Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
'She's not THAT pretty'
Comments
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
Ickle Magoo wrote: »And you don't think Dr Who fans or the posters in the redhead appreciation thread are a poor representative sample?
Tbf, all the people I know who have an opinion on Amy are Doctor Who fans.;)
I'm not sure where the red headed appreciation thread comes into it though. Gillan is clearly a very attractive woman, she won't be to everyone's taste, but nobody is. Objectively she is certainly good looking.0 -
-
Advertisement
-
-
Ickle Magoo wrote: »And you don't think Dr Who fans or the posters in the redhead appreciation thread are a poor representative sample?
:pac:
Very good, was more about the Martha and Amy part of the post.
I suppose it's a more representative, general sample in the Doctor who board. I suppose, seeing as I'm subscribed to the Redhead thread, I'm biased! Martha is stunningly beautiful as well. I do think Karen is under estimated as an actress though. She is very young and some just see her as eye candy.Mad Men's Don Draper : What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons.
0 -
-
-
-
-
Absolutely, there are so many variables on 'attractive' it's unbelievable, and that's what keeps the world spinning, but then there are women (and men, but that's another thread) who walk into a room and there's just no way you can't notice them.
There's a science behind it too - perfect symmetry in facial features, big eyes & mouth, full lips, ideal waist-hip ratio, ample bosom, etc etc. It has nothing (or at least very little) to do with makeup, clothes, fake tan, etc With my college classmate, it was tick, tick, tick, tick and tick.
Maybe this 'conventional' beauty isn't to everyone's taste but it certainly catches the eye of virtually everyone who runs into it in my experience and it's more common sense than personal preference to describe such a woman as 'beautiful'.
I agree with Paloma Large Top in terms of women who everyone deems 'stunning' because they're blonde, and/or wear a lot of makeup, provocative clothing, etc...but without their armour there's nothing special to look at. I see this all the time, especially as I work in TV - stylists who the tabloids describe as 'blonde bombshell' or 'brunette babe' and when they're standing in front of you, you realise they just have a well-developed sense of style and lots of money...that's when it becomes debatable.
But when the 'objectively' good looking...and I do believe they exist, even if it's a small percentage of the population...are described as 'not that pretty'. That's when I despair.
BINGO.
You and me both. 0 -
-
Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,327 Mod ✭✭✭✭
Join Date:Posts: 59254
I think when we talk about beauty we're in danger like you said of equating the western/current cultural ideal with a universal ideal and in that I agree. Though beks101 list "perfect symmetry in facial features, big eyes & mouth, full lips, ideal waist-hip ratio, ample bosom" is universal across cultures and time. Looking deeper into it would appear big eyes for Asian women is a recent thing due to the western influence, yet if you look at earlier Chinese or Japanese art, you will note that while men are represented with narrow eyes, the women are represented with larger eyes by comparison. So bigger eyes in women is desired. Also her list doesnt involve, size, nor skin colour, nor hair colour or length, nor any other cultural "fashion". While I also agree that some of this harks back to classical and neo classical ideals, there are reasons why these ideals were noted. The exaggeration of the underlying ideals is cultural, but those ideals themselves are not.The "science" dates back to the renaissance and the six Neo-Classical criteria for beauty and while there's been recent study in it and they found the criteria does still stand in general in defining beauty it is a western standard of beauty not a universal one.
I would agree. Even within the west the ideal is narrow. So a woman with pale skin is currently considered less ideal than a woman with lightly tanned skin. Blonde is considered above brunette and defo above red. So to find a natural blue eyed blonde with built in tanned skin is going to be pretty rare, even in the west. Which is a bit mad ted.There is a more sinister side to pushing forward this idea of good looking/pretty because that image that is pushed forward is a western idea of beauty.
I agree its crazy.The BBC had a series last year about women and men from ethnic backgrounds going to extreme lengths to alter themselves to fit the western idea of beauty. They would get plastic surgery to get a western face, western shaped eyes, smaller noses, they would bleach their skin to look more white and in one case have extreme surgery to lengthen their legs to be the ideal western height.
