This post originally appeared on The Good Men Project

Vicki Larson and I have been having a fairly heated conversation about what ugly has to do, or not do, with a man being marrying material. Her Huffington Post column got huge attention for claiming that women should choose ugly husbands, lest they be subject to the Weiner/Tiger/Arnold syndrome--appealing and powerful men who crash and burn.
I am not sure we will ever agree completely, but in my direct conversations with Vicki I get the sense that we actually agree, perhaps more than we disagree. Vicki and I thought it might be informative to engage in a spirited question and answer about her original piece and my sense of what manhood really is all about.
Tom: Vicki, everywhere I look, there are articles that attempt to summarize manhood (ironically most often written by women). Don't you think making sweeping stereotype-driven judgments about men is the same thing as making those judgments about women, or blacks or gays?
Vicki: You're surprised? Women love analyzing men! Sweeping stereotypes are horrible -- I hate being seen as a high-maintenance gold-digger living off my ex's hard-earned money just because I'm a divorced blonde. Intelligent people understand that the world doesn't work in absolutes -- "never" and "always."
What saddens me reading the comments here and elsewhere is that we still focus on how "bad" the other sex is. The studies I cite are old, they've been written about many times before, but because of social media, many people knee-jerk react and spread it faster, farther and wider than before. So much for thoughtful commentary.
Tom: I heard an interesting interview with Jon Hamm, who plays Don Draper on "Mad Men," in which he talked about how difficult it is for him to be objectified. He was serious about it and appeared to be an honest and sweet man despite his good looks. Should we be feeling sorry for him?
Vicki: We all want to feel attractive, not objectified. Still, Hamm chose a career that feeds off of good looks and he's being paid well and has many opportunities because of it. But it's great he's talking about it because women don't know how men feel about being lust objects. Most women, however, do; even women who aren't "beautiful" are drooled over because they might have great breasts or a butt. We need to be empathetic to how the other sex experiences things; Louanne Brizendine's books on male and female brains are great.

After the story broke that Arnold Schwarzenegger fathered a love child with his housekeeper, Mildred Baena, she and her 13-year-old son went into hiding -- hoping to wait out the media storm that followed. But now, Baena is ready to tell her side of the story, admitting that she is just as guilty for the adulterous affair as her former boss.

But Baena, 50, didn't always know that her son, Joseph, belonged to 'The Terminator.' Although, she had her suspicions when the young boy began to resemble his Austrian father.

"It was as Joseph grew and I started to see the resemblance that I wondered -- but it became more apparent as time went on," Baena told Hello! magazine. "I knew Arnold was the father, and maybe as Joseph got older and began to look like him, [Arnold] wondered. But he never said anything to me."
Unfortunately it wasn't only Schwarzenegger and Baena that had suspicions that their affair could have resulted in a child. The former governor's wife, Maria Shriver, alluded to Baena that she also noticed the similarities between Joseph and his biological father, her husband.

"She would say things like, 'I'm here if you need to talk,'" Baena recalls. "Finally, she asked point blank. Maria asked me directly if Joseph was Arnold's son, and I just broke down. I dropped to my knees and I was crying, saying that yes he was and I was so sorry."

But Baena was not confronted with your average rage-filled wife, having just discovered that her husband classically cheated on her with the family's housekeeper of twenty years.

"She was so strong," Baena said. "She cried with me and told me to get off my knees. We held each other and I told her it wasn't Arnie's fault, that it takes two."

Although the news was difficult for Shriver to digest, Baena's son had a much different reaction. When she explained to him, at the age of 13, that Schwarzenegger was his biological father, Joseph simply responded, "Cool."