The big lie about Physical Attractiveness

[roxyruby]

tboswell1216, Erika Awakening, songwriter loving your posts!

I was suprised to see this thread still high up!! How cool that people have been so interested in this issue

so many people must just "accept" that beauty is tall, thin, fit & young, generally with defined muscles for men & long straight hair for women

Often, perhaps more often than we think, in advertising, from friends, in movies, TV shows, this message is being casually dropped into our subconscious so it's no wonder so many people just accept this idea of beauty and attractiveness as "fact" and would think im crazy.

And I do aggree that this idea of beauty IS attractive & hot, but so is all the other looks out there, well to me anyway, and it is sorta sad to me, if they are just accepting that they are "ugly" and "unattractive" based on the messages they grew up with and continue to be exposed to

Maybe next time you see someone who doesnt fit the standards of beauty and a few thoughts pop into your head like "too fat therefore unattractive" or and "unattractive because of these features" etc.

Is that really your thoughts? Or is it really social conditioning?

[Black Spring]

I think stereotypes exist for a reason. But how someone reacts to others is also a great indication how they feel about themselves. There isn't anything wrong with creating standards for yourself - just don't expect everyone else to fall over themselves trying to meet YOUR expectations.
Have a good attitude and enjoy yourself. Period. Somebody can't deal then tough ****.

[Daffy Duck]

Many people find many different things beautiful. The most universal trait of beauty I've seen is health. Health = beautiful. If you look like you're about to die of cancer, most people aren't very into that.

[liamona]

Originally Posted by Daffy Duck

If you look like you're about to die of cancer, most people aren't very into that.

Heheh. It's funny, when I read that I immediately thought of the opposite: those poor souls who are so big that they're stuck in their bedrooms, and need firemen to come chop down the door frame so they can get out in emergencies.

[songwriter]

Originally Posted by roxyruby

tboswell1216, Erika Awakening, songwriter loving your posts!

I was suprised to see this thread still high up!! How cool that people have been so interested in this issue

so many people must just "accept" that beauty is tall, thin, fit & young, generally with defined muscles for men & long straight hair for women

Often, perhaps more often than we think, in advertising, from friends, in movies, TV shows, this message is being casually dropped into our osubconscious so it's no wonder so many people just accept this idea of beauty and attractiveness as "fact" and would think im crazy.

And I do aggree that this idea of beauty IS attractive & hot, but so is all the other looks out there, well to me anyway, and it is sorta sad to me, if they are just accepting that they are "ugly" and "unattractive" based on the messages they grew up with and continue to be exposed to

Maybe next time you see someone who doesnt fit the standards of beauty and a few thoughts pop into your head like "too fat therefore unattractive" or and "unattractive because of these features" etc.

Is that really your thoughts? Or is it really social conditioning?

But social conditioning in media is not obviously about "beauty" but virtually about anything... especially the ads and the news.

Answering your question... my thoughts. I know when I'm getting overweighted or underweighted, is not any external guide that tells me so. I've got to know myself.

And if you got to know yourself you get to know the others... I don't mind what media tells that is "sexy now"...

[Lauxa]

I recently watched a lecture on neurobiology that reminded me of this thread:
sapolsky - Google Videos

The part about physical attractiveness is at about 1:19:00

He mentions that by 2 months old, infants show a preference for more attractive faces and that their preference generally matches that of society.

[James81]

Originally Posted by roxyruby

Maybe next time you see someone who doesnt fit the standards of beauty and a few thoughts pop into your head like "too fat therefore unattractive" or and "unattractive because of these features" etc.

Is that really your thoughts? Or is it really social conditioning?

I don't think it really matters, does it?

I don't buy into attraction being a part of social conditioning. I mean, yes, I'm sure it plays a part in it, but I don't think it's that big of a part.

I think it's more psychological. Your conscious mind looks at a fat person and thinks: "I am not attracted to them" or (to put it more crudely) "Damn, they are ugly" or something along those lines.

But underneath that conscious thought is the real reason: for example, someone fat means they aren't healthy, don't live a healthy lifestyle, are inactive and would encourage that same inactivity in you. If you are a generally healthy person, that's not going to be a good match. So your subconscious tells your body "hey, you feel nothing for them."

There's also psychological evidence that guys are attracted to girls with big breast and hips because of child-bearing (it's more advantageous according to an evolutionary standpoint for the child to survive with those traits). And that girls are attracted to confidence and dominant men because, from an evolutionary standpoint, that's the man who is best able to protect her and take care of her children.