Havent seen it as yet but did catch a bit of it on Oprah. Interestingly he also made the point that it wasnt just black women either, when he pointed out that the majority of the white women in the audience had dyed hair, nearly always blonde. That although they had the kind of hair black women aspired to, they were still fiddling about with the natural. One thing that did occur to me though was with black hair in the natural, it has fewer options as far as styling goes, compared to straight european or asian hair. Small afro, big afro, sculpted afro. So maybe at least some of this is just to increase the palette of styling options?Chris Rocks' doc Good Hair has just hit Irish cinemas and its interesting viewing to hear black women talk about this idea of 'good hair' and how they all see 'good hair' as being white hair and go to extreme lengths to get their hair looking more like white hair and looking down on any black woman who opts to wear her hair natural.
I would say though that we have to be careful in ascribing insidious motives behind all of this. Humans throughout history have sought to adorn and change themselves to fit into whatever culture they were in and to fit into the ideal. When people think of Helen of Troy, the movies would have us believe in some skinny blonde straight haired scandinavian type. The ideal of feminine beauty back then would be thin alright, but she would have had dark(they didnt even have a word for blonde hair) curly hair, very white makeup with red lips and red dots on her cheeks as if a three year old raided their mothers makeup kit.
But Helen herself was held up as the ideal. Women would have wanted to look like that ideal, even if the woman herself never did. If we look at the stone age venus figures that show a very obese body type(still with the .7 hip waist ratio though), women would have aspired to that too. This stuff has always been with us. For men too, to different degrees throughout history.
Where it is insidious today is where the dissemination of the cultural ideal is complete and one ethnic ideal trumps all others globally. So an African woman who has the actual underlying biological ideal, may be considered less "beautiful" than the European woman who has a couple of the surface ideals. Then add in the technology we have today, that allows us to change our appearance in a manner far beyond what a woman of Helens time would have imagined. Breasts too small? Oh we can change that. Waist too big? Oh we can suck that fat right outa ya. Skin too dark/light, lips too thin, jaw or nose too big? Oh we can change that too. And humans being what they are we'll run with those. Then add in the technology to change someone's appearance in a photo*, beyond what is possible in reality. OK that's dodgy enough in a painting but a painting is fairly removed from reality. A photo tricks us into thinking its real. The camera never lies idea. It lies like a bastid. Thats the scary bit.
PS I'm one of those guys who doesnt think the new wan in Dr Who is all that, but lets keep that convo to the relevant forum
*and now they can do it with video. Video photoshop basically, where the old vaseline on the lens trick is way more sophisticated.Many worry about Artificial Intelligence. I worry far more about Organic Idiocy.
0 -
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,327 Mod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 59254
Look at them again and look at ones from Korea too. The mens eyes are smaller. More "male", often heavier lidded too.Not in early Japanese and Chinese art. Wood block prints from around the 8th century show men and women with the same eye size.
I agree, but the manga style is like you say a much later influence. Clearly nowadays the ideal is for euro style eyes without the asian epicanthic fold. As an aside I dont see whats unattractive about that eyelid. Other populations have it. Even some europeans have it to some degree. I am not suggesting you'll see manga eyes before 1900, just that the size of eyes tends to follow a gender bias. It can be subtle enough though.It was with the influence of the west that the style started to change, most notable after the second world war and the rise of manga style art. Manga characters have very large eyes as they developed from the early masters like Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy and his attempts to draw his characters to look like Walt Disney characters.
I agree, but again there are "default" triggers for sexual attraction in both genders. These can get exaggerated in some cultures or lessened in others.Different cultures will always have a different focus on what they feel is beautiful but it can change with time and influence from other cultures.
Good example of my point. Women on average have smaller feet than men(I say this as a man with small feetIn China for example tiny pointed feet were considered very attractive and in rich families young girls feet would be broken over and over then folded and bound to create these tiny pointed feet. This went on for over 1000 years and only stopped in the 1950's when Mao banned it.). Smaller hands in general too. In puberty the surge in male hormones promotes bone growth in males. So wider shoulders, bigger jaw more robust in general. If a woman is described as "mannish" these are usually the cues people tend to reference(of course its all relative). So small dainty feet are the baseline attraction trigger if we're focusing on that area. Ok grand. So a culture gets even more focused on this and hey presto foot binding is the exaggerated end point. Ditto with slimness in our culture to some degree. A healthy body in a culture where food is plentiful would be pretty slim and toned(in men and women). But again the culture if it focuses too much on one factor exaggerates it to the point where it becomes a fetish and hence we have anorexic ideals being pushed on us from the newstands and TV screens. Many worry about Artificial Intelligence. I worry far more about Organic Idiocy.
