Nicole: Eleanor’s body is in the normal to feminine range.
Sandy: Regular exercise was uncommon in the 1950s, and a number of glamour models in Playboy magazine and elsewhere had poor muscle tone, but some of them had good muscle tone even though they were not slender -- e.g., Audrey Daston (Playmate, March 1959).
Please do not use “anon.” I already mentioned body mass index (BMI). A 5-foot-5 woman with 40-inch hips is unlikely to have a BMI in the 20-21 range. Within the aforementioned BMI range and for a given waist-hip differential, your hips could vary within a couple of inches and you would look equally good or equally bad depending on your overall looks. My personal preferences are not in terms of measurements but in terms of what appeals to the eye.
Andy: If I had to pick the best looking among a group of women, I would base the choice on my personal preferences, just as others would, and there would obviously be disagreement between the raters, i.e., individual differences in personal preferences do matter, but most people will rate the women similarly, and based on studies reporting the central tendencies of the preferences of the public, it would not be difficult to describe why a particular woman in a group of feminine women will be considered most attractive by most people.
Alina: If you find Karolina’s looks compelling, you are among a minority of humans. Most people do not expect to see masculine features in a beautiful woman nor would your comment about masculine features accentuating the feminine elements of appearance make any sense to most. Among past artists, DaVinci was a bisexual, Michelangelo was a homosexual and it is a safe bet that a number of the Greek artists who sculpted androgynous women were either homosexual or bisexual men or were conforming to a trend set up by a great homosexual/bisexual male sculptor.
erik sometimes one single feature alone can diminish the whole attrcativeness of a woman i.e a very strong dislike for a particular feature i.e a square jaw, or a broad nose or whatever feature sometimes no matter how overall feminine a woman may look that one single feature alone may diminish her whole attractiveness to such an extent that despite how overall feminine she may look she may still look ugly
Michelle: My assumption, and a reasonable one at that, is that a thin and masculinized woman is unlikely to have naturally large breasts, not that it is impossible for her to have naturally large breasts. You have said that you have a high WHR, an unfeminine backside and a 32E bust. This is certainly easily possible. But, are you thin as in this picture of Heidi Klum? There is photographic evidence, cited above, that Heidi Klum got breast implants at some point.
If a woman has an exceptional hourglass figure according to your statistics and one which has a slightly less hourglass figure it doesnt make the one with the more exceptional hourglass figure more so to speak beautifull than the one with the less hourglass figure the one with the exceptional hourglass figure might look more aesthetically pleasing than the one with the less hourglass figure but the one with the less hourglass figure might be more sexually appealing than the one with the exceptional hourglass figure so what is your opinion in relation to your argument that life time hetrosexual men prefer feminine looking women, thats not saying the less hourglas figure woman is less feminine than the more hourglass figure woman but in terms of secxual appeal.
erik i personally feel a woman with a larger nose but a more feminine face shape for example an oval is likely to look way more attractive than a woman who has a square face but with a smaller nose and feminine features because i think the facial shape is noticed more overall than the facial features but it is the facial features where i feel lies the attractive element.
I agree with a number of the assertions on your site, particularly your comments on the model Gisele Bundchen whose face I've always found hideous by any standards.
I was wondering if you agreed with me that the British model Jodie Marsh, while having an unimpressive face, has a gorgeous, utterly feminine body? Her body is all-natural by the way.
Erik,
what if you have two or say even a group of "overall feminine looking" women, on what basis do you decided which one is the most attraactive over the other given that they are overall feminine, does it not beconme a subjective decision as in your choice is determined by simply by what you feel when you "look" at them? and therefore isnt beauty on some level simply subjective?
Thank you for explaining what is so very compelling about Karolina (and completely lacking in the feminine examples you cite). I guess that masculine features in a beautiful woman only accentuate what is feminine about her appearance. Karolina's look was once dubbed as "jolie-laide" in a Vogue article. This article reminded of that wonderful androgyny that you get in archaic and later Greek sculpture, Leonardo, etc.
It is very interesting to see photos of Playboy Playmates from the 50's and 60's. One comment I have that is more positive for our era is that while playmates have become more masculinized, less curvaceous, etc. etc., they have overall become more fit and toned looking -- a deparature from their counterparts of old. To me at least, a toned, fit body is part of the beauty package in today's world.
Even my 80+ year old mother noted recently that glamour girls of the 40's and 50's had great legs but often soft and even flabby arms and abdominal areas. Now, the emphasis has switched to sleek toned muscles, and while I realize overly built muscles are not necessarily attractive and masculine even, certainly an out-of-shape appearance is similarly unattractive. Perhaps "some" of the trend towards increased thinness was as a result on this emphasis on physical fitness...although obviously not all.
On another note, I was very intrigued with your blog entry regarding curvaceousness, especially in terms of how important height is to the equation. My own stats put me at about 4.4 because I am short, while a 5'10" model with my hip/bust measurements and a waist size 1" smaller even comes out at 4.1 -- quite a distinct difference. I had more thought of curvaceous in terms of waist and hip ratios, not factoring in the visual impact of height.
