if you took into consideration how much thinner tshe is than raquel or most other curvy women, her waist line would make sense. while some of your information is interesting, you lack the knowledge of a woman's proportions that a actual woman would know,. as a side note, the reason why on paper, fashion models have .7 whr is they lie--- they all lie. its an industry standard. i know girls who did runway. in person, some are shaped JUST LIKE MEN. they need the hips taken in to fit into women's jeans. they actually are shaped more like 33-27-34. its an industry standard, but what counts is that they can fit into a eu34---which in certain high-end lines, means a 28 inch waist anyway. balenciaga is a great example.
the one picture you used of halle displays the ablity to hide curves with airbrushing, studio lighting, and posing---as the media tries to fit even feminine women into the beauty standard designated by the fashion industry.
here is some help. http://img44.imagevenue.com/loc478/th_93956_HQCB.net_Halle_Berry_09_122_478lo.jpg
erik--what you have failed to realize, is that often other ethnic groups see northern europeans as looking androgynous. often one has difficulty determining which of the children are boys vs. girls---since compared to other groups---the women's eyes are not as defined(eyelid shape, prominence of eyelashes), the nose protrudes far from the face sometimes, often the women are more flat-butted with stockier legs than other groups. i recall going to a predominately black community one summer being asked why white women had suck muscular calves, flat butts, thin lips, etc. your definition of feminity centers around northern european women being the standard but to other groups--- these women are lacking--point blank.
cS: If a woman looks like a male-to-female transsexual, how would it be insulting to describe her looks as such?
Aileen: Quit using multiple aliases...Aileen, Raymond, Maria. The comments facility is not provided for you to abuse it. If you are out-debated, and I don’t know how you have managed to delude yourself into believing that you have refuted anything here, then you should bow out of the discussion instead of misrepresenting your opponent’s arguments and posting ad hominem. Feel free to set up your own website where you address female beauty, and use the blogging sites that I recommended to Amelia if you don’t want to deal with the hassle of designing your own site. Your comments, useless as they are, need to be addressed.
If a woman believes she is beautiful, then may the Gods bless her; I have nothing against this belief regardless of how she looks, and hopefully she will not end up with a lower opinion of her looks after perusing this site. I have nothing against women who accept themselves as they are; I say blessed are they! Once again, this site is not about making women evaluate their own looks and either accept or reject them.
There is nothing new about your advice that women should feel in their heart that they are beautiful. However, it often doesn’t work in practice if the woman is unattractive. As Sandy has mentioned, most people know how attractive they are compared to others; people have a basic intrinsic aesthetic sense, and those who fall short of their own standards will be disappointed with their looks to some extent. To the extent that aesthetic preferences can be manipulated by media imagery, this site is promoting a healthy standard that is intrinsically harbored by most individuals as opposed to the fashion industry’s abnormal and unhealthy standards. I have already explained that some women are influenced by high-fashion models because of their high status, and one way to combat this negative influence is to set up a competing healthy standard of beauty, which will need to meet high aesthetic standards or else it will not have a significant impact. In other words, you are looking at feminine beauty promotion, which dovetails with heterosexual male appreciation of feminine beauty. This is hardly an issue that needs to be railed against.
As I have already explained, poor body image problems among women are not a result of their catering to male interests/chauvinism. Apart from a basic intrinsic aesthetic sense, the very fact that heterosexual women are very selective about the men they would be willing to end up with means that there are few such men, and if a lot of women are competing for few men, then these men will naturally select the best looking ones, i.e., heterosexual women are themselves largely responsible for the pressure to look attractive.
Regarding what standards heterosexual men harbor, men have low standards when it comes to casual sex but not when it comes to fantasy or feminine beauty appreciation. Your assertion that I am not in the least bit concerned about self-esteem issues is belied by this entry, which addresses it in a through manner.
I have not made any assertion about men attracted to you or Amelia being less likely to be lifetime-exclusive heterosexual. I do not know how Amelia looks like, and I have not described your looks as manly. Your have broad shoulders but also prominent breasts and non-narrow hips; you have low rather than high cheekbones, and your angular jawline and facial robusticity is more an artifact of ancestry rather than masculinization. Among your co-ethnics, i.e., swarthy semites, you would be within the normal range. As long as you seek men among your co-ethnics, you would be fine, but beware of white men since by European standards your face is on the masculine-looking side. I have not asserted that the likes of Richard Gere or Johnny Depp have a tendency to be gay by virtue of being romantically involved with masculinized women in spite of their riches; what I said was that such men would be a prime candidate for either being into the down-low lifestyle (bisexually behaving) or of experiencing some level of same-sex attraction or of having narrowly escaped nonheterosexuality. Lifetime-exclusive heterosexual men may end up with masculinized women if they have little choice, but other things being equal, they will prefer a feminine to a masculine woman.
Your ad hominem attacks are not worth responding to; don’t repeat them.
I see Eric! Is that why you have a section calling Victoria Secrets...The Transexual Parade? OR Is that why you imply that the fashion industry is run by Gays whom fancy 14 year boys...Hmmm... I think there is a term for that behavior...
