The title picture is stunning. Sure. She's over made-up and probably airbrushed, but stunning no less. Question for thinkers, as opposed to emoters here. There is very often a consensus on what beauty is. Mass media ("society") plays a part but I propose that the appreciation of beauty is partly instinctive. You know it when you see it. Zoe Saldana is forgeous because she just is. She triggers feelings of desire and protection that the media did not tell me to have. Take off the makeup and put her in a coverall and I would have the same feelings. I am a heterosexual guy but these three men are gorgeous because they are (or were}. www.amiaceleb.com/media/galleries/214/741_view.jpg media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/.../...8320f1cf11dd.jpg Dont even know who he is. https://b.vimeocdn.com/ps/912/912810_300.jpg ... and I feel a little guilty taking a second look at them... ... and not because they are androgynous like the young Davis Bowie was and stir up mixed feelings. What I'm proposing is the appreciation of beauty is at least partially instinctive.
I definitely agree society and media can strongly influence what we perceive as beautiful, but honestly i think women are far more easily influenced by this than men are, but in practice men will have to deal with more problems as a result of this media influence. Men are more independent in their thinking while women are more about groupthinking, their opinion is more easily swayed by others or especially by someone or something with authority.
Women are on average more insecure than men about their looks, so if they dont get enough validation by others or media representation that shows that people like themselves look good, they will feel unattractive. However for example a girl regardless of ethnicity, if she is actually attractive, guys will be able to see that regardless if she looks like the ideal type that is shown in movies etc, or not. So if she is attractive she will easily be able to find plenty of men who want her regardless of racial stereotypes etc, so she should have less reason to be insecure.
Men on the other hand, if they dont see people like themselves on TV they might also start to question their attractiveness, however we can often realize if we are physically attractive just by looking at our individual facial features and bodytype, just like we can see if a woman is attractive or not even if she doesn't look like the models we usually see on billboards and magazines. However since women are generally hypergamous and influenced by what others consider attractive, a negative image of a certain type of men will make many women subconsciously think this type of men are unattractive, even if she finds an individual of this race who is physically attractive to her. So it actually affects a mans dating options to a greater degree than it does for women.
So while everyone might feel bad for black women, id say its easily worse for Asian and indian men, because im sure they experience more racism and prejudice when it comes to dating, and in general compared to anyone else, regardless of gender. And most people dont seem to care. Its a shame because its mainly the fault of the medias representation of these groups (just as this take brought up), combined with the fact that the Asian and indian population in the west is small, so its easier to believe in the stereotypes when the chances of meeting and having real life experiences with these races is smaller, so its harder to form an opinion based on ones own experiences.
2
0 Reply
Anonymous
(30-35)
+1 y
Wrong. Beauty is tied to positive genetics that give indication of strong survival.
People hwo have near perfect symetrical faces have good genetics.
People who have good clear skin have good genetics.
Men with chiseled squared, angular jaws which you can find in many different races of men:
Men with angular jaws is tied to high testosterone which is why women are attracted to them. Meanwhile men with round jaws/features are tied with low testosterone. Hence, why you'll never see a woman find said man attractive unless their view of his attraction was skewed by status/money.
Haha, this myTake seems to be tailor-made for me! As an Indian man, I had been self conscious about my looks until quite recently (since Indian men are considered universally unattractive by women all over the world). Of late though, I have started not giving a hoot!
I told my friend the other day, life is so much easier when you don't care! There's no emotions attached to not caring. Just be who you are! You cannot control how you were physically born.
Yeah, I agree with you here! There was a time, during my early 20s, that I hated my looks so much that I ha even considered plastic surgery, bleaching my skin to look fairer, and even wished that I would contract the disease that made Michael Jackson 's skin white.
I do often feel that I'm 'unlucky' for being born an Indian, but I'm glad that I'm out of that phase now. In fact, to such an extent that even if NO woman in the world would want me due to my ethnicity, I'd be fine with remaining alone all my life. I have other stuff to look forward too, related to my career and other interests. :)
What you are describing is extreme measures. I am glad you came to the realization, that you should love you, and be who you are. I am sure you will find that wonderful woman one day who won't care about your ethnicity. May I also say, environmental exposure may cause a play in this as well. Do you happen to live in an area where your race doesn't make up the major population?
Yeah, those measures are indeed extreme. Even now, I do occasionally feel very inferior and self conscious about my ethnicity, but these phases are short-lived, and not as intense as they were before.
I do hope your words about me finding that perfect woman comes true, but I'm really expecting that because expectations reduce joy.
I currently reside in India, so it's not like I'm surrounded by people of other ethnicites. But even here, Indians have different skin tones, ranging from really pale to extremely dark. I fall somewhere in between, and Indians in general have a fascination and obsession for fair skin. So I miss out here as well.