This comment isn't relating specifically to this entry but to your general assumption that if a woman is thin with a masculine body and large breasts, then they must be implants. I have a high waist-to-hip ratio and an 'unfeminine backside' as you put it, but I wear a size 32E. It's completely possible and natural, if kind of unforunate.
sorry i meant that in relative terms. an attractive 5'5 woman surely cant have 40 inch hips, this would look rather disproportionate, even with an hourglass shape. so what measurement would be ideal for such a height? i suppose taste differs. what would be you ideal if i may ask?
After reading the entry, you shouldn’t be asking for ideal waist-hip measurements since the waist or hip measurements could vary by a couple of inches and you would still overall look as good or as bad depending on the rest of you, i.e., how it all fits together. If you have a body mass index between 20-21 and the difference between your waist and hip circumferences is 10 inches or greater, you would look great, but depending on the rest of your looks, you may still look great even if this difference is 8 inches.
Please use a pseudonym other than “anon.” Eleanor Bradley isn’t the best feminine example from the 1950s, but others like Sally Todd and Ellen Stratton had looks that were good examples of femininity. Go through this site and you will find numerous illustrations of feminine looks.
hello eric i was just looking at the playboy playmates from the yesteryears. is it possible to put in eleanor bradley from 1959? she seems to have a very curvy body as do many of the other playmates fo that era. her (and some others) although have somewhat masculine faces. however it would be interesting to see what an ideal feminine physique would be. i am a female and im not using you to post up pictures for any gratification (as being able to view those pictures on playboy require one to be a member). im just curious to see what really makes a feminine body.
Kimberly: If there is one thing you learn from this site, you need to revise your notion of profoundly socialized ideals altering entire perceptual processes. For instance, notwithstanding the heavy promotion of masculinized women by the fashion industry, controlled laboratory studies have shown people to strongly and overwhelmingly prefer above average femininity in the looks of women. Similarly, it is unlikely that the situation in China was as drastic as you describe it. Many people would have found foot binding unpalatable, but were not able to do anything about this. Almost certainly analogously, for a long time many people have been railing against the skinniness of high-fashion models and a few voices also pointing out their masculinization, but what have these individuals achieved? Hardly anything.
The masculinization of models or women in the limelight does not represent misogyny but the direct or indirect aesthetic preferences of male homosexual fashion designers, and in the case of Playboy magazine the aesthetic preferences of a bisexual man with a preference for masculinized women. Quit using the term “culturally sanctioned debasement of femininity.” Most humans have not sanctioned it.
Most people prefer slimness, not skinniness, and the emphasis on the latter among high-fashion models is explained by the necessity of making them approximate the looks of boys in their early adolescence, not the issue of the camera adding weight, which would be a viable possibility if high-fashion models looked skinny in real life but normal on camera, but these models look skinny or camera.
Once again, controlling for ancestry, whereas taller women will be less feminine on average, it is an easy matter to come across tall and feminine women, and I have shown plenty within this site. Within an ethnic group, most of the variation in height is within the sexes and only a minority between them. Therefore, a woman could be tall without it resulting from masculinization. The circumstances leading to the increased prevalence of masculinized women among models have been extensively addressed, and this entry is part of this discussion; start here for a summary.
I am not promoting pornography. Please read the reason for the heavy reliance on nude models, the vast majority of whom in the attractive women section are not porn stars. Speaking of female porn stars catering to heterosexual men, there is no irony in their being disproportionately masculinized since women inclined toward promiscuity tend to be more masculine, on average.
I have not espoused any male supremacist viewpoints here and hence do not accuse me of even a little bit of sexism. You accuse me of misogyny yet use the term “masculinized amazonian beasts” to describe masculinized women models! The absence of non-white women in the attractive women section has nothing to do with racism, but with reasons explained on the FAQ page.
Kimberly: I surely haven’t reasoned that “whatever kids find attractive is thus more reliable, therefore justifying our mutual disdain for virilized women.” The point is to show how the typical high-fashion model quickly goes from unattractive to “attractive.” A side point is that on several counts children harbor a narrower range of aesthetic preferences than adults, which cannot be attributed to adults.
Your examples focus on pigmentation, whereas the quotes are mostly talking about body shape and size, i.e., multiple features and how they come together. If Karen Elson was a feminine and attractive girl, she would either not have been picked on for her pigmentation or teased very little. I know that even the Irish and Scottish are not exactly gung-ho about red hair, but Elson’s quote doesn’t mention red hair. Additionally, ethnicity is not a factor since these women have been picked on by their co-ethnics.
When and where were blue eyes and Nordic coloring seen as markers of stupidity? Also, if by Nordic coloring you mean skin color, most Nordics have normal skin and only a minority have pale English skin.
You should not see the use of high-fashion models that look like prepubescent girls or adolescent boys as a form of misogyny. The gay fashion designers responsible are simply selecting models based on their aesthetic preferences.
