, he ensures his inevitable human slip-ups will be the most salient things about him. His good deeds, however many, are just the taken-for-granted background against which his less-than-selfless acts stand out. Likewise for the men who go for the stoic, self-sufficient, I'll-be-the-rock-in-the-relationship kind of presentation; they ensure inordinate attention will be drawn to any moment of weakness, however fleeting (I think it's pretty telling how women often talk about getting "the ick" as if it were an encounter with the uncanny valley).
The redpill types saw all this and decided the lesson was that women secretly despise kindness and love being treated like shit because [insert preferred evolutionary just-so story here]. But the real enemy of attraction is *predictability.* The good news is you can be kind in ways that don't get stale or create superhuman expectations. And you can keep others interested in you by means that don't require being an asshole most of the time.
That's really insightful and I think you're right.
I gotta rewatch the entire series now through this lens. ❤️
You'll have to update us on your own verdict at the end 😄
"I literally cannot fathom being anything other than afraid of a man like Tony Soprano."
Women find it hard to leave abusive men, and easy to leave passive men. There's a fear of retaliation, but that doesn't explain "he really loves me". Managing her single core fear of him overwhelms the emotional impact of the many lesser fears that would otherwise exist day-to-day.
In contrast, the passive man leaves the woman feeling exposed to all these little fears, and she will construct a narrative that blames him not just for not protecting her but also for the things she fears. To her, there seems to be little cost to going it alone and thus she feels free to leave. Modern society exacerbates this because the government promises to pick up the slack, which also serves to downplay the un-exciting value a passive but diligent man brings.
[Political aside: laws that were intended to help women escape abusive relationships are more often used to escape mundane ones]
There is of course a third category - men who are both assertive & kind. They exist, but they are also in high demand.
Instinctively, most women are attracted to competent, powerful men. Sorting out "good" vs "bad" can get lost in the noise - or in the fantasy she builds around the man. The male analogy is men ignoring "red flags" because a woman is sufficiently hot. Though in general, men are less competent at weaving a plausible self-narrative around these decisions.
I have two different theories on why Shannon finds him attractive. The first is that she (and others?) might legitimately see a man who's mean, powerful, and puts women down to have rizz and allure. Which is to say that she mistakes him being an asshole and getting away with it as high status (or it isn't a mistake because he is high status).
The second is that he's attractive because he's on TV. He's the main character of his own story and you see everything from his perspective so you feel like you understand him. So while he's not actually buying groceries we the audience know that he can if he needed to because he does more complicated things. The problem is that his wife or anyone he's with still has to do her own shopping in practice. Which is to say that the result of his competence is money for the people around him. But I don't think Shannon imagines what it's like to be with Tony in practice, she imagines what it's like to be with the Tony "she knows".
(Note that I haven't watched any of this show and am going purely by second hand retellings)
Good point- Tony, by nature of being a media protagonist, has to be agentic and competent in order for the story to progress. He isn't necessarily attractive in the way that Brad Pitt (or more recently, Glen Powell) might be, but he certainly appears better at "problem solving" than the average man on the street whose life we know nothing about and who we are free to make the worst assumptions about.
That being said, given the opening anecdote of men being unable to comprehend why Tony, a fat mobster, is attractive, coupled with Shannon's references to men not showing competence on buying scallions, and the line about women getting to turn their brain off because society is dangerous, I suspect there is more than a touch of her working backwards from her premise: that modern men are both uninformed in womanly desire and also somewhat bumbling and unempathetic, and Tony Soprano happened to be a convenient vehicle to write an article expressing that point.
I think a better question would be what would Tony think of Shannon? Would he find her attractive or would he be a total dick to her, or both? Would she like it if he was? The reason that question is important because if she thinks men are incompetent it could just be that it's the kind of men she attracts. Given her desires to have men handle things for her and her brain off, I wouldn't be surprised if the competent men she described just generally avoided her
Finally read this essay. Really good and really thoughtful. I can’t speak for women or The Sopranos (never watched a second of it) but you lay out your case very persuasively. Well done.
Thank you! I definitely recommend giving it a try if you're into that sort of thing. It's really a great show even if the main character is a mean, murdering man whore lol
I did like The Godfather, Goodfellas, and a few other mob movies, but generally I hate the mafia and want to see them all get gunned down by the police whenever I watch a mob-related piece of media. So I don’t think I’m the target audience.
Your conclusion about women wanting to support their men's crazy dreams reminds me of a subset of women that I don't see discussed much anywhere: the bankrollers, for lack of a better term. I was fascinated learning about the 80s hair metal scene just how many of the guys were being supported by women who paid their rent, bought their clothes/food etc. They were supporting them because they wanted to see them succeed--the opposite of the "gold digger" that you might expect these guys would attract, but that would probably be a post-success thing. Outside of that specific venue there's a lot of women who pay for their artistic men to be able to do what they want, which supports your theory. (My mom was one of them, it backfired tremendously for her.)
I had to laugh at your wondering if you were watching a different show entirely because I often feel that way when seeing general cultural/celebrity analysis. I don't remember who wrote the piece about Glenn Powell but it seemed to just be PR fluff and projection, he also was defined as someone who "loves women" -- and while I don't think his public behaviour is anything like that of Tony, he's also a celebrity whose public persona is highly manicured so what on earth are we even talking about?! I could be wrong, but it seems like we're all grasping wish projections into reality by simply finding enough agreement. Maybe we were always like this, and it's just more noticeable these days.
I had no idea about the way the 80s metal scene was financially supported like that! That IS fascinating.
To your later question... I think maybe we have always been this way to an extent, but it just comes out more noticeably now during the heightened battles of the gender war we can't seem to ever escape 😅
I loved, loved, loved this piece. You went sniper on all the nebulous reddish flags I had experienced reading Catherine's article – which I love too, don't get me wrong. I'm not engaging in some "teams" crap here.
And speaking of teams, your take on hypergamy? Chef's kiss.
I'm endlessly irked by these entomology-adjacent takes on relationships that look at us from above and insist on keeping us harshly classified apart, in as if men and women were different species, strike that, *adversarial* species. Soul mates indeed, if people just understood that better.
However (you knew one was coming), in your brilliant dissection of Tony the character, you left out the proverbial elephant in the room: James Gandolfini, the actor.
Women aren't attracted to Tony, they just like Jim!
Dude was the prototypical "big scary guy with a tender core", on the one had. On the other, like many men of girth who used to be hunks in their youth, he just carried himself a certain way. I can see it.
I distinctly remember my wife (my soul mate) back in the day after watching Get Shorty, where Gandolfini has a pretty unglamorous part, going "That big guy Travolta kicked in the nuts, he's kinda hot." "Is he now", I said. "Yeah, he has kind eyes, and he's, I don't know, sort of handsome in a way." Again, I could see it.
Granted, the fact that I may or may not be a big bald guy in his fifties whom nobody has considered anything even approaching hot in over a decade may be casting a rosy tint on my reading glasses, but all the same, I'm pretty sure that the secret sauce in some women's baffling attraction to Tony is just good ol' Jim.
That said - my wife wolfed down The Sopranos like there was no tomorrow. It's become an inside joke in our household that maybe Dad needs to go out and extort some people just to get Mom in a romantic mood.
Because yes, humans are of course fucked up.
You are so right about James Gandolfini! I didn't write about him, the actor, at all, but it was mostly because I'm actually not really at all familiar with his work outside of The Sopranos. He must not have been in the kinds of movies I tend to watch 😄