Like you mentioned, no one has any control over how they are gone. Maybe I can somehow compensate for my physical unattractiveness (which is due to my ethnicity, because I actually feel attractive), by having a great career, making lots of money etc. These might negate the effects of my ethnicity to a certain extent, hopefully! :)
Oh stop it. I don't know if you belong to the state of dashing guys or not but you are 'at least' average for an Indian. And you're not that dark to get neglected in Indian society. You're brown which is quite common. Don't be so hard on yourself. You are unattractive as long as you believe you are. If you get rejected by girls, realise that it was nothing but your own inferiority. Some people would happily exchange their looks with yours if given chance by god. (Just like you are (were) hoping)
Haha, thanks pal! And welcome back, you were gone for so long! My insecurities have reduced in the last few months. But 'average' is not good enough now, is it? I mean... women obviously pick someone who 'stands out' from the crowd, and average men just blend into the crowd (in terms of looks). So why would a woman choose me over other men who may look better, or perhaps have better status, are more qualified, earn a lot more etc?
By the way, I wasn't rejected by too many girls because I never approach them! I have only approached ONE girl in my life, years ago, and that ended in rejection because she was very honest in proclaiming that she only dates men who are more than an 8 out of 10 in looks. Anyway, that one start incident does not really have a bearing on anything.
Anyway, I suppose I do feel more confident now. Besides, I have other things to look forward to. I would be moving to a different country in march, to resurrect my faltering career. :)
There are 3.5 billion women on this planet and 630 million in your country alone. With 356 million, 10-24 year-olds, India has the world's largest youth population.
Let's cut 1 billion girls who are ugly for you (they may be beautiful for others) Another 1 billion girls who are average. And rest 1 billion girls who are beautiful (I seriously doubt that only 1 billion girls are beautiful 😂) And eliminate half billion for religious, caste, abnormality, status and other issues.
Same goes for men. Let's say, ALL beautiful girls selected ONLY beautiful guys (some may find you beautiful but we'll not take this into account right now). There will still 1 bil women left who are average (decent I should say) FOR an average guy.
Say half of them are committed, there'll still be a whooping 500 mil choices. (When I blindly eliminated every single remotely ineligible girl).
If you are going to make excuses about status and wealth, it is your own failure in life
Your analysis is spot on. But in general, Indian girls are way too conservative, and averse to dating anyway. they'd rather marry the man chosen by their parents. The very few girls who are open-minded about dating, get lapped up when they are in college (or even earlier), so in their 20s they are already in stable relationships. Even girls who are single and open to date in their 20s, are almost always not available because they are either hurting from a past relationship, or already liking someone else. There is a very small window of opportunity for us men here... we need to make the move AFTER the girl has gotten over her ex, and BEFORE she starts liking someone else. A really tough ask, because we'd never know about it. Single and available women in India are an endangered species. Besides, there is the skewed male-female ratio to contend with. it is logical to assume that the very few single and available women in India, go for the choicest of men. :(
Ok I'll be honest here, if you want love and wants to marry in India, you can only rely on luck. If you want just sex with girls in 20s. You certainly can get it if you enhance your skills. Believe me, girls don't consider looks that much if you're ~ average. If you want to marry a beautiful (stranger) girl, get a job, earn money & wait while your parents hunt for a girl.
I have a much better plan, mate! I'm not too keen on sex, because as a matter of policy i don't have sex outside of committed relationships. Makes things easier for me. Besides, I would be moving out of India (probably permanently) in March, to resurrect my faltering career and perhaps pursue a masters. My visa is done, and air tickets are also booked. Like others, I too have decided there is nothing wrong in having a preference. And my preference is to date/marry only non-Indian women, or Indian women who have spent a significant part of their lives abroad. Indian women in India are way too conservative, hypocritical and materialistic. I have realised that I just can't get along with them.
Attraction has nothing really to do with what society says. Attraction can be broken down through math and the golden ratio or the Fibonacci sequence or Phi. And make total since b/c God is quite the supreme mathematician. It's also many artists secrets ;)
No, first off many peoples idea of attractive do not actually match what mainstream society says (I have a friend who only likes darker skinned women, the opposite of what media claims, I like women of all body types and bust sizes and ethnicities, again against what media claims) secondly beauty is biological, we are predisposed to find certain characteristcs attractive as it means a healthy person with good genes which also means a higher probability of a uncomplicated birth and good genes that get passed down to the offspring.
There's a variety of influences to one's attraction to others , the media further perpetuates that in some individuals. You cannot completely close off that fact. I can't tell you how many times I have heard others compare themselves to expectations that are unrealistic in magazines , videos and movies.
