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>Why do feminine beauty ideals contrast across not just cultures but socioeconomic class? Thinking just about feminine beauty, can you create a uniform rule abo

>Why do feminine beauty ideals contrast across not just cultures but socioeconomic class? Thinking just about feminine beauty, can you create a uniform rule about why certain strata and societies have historically prefer a more androgynous look and others prefer the more "bombshell" look? Why does what vary over time and wax and wane as certain looks go in and out of fashion? Socioeconomic class is basically another culture in terms of influence. These two terms can be used interchangeably as they both have the same effect on the perception of beauty. Your question is something I can answer. It differs across cultures because the minds interpretation of beauty involves external experiences. That is why. As for your comment about universal rules. Well that's also easy. Universal rules involve symmetry and youth. Possibly more, but those are some of the biggest rules of beauty extend past "culture" so we know it's part of biology. >Could you create such a rule which is consistent over time? The answer is no. None of these rules are created by anyone or anything. >Do you think those rules would have been consistent by era, or would they have varied in times of famine versus times of surplus, and could you create anything consistent across civilization? How about by geographic areas which shaped the city states which served as centers of power in those civilizations, IE how feminine beauty may exist on the steppe vs on the coast, or in the mountains? These rules vary by culture, culture varies by environmental circumstance and genetics. You're getting into a redundancy here. I think you misinterpreted my post. I DID not say that culture does not influence beauty. Quite the opposite. I said Culture DOES influence someones perception of beauty. Read my post, it is there. However and this is a big "However" you do not have a choice in the matter. You do not choose your culture and you do not choose the ideals that are imprinted onto your brain by that culture. Once imprinted on your brain you cannot change it. If the culture values skinny bombshell models then that ideal will be seared into your brain. There are variations and anomalies but overall it is generally consistent. It's the same way that a baby bird imprints on the first thing it sees as it's mother. It does not have a choice. Your brain is evolved to assimilate itself into it's environment and culture without conscious choice from you. That being said outside of this as I previously mentioned there are beauty standards that are universal that are not created by culture, two examples already mentioned are symmetry and youth (for women). We know this because surveys show that these ideals do not shift when observing different cultures. Additionally, quite obviously: men are generally attracted to women and women are generally attracted to men, there is some genetic influence making this opposite sex attraction preference generally consistent across all cultures. Do not discount these universal rules. They are powerful biological instincts and overall... When in conflict they usually override cultural imprints of beauty. >Speaking about cold hard truth is challenging when working from a basis of archaeogenetic ignorance. You risk overestimating how universal your priors are. Except this statement doesn't make sense. If everything I say is logically correct and everything you say has issues with correctness, then who's the ignorant one?

yowlingcat 3y ago
> If the culture values skinny bombshell models Skinny and bombshell are different. Even a bombshell model that is skinny is curvy and not the kind of neotenous androgynous ideal I referred to. You missed the point and clearly don't understand the significance of the difference. > If everything I say is logically correct and everything you say has issues with correctness, then who's the ignorant one? It doesn't matter if what you say appears to be logically correct to you because it's overfitted to a small subset of history that makes sense to you and actually falls apart under a larger evolutionary timeline. Thank you for proving my point. You don't actually grapple with divergent local evolutionary pressures creating different, competing and often conflicting ideals of feminine beauty each of which make sense for a given evolutionary context, because it's easier to be intellectually lazy than to actually build a model that accounts for that evidence. Who's the ignorant one? The one who continues to ignore full evolutionary context, so still you.
- formulathree 3y ago
  >Skinny and bombshell are different. Even a bombshell model that is skinny is curvy and not the kind of neotenous androgynous ideal I referred to. You missed the point and clearly don't understand the significance of the difference. Doesn't even matter, that's not the point. There are cultures in Africa that value obesity as beauty and those definitions are valid. https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937-018-0330-5 https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937... You think I'm fixated on a western style definition of beauty. I am not fixated on it. I am simply saying that the western definition of beauty is a VALID definition. It is not a "misunderstanding", your initial post claimed it is a "misunderstanding." You're emphasizing too much on specific examples with your preconceived notions. >You don't actually grapple with divergent local evolutionary pressures creating different, competing and often conflicting ideals of feminine beauty each of which make sense for a given evolutionary context, because it's easier to be intellectually lazy than to actually build a model that accounts for that evidence. Except I never said anything on the contrary. When did I say that there aren't competing ideals of beauty? I'm glad there's a word for intellectual laziness because I clearly don't fit it. Is there a word for making stuff up? Imagining that someone meant something when that person never said anything to that effect? What's the word for that? Delusional? No you are not delusional, but you need to understand that I never said anything to contradict your statement here. >Who's the ignorant one? The one who continues to ignore full evolutionary context, so still you. Except you haven't given any arguments to contradict my stance. Your arguments here are in full agreement with my point. I really don't understand what you're getting at here.

yowlingcat 3y ago

> If the culture values skinny bombshell models Skinny and bombshell are different. Even a bombshell model that is skinny is curvy and not the kind of neotenous androgynous ideal I referred to. You missed the point and clearly don't understand the significance of the difference. > If everything I say is logically correct and everything you say has issues with correctness, then who's the ignorant one? It doesn't matter if what you say appears to be logically correct to you because it's overfitted to a small subset of history that makes sense to you and actually falls apart under a larger evolutionary timeline. Thank you for proving my point. You don't actually grapple with divergent local evolutionary pressures creating different, competing and often conflicting ideals of feminine beauty each of which make sense for a given evolutionary context, because it's easier to be intellectually lazy than to actually build a model that accounts for that evidence. Who's the ignorant one? The one who continues to ignore full evolutionary context, so still you.

formulathree 3y ago
>Skinny and bombshell are different. Even a bombshell model that is skinny is curvy and not the kind of neotenous androgynous ideal I referred to. You missed the point and clearly don't understand the significance of the difference. Doesn't even matter, that's not the point. There are cultures in Africa that value obesity as beauty and those definitions are valid. https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937-018-0330-5 https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937... You think I'm fixated on a western style definition of beauty. I am not fixated on it. I am simply saying that the western definition of beauty is a VALID definition. It is not a "misunderstanding", your initial post claimed it is a "misunderstanding." You're emphasizing too much on specific examples with your preconceived notions. >You don't actually grapple with divergent local evolutionary pressures creating different, competing and often conflicting ideals of feminine beauty each of which make sense for a given evolutionary context, because it's easier to be intellectually lazy than to actually build a model that accounts for that evidence. Except I never said anything on the contrary. When did I say that there aren't competing ideals of beauty? I'm glad there's a word for intellectual laziness because I clearly don't fit it. Is there a word for making stuff up? Imagining that someone meant something when that person never said anything to that effect? What's the word for that? Delusional? No you are not delusional, but you need to understand that I never said anything to contradict your statement here. >Who's the ignorant one? The one who continues to ignore full evolutionary context, so still you. Except you haven't given any arguments to contradict my stance. Your arguments here are in full agreement with my point. I really don't understand what you're getting at here.