No you are just presenting an unemotional arguement in a scientific manner...justs the facts...no bias...no insults and inuendos.
You objectify, you deconstruct, you dehumanize. It gives you a sense of power.
If the physical attractiveness of some women is to be addressed, then they need to be looked at in some detail, which is not objectification. Deconstruction involves critiquing an argument by attaching malicious motives to the person making them, and this technique is not employed by this site. Women who do not meet standards of feminine beauty, i.e., the great majority, remain fully human, and are not being dehumanized in any manner. Power refers to the ability to manipulate. If I get around to manipulating the modeling world and beauty pageants to some extent, then it won’t be through the techniques you accuse me of employing.
Sandy: I appreciate your comment. On the other hand, if you disagree about some correlates of beauty addressed here, then please be more specific so that I can address them.
Charly: If you are a psychotherapist then it is a safe bet that your specialty is psychoanalysis given the Freudian reasoning you have employed. Whereas you may be a good psychoanalyst, a good psychoanalyst is no less pathetic than a bad one. Psychoanalysis is a ludicrous anachronism that should have died with Freud, but unfortunately it is still limping around. In the event you are a clinical psychologist, I’d say woe to the presumably third-rate institution that has given you your degree.
Amelia: Your comment indicates a misunderstanding of this site in addition to your not browsing enough of it. Here is the clarification, corresponding to your 5 points:
Quote:
1. This site is not about achieving an hourglass figure; it is about promoting women with these figures among models and beauty pageant contestants; read the solutions page for how one could go about it.
3. I don’t want women to do anything with their facial features; read point #1 again.
4. There is no argument here that only hourglass figures are feminine; see, for instance, Table 1 on the page addressing body image/self-esteem issues. Do I need to promote awareness of the variety of looks among women? The very suggestion is ridiculous; the typical person has already seen a wide variety of looks among women.
5. I am part of the problem by propagating beauty myths to dispel beauty myths? What is this? I have no problems accepting “real” women. The Gods have created great diversity, and presumably for good reasons. However, this does not mean that women should be picked at random for modeling purposes or as beauty pageant contestants or that people should not find some specific look more appealing than others. When feminine women are needed, feminine ones should be used, and beauty pageants should be about high aesthetic standards just as the Olympics are about high sporting standards. What is unreasonable about this?
Regarding your second comment, the article you cited was posted as a comment by Kristin in a separate entry within this thread, and it is irrelevant to this site. Of course there is a wide variety of physique types, but most physiques do not meet criteria for feminine beauty with an emphasis on high aesthetic standards. You need to understand that aesthetics is a strong focus of this site, and feminine beauty is being appreciated for its own sake.
Hourglass figures are not coveted because of the corset, but the corset was used to acquire the coveted hourglass shape. Why would people go through the trouble of devising a corset and women inconvenience themselves if there was no preference for hourglass physiques to start with among the populations where corsets were often used? You should consider evidence on this page relating physical femininity, especially a combination of large breasts and small waist, to higher fertility and fecundity. Obviously, nature would equip heterosexual men with a basic intrinsic sense that helps them evaluate a woman’s fertility and fecundity, which would manifest in the form of a preference for above average femininity in the looks of women. Therefore, your understanding of the corset is the reverse of the actual reason..
Once again, this site is not about how women should look like; it is about models and beauty pageant contestants, and is attempting to promote feminine beauty as in bringing more feminine and attractive women to the limelight, and by this I do not mean the nude models shown within this site.
You do not need webmastering skills to publish on the web; you could use blogger, typepad, livejournal or equivalent to easily publish on the internet; it would be as easy as typing into a word/wordperfect document. Alternatively, if you believe that you can teach me a few useful things about femininity and beauty, send me a word document with your arguments and embedded pictures if any, and I will post it in a separate entry and then we can have a debate in the comments section.
And if he bothered to do some real research into the history of the corset, he would see that it's because of the CORSET why the hourglass figure is so coveted. Many women attained an hourglass figure by using something unnatural, which deformed their bodies at times and forced the organs to reshape in ways within the torso that their bodies did not originally design. If none of these women had ever worn corsets, but were still within a healthy weight range, it's quite possible that their bodies would still have "curves" but not to the pronounced extent that Mr. Holland believes that they should be.
Hell...if I had any webmastering skills I'd take this guy back to school and show him what a REAL website promoting healthy bodies and femininity was all about. And to be honest, he's a guy, what the hell does he know? That would be like me promoting a "true manliness and masculinity" site when I'm a woman.
To talk about "what distinguishes..." is not to imply that these women are sexier. The question asked is "What is sexy?" and this is to say that the focus is on what constitutes sexiness. Therefore, "what distinguishes..." is in terms of physical features pertaining to sexiness.
The distinguishing elements you have pointed out, such as attitude expressed or posing are of little relevance because the women in the attractive women section could be made to pose similarly; the women there are shown in a bunch of poses, too. The relevant question is whether under similar posing the looks would on average be similar between the groups, and if not, then what are the distinguishing elements?