Kimberly: Do not label my arguments as “racist” or accuse me of harboring “sickening agendas” without justifying these serious charges. This site is not “dehumanizing” women and I don’t see how I am disappointing women upset at not matching men with respect to wealth and power.
Frank: I am aware of the limitations of the early physical anthropology literature and make a point to cite current papers. All papers I cited in reference to average facial differences between East Asians and Europeans in my reply to Sarah have been published between 2000 and 2005, are in agreement with each other and consistent with common observation.
Regarding the Jomon and Ainu, you have cited data on Y and mtDNA, and mentioned linguistics. The DNA data is limited and affected by admixture. The linguistic data is of little relevance as can be seen from the example of white Finns speaking an Asiatic language in spite of having very little Asiatic genetic contribution. The paper that I cited, published in 2001, analyzed skull samples ranging from prehistory to present and used 21 neutral inter-landmark distances to infer population affinities. It is very clear that the prehistoric Jomon and early Ainus are closer to Europeans than to the current core population of East Asia. Your objections involve minor superficial features such as body hair and frequency of epicanthal folds and on this basis you mention Australian aborigines having as many “European” features as the Ainu. Population affinities need to be assessed by analyzing multiple markers rather than a handful of features. Use the 21 neutral inter-landmark distances as in the study above and there is no way Australian aborigines will end up anywhere close to Europeans.
What do you mean by a relatively recent appearance of East Asian features? There is nothing “recent” about flattened nasal bones, general mid-facial flattening, larger faces, larger teeth, etc. You mention epicanthal folds, but this is of little relevance to the “relatively recent” question unless its genetics is known and DNA suitable for analysis can be extracted from prehistoric remains. Yes, Cavalli-Sforza did show Northeast Asians to be closer to Europeans than Southeast Asians, but he only analyzed 150 genes, and the markers were not neutral; his genetic tree was also not very stable. The use of neutral and much more numerous markers reveal that the mainland Northeast Asian and mainland Southeast Asian populations cluster together.
I don’t see the point of your bringing Peter Frost into the picture. The unusual MC1R diversity corresponding to hair color diversity among Europeans has no analog among East Asians. Regarding “purity,” I have not mentioned this word or implied anything along these lines.
Holy god, you people are all fucking crazy. Sarah, all the Asian girls you displayed have clearly had extensive plastic surgery. I do not say this to support Erik's creepy racist argument, but because Asian societies have very dehumanizing cultural constructs that have most recently manifested themselves in the prevailing cultural notions of beauty ideals (or even beauty necessities, these days) of co-opting a handful of very particular features specific to caucasian people. They impose a great deal of misogyny and racism on themselves, for whatever reason.
You are all crazy. Erik, I loved this site at first because there are so few people who can see beyond their cultural conditioning that idealizes masculinized models, but it's become clear to me that you have so many other sickening agendas that even this site has become a disappointment. Go hang out with your real comrades--those majorityrights and GNXP psychos.
You are especially disappointing to women who are tired of being dehumanized by all the men still in control of the majority of wealth, as well as influential spheres like politics, media, and academia.
Cameron Diaz has stated in interviews that in high school, she was taunted with the nickname "Skeletor!"
As for Elson being picked on for her paleness, having a mutation for rare coloring will generally make those kids the target of insulting comments (in this regard, children aren't too different from chickens that will peck to death a differently colored bird). However, I don't think this phenomenon effectively supports your reasoning that whatever kids find attractive is thus more reliable, therefore justifying our mutual disdain for virilized women. A lot of what they find acceptable has to do with their limited contact with certain races. I'm willing to bet that as a child Angelina Jolie would have been dubbed "Fish Lips" had she gone to my elementary school, but not in a more racially mixed primary school.
Even though Elson's coloring is more common in the UK, it actually carries much worse social implications than in the US. Being red-headed is seen very negatively there. So even very young children are susceptible to socialized beliefs about racial/phenotypic traits; their reactions aren't necessarily "pure," as you seem to be implying.
Remember, people with blue eyes were once denigrated for being the exception, too. Blue eyes and Nordic coloring were seen as a marker for stupidity.
All that said, the manly-woman preference is absolutely socialized. The ideal of virilized women who look like prepubescent girls in an awkward, unevenly executed growth spurt or gangly teenage boys is disturbing and misogynistic.
What people fail to understand is how profoundly socialized ideals can alter their entire perceptual process. Do you think maimed, disabled, tortured, disfigured women are sexy? You would have if you lived in China not too long ago. The misogynistic ideal back then was for women's feet to be bound (read: broken and crushed, over and over again, for years, beginning in childhood). The new misogynistic ideal is for women to look like men.
Women are afraid to say anything about this (if they even notice it at all!), because they're rightly aware of the overall problem of how defining what is acceptable for women to look like is inherently misogynistic. The problem is that they then overlook this horrific culturally sanctioned debasement of femininity to their own detriment (but to the gain of perhaps 2% of women--virilized ones).