0 -
-
Eve_Dublin wrote: »I´d just like to ask a question out of curiosity. We all know a lot of famous women have had a lot of surgery done and even though we know this, we still compliment their beauty. So I want to know would you consider these women "beautiful" knowing how much surgery they´ve had? Are they really beautiful if they paid for it?
Personally I would have a natural repulsion when I come across "fake" but that´s just me. I don´t like to wear a lot of make up (just mascara everyday and a bit of foundation and lipstick for special occasions) but I´m talking about surgery and as well as superficial enhancing. If I know a woman has had surgery or has had an extreme superficial makeover to change how she looks permanently or temporarily and even if she looks great, I still wouldn´t call her beautiful. To me beauty is something natural. I understand not everyone is born gorgeous and feel they need to alter how they look so they are because beauty is valued above all else in a woman but I still wouldn´t call them beautiful. I guess I see it as not everyone can excel in everything. I´m not good at Art and I have accepted that and moved on, for example. The fact that most women with money to spend nowadays can be "beautiful" kind of cheapens the label in my opinion. Like every second woman is "beautiful" but not naturally.
I think it creates huge pressure among women to be beautiful that didn´t exist so much in the past because it´s almost unacceptable NOT to be "beautiful" because any woman can be. Marketing has made us believe that beauty is within the reach of any woman with the money to spend, even if it just means spending 60 quid in Boots.
What do you think? Am I being too harsh?
A lovely stretch of landscape in Donegal is naturally beautiful. A lovely, well-proportioned woman will be naturally beautiful.
However, a good work of art (think of some sculptures by Michelangelo or Rodin) will be equally beautiful. The difference is, it was made by a human hand. See where I'm going with this?
Demi Moore has had some fantastic work done, both on body and face. As a refreshing change when it comes to plastic surgery, she doesn't look weird, she looks... good :eek:. Granted, she was beautiful to begin with, somewhat comparable to the quality of marble with which Rodin was working. Therefore in my opinion, she is beautiful full stop.
As to the rest, I think you said yourself (or was it someone else on the thread) that women are pretty good at sussing out who is beautiful and who is not under the slap. I think the same applies to the "work" being done - I mean, there is a world of difference between an artificial trout pout (Meg Ryan) and naturally full lips (ScarJo). Same goes for Botox and whatever else. You can build on natural beauty well, and this will be beautiful (Demi), you can build on it badly, and that will be a disaster (Kylie, Nicole "FrozenForehead" Kidman), you can build on something average and come up with a pretty good end result (Megan Fox - that girl should write a letter of ackowledgment to her cheekbones), but if there is NO quality at all at the starting point, than as things (still) stand, there will be no saving grace, no way forward.
I forget my point... (drawbacks of ageing...:()
Ah, yes! Beautiful is beautiful is beautiful. If it looks good, it's beautiful. 0 -
As to the rest, I think you said yourself (or was it someone else on the thread) that women are pretty good at sussing out who is beautiful and who is not under the slap. I think the same applies to the "work" being done - I mean, there is a world of difference between an artificial trout pout (Meg Ryan) and naturally full lips (ScarJo). Same goes for Botox and whatever else. You can build on natural beauty well, and this will be beautiful (Demi), you can build on it badly, and that will be a disaster (Kylie, Nicole "FrozenForehead" Kidman), you can build on something average and come up with a pretty good end result (Megan Fox - that girl should write a letter of ackowledgment to her cheekbones), but if there is NO quality at all at the starting point, than as things (still) stand, there will be no saving grace, no way forward.
I forget my point... (drawbacks of ageing...:()
Ah, yes! Beautiful is beautiful is beautiful. If it looks good, it's beautiful.
Yes, it was I who said that about being able to tell! I´m so wise
But I guess I take it a little too far...maybe I´m not as forgiving as most...or maybe I just have very good eyesight.
I see your point. If it´s looks beautiful, then it is. Yeah, that does make sense. However I still would never call a woman truly beautiful unless I know she could scrub her face of everything and still look striking. A statue is a mad made object, a human is an animal and thus is natural. I suppose it´s a personal thing....I´m actually repulsed by fakery (fake personalities most of all). Fake tan makes me queasy...physically queasy and I feel uneasy when I wear the smallest amount of make up, so I generally don´t even though I know I´d look more enhanced with it on. I don´t like looking at women close who up because I hate the look of make up on pores and I shudder when I see a foundation line on a chin and fake nails make me feel...I don´t know...uncomfortable. And porcelain veneers! Don´t get me started...I suppose it´s a bit of a phobia. I can´t explain it. Plastic surgery repels me even more. I guess there´s those who were beautiful to begin with so they´re adding to that. Demi Moore is a very good example...she was a natural beauty and now she still LOOKS great...but I can´t help imaging what she´d look like if she just let herself age naturally (and truly beautiful women can age beautifully but she works in an industry that doesn´t tolerate aging)...it´s something that niggles when I see a photo.