It is not the intent of the entry above to explicitly define sexiness, but to see what people think sexiness is from the perspective of lifetime-exclusive heterosexual men. I will have more to say later.
Sex hormones have a global effect. If you see a clearly feminine physique, as in Nikky Case, that is accompanied by a masculine-looking face, then it would be inappropriate to call the face masculine because the masculine appearance would be a result of factors other than sex hormones and their receptors, i.e., the term “masculine-looking” would be appropriate but not “masculine.” On the other hand, Nikky Case does not have a masculine-looking face; here are three large examples: Pic1, Pic2, Pic3.
You should consider ancestry. Some Central Europeans have squared faces with a sharp jawline, i.e., Nikky Case just has a different face design compared to the Northern European norm.
i dunno what your are worried about, making money from pornography is nothing to be ashamed of. i hope you make lots of money from your porn affiliate links.
Actually, Mr. Holland's rhetoric and articulacy is reflective of several personality and character types and actually this is interesting.
His rhetoric reflects a combination of white america's rednick male, a very traditionally masculine character, and the sophisticated articulate male, a stereotypically feminine character (Mr. Holland's range of vocabulary is astoundingly wide) and this character type is often described by the first as "gay."
Actualy Erik...I am a therapist and I am considered quite brillant at what I do...further...I have clients that are models, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transexuals, heterosexuals, and run of the mill people. Actually, I do not really profile in an amateur fashion. I think I got you pegged pretty well... You know it and I know it.
I'm always waiting for comments such as yours, for now I am not even responding to Mr. Holland and really find no purpose in doing so although every time I refute everything he says, he just comes up with some other BS argument, one less credible than the other, thinking it has a lot of scientific basis. If you read his previous reponses to people, you will realize that he is not the least bit concerned with women's self esteem and just wants to promote feminine beauty, the beauty that he has identified here that you and I both do not agree with.
Sweetheart, you are beautiful the way you are. Mr. Holland insists that men who have a preference for women with features and proportions similar to yours and mine are on the less heterosexual side and are more likely to be gay than exclusively heterosexual men. I guess he insists that well to do and well known men like Richard Gere and Johnny Depp who dated top supermodels have a tendency to be gay and that exclusively heterosexual men would never pick a "masculine" looking woman over a more feminine looking one.
Mr. Holland has clearly demonstrated his indignation for women who accept themselves the way they are and do not succumb to his definition of feminine beauty and humble themselves down to stupid looking teenage girls who meet his definition of feminine beauty.
Amelia, my email is eval(unescape('%64%6f%63%75%6d%65%6e%74%2e%77%72%69%74%65%28%27%3c%61%20%68%72%65%66%3d%22%6d%61%69%6c%74%6f%3a%73%61%68%6e%65%5f%67%68%61%73%68%61%6e%67%40%79%61%68%6f%6f%2e%63%6f%6d%22%3e%73%61%68%6e%65%5f%67%68%61%73%68%61%6e%67%40%79%61%68%6f%6f%2e%63%6f%6d%3c%2f%61%3e%27%29%3b')) if you want to correspond with me about such subjects because Mr. Holland is not going to repeat the same words over and over again. Well, I guess he is not well known for much out there and decide to talk about a subject that no one else talks about at this much extent, those subjects being gay male interests (how an exclusively heterosexual man is so insightful as to the interests of gay men is still beyond me) and the physical differences between men and women and the importance of replacing more masculine models with more feminine models.
While I understand that your purpose is to promote female beauty and rid the obsession with skinny waif-figures, you seemed to have overlooked a few things:
1. "Achieving an hourglass figure" shouldn't be a goal because if you BIOLOGICALLY can't, what are you supposed to do? I have a big ribcage and 36D boobs on top of them-- what should I do about my ribcage and small hips? What about all the other women who have big ribcages and smaller hips? Why should an hourglass figure, something that VERY few women have (and please do not mistake an hourglass figure is the same thing as a small waist) even be something that should be "achieved"? You either have it, or you don't.
2. Very little about your site focuses on healthier body image, improving self-esteem, or even exercise. Yes many people are overweight, but instead of focusing on whose pelvic regions are more feminine than the other, why don't you focus on what exercises are best for a person's body type instead?
3. You talk about "masculine" and "feminine" facial features. How in God's name is someone supposed to change the way they were born (minus plastic surgery)? So some women have strong facial features and some women have very soft features-- WHAT DO YOU WANT US TO DO ABOUT IT?
4. Instead of comparing hourglass figures to nonhourglass figures, which to YOU, are the only "true" feminine body type, why don't you actually try to promote awareness about what women's bodies can actually look like? Women are not cookie-cutters, we come in different shapes which aren't always your sanctified hourglass figure.
