Is the whole concept of beauty, shallow, or is there a logical basis for it?

[kyser_soze]

I like the idea that it may be culturally determined but I don't recall, talking about beauty in a person, I don't recall anyone teaching it to me, (who is beautiful and who is not) perhaps I just somehow absorbed it as I was growing up.

Of all the things you know, how many did someone tell you about, and how much did you pick up for yourself.

For example, your sense of fairness. How much is from you parents, and how much from your life?

 

[Knotted]

I like the idea that it may be culturally determined but I don't recall, talking about beauty in a person, I don't recall anyone teaching it to me, (who is beautiful and who is not) perhaps I just somehow absorbed it as I was growing up.

I'm not claiming it is culturally determined - although I think it is in part.

I appreciate that nothing I am saying is answering your question and I appreciate that might be a bit frustrating, but I'm trying to convince you that you won't get a nice clear cut answer. But think about it for yourself. Pick up a book on aesthetics - there are lots of theories out there. I would just warn you not to expect to find a theory which gets it quite right.

I think aesthetics could be taught in schools - but it wouldn't be like teaching maths or history. It would have to be discussion based rather than didactic.

 

[kyser_soze]

The whole thing about beauty being culturally determined is because we live in an age of unprecedented information saturation, where we're told that certain body types etc are 'beautiful' - or at least that's the easy, lazy theory. This of course only applies to those who predominantly live their lives through 3rd party mediated input - it's interesting to see people who love celeb mags, for example, slating people who like online gaming by saying that the latter don't engage with the 'real world', while their own lives are spent endlessly attempting to copy/revile the lives they see in the extended garden fence of Heat magazine and 'celebrity culture'.

 

[THINK!]

The whole thing about beauty being culturally determined is because we live in an age of unprecedented information saturation, where we're told that certain body types etc are 'beautiful' - or at least that's the easy, lazy theory. This of course only applies to those who predominantly live their lives through 3rd party mediated input - it's interesting to see people who love celeb mags, for example, slating people who like online gaming by saying that the latter don't engage with the 'real world', while their own lives are spent endlessly attempting to copy/revile the lives they see in the extended garden fence of Heat magazine and 'celebrity culture'.

I'm not sure about that. i liv in a country (Britain) where tall blonde women with big boobs ar presented as perfection/ the ideal. I hate big boobs love the big pert arse, small boobs dark hair, i love Oriental girls etc. I wasn't brought up to like these things, my Mum being a prude for one thing and i can remember liking the Oriental girl out of a Doris day film, I didn't know any thing about Race or what i was meant to like, I just liked her a lot and I must hav been pretty young, younger than 5 becoz my Dad was still there. Nature not Nuture.

 

[kyser_soze]

liv in a country (Britain) where tall blonde women with big boobs ar presented as perfection/ the ideal

Lazy, and untrue. The current No 1 pinup in the UK is 5'4" and brunette (with big boobs); Lucy Pinder. The most photographed woman on the planet is 5'8/", brunette and slim; Kate Moss.

The whole 'blonde with big tits is the ideal' is a lazy and untrue observation.

 

[weltweit]

Of all the things you know, how many did someone tell you about, and how much did you pick up for yourself.

For example, your sense of fairness. How much is from you parents, and how much from your life?

How does one acquire a sense of which people are beautiful and which not?

 

[weltweit]

I think aesthetics could be taught in schools - but it wouldn't be like teaching maths or history. It would have to be discussion based rather than didactic.

That could be tricky where people are concerned but I accept where other aesthetics are concerned, art for example it could work.

 

[weltweit]

The whole thing about beauty being culturally determined is because we live in an age of unprecedented information saturation, where we're told that certain body types etc are 'beautiful' - or at least that's the easy, lazy theory. This of course only applies to those who predominantly live their lives through 3rd party mediated input - it's interesting to see people who love celeb mags, for example, slating people who like online gaming by saying that the latter don't engage with the 'real world', while their own lives are spent endlessly attempting to copy/revile the lives they see in the extended garden fence of Heat magazine and 'celebrity culture'.

Well it is interesting to me that in womens magazines there are multitudes of images of women and in mens magazines the same is true, lots of images of women.

Do the women's images have anything in common? perhaps a lack of obvious flaws.

