[sereneiders]

I've meet Barbie and Keen, several times, besides the name they were wearing evary time, nor the look, and yep, they managed to make me (us) feel unconfortable. Usually they also think it happens because they can intimidate us, but such a tought comes from the supposition that there are some "better" stuff beyond our reach, something able to set them one (or several) step above us.

There exist an stereotype of people that invest more time and effort on their external look developement than the time and effort they invest developing the remaining aspects of their persons, but's it's an stereotype based on what you can grasp at a first sight: the way people look. But the stereotype can be a missleading one, because there are people that invest time and effort in the way they look, but just as one of many aspects they invest also into to develop themselves as a whole, and in such a case these people are far from deserving to be taken for K&B.

This stereotype is a coin with an opposite face: people who want to point out for everyone around that they invest more time in the remaining aspects of their own development than the one they invest in the way they look, and to do so they deprive the external look from any importance and become careless about it. We could say these people are the proper Anti-K&B.

But IMHO the stereotype rely on the fact that our society is driven by "the market" and a "succesfulness" criteria and standards that only fit the marketing purpose. K&B are, at last, people who live to follow these standards (perhaps because it is the easiest way to fit in they feel they have), which means, they push themselves towards these sort of success, they need to show off their success, they want to surround themselves with successful people as to feel appreciated by peers, and often they require some not-so-succesfull people around as to point out how succesfull they are in comparison (as Michelle Foulcault said, in the old courts, the need to have fools, mad and disabled people, as to ensure they were intelligent, clever and perfects, thus ensuring they were resembling the image of God).

So the problem isn't the K&B alone, it is the mix of K&B and non K&B people, because of the role the formers may require the laters to fulfill, a role that, by definition, would be humilliating for the non K&B ones.

To say non K&B people are "intimidated" would be to admit the K&B standards are the right ones. And humilliation isn't intimidation.

I think it is worth to point out our lifestyle collide with the K&B standrads because (it's supposed) we have rules stating we should be respectfull about everyone's elses feelings. Most swingers wouldn't engage in an activity where the outcome risk to be humilliating for them, so to uphold the lifestyle standards K&B and non K&B trend to play in different "leages", to avoid the standards collision.

And because of this I believe people take the measure to state the attitude they have towards the K&B ones.