But the media cannot influence what is not already their. The media for instance cannot convince some one to do or be what they are not, they can only push an aspect of an idea that already preexists within the subject themselves. Hence ugly is always ugly beautiful however tends to be varied yet also has certain traits that are consistent through out ie health and symmetry. As for your link, it also doesn't show that this does not hold true for men, that is men routinely preffer a thicker woman then women think. When told to describe a beautiful woman both men and women came up with two different images, for men the woman was thicker then one woman came up with. The reason that it may affect women more is because mens value comes from resource womens from child bearing/rearing, biologicly speaking meaning phsical looks matter more to a woman as it directly affects mate selection. For men, they preffer an attractive woman but are much more leniant about it then women do to them having
a greater probability of not reproducing at all compared to a woman (prehistoricly 80% of women reproduced as opposed to 40% of men). This means while their are certain beauty standards, women being forced to compete (look wise) with other women focus more on it then men who are more willing to be more open to differences in women due to essentially the notion of beggers can't be choosers. So long as she fits most of the criteria he is happy. Plus I think it also has to do with womens percpetion of women. I think women believe they need to be tiny to be feminine (hence in the study women showing a much thinner woman) and men look at a woman in a more child bearing sense hence them preffering a little more meat on a woman. So yes it might influence it but the idea had to be their to begin with and it does not influence it so much that it can make ugly beautiful and beautiful ugly. This also would be true for men as well (ie muscles penis size)
I don't think the media brainwashed us into thinking they are attractive. I think the media knows we find those people attractive and this why they use them. It's all about making money and getting people to buy products. If they thought they could make money using average or ugly people, then they would.
Look the very last video. The projected image is fake most of the time. People like what is artificial. Even the images themselves don't look like what is displayed. I don't think people would like what is "false" if those images weren't projected. In hindsight, most people wouldn't know what false looked like if real images were shown.
It causes more emotional detachment from oneself if anything. It also causes those who are perfectly fine, to become overly obsessed with getting everything nipped and tucked until they no longer look human. I think this contributes to psychological damage and is unhealthy exposure ---long term. Especially, when someone doesn't have enough strength to see that they are beautiful despite what the world tells them.
Also a lot of the models are still better looking that most people even withour makeup and photoshop.
I don't believe the media changes what we think is beautiful, but it does skew our perception of average. Normally model quality people are rare but when we see them all the time on TV and in ads, we believe they are more common than they really are and that skews the average in our heads.
I kind of have to agree with bandit here. The media manipulates the models to be closer to being attractive. The closer to the average in terms of facial features, the more attractive the person is, and there are evolutionary reasons for this.
My brother has worked around actors and models most of his life. They are very attractive even out of makeup.
I've notice the media has made attempt to try to include not so attractive people as stars of movie/tv shows/love interest. Maybe it's a social experiment of hollywood upper executives to see if they could change people's view on beauty or maybe they are trying to maximize profit by making non-mainstream men/women loove interest so average/not so attractive people can immerse themselves in the story better.
Example of this is the guy who played Finn on star wars. He is not the ideal male beauty we've seen in hollywood for the past 10 years. Yet, he's central protagonist in the force awakened.
You may be beautiful and unhappy with your looks at the same time. And only society can judge our looks because we all are (should be) beautiful for ourselves (because we could be worse, handicapped).
If you are unattractive because of one of those features which is considered unattractive, at least you can consolidate yourself by watching millions others who are having the same problem. You'll realise that you will 'probably' work harder or just start taking yourself more seriously and build a thick skin.
In my case, it's not about being attractive or unattractive. It is about being normal or abnormal.
I just skimmed through this and I love it already. ❤️ Forget what society says. I'm allowed to be beautiful if I want to and you can't stop me just because you say that I'm not! 😒
Don't find me attractive? Well that's your problem. I have a boyfriend who finds me sexy af 😝
Anyway thanks for writing this. I enjoyed reading it! 👍
6
0 Reply
Anonymous
(36-45)
+1 y
They manipulate a plain woman into a beautiful one in the video but there are women who look that good without any manipulation. I know, I've had girlfriends who looked at least as good as the finished product. There aren't many but they do exist. Maybe it's cheaper to manipulate a plain girl than hire a good looking one I don't know but I think that video is a gimmick as contrived as the manipulations it's designed to criticize.
The rest I have no particular argument with, by all means believe in yourself.
Thank you for this❤️ I am proud of who I am and my culture. I am half Mexican and half Spaniard, but embrace my Mexican culture more because I identify with it. Growing up you hear comments about what society interprets as "beautiful" but I've grown to love every part of myself and to embrace my culture. Love you girl and thank you!