5. Your site gives the impression of trying to dispel beauty myths and so forth, but instead continues to propogate what you are attempting to fight, so you're just part of the problem. Accept women, REAL women, for who they are and what they look like, sell that idea, and you'll see more feminine figures, hourglass or NOT in the modeling industry and elsewhere. So why not just accept women for having the features they do as long as it's healthy, regardless of whether or not they have a masculine nose with feminine face shape, broad shoulders, small waist, and manly arms? Why is that so hard? For someone wanting to stop underweight models from entering the runway and eating disorders, you sure have a strange way of going about it.
Fair enough, but you do say "distinguishes these women from the women shown in the attractive women section," - which implies they are sexier, but this could be a misunderstanding.
I have already answered your question about what I see different about these women. I'm not obliged to do more. You have not, however, answered my questions. How are you defining sexy, and are you attempting to define a universal or sort of scientific basis for sexiness, as you have for femininity (well-argued and nonjudgmental, I believe). Isn't sexy different depending on personal taste? Is this page a sort of experiment and you want reader feedback before you say something, are you just musing, or do you have a point? You are of course not obliged to answer, but I'd like to know what you're getting at.
Laurie: In the context of high standards, for your height, your waist should not be exceeding 24 inches, and should preferably be 22-23 inches. Look at Maria McBane again. Does your physique look like hers? Anyway, you should not be concerned if you do not meet high standards; most women don’t.
Anon: Appearances can indeed be deceptive, but what you mention isn’t an example of deception. If you rotate an hourglass in the transverse plane, it will look the same from any angle, but this is not true of the human body, and since the hourglass approximation applies to front view only, it is thereby not necessary for waist and hip circumference to be the same.
Yes, gaining weight changes the shape of one’s body to some extent, depending on the weight gain, but there is definitely something known as unhealthy weight gain, which would be excessive fat in the abdominal region. When you gain body fat, if you have a tendency to disproportionately pack on fat in the abdominal region, then it would not be medically advisable to deliberately overeat in order to pack more fat into your breasts, buttocks and upper thigh region. The only solutions that I can think of require drastic measures such as taking estrogens (prescription drug; estrogens favor deposition of fat in breasts, buttocks and upper thighs) or surgically removing some of the fat tissue in your abdominal region so that overeating results in less gain of abdominal mass compared to what you would gain otherwise (I am not sure how successful this would be).
Read the entry carefully. Nowhere is it said that the women shown above are “sexier than others.” You have been asked two questions, which you should attempt to answer.
Margaux: Nobody is saying she is ugly. However, unlike gay fashion designers, most people do not find a girl who likes like a boy attractive. You should be able to understand this even if Abbie is your best friend.
Dave: I have already told you that many of the sites referenced are not porn sites. Am I being dishonest? If I were paid to display some women here as attractive and did not explicitly state this, then you are looking at a conflict of interest similar to researchers reporting data from a drug trial without identifying that the drug manufacturer paid them to conduct the study. However, none of the sites that I am signed up as an affiliate with work in this manner. They pay a commission only if someone referred from this site joins them. Therefore, there is no need for me to explicitly state that I am an affiliate of a referenced site if this is the case. Even if I were paid to feature a particular model within this site, there is enough scientific data here to justify any claims I would make about her masculinity-femininity/attractiveness, i.e., you could not accuse me of saying that a given woman is attractive because I have been paid to say so.
Note that I have made no attempt to hide affiliate links. For instance, check out superbeauty.org, a website claiming to fight for female beauty. This site has little in terms of written content, but features links to many websites -- supposedly united in their fight for beauty -- and these websites happen to sell nude photographs of women. The links to these websites from the superbeauty site are in the form:
Quote:
superbeauty.org/cgi-bin/out.cgi?site=56
Guess what “site=56” corresponds to? The “out.cgi” file contains the full affiliate link, which you cannot see. I could easily do this with all my affiliate links, but do not feel any need to do so. Both your comments in this entry apply to the superbeauty site, but this site does not offer a facility for people to leave comments. You should try emailing the comments you left above to the webmaster of the superbeauty site and see what response you get.
This page disappoints me. The rest of your site seems very well argued - but here you just throw in a few women and proclaim that they are sexier than others - on what basis? Your personal taste? Please tell me how you selected them. From what I can see it's mostly in attitude, expression, and poise - teasing the camera, maybe, and confident.
You suggest that the reader try to discern what makes these women sexy, by which my guess you mean sexually appealing to lifetime exclusive heterosexual men - but have you yourself actually come up with what that is? I find it very curious that you offer no basis, science, observations, or even theories. Is this a personal preference? It seems to me that since sexiness has to do with appeal, sexy can be something different to a whole lot of different guys - feminine, on the other hand, is well-defined here and I think you do a very good job discussing it. Some men may like more feminine women, and some may not - but in who's taste do you define sexiness? I'm not sure how you plan to qualify your discussion of sexiness, though.