So, no, social conditioning isn't the only factor at play here. Evolution plays a much bigger role than that.

[Lionman]

There's an underlying concept of beauty which materialises in the physical world within the paremeters of physical manifestation. The Golden Ratio is a ratio in mathematics which features prominently in the faces of those normally accepted as beautiful.

An obese, smelly, diseased, slobering worse than jabba-the-hut looking guy or girl with hairy eyeballs doesn't fit in with this principle. If, in your subjective reality, you are this person and decide to consider yourself attractive in this state which is clearly not shared by most people, then you might very well attract someone who has a fetish for this sort of thing. Hell, before they come over to visit they were probably just shagging themselves in a bathtub full of insects or something equally devient from the conventional (apologies for the image... unless you find that sort of thing beautiful!).

Someone who is a vibrational match for beauty will be considered beautiful by the majority of people. Jabba-the-Hut girl for instance, if she decides to be a vibration match for beauty (vibrating all the way down to the physical), she will make the physical changes required e.g. shaving her hairy eyeballs. Otherwise she'd just manifesting having a different concept of beauty than most people and attracting the insect-tub fetish guy/girl.

On that note, there's something very harmonious about beauty. It just is beautiful. It doesn't need to fight to convince anyone that it's beautiful because it's just considered beautiful to people who subconciously see its harmonious divine reflection. If your body is full of vitality, in a harmonious state and able to physically reflect a fragment of divine beauty then you will be considered beautiful by the collective consciousness, e.g. the majority of people out there.

If you're into astrology, this can be seen in your Rising Sign and it's aspects. E.g. the extent your physical self reflects aspects of cosmic/divine energies. You may be born with it or not, it doesn't matter. Your physical reality will morph around your well designed beliefs/intentions.

[AlekNovy]

As an sociologist/anthropologist I can confirm this. This is a *scientific fact*... Mind you, I did not say "theory"... Its a confirmed and provend beyond doubt fact.

You would be surprised how much of physical attractivness is learned. There are only a few markers that are universal and actually biological (not learned/brainwashed by culture).


- Symmetry
- Good skin (lack of irregularities)
- Bodypart ratios (hips to waist ratio for women, shoulder to waist ratio for men)


These are universal amongst cultures. Everything else is made-up for that specific culture, for that specific time.

What people don't realize is how strong this stuff is (the learned stuff). It actually manifests as a biological desire. For example, when a man sees a skinny, bleached blonde girl, he gets physical arousal. If that same man (exact same men) was adopted and raised in somalia... When he sees that girl, he wouldn't feel a thing... Like looking at a wall.



Its actually scary how powerful it is

In anthropology you will see examples of its deadly manifestations. Like for example if you grow in a country where you learned that poultry was food and grasshoppers, snakes and beetles weren't. If you're dying in the middle of a jungle, you will be so repulsed by eating the beetles/snakes that you throw them up... Even though they're nutritionally identical to some of the meat you would eat. People can actually died due to their learned physical instincts.

I know "learned physical instincts" sounds like an oxymoron, but is not.

[Lauxa]

Originally Posted by AlekNovy

What people don't realize is how strong this stuff is (the learned stuff). It actually manifests as a biological desire. For example, when a man sees a skinny, bleached blonde girl, he gets physical arousal. If that same man (exact same men) was adopted and raised in somalia... When he sees that girl, he wouldn't feel a thing... Like looking at a wall.

I just think it's interesting how early some of the learning takes place. The lecture I mentioned above says that infants at 2 months old can recognize culturally-accepted standards of beauty. What are they looking for? Average-ness. Normality. The more average a face is compared to all the other faces they have seen the more attractive they find it. At least that was what I understood.

[AlekNovy]

Originally Posted by Lauxa

I just think it's interesting how early some of the learning takes place. The lecture I mentioned above says that infants at 2 months old can recognize culturally-accepted standards of beauty. What are they looking for? Average-ness. Normality. The more average a face is compared to all the other faces they have seen the more attractive they find it. At least that was what I understood.

Really!? I didn't realize it was that early. Nice. And actually quite scary.

Btw, I saw some other studies where children preferred food packed in a mcdonalds bag, over food packed in a bag with random (made up) logo as early as 6 months or something. Something like that.

[liamona]

Originally Posted by AlekNovy

Btw, I saw some other studies where children preferred food packed in a mcdonalds bag, over food packed in a bag with random (made up) logo as early as 6 months or something. Something like that.

I'm sure that's not a coincidence. According to Fast Food Nation, they do everything they can to hook children up to age three, in order to have "consumers for life."