 

[weltweit]

I'm not sure about that. i liv in a country (Britain) where tall blonde women with big boobs ar presented as perfection/ the ideal. I hate big boobs love the big pert arse, small boobs dark hair, i love Oriental girls etc. I wasn't brought up to like these things, my Mum being a prude for one thing and i can remember liking the Oriental girl out of a Doris day film, I didn't know any thing about Race or what i was meant to like, I just liked her a lot and I must hav been pretty young, younger than 5 becoz my Dad was still there. Nature not Nuture.

So you are saying that the nurture in your life would point you towards blonde big boobed women but that your nature is not to go for them. So you argue nature over nurture.

 

[THINK!]

Lazy, and untrue. The current No 1 pinup in the UK is 5'4" and brunette (with big boobs); Lucy Pinder. The most photographed woman on the planet is 5'8/", brunette and slim; Kate Moss.

The whole 'blonde with big tits is the ideal' is a lazy and untrue observation.

not lazy, the early days of page 3 that was what presented to me as the ideal and what about the ghastly, Sam Fox? A milk bottle with two milk bottles. Didn't do anything for me ever. Yuk

 

[THINK!]

So you are saying that the nurture in your life would point you towards blonde big boobed women but that your nature is not to go for them. So you argue nature over nurture.

Yep.

#i am tall and blond so maybe i trying mix up my genes or something

 

[THINK!]

Lazy, and untrue. The current No 1 pinup in the UK is 5'4" and brunette (with big boobs); Lucy Pinder. The most photographed woman on the planet is 5'8/", brunette and slim; Kate Moss.

The whole 'blonde with big tits is the ideal' is a lazy and untrue observation.

I think Kate Moss is mor of a fashion model than pin-up girl. Those pictures of her will be stylish pictures of her with fashionable designer clothes on in fashion magazines and not adorning the walls of blue-collar male work places.

and as for Lucy Pinder, i said big boobs don't do it for me. probably a nice girl and all that but...

 

[weltweit]

Yep.

#i am tall and blond so maybe i trying mix up my genes or something

Yes, perhaps you are trying to avoid inbreeding which might result if you were attracted to blondes like yourself.

Though how that aim could be encoded into your nature I have no idea.

 

[THINK!]

Yes, perhaps you are trying to avoid inbreeding which might result if you were attracted to blondes like yourself.

Though how that aim could be encoded into your nature I have no idea.

Evolution. trial and error.

 

[THINK!]

We all heard of butt-men boob-men leg-men etc. I am/was definately an arse man, and i can even remember as a tiny little kid at the lido in Enfield watching a woman/girl walking along in her bikini and being turn'd on by/ interested in her bottom. Where did those feeling come from? i wasn't taught to be atracted and aroused.

 

[weltweit]

We all heard of butt-men boob-men leg-men etc. I am/was definately an arse man, and i can even remember as a tiny little kid at the lido in Enfield watching a woman/girl walking along in her bikini and being turn'd on by/ interested in her bottom. Where did those feeling come from? i wasn't taught to be atracted and aroused.

There is an argument that men are attracted to the same kinds of women as those who looked after them as young boys. (usually that would be their mothers of course).

Not sure that holds true for women and girls though.

 

[kyser_soze]

not lazy, the early days of page 3 that was what presented to me as the ideal and what about the ghastly, Sam Fox? A milk bottle with two milk bottles. Didn't do anything for me ever. Yuk

How tall do you think those models are? The really famous 80s p3 girls - Sam Fox, Maria Whittaker, Linda Lusardi etc - we're all a pretty long way from 'tall, blonde and bit tits'

 

[girasol]

beauty is about symmetry and health and reproduction.

but I'm sure someone has said that already. don't have time to read the whole thread as I have already reproduced and have to sort dinner out!

but in the old days being healthy meant being curvy and strong. Nowadays it's about being skeleletal and weak.

 

[THINK!]

beauty is about symmetry and health and reproduction.

but I'm sure someone has said that already. don't have time to read the whole thread as I have already reproduced and have to sort dinner out!

but in the old days being healthy meant being curvy and strong. Nowadays it's about being skeleletal and weak.

the ideal of male beauty, on the other hand, has remain'd consistent, hence Greek statues still doing it and Greek God references.