Part of the origin of the problem is the emphasis on thinness, which is better approximated by tall people on TV (as television illusively adds weight). Tall women tend to be virilized, as height is mediated by androgens (Erik has disagreed with me on this, but it's true), so the masculinity-skewed dimorphisms other than height tend to come hand-in-hand--all due to the original desire to merely approximate the average proportion that is distorted on television. How this disgusting trend in misogyny then began to subtley take over as the ideal is subject for debate.
I like what Erik is doing, although I have a problem with some of the misogyny he himself promotes on the site. Promoting pornography in any context is disturbing and degrading to women. Ironically, they themselves are generally more masculinized on average, and also use previously discussed feminizing camera/aesthetic modifications as models do to compensate for this deficit. However, they still provide a striking contrast to the exceptionally masculinized amazonian beasts.
I don't think Erik hates gay men, I think gay men hate women.
If Erik suffers from any ism, it's probably a little bit of sexism but a whole lot of racism. Even as a white woman, I am disturbed by the obvious exclusion of darker-skinned women in the creepy "attractive women" collection.
Thanks, Erik. I think there must be something wrong with my set-up, as there was no notification of exceeding any limit. I tried a number of times before giving up. I realised it wasn't your decision to block my post, which is why I tried the short query.
In the meantime, I have decided not to post my original reply, but, in light of having explored more of your site, to write a more considered reply. However, as I don't have much time to post, and am shortly leaving my office until the middle of next week, I won't do so until then. Suffice to say for now that two posts might be needed, as a number of different issues came up.
Whether or not I have misunderstood you, you have certainly misunderstood the import of some of my post. I don't blame you for this, as my post was probably not clear enough.
I'll just for now try to clear up some points which are not central to the main thrust of this site and this thread.
I am fully aware that blood groups, especially when individuals are concerned, are not a good indicator of ethnicity! (Although it is surprising how many apparently educated people still think they are). My point was simply to point out how unreliable much of the published literature in the field of Physical Anthropology has been until quite recently, and to some extent still is. I had my blood tested in the early '70s, and found that I had a Rhesus blood group (C+D-E-) which, according to the leading Human Medical Genetics text book at the time, was non-existent among Chinese. I then find that the source for the text-book assertion was a sample of 500 Cantonese. So, on the basis of a small sample from one Southern Chinese city, the text-book characterized all Chinese!
And I'm afraid such stereotyping was all too common at that time. I could quote other examples of other such "facts" which have subsequently proved to be untrue. While such extreme examples are much rarer today, more restrained examples are still too common. All this has made me quite suspicious of most claims about "ethnic" or "racial" characteristics, unless they have been certified a reasonable amount of times in modern studies by reliable scholars.
An example as to how recent studies in physical anthropology have transformed the understanding of "race" concerns the Ainu you mentioned in your reply.
The characteristics which were cited to link the Ainu with Europeans have either turned out to be mistakes (e.g. the Ainu were and are not blue-eyed), or are to do with what now appears to be purely superficial appearance, e.g. the Ainu have quite heavy body hair growth, and not many instances of the epicanthus eye-fold. In fact on this level the Australian Aborigines have as many "European" characteristics as the Ainu.
The Jomon-Yayoi transition and synthesis to form the modern Japanese nation is actually one of the best examples of the fusion of two different ethnic groups. The whole subject is also a good example as to how pseudo-scientific anthropology has been misused for ethnic - and sometimes frankly racist - purposes.
Furthermore, the relatively recent appearance of so-called "Mongoloid" features in East Asian and Amerindian populations is a puzzle which has, until recently, not been tackled in a truly scientific manner. "Migration" used to be the only answer considered - but from where? It is notable that the highest frequency of the epicanthus occurs in populations such as the Koreans and the Northern Chinese, which are, as Cavalli-Sforza and others have shown, actually in some ways more closely related to Europeans than they are to Southern Chinese and South East Asians, who have a low frequency of "Mongolian" features such as the epicanthus.
"Evolution" seems too often forgotten in all this. There seems to be a reluctance to consider that characteristic polymorphisms which gave rise to the "East Asian" appearance might actually have evolved relatively recently out of a more generalised ancient Eurasian (broadly "Caucasoid") background - perhaps by a process which some, e.g. Peter Frost, have proposed (on the basis of what is as yet very shaky, but plausible, argumentation) for the establishment of polymorphisms with regard to hair and eye colour in parts of Europe.
And that links up to why I put the word "pure" in quotation marks, because in the light of evolution "purity" becomes an elusive quality - in fact usually meaningless. Yet those who get hung-up on making ethnic comparisons e.g. Europeans vs. Asians often unwittingly speak as if "pure" races existed, and any anomalies must be due to race-mixing.
That's enough for now. Next week I'll try to deal with matters more directly relevant to your site.
Nicole: Eleanor’s body is in the normal to feminine range.
Sandy: Regular exercise was uncommon in the 1950s, and a number of glamour models in Playboy magazine and elsewhere had poor muscle tone, but some of them had good muscle tone even though they were not slender -- e.g., Audrey Daston (Playmate, March 1959).
