This exchange is FASCINATING.
People value how desirability capital is distributed because it IS powerful. Nobody distributes it thoughtlessly.
People also allocate desirability intentionally in public because people knowing what you think is sexy is POLITICAL AF. https://twitter.com/TheAstroDim/status/1307884648899502080

I remember someone's mom going 200 kilometers out of her way to tell me the one she wanted her child to date had nicer hair and was prettier than me, with acid and sugar in her tone I was young but that didn't escape me at ALL. It didn't hurt. I just thought she was a weirdo

Partnered people KNOW what they are doing when they use public fora to allocate beauty capital directly within their partner's social circles.
Nothing can convince me the bf here did this innocently or cluelessly. The girlfriend was supposed to feel insecure, and clearly she did.

Crisis moments like this reveal if that there has also been a struggle in the subtext.
What the bf said isn't the only thing. The other stuff about the friend's looks, her singing etc came out fluently, like a processed, packaged thought .
This friend been PRESSDT for a minute

Re. public allocation of desirability capital, that's why people say some things on the TL, say some things "to their friends only when they are drunk", and say some things on IG DMs where they can unsend it later.
All to different people.
That shit is not innocent

And that is why some people get told "you're so confident"! With shocked tones. They mean "you're maybe a 4 to 6, but you are carrying yourself like a 10, and I don't get it."
None of that shit is by aggzident

Where desirability is louded, and where it is whispered, is all very calculated.
That's behind all the wilding when celebs/public people date above or below their projected worth.
It's behind so much anti LGBTQ violence.
Behind so much hate for dark skinned folk, fat folk etc

It's not just small small. A friend can end a friendship which existed before the boyfriend came, with insults intended to hurt, because of it. Wild tings.

The politics of "preference" are foundationally about which "preferences" can be said publicly and which ones can't.
Also history is replete with stories people whose lives, energies, attitudes subverted everything their societies knew about looks, desirability and their results

Feminism's core, marginal, derived thoughts are about subverting/living beyond infinite nonsense norms that exist to favour patriarchy. Being a slave to normative desirability and their politics is just one of them.
I love @imani_yvonne2's work in that and MANY other areas

Recognise the unearned privilege that comes with having bodies that align to accepted desirability norms.
See also the visceral, irrational violence that arises when people are angry when allocation happens in ways they don't agree with.

The friend in exhibit A "needed" to reach for "fat" and "ugly" to feel better about her insecurity.
Instead of face that her boyfriend louding someone else's pretty made her uncomfortable, she "needed" to come insult the recipient of the desirability capital to take it away.

Just start watching who gets told what, by whom, about how they look in public.
There's a LOT to learn there.
/

PS A very wise friend of mine said 'type is about who you are willing to be seen in public with. But when it comes to sex, type really doesn't exist.'
She's so right.
People disobey their own types to get what they want.
How they feel about it is another thing. But they will.