From: Kenneth Van Oost (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Sun 29 May 2005 - 19:08:57 GMT
----- Original Message -----
From: Scott Chase <osteopilus@yahoo.com>
> It would be interesting to do some cross cultural
> comparisons for body ideal norms and if they've
> changed over the years. It seems that Brazil used to
> have a tendency towards a "guitar-shaped" figure
> (smaller breasts, bigger butt) ["Bodies a la carte:
> passionate for pulchritude, Latin American women are
> reshaping their form through plastic surgery", _Time
> International_, 7-9-01, v 158, p 26+], but this has
> shifted to the Baywatch "hourglass". Plastic surgery
> seems to be an option to reduce or augment. I wonder
> how plastic surgery trends have gone in Brazil between
> breast reduction surgery and breast augmentation
> surgery over the past 5-10 years.
<< Like I said in my post to Bill there is more to it than just
changed ideas about ever changing body shapes !
It is a two way circus, 1_ what men want/ desire is expressed
in how women want to look like and 2_ most women end up like
Kirstie Alley and are sick about it, moreover they are getting
bombarded with the way how men want them all the time.
But the question must be asked if not all what women are so
ashamed about; sensitive over; feel repulsed about and what
in many ways is fed by an enormious industry isn 't somehow
generated by what men want_ by how men see women !
Beauty equals within our culture ' property ', you can gain it by
adding a new set of clothes, you can loose it by aging.
Women in particular feel victimized if they pass 50, or loose
out their natural beauty by giving birth.
( If men consider to get a nosejob the question may be asked
not for why they want it but for whom, and that is a complete
different pack of dice...)
All of the above can be avoided if we would stand more openly
for the subjective side of the argument. Beauty is more or less
a question of taste, an element that belongs to the point of view
of the beholder, instead of being a characteristic that can and IS
collectively (be) measured / agreed upon.
It is like Fisher argued a ' runaway sexual selection " whereby the
allmost mythical objectiviness of the woman must logical be
followed by an even more desperate try- out of the men to proove
they were right all along.
How hard women ever will try to hide what is naturally theirs, how
ever more hard will men penetrate the female body with their horny
looks. You can try to hide you 're breasts and waitng for the judge-
ment being made. No judgement is however harder to bare than one
you can 't do anything about_ breasts belong naturally to women but
being judged by everybody and everthing else that they are too small
or too big or whatever is looking for trouble.
The paradox is however that mens objectivity ( their inner self) makes
and wants to make ' objects ' of women.
Our modern objectified society works in such ways that women are
aware of this, wants to cope with the increasing demand to cope
with the new reached idealizations that they loose out in the proces
their own subjectivity. Not only make men objects of women they
themselves become objects of their own. They become for ever more
horny containers full of desire for something that will never come or
can 't be reached.
Regards,
Kenneth
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