Please do not use “anon.” I already mentioned body mass index (BMI). A 5-foot-5 woman with 40-inch hips is unlikely to have a BMI in the 20-21 range. Within the aforementioned BMI range and for a given waist-hip differential, your hips could vary within a couple of inches and you would look equally good or equally bad depending on your overall looks. My personal preferences are not in terms of measurements but in terms of what appeals to the eye.
Andy: If I had to pick the best looking among a group of women, I would base the choice on my personal preferences, just as others would, and there would obviously be disagreement between the raters, i.e., individual differences in personal preferences do matter, but most people will rate the women similarly, and based on studies reporting the central tendencies of the preferences of the public, it would not be difficult to describe why a particular woman in a group of feminine women will be considered most attractive by most people.
Alina: If you find Karolina’s looks compelling, you are among a minority of humans. Most people do not expect to see masculine features in a beautiful woman nor would your comment about masculine features accentuating the feminine elements of appearance make any sense to most. Among past artists, DaVinci was a bisexual, Michelangelo was a homosexual and it is a safe bet that a number of the Greek artists who sculpted androgynous women were either homosexual or bisexual men or were conforming to a trend set up by a great homosexual/bisexual male sculptor.
erik sometimes one single feature alone can diminish the whole attrcativeness of a woman i.e a very strong dislike for a particular feature i.e a square jaw, or a broad nose or whatever feature sometimes no matter how overall feminine a woman may look that one single feature alone may diminish her whole attractiveness to such an extent that despite how overall feminine she may look she may still look ugly
Michelle: My assumption, and a reasonable one at that, is that a thin and masculinized woman is unlikely to have naturally large breasts, not that it is impossible for her to have naturally large breasts. You have said that you have a high WHR, an unfeminine backside and a 32E bust. This is certainly easily possible. But, are you thin as in this picture of Heidi Klum? There is photographic evidence, cited above, that Heidi Klum got breast implants at some point.
Erik,
If a woman has an exceptional hourglass figure according to your statistics and one which has a slightly less hourglass figure it doesnt make the one with the more exceptional hourglass figure more so to speak beautifull than the one with the less hourglass figure the one with the exceptional hourglass figure might look more aesthetically pleasing than the one with the less hourglass figure but the one with the less hourglass figure might be more sexually appealing than the one with the exceptional hourglass figure so what is your opinion in relation to your argument that life time hetrosexual men prefer feminine looking women, thats not saying the less hourglas figure woman is less feminine than the more hourglass figure woman but in terms of secxual appeal.
erik i personally feel a woman with a larger nose but a more feminine face shape for example an oval is likely to look way more attractive than a woman who has a square face but with a smaller nose and feminine features because i think the facial shape is noticed more overall than the facial features but it is the facial features where i feel lies the attractive element.
Hey,
I agree with a number of the assertions on your site, particularly your comments on the model Gisele Bundchen whose face I've always found hideous by any standards.
I was wondering if you agreed with me that the British model Jodie Marsh, while having an unimpressive face, has a gorgeous, utterly feminine body? Her body is all-natural by the way.
Erik,
what if you have two or say even a group of "overall feminine looking" women, on what basis do you decided which one is the most attraactive over the other given that they are overall feminine, does it not beconme a subjective decision as in your choice is determined by simply by what you feel when you "look" at them? and therefore isnt beauty on some level simply subjective?
Thank you for explaining what is so very compelling about Karolina (and completely lacking in the feminine examples you cite). I guess that masculine features in a beautiful woman only accentuate what is feminine about her appearance. Karolina's look was once dubbed as "jolie-laide" in a Vogue article. This article reminded of that wonderful androgyny that you get in archaic and later Greek sculpture, Leonardo, etc.
Erik:
It is very interesting to see photos of Playboy Playmates from the 50's and 60's. One comment I have that is more positive for our era is that while playmates have become more masculinized, less curvaceous, etc. etc., they have overall become more fit and toned looking -- a deparature from their counterparts of old. To me at least, a toned, fit body is part of the beauty package in today's world.
Even my 80+ year old mother noted recently that glamour girls of the 40's and 50's had great legs but often soft and even flabby arms and abdominal areas. Now, the emphasis has switched to sleek toned muscles, and while I realize overly built muscles are not necessarily attractive and masculine even, certainly an out-of-shape appearance is similarly unattractive. Perhaps "some" of the trend towards increased thinness was as a result on this emphasis on physical fitness...although obviously not all.
On another note, I was very intrigued with your blog entry regarding curvaceousness, especially in terms of how important height is to the equation. My own stats put me at about 4.4 because I am short, while a 5'10" model with my hip/bust measurements and a waist size 1" smaller even comes out at 4.1 -- quite a distinct difference. I had more thought of curvaceous in terms of waist and hip ratios, not factoring in the visual impact of height.