Saying all that, I wouldn´t knock a woman for doing what she wants to do with her body. Not at all. I´d just be more judgemental on how truly beautiful they are and wouldn´t be so quick to label them as such. I´ll probably succumb myself in about 20 years, who knows but at the moment my feelings are that it´s all getting a bit out of hand and there´s enormous pressure on women to be "beautiful", even it means caking it on so the person doesn´t resemble the same person that got out of the shower that morning or going under the knife. There seems to be no acceptance among women nowadays that they´re not "stunning" and that´s life. You have to deal with it. I think a little more acceptance of this could stop things getting REALLY out of hand (although I think they already have). I´m just repulsed by how fair it´s all come...I think it´s a pretty natural reaction though, no?
Edit: Just to add, I do wear mascara everyday and I sometimes wear bras with padding and I´ve worn lipstick, foundation at special occasions but I´m really talking about taking that to the extreme.0 -
Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,327 Mod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 59254
We'll have to agree to disagree on the older stuff :)As for the crazy anime eyes it's good to hear there is that discussion and move away from that and good thing too. My point is that your contention that what is considered beautiful is not just cultural. There is a science behind it and there are valid organic reasons why various things including beks101 list are universal. Culture may accentuate one or more features to the point of fetish, but the underlying reasons from a reproductive point of view remain.I have looked at them, I do alot of wood block printing and have spent time in Japan studying both printmaking and comics and I don't see larger eyes evident among female figures in early prints...look at the work of Utagawa Kunisada and his court ladies or Katsukawa Shunzan and his ladies by the river series. It's been a point of discussion in anime recently with more and more studios moving towards using smaller eyes in line with traditional Japanese art rather then the more established 'anime' larger eyes which developed in the 1950s.
It's also how we want to define beautiful. A mountain view is beautiful, but has no reproductive reason to be. Indeed both male and female genitals are objectively less beautiful than the same mountain view, but people are usually and viscerally attracted to them more(in a different way). An artist(Lucien Freud a good example) may prefer to paint a very large, nay obese person, because its more interesting from a painterly point of view and it is beautiful, but is it reproductively beautiful? Ditto for an old lined face carved by time and experience.
The other problem with our society is balance and where we focus. We focus on youth and reproductive triggers like few others have(ironic as we tend to live longer). Where they have venerated youth, they have also focused on great age. So the greeks as an example were big into gilded youth, but at the same time venerated great age and the wisdom that comes from it. To the point where they would mash up the two and you can find heroic/god statues where the male body is heavily muscled and youthful yet the head is an older one. The renaissance dudes did the same. http://www.awakentoprayer.org/God.creating.adam.jpeg Micks god there, all grey hair and flowing beard has a physique the guys in the fitness forum hereabouts would kill for You tend to see similar balanced weighting of all stages of life(except inbetweeny middle age) in most art from most cultures before our own.
So this fetish of youth skews out perceptions. Particularly for women. They really bloody well get it in the neck on this score. In hunter gatherer societies and many others, older women are looked up to as much if not more than older men, or men in general(and more looked up to than 20 year old women). Women were/are celebrated for their youth, they're celebrated for the middle mother/wife part and the celebrated for their post reproductive age. The old maiden mother and "crone" vibe. Very strong in many cultures including our own in the past. Today all we concentrate on is the maiden aspect. What is considered ideal is the figure and face of an 18 year old and a specific 18 year old archetype while we're at it. To the ridiculous degree where we can see ads for anti aging skin cream being modeled by late teenage women. Its insidious crap too. So someone like Jenny aniston is admired, not because of her age, but because she has through good luck with her genes, hard graft and possible help kept the maiden look.
It also plugs into this she's not that pretty thing too. When a section of society is lauded for just one thing, anything they do outside of that is ignored or hauled up for comparison to that one things. Its no great surprise that women get that or do that to other women.Many worry about Artificial Intelligence. I worry far more about Organic Idiocy.
0 -
-
-
Advertisement
-
Advertisement