sj_zero on Nostr: I was thinking just now about "Societal beauty standards". It strikes me as an ...
I was thinking just now about "Societal beauty standards".
It strikes me as an anti-human idea. It strikes me as something someone who believes that we're all tabula rasa to be written upon however some powermonger sees fit instead of immensely complex human animals made from human parts would come up with.
Let's consider some things most people consider universally beautiful. Sunrises. Sunsets. The full moon on a clear night. The shining stars. A roaring campfire. Flowers. Did anyone have to tell you these things were beautiful, or did you just know? Did you have to be told a little rabbit or kitten was cute, or did you just know? Did you think certain babies (especially your own) are beautiful, or did you just know?
Do you have anything you find beautiful that nobody really talks about as such? I find traffic lights at night beautiful. The vivid colors against the surrounding darkness, it's always been something I've loved, and I don't think anyone in society really says you should find traffic lights beautiful, and many in society consider traffic lights to be symbols of stress and the ugliness of industrialization, but I like them, I think they're beautiful.
To give the devil his due, of course context can somewhat change how we perceive something. The good inside a person can make an ugly face something we cherish, and the evil inside a person can make a beautiful face something we detest.
There are examples where a horribly ugly thing is made something desirable. The foot binding of premodern China is objectively disgusting, with women who ended up with this procedure done walking around on twisted abominations for feet, and yet it was considered extremely desirable at the time, apparently with some men having quite the fetish for the practice. Twiggy Tips was an insanely rail thin model in the 1970s who was apparently very popular.
During the Heian period in Japan, it was considered fashionable for the men to act somewhat effeminate, not in pursuit of a modern-day lgbt ideal, but as an expression of masculinity somehow.
Some of these I think do help us because the ugly or undesirable thing being made desirable isn't done so through sheer force of will, but because of the representation of something else. The foot binding represents the willful submission of a wife to her husband. The men who were often acting effeminate in Heian Japan would be Samurai and Daimyo and the like -- masculine men who were fully dangerous and so the disconnect could have a complex ideological context behind it. Twiggy Tips was considered interesting in part because of the convention defying age of the 1970s in which she worked, so her skinny androgynous look epitomized the style of the time, but that didn't mean necessarily people found her beautiful, just that she represented the moment. In that sense, it's rather ironic that she was used as an example of unrealistic and dangerous standards of beauty, since it was a postmodern rebellion against conventional beauty that made her famous.
There's current examples where a lot of people who have been convinced that something not very attractive is highly desirable. "Instagram face" has many women getting plastic surgery to achieve a standard look that nobody outside of very specific social media circles finds remotely pleasing to look at.
Many things considered attractive are considered so exactly because they would be unattractive if you aren't beautiful. A short haired girl who is absolutely gorgeous still pulls it off because she's so beautiful, but anything less and she looks ugly. A young healthy woman with large breasts looks healthy and attractive, but an older, less healthy woman might not look nearly as good.
In a lot of these cases, what I'm finding is that while the "societal beauty standards" may have said a certain thing because of the power of the media, the common man probably didn't actually think these things were all that beautiful. At best, they might see what those standards represented instead of what they were. Without the connection between the particular look and the separate ideal it represented, nobody would consider that look beautiful.
Which brings us to the current moment. It occurs to me that the people most likely to attack "societal beauty standards" are actually likely to just be wanting to place their exact picture on that pedestal instead of someone else's. Objectively non-beautiful things or people are placed into that role, but even in a postmodern society where every message tells us to reject the grand narrative of objective beauty standards and instead believe in a new standard set up by people who would really rather you just worship them. It isn't working because we're human beings, not tabula rasa. That which is unattractive may have beautiful ideas attached to them, but they do not themselves become beautiful by association, they just share in the beauty of their symbiote. And if there is no beauty in the thing they've attached themselves to, then there is no additional beauty to be found there.
With respect to all of us just being tabula rasa programmed by society, that would suggest that in one society everyone would have the same tastes in beauty, which isn't true. While we all have some common traits as humans, just like humans who have different eye color or hair color or skin color, we have subtly different aesthetic preferences. Some of that may be due to environment, but there's also a reason to believe it's partially based on us being different sorts of people genetically.
You see all kinds of people together romantically. You'll see some women like twinky guys, and others prefer big bears. Some like muscular guys, some like fatty guys. You'll see some men with skinny women with flat chests, you'll see others with bigger girls with big breasts. Some like blondes, some like brunettes, some like redheads. There's so much variability, it seems impossible that if society is programming us to like one thing that there'd be such a variance.
Arguably, there are societal standards that do apply, and they're much more rigid. Most people speak English, and most people in a region speak it basically the same. Most people in a region eat basically the same foods. Most of the houses in a region are built basically the same. So where culture actually affects things predominantly, there's a lot less variability.