This comment isn't relating specifically to this entry but to your general assumption that if a woman is thin with a masculine body and large breasts, then they must be implants. I have a high waist-to-hip ratio and an 'unfeminine backside' as you put it, but I wear a size 32E. It's completely possible and natural, if kind of unforunate.
sorry i meant that in relative terms. an attractive 5'5 woman surely cant have 40 inch hips, this would look rather disproportionate, even with an hourglass shape. so what measurement would be ideal for such a height? i suppose taste differs. what would be you ideal if i may ask?
does eleanor's body not look feminine to you? disregarding the face of course. im merely asking about physique rather than overall looks.
After reading the entry, you shouldn’t be asking for ideal waist-hip measurements since the waist or hip measurements could vary by a couple of inches and you would still overall look as good or as bad depending on the rest of you, i.e., how it all fits together. If you have a body mass index between 20-21 and the difference between your waist and hip circumferences is 10 inches or greater, you would look great, but depending on the rest of your looks, you may still look great even if this difference is 8 inches.
Please use a pseudonym other than “anon.” Eleanor Bradley isn’t the best feminine example from the 1950s, but others like Sally Todd and Ellen Stratton had looks that were good examples of femininity. Go through this site and you will find numerous illustrations of feminine looks.
Erik,
i am around 5'5 and i was wondering what are the ideal waist and hip measurememnts for this height?
i mean for a feminine physique.
hello eric i was just looking at the playboy playmates from the yesteryears. is it possible to put in eleanor bradley from 1959? she seems to have a very curvy body as do many of the other playmates fo that era. her (and some others) although have somewhat masculine faces. however it would be interesting to see what an ideal feminine physique would be. i am a female and im not using you to post up pictures for any gratification (as being able to view those pictures on playboy require one to be a member). im just curious to see what really makes a feminine body.
thanks
Kimberly: If there is one thing you learn from this site, you need to revise your notion of profoundly socialized ideals altering entire perceptual processes. For instance, notwithstanding the heavy promotion of masculinized women by the fashion industry, controlled laboratory studies have shown people to strongly and overwhelmingly prefer above average femininity in the looks of women. Similarly, it is unlikely that the situation in China was as drastic as you describe it. Many people would have found foot binding unpalatable, but were not able to do anything about this. Almost certainly analogously, for a long time many people have been railing against the skinniness of high-fashion models and a few voices also pointing out their masculinization, but what have these individuals achieved? Hardly anything.
The masculinization of models or women in the limelight does not represent misogyny but the direct or indirect aesthetic preferences of male homosexual fashion designers, and in the case of Playboy magazine the aesthetic preferences of a bisexual man with a preference for masculinized women. Quit using the term “culturally sanctioned debasement of femininity.” Most humans have not sanctioned it.
Most people prefer slimness, not skinniness, and the emphasis on the latter among high-fashion models is explained by the necessity of making them approximate the looks of boys in their early adolescence, not the issue of the camera adding weight, which would be a viable possibility if high-fashion models looked skinny in real life but normal on camera, but these models look skinny or camera.
Once again, controlling for ancestry, whereas taller women will be less feminine on average, it is an easy matter to come across tall and feminine women, and I have shown plenty within this site. Within an ethnic group, most of the variation in height is within the sexes and only a minority between them. Therefore, a woman could be tall without it resulting from masculinization. The circumstances leading to the increased prevalence of masculinized women among models have been extensively addressed, and this entry is part of this discussion; start here for a summary.
I am not promoting pornography. Please read the reason for the heavy reliance on nude models, the vast majority of whom in the attractive women section are not porn stars. Speaking of female porn stars catering to heterosexual men, there is no irony in their being disproportionately masculinized since women inclined toward promiscuity tend to be more masculine, on average.
I have not espoused any male supremacist viewpoints here and hence do not accuse me of even a little bit of sexism. You accuse me of misogyny yet use the term “masculinized amazonian beasts” to describe masculinized women models! The absence of non-white women in the attractive women section has nothing to do with racism, but with reasons explained on the FAQ page.
Kimberly: I surely haven’t reasoned that “whatever kids find attractive is thus more reliable, therefore justifying our mutual disdain for virilized women.” The point is to show how the typical high-fashion model quickly goes from unattractive to “attractive.” A side point is that on several counts children harbor a narrower range of aesthetic preferences than adults, which cannot be attributed to adults.
Your examples focus on pigmentation, whereas the quotes are mostly talking about body shape and size, i.e., multiple features and how they come together. If Karen Elson was a feminine and attractive girl, she would either not have been picked on for her pigmentation or teased very little. I know that even the Irish and Scottish are not exactly gung-ho about red hair, but Elson’s quote doesn’t mention red hair. Additionally, ethnicity is not a factor since these women have been picked on by their co-ethnics.
When and where were blue eyes and Nordic coloring seen as markers of stupidity? Also, if by Nordic coloring you mean skin color, most Nordics have normal skin and only a minority have pale English skin.
You should not see the use of high-fashion models that look like prepubescent girls or adolescent boys as a form of misogyny. The gay fashion designers responsible are simply selecting models based on their aesthetic preferences.
Kimberly: Do not label my arguments as “racist” or accuse me of harboring “sickening agendas” without justifying these serious charges. This site is not “dehumanizing” women and I don’t see how I am disappointing women upset at not matching men with respect to wealth and power.