Erik,
With reference to your example of Nicky case, I agree by looking at her overall appearance though she may 'look' feminine one cannot still naturally deviate attention from her masculine features i.e her square face which clearly started at on its own looks masucline and which still stands out when looking at her overall and thus tones down her acceptance of being feminine looking.
also, by dressmaking standards a hourglass figure has ATLEAST A 10 INCH DIFFERENCE. PROBABLY MORE LIKE 13.
http://img172.imagevenue.com/loc464/th_94004_HQCB.net_Halle_Berry_08_122_464lo.jpg
http://img168.imagevenue.com/loc329/th_03174_hqcb.net_Halle_Berry_3_122_329lo.jpg
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/8553/11204874babychoux113200yv7.jpg
http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/5015/11204925babychoux113200tf4.jpg
if you took into consideration how much thinner tshe is than raquel or most other curvy women, her waist line would make sense. while some of your information is interesting, you lack the knowledge of a woman's proportions that a actual woman would know,. as a side note, the reason why on paper, fashion models have .7 whr is they lie--- they all lie. its an industry standard. i know girls who did runway. in person, some are shaped JUST LIKE MEN. they need the hips taken in to fit into women's jeans. they actually are shaped more like 33-27-34. its an industry standard, but what counts is that they can fit into a eu34---which in certain high-end lines, means a 28 inch waist anyway. balenciaga is a great example.
the one picture you used of halle displays the ablity to hide curves with airbrushing, studio lighting, and posing---as the media tries to fit even feminine women into the beauty standard designated by the fashion industry.
here is some help.
http://img44.imagevenue.com/loc478/th_93956_HQCB.net_Halle_Berry_09_122_478lo.jpg
erik--what you have failed to realize, is that often other ethnic groups see northern europeans as looking androgynous. often one has difficulty determining which of the children are boys vs. girls---since compared to other groups---the women's eyes are not as defined(eyelid shape, prominence of eyelashes), the nose protrudes far from the face sometimes, often the women are more flat-butted with stockier legs than other groups. i recall going to a predominately black community one summer being asked why white women had suck muscular calves, flat butts, thin lips, etc. your definition of feminity centers around northern european women being the standard but to other groups--- these women are lacking--point blank.
cS: If a woman looks like a male-to-female transsexual, how would it be insulting to describe her looks as such?
Aileen: Quit using multiple aliases...Aileen, Raymond, Maria. The comments facility is not provided for you to abuse it. If you are out-debated, and I don’t know how you have managed to delude yourself into believing that you have refuted anything here, then you should bow out of the discussion instead of misrepresenting your opponent’s arguments and posting ad hominem. Feel free to set up your own website where you address female beauty, and use the blogging sites that I recommended to Amelia if you don’t want to deal with the hassle of designing your own site. Your comments, useless as they are, need to be addressed.
If a woman believes she is beautiful, then may the Gods bless her; I have nothing against this belief regardless of how she looks, and hopefully she will not end up with a lower opinion of her looks after perusing this site. I have nothing against women who accept themselves as they are; I say blessed are they! Once again, this site is not about making women evaluate their own looks and either accept or reject them.
There is nothing new about your advice that women should feel in their heart that they are beautiful. However, it often doesn’t work in practice if the woman is unattractive. As Sandy has mentioned, most people know how attractive they are compared to others; people have a basic intrinsic aesthetic sense, and those who fall short of their own standards will be disappointed with their looks to some extent. To the extent that aesthetic preferences can be manipulated by media imagery, this site is promoting a healthy standard that is intrinsically harbored by most individuals as opposed to the fashion industry’s abnormal and unhealthy standards. I have already explained that some women are influenced by high-fashion models because of their high status, and one way to combat this negative influence is to set up a competing healthy standard of beauty, which will need to meet high aesthetic standards or else it will not have a significant impact. In other words, you are looking at feminine beauty promotion, which dovetails with heterosexual male appreciation of feminine beauty. This is hardly an issue that needs to be railed against.
As I have already explained, poor body image problems among women are not a result of their catering to male interests/chauvinism. Apart from a basic intrinsic aesthetic sense, the very fact that heterosexual women are very selective about the men they would be willing to end up with means that there are few such men, and if a lot of women are competing for few men, then these men will naturally select the best looking ones, i.e., heterosexual women are themselves largely responsible for the pressure to look attractive.
Regarding what standards heterosexual men harbor, men have low standards when it comes to casual sex but not when it comes to fantasy or feminine beauty appreciation. Your assertion that I am not in the least bit concerned about self-esteem issues is belied by this entry, which addresses it in a through manner.
I have not made any assertion about men attracted to you or Amelia being less likely to be lifetime-exclusive heterosexual. I do not know how Amelia looks like, and I have not described your looks as manly. Your have broad shoulders but also prominent breasts and non-narrow hips; you have low rather than high cheekbones, and your angular jawline and facial robusticity is more an artifact of ancestry rather than masculinization. Among your co-ethnics, i.e., swarthy semites, you would be within the normal range. As long as you seek men among your co-ethnics, you would be fine, but beware of white men since by European standards your face is on the masculine-looking side. I have not asserted that the likes of Richard Gere or Johnny Depp have a tendency to be gay by virtue of being romantically involved with masculinized women in spite of their riches; what I said was that such men would be a prime candidate for either being into the down-low lifestyle (bisexually behaving) or of experiencing some level of same-sex attraction or of having narrowly escaped nonheterosexuality. Lifetime-exclusive heterosexual men may end up with masculinized women if they have little choice, but other things being equal, they will prefer a feminine to a masculine woman.
