Simpler Times

DandyDan: what about my interest in young-looking female bodies? That's not perpetrated by the television, is it?

I do agree, there's something to the idea of getting away from popular culture for a while. You start to realize that your definitions of what passes for "sexy" or "desirable" are modified by what you see on TV and in the movies and magazines. For me, for a while there, I couldn't get horny at all for a woman who wasn't the reality-porn tattooed tramy crack-ho ideal. When it got that bad, I did some therapy and got out of the house more. Har! :)

But there's also a set of preferences which, I'm convinced, aren't going to change no matter how much or how little popular culture or porn I consume. Isn't it the case, that somewhere in there, we just CAN'T find a woman to be sexy unless she has certain physical characteristics? Or, is it actually possible, that true love will conquer all, including abhorrence for a saggy tit?

Dan: Plus, you know that's the way Henreitta would want it.

Or you can just turn off the TV and avoid it all and just make up your own mind. I know I loved all my lovers and just because a couple of them didn't conform to modern society's ideal of beauty doesn't take away from the fact I loved them and enjoyed their time immensely.

Another problem (to add to FONDL's point, that we try to combine lover and wife) is that we pair-bond later in life. North American "typical middle class" people tend to get married at about 28 or 30 years old, in a couple in which the female is almost as sexually experienced as the male, and in which both partners are roughly the same age.

But that doesn't match biology. Males are sexy at 60, females are sexy at 16. Procreation works fine at those ages. And so forth. Further, a guy who has to wait from 13 or 14 to 28 to get "regular" sex, is a VERY ANNOYED and frustrated guy. We have wars, in order to alleviate his otherwise deadly sperm build-up, I think. :)

Helen of Troy: Probably no better than a 6 with saggy boobs and cottage cheese thighs, but who knew any better?

I've always thought that life would be a lot simpler if the first girl you ever were crazy over shared your feelings and you spent the rest of your lives together and were able to skip all the dating bullshit. Although that might get pretty boring eventually.

I think maybe one of our problems is that we're perhaps the first society in the history of the plant that has tried to combine the roles of wife and lover into the same woman. For some people that clearly hasn't worked out very well. Maybe times were simpler when those were two different people, when people married for social status and screwed for love. Except I can see Valentine's Day getting pretty complicated.

I dunno. I think the ancient Greeks and Romans had ample access to "non-village Venus" style women. The beauties of the day were paraded about especially in urban centers, the sculptors of statues made idealized women that were very lifelike, and (here's the one I REALLY wonder about) EVERYONE knew that late-adolescent girls, up to their mid-twenties, were hotter than senior citizen crones. Right?

So, to some extent maybe the modern mass-media phenomenon has made it more difficult for us horny males to "do without" access to perfect women. But, to another extent, isn't it possible that the amount of unfulfilled fantasies can always simply expand to fill the void left by the imagination right where reality leaves off? Maybe we're better off today than ever before, and much less shallow, because we actually make long-term marriages happen DESPITE the fact that we know what a hot young thang looks like naked.

I'm just playing devil's advocate there. I do experience a LOT of occasions when I kind of feel like life would be a lot easier if only I were blind. I'd be able to sidle up to a girl who was available and with whom I might have a "legitimate" interest in (something about our characters, common interests, backgrounds, educations, etc.), rather than having to navigate all the typical crap:

I want her because she looks hot, so she deliberately prevents me from getting her because she knows I only want her because she looks hot, so she goes out of her way to look hot so that she can attract me so that I can approach her because she look shot so she can shoot me down because she knows I'm shallow so that she can get real love but never actually deliberately look less than hot, so meanwhile I have to date girls I don't think look hot because that's somehow "real" instead, because they're the "smart" or "friendly" ones (until you find out that ugly girls are just as bitchy, often more so, than hot girls), and then I think I'm shallow for wanting someone who looks hotter, and she shoots me down because even though we WOULD HAVE been a perfect match for one another, she ALSO looks hot and therefore shoots everyone down, and ...

blah blah fucking blah ...

Wouldn't it be nice to bypass all that crap some day?

DougS, my mistake, I got your point the first time and meant to say "more" and typed "less."

I can't speak for 100 years ago but 40 years ago Joe Hick probably subscribed to Playboy Magazine, I know I did. And before that, in case you didn't know, pin-up calendars were big during WWII and female movie stars were big business as early as the 1920s, and their photos appeared regularly in magazines. So I think guys had plenty of images to compare their GFs to, they just weren't bombarded by it every day like we are now.

I don't know that those earlier times were simpler, just different. Having 1 chance in 3 or so that your kid will die before the age of 5, as was the case 100 years ago, doesn't sound simple to me.