Frank: I am aware of the limitations of the early physical anthropology literature and make a point to cite current papers. All papers I cited in reference to average facial differences between East Asians and Europeans in my reply to Sarah have been published between 2000 and 2005, are in agreement with each other and consistent with common observation.
Regarding the Jomon and Ainu, you have cited data on Y and mtDNA, and mentioned linguistics. The DNA data is limited and affected by admixture. The linguistic data is of little relevance as can be seen from the example of white Finns speaking an Asiatic language in spite of having very little Asiatic genetic contribution. The paper that I cited, published in 2001, analyzed skull samples ranging from prehistory to present and used 21 neutral inter-landmark distances to infer population affinities. It is very clear that the prehistoric Jomon and early Ainus are closer to Europeans than to the current core population of East Asia. Your objections involve minor superficial features such as body hair and frequency of epicanthal folds and on this basis you mention Australian aborigines having as many “European” features as the Ainu. Population affinities need to be assessed by analyzing multiple markers rather than a handful of features. Use the 21 neutral inter-landmark distances as in the study above and there is no way Australian aborigines will end up anywhere close to Europeans.
What do you mean by a relatively recent appearance of East Asian features? There is nothing “recent” about flattened nasal bones, general mid-facial flattening, larger faces, larger teeth, etc. You mention epicanthal folds, but this is of little relevance to the “relatively recent” question unless its genetics is known and DNA suitable for analysis can be extracted from prehistoric remains. Yes, Cavalli-Sforza did show Northeast Asians to be closer to Europeans than Southeast Asians, but he only analyzed 150 genes, and the markers were not neutral; his genetic tree was also not very stable. The use of neutral and much more numerous markers reveal that the mainland Northeast Asian and mainland Southeast Asian populations cluster together.
I don’t see the point of your bringing Peter Frost into the picture. The unusual MC1R diversity corresponding to hair color diversity among Europeans has no analog among East Asians. Regarding “purity,” I have not mentioned this word or implied anything along these lines.
Holy god, you people are all fucking crazy. Sarah, all the Asian girls you displayed have clearly had extensive plastic surgery. I do not say this to support Erik's creepy racist argument, but because Asian societies have very dehumanizing cultural constructs that have most recently manifested themselves in the prevailing cultural notions of beauty ideals (or even beauty necessities, these days) of co-opting a handful of very particular features specific to caucasian people. They impose a great deal of misogyny and racism on themselves, for whatever reason.
You are all crazy. Erik, I loved this site at first because there are so few people who can see beyond their cultural conditioning that idealizes masculinized models, but it's become clear to me that you have so many other sickening agendas that even this site has become a disappointment. Go hang out with your real comrades--those majorityrights and GNXP psychos.
You are especially disappointing to women who are tired of being dehumanized by all the men still in control of the majority of wealth, as well as influential spheres like politics, media, and academia.
Cameron Diaz has stated in interviews that in high school, she was taunted with the nickname "Skeletor!"
As for Elson being picked on for her paleness, having a mutation for rare coloring will generally make those kids the target of insulting comments (in this regard, children aren't too different from chickens that will peck to death a differently colored bird). However, I don't think this phenomenon effectively supports your reasoning that whatever kids find attractive is thus more reliable, therefore justifying our mutual disdain for virilized women. A lot of what they find acceptable has to do with their limited contact with certain races. I'm willing to bet that as a child Angelina Jolie would have been dubbed "Fish Lips" had she gone to my elementary school, but not in a more racially mixed primary school.
Even though Elson's coloring is more common in the UK, it actually carries much worse social implications than in the US. Being red-headed is seen very negatively there. So even very young children are susceptible to socialized beliefs about racial/phenotypic traits; their reactions aren't necessarily "pure," as you seem to be implying.
Remember, people with blue eyes were once denigrated for being the exception, too. Blue eyes and Nordic coloring were seen as a marker for stupidity.
All that said, the manly-woman preference is absolutely socialized. The ideal of virilized women who look like prepubescent girls in an awkward, unevenly executed growth spurt or gangly teenage boys is disturbing and misogynistic.
What people fail to understand is how profoundly socialized ideals can alter their entire perceptual process. Do you think maimed, disabled, tortured, disfigured women are sexy? You would have if you lived in China not too long ago. The misogynistic ideal back then was for women's feet to be bound (read: broken and crushed, over and over again, for years, beginning in childhood). The new misogynistic ideal is for women to look like men.
Women are afraid to say anything about this (if they even notice it at all!), because they're rightly aware of the overall problem of how defining what is acceptable for women to look like is inherently misogynistic. The problem is that they then overlook this horrific culturally sanctioned debasement of femininity to their own detriment (but to the gain of perhaps 2% of women--virilized ones).
