I’m unconvinced by the whole argument that what is attractive is determined by the media rather than the other way around. IMO it’s more of a case of the media attracting a lot of people at varying levels of attractiveness and the most attractive having their usual advantage, hence there’s an unrealistic proportion of attractive people represented in the media (which then messes with our own metric because it skews what we think is common and rare beauty since we see media all the time).
Statues were kinda like the media back then, at least in that someone taking the time to carve one might have been more picky with who it was modeled after. I’d be very surprised if humanity didn’t always have a similar range of attractiveness to what we have today, though with less obesity going back to the times when there wasn’t so much surplus food (and it wasn’t made very accessible to the general population when there was).
I also suspect that the “older postures” before the “modern postures” were the result of control freaks gaining influence in schools and yelling at kids about their posture, and the “modern posture” is more of a case of people getting tired of that shit and ignoring them and going back to more natural postures.
i kinda feel like media outright lies about what is attractive, both in that “sexually attractive” and “aesthetically pleasing/handsome” are conflated, but also i just don’t get the vibe that most people actually find “conventionally attractive” people that appealing when push comes to shove.
Maybe it’s just me, but a lot of the people i see day to day IRL are so appealing that i almost want to laugh when i see hollywood actresses being called attractive. I’ve seen people in the grocery store who made me want to whimper like a dog that knows it can’t eat a thanksgiving turkey, i struggle to find that shit online when actively searching for it!
It’s kinda like how chinese foot binding was/is seen as something desirable, but like… Basically no one is actually into that, right? Even people raised in that culture surely don’t see a foot folded in half and start drooling, right???
Yeah, I agree. I think culture can sometimes get skewed by the specific tastes of more powerful people but it doesn’t actually set what people truly find attractive. That combined with how much a lot of people seem to like jumping on bandwagons and base their outward tastes on popularity as much as (or more than) their actual tastes.
I’m unconvinced by the whole argument that what is attractive is determined by the media rather than the other way around. IMO it’s more of a case of the media attracting a lot of people at varying levels of attractiveness and the most attractive having their usual advantage, hence there’s an unrealistic proportion of attractive people represented in the media (which then messes with our own metric because it skews what we think is common and rare beauty since we see media all the time).
Statues were kinda like the media back then, at least in that someone taking the time to carve one might have been more picky with who it was modeled after. I’d be very surprised if humanity didn’t always have a similar range of attractiveness to what we have today, though with less obesity going back to the times when there wasn’t so much surplus food (and it wasn’t made very accessible to the general population when there was).
I also suspect that the “older postures” before the “modern postures” were the result of control freaks gaining influence in schools and yelling at kids about their posture, and the “modern posture” is more of a case of people getting tired of that shit and ignoring them and going back to more natural postures.
i kinda feel like media outright lies about what is attractive, both in that “sexually attractive” and “aesthetically pleasing/handsome” are conflated, but also i just don’t get the vibe that most people actually find “conventionally attractive” people that appealing when push comes to shove.
Maybe it’s just me, but a lot of the people i see day to day IRL are so appealing that i almost want to laugh when i see hollywood actresses being called attractive. I’ve seen people in the grocery store who made me want to whimper like a dog that knows it can’t eat a thanksgiving turkey, i struggle to find that shit online when actively searching for it!
It’s kinda like how chinese foot binding was/is seen as something desirable, but like… Basically no one is actually into that, right? Even people raised in that culture surely don’t see a foot folded in half and start drooling, right???
Yeah, I agree. I think culture can sometimes get skewed by the specific tastes of more powerful people but it doesn’t actually set what people truly find attractive. That combined with how much a lot of people seem to like jumping on bandwagons and base their outward tastes on popularity as much as (or more than) their actual tastes.