I guess I'm just from the wrong generation...

We should all be glad we live in these simpler times, as our descendants will look back upon them once everyone has their own virtual orgasmabot to sate their appetite during Libido Breaktime on the Galactic Homeland Productivity Network.

Fondl: I'm actually saying that beauty is MORE important now, than what it was before there was mass media showing us how much beauty was really available. And really I'm not saying that guys didn't pursue the girls they thought were the prettiest. What I was trying to say is that back then, pre-media blitz, guys didn't know what was available, so Joe Hick, living in Podunk, USA, thought that Henrietta Homemaker was THE most beautiful girl in the world, but that's only because his would was so much smaller then. Now, Joe Hick sees Sally Sexpot on TV and she becomes his ideal girl, and Henrietta no longer turns his head. She no longer turns him on, because now he wants Sally and anyone less pretty will not do.

So, getting back to Simpler Times, if we were living 100 years ago, we'd be dating our Henrietta's and would be blissfully happy, because we'd think there were none prettier. Even if Sally Sexpot lived three villages over, he didn't know about her, and hadn't seen how beautiful she is.

I agree that today's definition of female beauty is a lot slimmer and fitter than it used to be. But I don't agee that physical beauty means a whole lot less today. Maybe a little but not a lot. I wasn't around a hundred years ago but 50 years ago guys still chased the best looking girls. And I still think Marilyn Monroe was the best looking woman of my lifetime.

As the say, once they've seen Paris...er, make that once *we've* seen Paris how do you keep 'em down?

I'm aware that my standards for an atrractive body have become ridiculously more exacting since going to strip clubs. When I see sex symbols of the past in movies, their asses are so HUGE! Marilyn Monroe from the neck down would get booed off the stage today!

I think there are SOME attractions that no matter what visual stimulous you are subjected to, such as my fetish for long, silky hair... although, THAT was a direct result of sitting behind the DeMeester twins in kindergarten, and playing with their long hair... so, had I been born 100 years prior, and had been home schooled, I probably wouldn't even have that obsession.

But, I still contend, if I wasn't watching TV and seeing all of the young hot girls, and didn't see magazines with the young hot girls, etc., my older attractive wife (Henrietta Homemaker doing the laundry on the washboard) would be more than I neded. BUT, now that I see all of that young, sexy, hot stuff out there, the seed in planted (no pun) in my mind and THAT is what I crave...

Further, if I was out working the fields all day and went into town to see the handful of girls in the villiage 100 years ago, the known pool of girls to select from - even though they'd be "hot" in my eyes, because they are all that I would be able to see, compared to what I can see today, in the media, they would probably rate a 3, at best. I'm not sure if I'm making any sense here, but in my mind, it seems clear. Go back 100 years in time, and the 2's and 3's of today, would appear as a 10 in the eyes of that time.

Doug: the village-venus thing, where males find the most attractive girl they've ever seen, as the "ideal" most attractive, seems to be just about exactly your theory. I've heard it a lot, from the Evo-Bio-Psych people.

Thing is, although there's SOMETHING to it, I disagree with most of it. One example: Ancient Greeks never saw a woman who looked like the Aphrodite they created in statues, but they could still imagine such a Goddess and make her to their own standards. Another example: manga / hentai chicks are designed to be unrealistic (those freaky giant eyes, impossibly large tits coupled with unreasonably skinny long thin thighs) but they're still a turn-on to me.

I actually go to the oppositie extreme, with my grand over-arching theory of beauty. I think we look at things and seek flaws in them. If the non-flawed parts overwhelm us with SEXUAL desire, then we can overlook the non-sexual, or flawed, or both, remainder. That idea spells both hope -- a hot body on an otherwise ugly oldster can still yield an erection! -- and dismay -- an otherwise hot girlfriend can always have a bad day.

Doug: I don't think the impact of modern media is quite what you think. People by and large still judge attractiveness relative to their other "wet world" acquaintances, not to images from TV and magazines. At any high school in the country, there are a few girls who all the boys drool over and vice versa. They don't get overlooked for not measuring up to teen idols on TV. People you actually meet in person mean a million times more than any photogenic model in a magazine. Well, unless you're mentally ill.

What I think has changed is the type of beauty most of us agree on. We all learn what to look for from the same pop culture. People have always admired and imitated archetypes of beauty, since long before photography or mass media existed. Human imagination is more powerful and complex (even in so-called simpler times) than you seem to credit it. It's just that the standards now are so uniform and the images are so detailed and explicit that we agree about more, including features that nobody even considered 100 years ago. Joe Hick didn't give a hoot whether Henrietta had a flat stomach or a shaved pussy. Today, a lot of guys consider both a must.