Part of the origin of the problem is the emphasis on thinness, which is better approximated by tall people on TV (as television illusively adds weight). Tall women tend to be virilized, as height is mediated by androgens (Erik has disagreed with me on this, but it's true), so the masculinity-skewed dimorphisms other than height tend to come hand-in-hand--all due to the original desire to merely approximate the average proportion that is distorted on television. How this disgusting trend in misogyny then began to subtley take over as the ideal is subject for debate.
I like what Erik is doing, although I have a problem with some of the misogyny he himself promotes on the site. Promoting pornography in any context is disturbing and degrading to women. Ironically, they themselves are generally more masculinized on average, and also use previously discussed feminizing camera/aesthetic modifications as models do to compensate for this deficit. However, they still provide a striking contrast to the exceptionally masculinized amazonian beasts.
I don't think Erik hates gay men, I think gay men hate women.
If Erik suffers from any ism, it's probably a little bit of sexism but a whole lot of racism. Even as a white woman, I am disturbed by the obvious exclusion of darker-skinned women in the creepy "attractive women" collection.
Thanks, Erik. I think there must be something wrong with my set-up, as there was no notification of exceeding any limit. I tried a number of times before giving up. I realised it wasn't your decision to block my post, which is why I tried the short query.
In the meantime, I have decided not to post my original reply, but, in light of having explored more of your site, to write a more considered reply. However, as I don't have much time to post, and am shortly leaving my office until the middle of next week, I won't do so until then. Suffice to say for now that two posts might be needed, as a number of different issues came up.
Whether or not I have misunderstood you, you have certainly misunderstood the import of some of my post. I don't blame you for this, as my post was probably not clear enough.
I'll just for now try to clear up some points which are not central to the main thrust of this site and this thread.
I am fully aware that blood groups, especially when individuals are concerned, are not a good indicator of ethnicity! (Although it is surprising how many apparently educated people still think they are). My point was simply to point out how unreliable much of the published literature in the field of Physical Anthropology has been until quite recently, and to some extent still is. I had my blood tested in the early '70s, and found that I had a Rhesus blood group (C+D-E-) which, according to the leading Human Medical Genetics text book at the time, was non-existent among Chinese. I then find that the source for the text-book assertion was a sample of 500 Cantonese. So, on the basis of a small sample from one Southern Chinese city, the text-book characterized all Chinese!
And I'm afraid such stereotyping was all too common at that time. I could quote other examples of other such "facts" which have subsequently proved to be untrue. While such extreme examples are much rarer today, more restrained examples are still too common. All this has made me quite suspicious of most claims about "ethnic" or "racial" characteristics, unless they have been certified a reasonable amount of times in modern studies by reliable scholars.
An example as to how recent studies in physical anthropology have transformed the understanding of "race" concerns the Ainu you mentioned in your reply.
It is clear now that the Ainu, and the Jomon, were NOT a lot closer to modern Europeans than to modern (East) Asians. See for example:
http://www.pitt.edu/~annj/courses/notes/jomon_genes or http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14997363&dopt=Citation
It is clear that the closest relatives of the Ainu are certain other North East Asian groups. This is backed up by linguistic research which is more and more suggesting that the closest relatives of the Ainu language are other North East Asian languages.
The characteristics which were cited to link the Ainu with Europeans have either turned out to be mistakes (e.g. the Ainu were and are not blue-eyed), or are to do with what now appears to be purely superficial appearance, e.g. the Ainu have quite heavy body hair growth, and not many instances of the epicanthus eye-fold. In fact on this level the Australian Aborigines have as many "European" characteristics as the Ainu.
The Jomon-Yayoi transition and synthesis to form the modern Japanese nation is actually one of the best examples of the fusion of two different ethnic groups. The whole subject is also a good example as to how pseudo-scientific anthropology has been misused for ethnic - and sometimes frankly racist - purposes.
Furthermore, the relatively recent appearance of so-called "Mongoloid" features in East Asian and Amerindian populations is a puzzle which has, until recently, not been tackled in a truly scientific manner. "Migration" used to be the only answer considered - but from where? It is notable that the highest frequency of the epicanthus occurs in populations such as the Koreans and the Northern Chinese, which are, as Cavalli-Sforza and others have shown, actually in some ways more closely related to Europeans than they are to Southern Chinese and South East Asians, who have a low frequency of "Mongolian" features such as the epicanthus.
"Evolution" seems too often forgotten in all this. There seems to be a reluctance to consider that characteristic polymorphisms which gave rise to the "East Asian" appearance might actually have evolved relatively recently out of a more generalised ancient Eurasian (broadly "Caucasoid") background - perhaps by a process which some, e.g. Peter Frost, have proposed (on the basis of what is as yet very shaky, but plausible, argumentation) for the establishment of polymorphisms with regard to hair and eye colour in parts of Europe.
And that links up to why I put the word "pure" in quotation marks, because in the light of evolution "purity" becomes an elusive quality - in fact usually meaningless. Yet those who get hung-up on making ethnic comparisons e.g. Europeans vs. Asians often unwittingly speak as if "pure" races existed, and any anomalies must be due to race-mixing.
That's enough for now. Next week I'll try to deal with matters more directly relevant to your site.
Best Wishes
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