Standards

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

I was somewhat joking, but come on, of course people are more physically attracted to attractive people than unattractive ones. The OP mentions fat people but the title of the thread is standards and so I feel they are in fact speaking more broadly than it appears.

The way I see it is that it's extremely naïve to think that people who are 'not exactly models', just also happen to fancy other people who also are 'not exactly models'. Of course they are settling. Would be a mad coincidence otherwise, don't you think. There'll always be exceptions of course. Have a neighbour who is defiantly punching above his weight for example, but by and large (excuse the pun) like tends to end up living in the suburbs with like... whacking off to better looking people when they get the house to themselves.

It might be my age speaking, but I never really found myself attracted to people who are considered attractive by general consensus - not the guy in class many of the girls were hot for, not Brad Pitt, not George Clooney, they just honest to goodness never did anything for me.
Same with the ladies, too. I would not generally be attracted to the slim ones considered beautiful.
In fact, I've got an extremely hard time sometimes telling people considered to be beautiful apart, they look very much the same to me quite often.

That's not saying I don't like beauty, far from it. I just seem to see it in other things and other people than the majority.
As such, I love women with really full curves. And I like men that are "chubby" (for lack of a better word) - for me it's the distribution of weight and how it makes the person look overall. But I would rarely if ever go for anyone slim. And never for anyone considered athletic.

Funnily enough, the same is true with my taste in cars. I find any kind of sporty car extremely ugly.

Fluffy Cat 88 wrote: »

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder ( or beer-holder as the joke goes )

That's not so much true. There are known formulas and ratios that are aesthetically pleasing to people, they're fundamentals that don't preclude fat people. Just think of babies, fat little feckers that own cute. It's a matter of preference after that.

beks101 wrote: »

Isn't there a study knocking about somewhere about how people tend to couple up with others of similar body fat to them? Sure I read something to that effect once.

I remember hearing or reading something about most people choosing people that have similar features to them. If you look at couples you'll see some that could pass for brother and sister they look so similar. Other times the similarities are much more subtle. It was making out that we're all narcissists.

Of course in humans physical beauty and fitness aren't essential. A king could be fat and useless and still be attractive because of the lifestyle they can provide. There are so many variables in human society that all you can do is talk in generalities and statistical likelihoods. There are no hard and fast rules, each person's experiences will affect what they find attractive.

Junkyard Tom wrote:

Large people are naturally attracted to each other because in the event of a food shortage they can eat each other.

cython wrote:

They also exert larger gravitational fields by virtue of their masses, and the complementary effect of two gravity wells is what draws them together.....

As a fat person, I find these hilarious!