 

[THINK!]

There is an argument that men are attracted to the same kinds of women as those who looked after them as young boys. (usually that would be their mothers of course).

Not sure that holds true for women and girls though.

Is this true in yor case? I don't think it is on my case, my Mum is blonde for example.

 

[weltweit]

So, one beauty can be flawlessness, as in, the demonstration of good genes for breeding purposes.

But is that it? Can that be all there is to it?

 

[Pickman's model]

So, one beauty can be flawlessness, as in, the demonstration of good genes for breeding purposes.

But is that it? Can that be all there is to it?

what about beautiful things like sunsets, diamonds, or - indeed - the alignment of carbon atoms in buckminsterfullerene?

 

[weltweit]

what about beautiful things like sunsets, diamonds, or - indeed - the alignment of carbon atoms in buckminsterfullerene?

No, sure you are right about that but I am at the moment just interested in beauty as it applies to people rather than things or artworks etc.


eta: and I think there is more cohesion in the idea of human beauty than there is in what other things are considered beautiful. So why are beautiful humans beautiful when in the art world it is much more to do with the eye of the beholder.

 

[girasol]

the ideal of male beauty, on the other hand, has remain'd consistent, hence Greek statues still doing it and Greek God references.

interesting... I wonder why that is. Maybe men always had more of a say on what beauty is?

 

[weltweit]

interesting... I wonder why that is. Maybe men always had more of a say on what beauty is?

I am not convinced that male and or female views of beauty have changed over the years. I think they have stayed pretty much similar over the ages.

There are in any case no measures of beauty so how for example would you decide what is female beauty at the moment? or for that matter male beauty?

 

[THINK!]

interesting... I wonder why that is. Maybe men always had more of a say on what beauty is?

I don't think you can force people to like something, to find certain things attractiv, it is not like a fashion object that is used to show "coolness" then be abandoned when too many people do it. Fashions hav changed a lot since the 80's but our idea of Human beauty has not.

 

[weltweit]

On Saturday night I saw there was a program on BBC called "what is beauty?" so I decided I had to watch it. It was about beauty in / and art.

The presenter pontificated that there were 10 rules of beauty and produced 10 examples of beautiful things, including a bridge, some paintings, the Sistine chapel etc ..

Some of the rules of beauty he suggested were Natural, Simplicity, Pattern, Transformation etc ..

I am afraid I concluded he was talking bollocks for most of it, just waffle.

 

[weltweit]

I can't let this thread die yet because I am not sure we have yet thrown any light on how we learn what is beautiful as it applies to a person. That there may be a flawless faultless person who may be good breeding material is certainly possible, but if so, did we learn to like that or were we born liking that?

 

[CJohn]

...well obviously there's some sort of instinctive bias towards certain features in terms of symmetry and proportional ratios, though this is all highly flexible and malleable - and thus not really applicable to generalisations. This flexibility means that attractiveness is also shaped by social conventions and ideals, which can be understood in terms of historical factors or certain aspects of appearance gaining particular assocaitive symbolic meanings. And then there are those aspects unique to the individual and their lived experiences, identifications and values etc. Obviously you can't study any of these factors in isolation so as to analyse the pure influence of each - there is no outside perespective from which to ground the study of beauty - still having said that this doesn't stop us drawing on various schools (biology, psychology, anthropology etc) to get some sense of what we mean and how we construct beauty. But clearly there is no straightforward answer to this, despite that fact that we 'instictively' recognise beauty so easily.

 

[revol68]

...well obviously there's some sort of instinctive bias towards certain features in terms of symmetry and proportional ratios, though this is all highly flexible and malleable - and thus not really applicable to generalisations. This flexibility means that attractiveness is also shaped by social conventions and ideals, which can be understood in terms of historical factors or certain aspects of appearance gaining particular assocaitive symbolic meanings. And then there are those aspects unique to the individual and their lived experiences, identifications and values etc. Obviously you can't study any of these factors in isolation so as to analyse the pure influence of each - there is no outside perespective from which to ground the study of beauty - still having said that this doesn't stop us drawing on various schools (biology, psychology, anthropology etc) to get some sense of what we mean and how we construct beauty. But clearly there is no straightforward answer.

Beauty is a rock in a cops face...