It strikes me as an anti-human idea. It strikes me as something someone who believes that we're all tabula rasa to be written upon however some powermonger sees fit instead of immensely complex human animals made from human parts would come up with.
Let's consider some things most people consider universally beautiful. Sunrises. Sunsets. The full moon on a clear night. The shining stars. A roaring campfire. Flowers. Did anyone have to tell you these things were beautiful, or did you just know? Did you have to be told a little rabbit or kitten was cute, or did you just know? Did you think certain babies (especially your own) are beautiful, or did you just know?
Do you have anything you find beautiful that nobody really talks about as such? I find traffic lights at night beautiful. The vivid colors against the surrounding darkness, it's always been something I've loved, and I don't think anyone in society really says you should find traffic lights beautiful, and many in society consider traffic lights to be symbols of stress and the ugliness of industrialization, but I like them, I think they're beautiful.
To give the devil his due, of course context can somewhat change how we perceive something. The good inside a person can make an ugly face something we cherish, and the evil inside a person can make a beautiful face something we detest.
There are examples where a horribly ugly thing is made something desirable. The foot binding of premodern China is objectively disgusting, with women who ended up with this procedure done walking around on twisted abominations for feet, and yet it was considered extremely desirable at the time, apparently with some men having quite the fetish for the practice. Twiggy Tips was an insanely rail thin model in the 1970s who was apparently very popular.
During the Heian period in Japan, it was considered fashionable for the men to act somewhat effeminate, not in pursuit of a modern-day lgbt ideal, but as an expression of masculinity somehow.
Some of these I think do help us because the ugly or undesirable thing being made desirable isn't done so through sheer force of will, but because of the representation of something else. The foot binding represents the willful submission of a wife to her husband. The men who were often acting effeminate in Heian Japan would be Samurai and Daimyo and the like -- masculine men who were fully dangerous and so the disconnect could have a complex ideological context behind it. Twiggy Tips was considered interesting in part because of the convention defying age of the 1970s in which she worked, so her skinny androgynous look epitomized the style of the time, but that didn't mean necessarily people found her beautiful, just that she represented the moment. In that sense, it's rather ironic that she was used as an example of unrealistic and dangerous standards of beauty, since it was a postmodern rebellion against conventional beauty that made her famous.
There's current examples where a lot of people who have been convinced that something not very attractive is highly desirable. "Instagram face" has many women getting plastic surgery to achieve a standard look that nobody outside of very specific social media circles finds remotely pleasing to look at.
Many things considered attractive are considered so exactly because they would be unattractive if you aren't beautiful. A short haired girl who is absolutely gorgeous still pulls it off because she's so beautiful, but anything less and she looks ugly. A young healthy woman with large breasts looks healthy and attractive, but an older, less healthy woman might not look nearly as good.
In a lot of these cases, what I'm finding is that while the "societal beauty standards" may have said a certain thing because of the power of the media, the common man probably didn't actually think these things were all that beautiful. At best, they might see what those standards represented instead of what they were. Without the connection between the particular look and the separate ideal it represented, nobody would consider that look beautiful.
Which brings us to the current moment. It occurs to me that the people most likely to attack "societal beauty standards" are actually likely to just be wanting to place their exact picture on that pedestal instead of someone else's. Objectively non-beautiful things or people are placed into that role, but even in a postmodern society where every message tells us to reject the grand narrative of objective beauty standards and instead believe in a new standard set up by people who would really rather you just worship them. It isn't working because we're human beings, not tabula rasa. That which is unattractive may have beautiful ideas attached to them, but they do not themselves become beautiful by association, they just share in the beauty of their symbiote. And if there is no beauty in the thing they've attached themselves to, then there is no additional beauty to be found there.
With respect to all of us just being tabula rasa programmed by society, that would suggest that in one society everyone would have the same tastes in beauty, which isn't true. While we all have some common traits as humans, just like humans who have different eye color or hair color or skin color, we have subtly different aesthetic preferences. Some of that may be due to environment, but there's also a reason to believe it's partially based on us being different sorts of people genetically.
You see all kinds of people together romantically. You'll see some women like twinky guys, and others prefer big bears. Some like muscular guys, some like fatty guys. You'll see some men with skinny women with flat chests, you'll see others with bigger girls with big breasts. Some like blondes, some like brunettes, some like redheads. There's so much variability, it seems impossible that if society is programming us to like one thing that there'd be such a variance.
Arguably, there are societal standards that do apply, and they're much more rigid. Most people speak English, and most people in a region speak it basically the same. Most people in a region eat basically the same foods. Most of the houses in a region are built basically the same. So where culture actually affects things predominantly, there's a lot less variability.