Your ad hominem attacks are not worth responding to; don’t repeat them.
I see Eric! Is that why you have a section calling Victoria Secrets...The Transexual Parade? OR Is that why you imply that the fashion industry is run by Gays whom fancy 14 year boys...Hmmm... I think there is a term for that behavior...
No you are just presenting an unemotional arguement in a scientific manner...justs the facts...no bias...no insults and inuendos.
Bialia: This is a response to your statement:
Quote:
If the physical attractiveness of some women is to be addressed, then they need to be looked at in some detail, which is not objectification. Deconstruction involves critiquing an argument by attaching malicious motives to the person making them, and this technique is not employed by this site. Women who do not meet standards of feminine beauty, i.e., the great majority, remain fully human, and are not being dehumanized in any manner. Power refers to the ability to manipulate. If I get around to manipulating the modeling world and beauty pageants to some extent, then it won’t be through the techniques you accuse me of employing.
Sandy: I appreciate your comment. On the other hand, if you disagree about some correlates of beauty addressed here, then please be more specific so that I can address them.
Charly: If you are a psychotherapist then it is a safe bet that your specialty is psychoanalysis given the Freudian reasoning you have employed. Whereas you may be a good psychoanalyst, a good psychoanalyst is no less pathetic than a bad one. Psychoanalysis is a ludicrous anachronism that should have died with Freud, but unfortunately it is still limping around. In the event you are a clinical psychologist, I’d say woe to the presumably third-rate institution that has given you your degree.
Amelia: Your comment indicates a misunderstanding of this site in addition to your not browsing enough of it. Here is the clarification, corresponding to your 5 points:
Quote:
Regarding your second comment, the article you cited was posted as a comment by Kristin in a separate entry within this thread, and it is irrelevant to this site. Of course there is a wide variety of physique types, but most physiques do not meet criteria for feminine beauty with an emphasis on high aesthetic standards. You need to understand that aesthetics is a strong focus of this site, and feminine beauty is being appreciated for its own sake.
Hourglass figures are not coveted because of the corset, but the corset was used to acquire the coveted hourglass shape. Why would people go through the trouble of devising a corset and women inconvenience themselves if there was no preference for hourglass physiques to start with among the populations where corsets were often used? You should consider evidence on this page relating physical femininity, especially a combination of large breasts and small waist, to higher fertility and fecundity. Obviously, nature would equip heterosexual men with a basic intrinsic sense that helps them evaluate a woman’s fertility and fecundity, which would manifest in the form of a preference for above average femininity in the looks of women. Therefore, your understanding of the corset is the reverse of the actual reason..
Once again, this site is not about how women should look like; it is about models and beauty pageant contestants, and is attempting to promote feminine beauty as in bringing more feminine and attractive women to the limelight, and by this I do not mean the nude models shown within this site.
You do not need webmastering skills to publish on the web; you could use blogger, typepad, livejournal or equivalent to easily publish on the internet; it would be as easy as typing into a word/wordperfect document. Alternatively, if you believe that you can teach me a few useful things about femininity and beauty, send me a word document with your arguments and embedded pictures if any, and I will post it in a separate entry and then we can have a debate in the comments section.
Thanks Aileen. I think Mr. Holland should also consider reading this:
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article328328.ece
And if he bothered to do some real research into the history of the corset, he would see that it's because of the CORSET why the hourglass figure is so coveted. Many women attained an hourglass figure by using something unnatural, which deformed their bodies at times and forced the organs to reshape in ways within the torso that their bodies did not originally design. If none of these women had ever worn corsets, but were still within a healthy weight range, it's quite possible that their bodies would still have "curves" but not to the pronounced extent that Mr. Holland believes that they should be.
Hell...if I had any webmastering skills I'd take this guy back to school and show him what a REAL website promoting healthy bodies and femininity was all about. And to be honest, he's a guy, what the hell does he know? That would be like me promoting a "true manliness and masculinity" site when I'm a woman.
To talk about "what distinguishes..." is not to imply that these women are sexier. The question asked is "What is sexy?" and this is to say that the focus is on what constitutes sexiness. Therefore, "what distinguishes..." is in terms of physical features pertaining to sexiness.
The distinguishing elements you have pointed out, such as attitude expressed or posing are of little relevance because the women in the attractive women section could be made to pose similarly; the women there are shown in a bunch of poses, too. The relevant question is whether under similar posing the looks would on average be similar between the groups, and if not, then what are the distinguishing elements?
It is not the intent of the entry above to explicitly define sexiness, but to see what people think sexiness is from the perspective of lifetime-exclusive heterosexual men. I will have more to say later.
