Simpler Times
DougS
Florida
Bookguy recently said something in another thread that triggered this topic. I'll be danged if I can find which thread it was in now, but he was talking about how a former girlfriend of his was perfect in every way, except that she had a big butt that he couldn't get past (well, not litterally - surely it wasn't THAT big).
Anyhow, it made me think about how much I sometimes wish that I'd lived back in the pre-TV, pre-sex-crazed media hyped world.
In my opinion, due to all of the sexual images that we are exposed to these days; images of the ideal girl, etc., we have become a shallower generation. A generation that influences our attactions to the opposite sex.
Physical beauty is so much more important now than a hundred years ago. A hundred years ago, we wouldn't be seeing pics of the hottest women in the world, we'd only know about those women that lived in very close proximity. Ignorance is bliss, right? We'd be more inclined to lust after girls that are no better than a "3" or "4" in todays eyes, but might've been a "10" back then, simply because we didn't know that prettier and hotter women existed elsewhere.
We'd all be happy with our SOs, and wouldn't be looking for younger, hotter women to play with.
Anyhow, it made me think about how much I sometimes wish that I'd lived back in the pre-TV, pre-sex-crazed media hyped world.
In my opinion, due to all of the sexual images that we are exposed to these days; images of the ideal girl, etc., we have become a shallower generation. A generation that influences our attactions to the opposite sex.
Physical beauty is so much more important now than a hundred years ago. A hundred years ago, we wouldn't be seeing pics of the hottest women in the world, we'd only know about those women that lived in very close proximity. Ignorance is bliss, right? We'd be more inclined to lust after girls that are no better than a "3" or "4" in todays eyes, but might've been a "10" back then, simply because we didn't know that prettier and hotter women existed elsewhere.
We'd all be happy with our SOs, and wouldn't be looking for younger, hotter women to play with.
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22 comments
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?
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. :)
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.
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?
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.
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'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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.