Assuming your question was serious: Because she displays a very minor amount of cleavage in the picture, with a pleasant smile.

In other words, her picture is fun and completely unobjectionable.

Unfortunately, if that picture is shown outside of her private context it's also liable to generate hordes of crude come-ons from lonely men who see it while browsing Youtube. This is different from a facebook profile picture because she can't comment without showing it.

If you know any women who use OK Cupid, ask them how many creepy messages they have to filter through. Or if you truly want to be horrified, make a personals ad on Craigslist pretending to be a woman. You will get pictures of penises.

"Or if you truly want to be horrified, make an ad on Craigslist pretending to be a woman. You will get pictures of penises."

This might initially seem like a silly question, but as someone who wants to understand the perspectives of both sexes I wonder: Why can this behaviour generally be observed only in male to female exchanges but not the reverse?

Women tend not to have penises.

I am sure you were joking, but to clarify and expand: Why do men seek contact with the opposite sex more frequently than women? Why do they tend to do so in a way that seems to bother the woman in question? Why are women not doing the same to men?

...seriously? well, because women and men experience life very differently. being a woman is a lot more dangerous - you are simply too weak to defend yourself against most guys. so, you have to trust that they will treat you fairly before sleeping with them or starting a relationship, and if you're wrong, the consequences are terrible. men simply don't have to worry about consequences this severe - as a guy picking up girls, you never have to wonder if they will rape or abuse you.

remember that rape is still exceedingly common (1 in 3 women in the USA will be sexually abused at some point). women are just as sexual as guys, it's just much more dangerous (and socially unacceptable - slut-shaming, etc) for them to solicit sex. as for why anonymous dudes on the internet are so creepy, it's most likely a combination of the disinhibition anonymity gives you and the sexual deviance a boner gives you.

Because they don't need to, in general; and because reproductive biology predisposes women to be choosy (as the physical burden of pregnancy and childbirth on women is enormously high).

Part of it is purely game theoretic.

Once one person realizes it's a successful strategy to send more messages then their competition, their competition also has to send more messages. Arms race quickly ensues. And once you have such an arms race on one side, the other gender no longer has to even bother initiating conversations.

Why did the arms race tip towards men competing and women getting it easy? Probably cultural norms. But once the arms race got started, there was no putting it back in the bag.

> "Why did the arms race tip towards men competing and women getting it easy? Probably cultural norms."

Cultural norms that are followed by every live-birthing animal species, how strange.

Incorrect. For example, the bonobo.

Because it costs far more for women than men to have children, biologically speaking.

That's an intellectually lazy excuse: humans are social creatures – completely ignoring that (and the existence of birth-control) to rely on biological determinism ignores most of the things which make us human.

(Put another way: your explanation would cover our closest relatives: chimps, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos – given the huge differences in behavior, a simple reproductive cost model is obviously incomplete)

I think the three other responses you had received to this comment when I post this give a more general answer: No one knows, and most fall back on evolutionary psychology to come up with a plausible-sounding explanation.

I understand her discomfort with harassers, but it seems to me that it's a trade between crude come-ons from people with real names attached and murder/rape threats from people without their real names attached.

I prefer a web where pseudonyms are allowed, but if anything, real names could reduce harassment.

What Amagumori said -- I can block/delete harassing comments (and do, on a regular basis), but I am far more concerned with murder/rape threats from people who know where I live.

I'm a big girl, I can deal with crude come-ons appropriately (which is to say, snort/fume depending on the content, then report, block, and delete.)

What concerns me is the unwanted linking of trackable personal information, through a service that had been repeatedly declined by the user in question.

I'm thankful that I am not in compliance with Google's "real-name" policy, or else I'd potentially have harassers showing up at my door -- and that's a shitty, uncomfortable, violated feeling to be experiencing, because Google broke my trust after I told them that I didn't want to share that information, and they shared it anyway, without giving me a chance to opt out.

In this case, no actual harm was done. However, it illustrates the potential for harm very clearly -- when you require "real names" (and, in some cases, enforce that with requests for drivers-license scans, etc., as has happened a number of times since the G+ nymwars started), you must respect your users' privacy choices about how they want those names to be shared with the public.

All it takes is one stalker, one violent ex, one deranged family member, and their real-name policy, combined with the collapse of walls that users set up for self-protection, is a recipe for preventable tragedy.

the issue is not the visibility of the harasser's names but hers. using your real name gives people the ability to find your phone number and address fairly easily.

I can't edit my reply, but another comment downstream put it even better than I did:

"Her profile picture is a woman coyly putting something vaguely phallic in her mouth. If it was posted to reddit the slobbering masses would be tripping over themselves to tip their fedoras in her general direction, so imagine what it would be like on YouTube."

Again, a fun, funny photo, in context. In the wilds of Youtube, that will get her plenty of awful comments and come-ons.

Her profile picture is a woman coyly putting something vaguely phallic in her mouth. If it was posted to reddit the slobbering masses would be tripping over themselves to tip their fedoras in her general direction, so imagine what it would be like on YouTube.