Sex hormones have a global effect. If you see a clearly feminine physique, as in Nikky Case, that is accompanied by a masculine-looking face, then it would be inappropriate to call the face masculine because the masculine appearance would be a result of factors other than sex hormones and their receptors, i.e., the term “masculine-looking” would be appropriate but not “masculine.” On the other hand, Nikky Case does not have a masculine-looking face; here are three large examples: Pic1, Pic2, Pic3.
You should consider ancestry. Some Central Europeans have squared faces with a sharp jawline, i.e., Nikky Case just has a different face design compared to the Northern European norm.
Dave: I am not worried about obtaining commissions from porn sites and artistic nudity sites. However, I do need to respond to smear, which I did.
i dunno what your are worried about, making money from pornography is nothing to be ashamed of. i hope you make lots of money from your porn affiliate links.
Actually, Mr. Holland's rhetoric and articulacy is reflective of several personality and character types and actually this is interesting.
His rhetoric reflects a combination of white america's rednick male, a very traditionally masculine character, and the sophisticated articulate male, a stereotypically feminine character (Mr. Holland's range of vocabulary is astoundingly wide) and this character type is often described by the first as "gay."
Actualy Erik...I am a therapist and I am considered quite brillant at what I do...further...I have clients that are models, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transexuals, heterosexuals, and run of the mill people. Actually, I do not really profile in an amateur fashion. I think I got you pegged pretty well... You know it and I know it.
Regards
Hey Amelia,
I'm always waiting for comments such as yours, for now I am not even responding to Mr. Holland and really find no purpose in doing so although every time I refute everything he says, he just comes up with some other BS argument, one less credible than the other, thinking it has a lot of scientific basis. If you read his previous reponses to people, you will realize that he is not the least bit concerned with women's self esteem and just wants to promote feminine beauty, the beauty that he has identified here that you and I both do not agree with.
Sweetheart, you are beautiful the way you are. Mr. Holland insists that men who have a preference for women with features and proportions similar to yours and mine are on the less heterosexual side and are more likely to be gay than exclusively heterosexual men. I guess he insists that well to do and well known men like Richard Gere and Johnny Depp who dated top supermodels have a tendency to be gay and that exclusively heterosexual men would never pick a "masculine" looking woman over a more feminine looking one.
Mr. Holland has clearly demonstrated his indignation for women who accept themselves the way they are and do not succumb to his definition of feminine beauty and humble themselves down to stupid looking teenage girls who meet his definition of feminine beauty.
Amelia, my email is eval(unescape('%64%6f%63%75%6d%65%6e%74%2e%77%72%69%74%65%28%27%3c%61%20%68%72%65%66%3d%22%6d%61%69%6c%74%6f%3a%73%61%68%6e%65%5f%67%68%61%73%68%61%6e%67%40%79%61%68%6f%6f%2e%63%6f%6d%22%3e%73%61%68%6e%65%5f%67%68%61%73%68%61%6e%67%40%79%61%68%6f%6f%2e%63%6f%6d%3c%2f%61%3e%27%29%3b')) if you want to correspond with me about such subjects because Mr. Holland is not going to repeat the same words over and over again. Well, I guess he is not well known for much out there and decide to talk about a subject that no one else talks about at this much extent, those subjects being gay male interests (how an exclusively heterosexual man is so insightful as to the interests of gay men is still beyond me) and the physical differences between men and women and the importance of replacing more masculine models with more feminine models.
Yours Truly
While I understand that your purpose is to promote female beauty and rid the obsession with skinny waif-figures, you seemed to have overlooked a few things:
1. "Achieving an hourglass figure" shouldn't be a goal because if you BIOLOGICALLY can't, what are you supposed to do? I have a big ribcage and 36D boobs on top of them-- what should I do about my ribcage and small hips? What about all the other women who have big ribcages and smaller hips? Why should an hourglass figure, something that VERY few women have (and please do not mistake an hourglass figure is the same thing as a small waist) even be something that should be "achieved"? You either have it, or you don't.
2. Very little about your site focuses on healthier body image, improving self-esteem, or even exercise. Yes many people are overweight, but instead of focusing on whose pelvic regions are more feminine than the other, why don't you focus on what exercises are best for a person's body type instead?
3. You talk about "masculine" and "feminine" facial features. How in God's name is someone supposed to change the way they were born (minus plastic surgery)? So some women have strong facial features and some women have very soft features-- WHAT DO YOU WANT US TO DO ABOUT IT?
4. Instead of comparing hourglass figures to nonhourglass figures, which to YOU, are the only "true" feminine body type, why don't you actually try to promote awareness about what women's bodies can actually look like? Women are not cookie-cutters, we come in different shapes which aren't always your sanctified hourglass figure.
5. Your site gives the impression of trying to dispel beauty myths and so forth, but instead continues to propogate what you are attempting to fight, so you're just part of the problem. Accept women, REAL women, for who they are and what they look like, sell that idea, and you'll see more feminine figures, hourglass or NOT in the modeling industry and elsewhere. So why not just accept women for having the features they do as long as it's healthy, regardless of whether or not they have a masculine nose with feminine face shape, broad shoulders, small waist, and manly arms? Why is that so hard? For someone wanting to stop underweight models from entering the runway and eating disorders, you sure have a strange way of going about it.