Joe Hick had it easy. :)

Seriously, great point about the shaved pussy. (I do quibble on the flat stomach thing. Some types of physical fitness are sometimes visually appealing "automatically," regardless of cultural preferences at the time.) I wonder what it would have been like to have lived in an age when beauty ideals were more readily "attainable" for women -- and therefore, for the men who were humping them.

Nowadays, only about 5% of a given gene pool can actually measure up to what is supposedly "required" as bare-minimum attractiveness. If the standards were different -- say, to prefer women who are neither underweight or overweight, rather than merely one extreme on that continuum -- then a larger number of females would "automatically qualify" as beautiful. Or, at least, as desirable ENOUGH. There would likely still be the same strange percentage of beauty-obsessed women seeking excess degrees of "perfection," to the detriment of their charcter and all other areas of their lives, sure; but mostly, the change would have one startling effect.

Beauty would be less important. A "hot enough" woman could get a man while also leading a normal life, a man could get a "satisfying enough" woman without sacrificing years of his life to improve his eventual earning potential, etc. And we'd actually be free to judge on the basis of something OTHER than the unattainable beauty ideal.

I'd love to have CHOICE. To look at six girls, say, "Nah, number six isn't appealing to me. But among the other five, any one will get me horny. So, I'm going to pick which one or two of them seem most likely to LIKE me, most likely that I'll LIKE and respect her, etc." And even the ugly one might likely be attractive to another male.

But we don't have that system. Instead, we have, "Nah, she's butt ugly. So is she. So is she. Her too. They're all butt ugly. Gee, I WISH I could find a nice girl, but I don't have that luxury. In order to help mister happy to get his cookie, I have to DO WITHOUT all that airy-fairy stuff about character and compatibility, because attractive-enough women are SO RARE that I almost never land one AT ALL. I'm not going to ruin my chances for having a successful bout of sex merely for something as pointless as ... emotions. I'm too busy trying to weed through all the morbidly obese or butt ugly ones out there to waste choices on something like character or meaningfulness."

Wish it weren't like that. But I didn't build the American obesity triangle, I just got born into it.

Book guy-

You ask: Isn't it the case, that somewhere in there, we just CAN'T find a woman to be sexy unless she has certain physical characteristics?

I agree, but what I find sexy isn't always what you find sexy. There isn't a universal sexiness that all men agree with. Some men only like blondes. Some only like brunettes. Some like girls with big tits and some don't.

On the other hand, no one has ever encountered the perfect girl for them, so you just have to play with the cards you are dealt.

Yes. There are a few points, though.

First, if nobody has ever encountered a girl he considers "perfect" (for himself; or, for everybody; different issue) then, isn't it the case that we all can find flaws any time anywhere? In other words, as I've just said in my previous post, we actually look for IMperfections in the hopes of being overwhelmed by something OTHER than perfection. To me, that's a better way of looking at what "the apprehension of beauty" is to a human, especially a heterosexual male appreciating a female.

Second, although I agree that there are different girls for every guy, so you can't define a universal perfection, I'd also point out that many men would generally agree on an universal UNattractiveness. There are PLENTY of women out there who are attractive to NOBODY. (In fact, North America seems to be maximizing our percentages in that department!) This implies, again, that although there may not be a universal standard for "perfect beauty," there is nevertheless a universal standard for "ugliness" and, therefore, beauty is not so much a quest for perfection, as a quest for lack of imperfection and in the meanwhile a quest for something ELSE desirable.

Finally, I'd also say, there ARE some universals. Health, youthful vigor, symmetry, fecundity, signs of cleanliness and happiness, signs of competence at certain tasks, certain female body-parts that are readily distinguished from the male counterparts ... all these things are "hard wired" into males. Though the criteria allow for blonde or brunette, they don't allow for hairy beer-bellies, bristly mustaches, or three eyeballs and gaping sores.

Book Guy: I mentioned a flat stomach and shaved pussy just as examples of criteria that wouldn't even occur to anybody back then. Sure, an Edwardian chap might appreciate his wife's fit body once he got her naked, but while cruising for a lass, he couldn't get more than a general idea of the figure underneath her corset and all her petticoats. And the point is, he probably wouldn't know enough to be disappointed if he found that her stomach wasn't so flat.

Yeah, agreed on that much. But if you go back farther than the Edwardian era, you might find we have a lot more in common with the apes than with any given cultural nexus.

Yes, I imagine those were simpler times. Not sure If I'd want to go back that far. Too much shaving. For me and my SO.