Babes of Gencon 2003

[Mark Chance]

my apologies Mark

No problems. I actually am virtually impossible to offend. I think its a side effect of not giving up my capacity for rational judgment. Of course my over-developed passion for sarcasm often conveys the opposite.

I very nearly despise what Hollywood pushes as beautiful. Watching Lara Flynn Boyle strut around in lingerie in Men In Black II was painful and put me off my popcorn. I nearly wept watching Jennifer Connelly accept her Oscar for A Beautiful Mind. Ye gods! she looked horrible. Pale, limp hair, bony, her breasts and hips had all but vanished. Blech. Slap a beer gut on her and a black wig on me and it'd have been hard to tell us apart.

 

[Morbidity]

my apologies Mark, i didn't mean to be inflamatory. or to put words into your mouth. clearly i did, and i apologise. i made an assumption based on the usual comments of modern beanpole models vs more ample women of the past. and follwed the usual course when one @$$umes.

~NegZ

Ahhh Neg Zero you may have been thinking of me. I used the word ‘obese’ when referring to the concept of beauty in Renaissance women. In fact I said ‘technically obese’ … meaning that they had a body mass index in excess of 30. I was using the word in a technical not a derogative context. I do agree though that the woman in the painting referenced is not obese in any context.

 

[PowerWordDumb]

Slap a beer gut on her and a black wig on me and it'd have been hard to tell us apart.

Holy cow, slap a black wig on Mark, and we'll soon be seeing him in the Babes of Gencon 2003 folder! If on the other hand Jennifer Connoly grew herself a beer gut and cut her hair, she'd almost fit right in with the normal Gencon crowd and slip under the radar of our roving photographers...

*shudder* There's a pair of visuals I didn't need to inflict on myself, let alone anyone else!

 

[Mark Chance]

Holy cow, slap a black wig on Mark, and we'll soon be seeing him in the Babes of Gencon 2003 folder!

And don't you forget it!

Hmm. I wonder how hard it would be to doctor a picture of me....

 

[PowerWordDumb]

Re: Re: Re: re

IOW, it isn't so much DNA that makes the super-model appear attractive as it is decades of Madison Avenue propaganda.

I'm always highly offended by this line of reasoning, or more precisely, the "rationale" behind it. This all-too-easy explanation hinges upon the belief that we as males are somehow easily programmed by what the advertisers decide to show us.

I grant that conditioning is a real thing, as Pavlov so nicely demonstrated. My contention however is that one is only as easily programmed as one allows himself to be. My personal definitions of beauty and attractiveness were formed at an early age, primarily fed from:

a) my mother (hush with your oedipal complex mutterings, you heathens!)
b) the young girls on my block who I liked
c) a very select subset of movie/television stars I liked

Over the years, the advertising standard has changed - the women in ads and on television today are radically different than those in common use in the early 70's, but my standards of beauty have not shifted with them. Maybe I'm the aberration here, but I do not believe for one minute that my preferences (or anyone else's for that matter) can be redefined for me without my consent and involvement.

It's interesting to note that my fiancee actually does not resemble my built-in genetic beauty "standard" at all, yet I find her to be one of the most beautiful and attractive woman I've ever known. Granted, I can see the inner beauty as well as the exterior in this case, but it goes to show that I at least am not a slavering dog for whatever Madison avenue deems appropriate to sell me.

I think men are far too eager to submit to this "Men are pigs" and "Men are easily led around by the you-know-what" line that radical feminists and other apologists for male tendencies are eager to sell us. Are we suffering from some mass inferiority complex, or are some of us simply looking for an excuse to point to in order to justify poor behavior? "I can't help it, I'm just a man!" Bah!

 

[Mark Chance]

Re: Re: Re: Re: re

My personal definitions of beauty and attractiveness were formed at an early age, primarily fed from:

a) my mother (hush with your oedipal complex mutterings, you heathens!)
b) the young girls on my block who I liked
c) a very select subset of movie/television stars I liked

See? Perceptions of beauty are culturally conditioned. And I'd never stoop to "oedipal complex mutterings." Freud was a fraud.

Over the years, the advertising standard has changed - the women in ads and on television today are radically different than those in common use in the early 70's, but my standards of beauty have not shifted with them.

Talk to teenagers. Your standards have not shifted, but standards have (as you yourself admit). I remember showing my students Casablanca and being amazed that almost none of my students agreed with me that Ingrid Bergman is a beautiful woman.

Maybe I'm the aberration here, but I do not believe for one minute that my preferences (or anyone else's for that matter) can be redefined for me without my consent and involvement.

No one's said anything to the contrary to the best of my recollection. Immersing oneself in, for example, Madison Avenue is consensual involvement. Since you and I have apparently declined such involvement, is it any wonder that we both disagree with the "conventional wisdom"?

I think men are far too eager to submit to this "Men are pigs" and "Men are easily led around by the you-know-what" line that radical feminists and other apologists for male tendencies are eager to sell us.

I think you're reading way too much into what is a basically self-evident statement: Perceptions of beauty are culturally conditioned. That applies as much to women and as to men. It is also a markedly different claim than saying that perceptions of beauty are culturally determined or are the result of genetic programming.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

Nothing makes a girl as sexy as her smile.

eyes and lips for me.

 

[PowerWordDumb]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re

Perceptions of beauty are culturally conditioned.

Oh, I agree completely, I just would interject some limitation on that - particularly if I could have authored a post clearly in the first place. I would say that culture and society definitely can *influence* standards of beauty - to claim otherwise would be folly. Madison Ave. manipulations obviously fall within that sphere.

I just don't accept that they *define* standards of beauty - the fact that both of us have opted out of fashion industry reprogramming shows the lie of the prevailing wisdom here. Certainly one's environment plays a part, particularly at an early age, but once your filters are sufficiently developed (In my case a healthy scepticism of all things "popular"), you no longer have the luxury of being an unwitting pawn of the media.

Hope that clarifies. I don't think you're wrong per se, just that I take issue with the popular premise. I am not defined by my culture - I am shaped by it to the extent I allow that to happen.

 

[Mark Chance]

eyes and lips for me.

For me: Being able to understand Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God and Gaunilo's and Aquinas's critiques of the same.

 

[PowerWordDumb]

For me: Being able to understand Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God and Gaunilo's and Aquinas's critiques of the same.

I concur. A sharp mind is wayyyyy sexier than any pair of surgically-enhanced child-rearing glands could ever be. What is intriguing to me is that my fiancee is demonstrably very intelligent, but in very different areas than myself (logic, math, philosophy and sciences for me, artistry and boundless creativity for her), and yet I am still able to admire her intelligence for what it is, rather than devalue it for being different than I have (unfairly) judged intelligence my whole life.