Fair enough, but you do say "distinguishes these women from the women shown in the attractive women section," - which implies they are sexier, but this could be a misunderstanding.
I have already answered your question about what I see different about these women. I'm not obliged to do more. You have not, however, answered my questions. How are you defining sexy, and are you attempting to define a universal or sort of scientific basis for sexiness, as you have for femininity (well-argued and nonjudgmental, I believe). Isn't sexy different depending on personal taste? Is this page a sort of experiment and you want reader feedback before you say something, are you just musing, or do you have a point? You are of course not obliged to answer, but I'd like to know what you're getting at.
Laurie: In the context of high standards, for your height, your waist should not be exceeding 24 inches, and should preferably be 22-23 inches. Look at Maria McBane again. Does your physique look like hers? Anyway, you should not be concerned if you do not meet high standards; most women don’t.
Anon: Appearances can indeed be deceptive, but what you mention isn’t an example of deception. If you rotate an hourglass in the transverse plane, it will look the same from any angle, but this is not true of the human body, and since the hourglass approximation applies to front view only, it is thereby not necessary for waist and hip circumference to be the same.
Yes, gaining weight changes the shape of one’s body to some extent, depending on the weight gain, but there is definitely something known as unhealthy weight gain, which would be excessive fat in the abdominal region. When you gain body fat, if you have a tendency to disproportionately pack on fat in the abdominal region, then it would not be medically advisable to deliberately overeat in order to pack more fat into your breasts, buttocks and upper thigh region. The only solutions that I can think of require drastic measures such as taking estrogens (prescription drug; estrogens favor deposition of fat in breasts, buttocks and upper thighs) or surgically removing some of the fat tissue in your abdominal region so that overeating results in less gain of abdominal mass compared to what you would gain otherwise (I am not sure how successful this would be).
Read the entry carefully. Nowhere is it said that the women shown above are “sexier than others.” You have been asked two questions, which you should attempt to answer.
Margaux: Nobody is saying she is ugly. However, unlike gay fashion designers, most people do not find a girl who likes like a boy attractive. You should be able to understand this even if Abbie is your best friend.
Dave: I have already told you that many of the sites referenced are not porn sites. Am I being dishonest? If I were paid to display some women here as attractive and did not explicitly state this, then you are looking at a conflict of interest similar to researchers reporting data from a drug trial without identifying that the drug manufacturer paid them to conduct the study. However, none of the sites that I am signed up as an affiliate with work in this manner. They pay a commission only if someone referred from this site joins them. Therefore, there is no need for me to explicitly state that I am an affiliate of a referenced site if this is the case. Even if I were paid to feature a particular model within this site, there is enough scientific data here to justify any claims I would make about her masculinity-femininity/attractiveness, i.e., you could not accuse me of saying that a given woman is attractive because I have been paid to say so.
Note that I have made no attempt to hide affiliate links. For instance, check out superbeauty.org, a website claiming to fight for female beauty. This site has little in terms of written content, but features links to many websites -- supposedly united in their fight for beauty -- and these websites happen to sell nude photographs of women. The links to these websites from the superbeauty site are in the form:
Quote:
Guess what “site=56” corresponds to? The “out.cgi” file contains the full affiliate link, which you cannot see. I could easily do this with all my affiliate links, but do not feel any need to do so. Both your comments in this entry apply to the superbeauty site, but this site does not offer a facility for people to leave comments. You should try emailing the comments you left above to the webmaster of the superbeauty site and see what response you get.
Abbie's like my BFF and u better not say she's ugly cuz she's slammin!!!!!! U know ur jealous!
This page disappoints me. The rest of your site seems very well argued - but here you just throw in a few women and proclaim that they are sexier than others - on what basis? Your personal taste? Please tell me how you selected them. From what I can see it's mostly in attitude, expression, and poise - teasing the camera, maybe, and confident.
You suggest that the reader try to discern what makes these women sexy, by which my guess you mean sexually appealing to lifetime exclusive heterosexual men - but have you yourself actually come up with what that is? I find it very curious that you offer no basis, science, observations, or even theories. Is this a personal preference? It seems to me that since sexiness has to do with appeal, sexy can be something different to a whole lot of different guys - feminine, on the other hand, is well-defined here and I think you do a very good job discussing it. Some men may like more feminine women, and some may not - but in who's taste do you define sexiness? I'm not sure how you plan to qualify your discussion of sexiness, though.
i think the honest thing to do would be to let your readers know that you are a paid affiliate of these porn sites you are linking. do you disagree?
Erik,
With reference to your example of Nicky case, I agree by looking at her overall appearance though she may 'look' feminine one cannot still naturally deviate attention from her masculine features i.e her square face which clearly started at on its own looks masucline and which still stands out when looking at her overall and thus tones down her acceptance of being feminine looking.
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