I think we live in a society that glamorizes artificial bodies. look at who is famous and considered sexy, perfect. They have all had numerous of work done, especially for women it's hard, because your literally being compared to something that is natural. I don't think however it will change more people are getting work done, the trend will only get bigger. But I do believe we need to tell people they where born perfect, and everyone is individually perfect. But saying that will piss many off
I agree with this. I've had girls at school tell me I need to wear tighter clothes and curl my hair and straighten my hair and wear makeup over my freckles and get contacts show off my body more and all that. I just laugh and ignore them. Why should anyone listen to society when it's telling us to change things that simply shouldn't be changed? It's sad in all the wrong ways that if you don't look like everyone else you're just some inferior stupid little mysterious lifeform.
Although I agree with the premise I feel that this video didn't do the concept justice. It took a below average looking woman and made her look like a doll which made her even less appealing.
I remember seeing this video a while back. It shows what you can do with photoshop if you know how.
Sadly the sound quality of the song isn't as good as when I saw it a few years ago. The song is about a guy's infatuation with a girl whom he can never be with so he decided to draw her.
Because they haven't been brainwashed. The girl you showed is wearing tons of makeup, using filters and probably took 301 pictures to find a great one, you're comparing her to a girl in poor lightning with no makeup on. Your girl is not only pretty, she is in fact way above the average female so she isn't a realistic comparison. You can have all the standards you want, heck if you want to date no one but the princess of Saudi Arabia you have the right to feel that way, but that doesn't mean you can force your impossible standards of beauty down on everyone as if they were the only truth.
You think models in magazines actually represent real women. Jealous? I don't mind her being very pretty, not at all. Im defending the female gender against people with horrible expectations, like you.
@ShaeNielson I've met women that look like models so I know that they're not that rare. I see them all the time. What is there to defend against? It's not like I'm forcing someone to fit my standards. I'm just saying this is what I want otherwise I'm not interested.
There are girls out there that only go for big muscular guys and no one says shit to them so why are you attacking me?
Models do not look the the average woman, you can't hold everybody up to that standard.
Im not attacking you, Im telling you it's not okay to call a beautiful woman ugly, just because she is natural and you may not like her. As I said previously, you can go for the top 1% for all that I care, it's not about you not being allowed to have preferences, but about not bashing other people like that.
For me I disagree and love their vocals. Though yes they are since they are talking about how the propaganda brain wash the weak minded into buying their shit. Then other people only doing things because they see it on the media.
Relevant take! Especially after I heard yesterday some white guys check out Naomi Campbell in MJ video and them saying "She is the hottest thing to walk on earth!" then their white female friend said: "but how? she is black. black can't be beautiful, even black men date white women because black girls are ugly" where was her logic I have no idea, really...
1
0 Reply
Anonymous
(25-29)
+1 y
The way I see beauty is that it is truly in the eye of the beholder. It's kind of like art. There is always a painting that many people find ugly but that someone finds intriguing and beautiful, and there's always a painting that may people find stunning but that someone finds uninteresting and bland. That is how people are as well. Different strokes for different folks.
Just because society portrays what the standard of beauty is or should be, does not mean that beauty cannot be found in other ethnicity's there is beauty to be found all over the world and they all come in different colors, isn't God amazing, just like a rainbow has different colors so too do humans come in all shades and beautiful colors, the beauty of creation, society has no say in that.
I'm unnatractive because no women ever touched me even though I had heaps of male and female friends. Maybe they were a victim to advertising, but my thinking came from real life experiences. No, I'm not beautiful. If we were all beautiful, the dating game would be balanced, but it's not.
You are correct. One person view of themselves and how others react to them can further contribute to their low self esteem. But aside from ones view, there are other influences in life that further add to that.
The people that have the most power at those we look up to, our friends, our family, some of which may be a public figure. If images that don't look like every day people are constantly projected, that is further detrimental to ones self esteem.
Yeah, it's just basically, self esteem or not, brad Pitt will kill Danny de vito in the dating game (as an example). Everyone may be beautiful in some way, but it doesn't mean much for attraction. Again, I agree, it's possibly the entire environment of social standards that make it that way. But I'm more team evolution and think advertising just rides on what we desire. Even if you took advertising away, I'm sure brad Pitt would still kill Danny de vito in the dating game. This is why I support prostitutes so much. An ugly guy can actually get laid by a hot babe. At a price, but worth the experience
@RachelBrigs Yeah I may be attractive now because I worked my arse off to meet societies ideals. Also men's beauty is determined by their personality and the irony is what makes a beautiful soul, like kindness, warmth, even a little bit of sacrifice for somebody to make them happy is not what makes a man attractive in the love game. That's where I'm not beautiful. I'm too nice and easy going. So I'm "ugly" in terms of attraction.
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