Wild that some people read, “We’re all entitled to our own looks-based preferences for our bodies” and jumped in to share their opinions on what bothers them about other people’s bodies.
I don’t know who answered that survey back then… Jessica Biel’s body in those photos, she was a goddess. Superior to Jessica Alba of the time by far.
And I’m not sure how many women need to hear this, but the holocaust camp thin Hollywood chicks with ribs and bones showing are not appealing. The plastic surgery they are getting now is a horror show. The stretched face, the swollen lips that looked like they’ve been punched in the mouth… Ladies, please, being punched in the mouth is not an attractive look. 🙄
Athletic women are the hottest creatures on earth, even when they’re low body fat gives them a rather flat chest.
Obviously tastes differ; some men enjoy women with more curves. The full bodied Julia Roberts of Mystic Pizza was far superior to the skinny dieting version after she got famous.
In short, just don’t be fat and you will be well above average.
I'm only seeing it now, but I don't like this comment and will tell you why. I don't tolerate the shaming of body types/appearances around here; there's a way to talk about the forces that shape body/beauty pressures without criticizing individuals and the choices they make. I don't like comparing women to each other, I don't like the idea that women are exclusively doing things to appeal to men, and I don't like you telling people "just don't be fat," as if that's 1) easy and 2) necessarily an imperative toward any particular end. Please try to be more considerate next time if you're going to comment here
I feel like this comment misses the point of the article. My takeaway is that body trends are fleeting, and trying desperately to appeal to male approval has the potential to lead you down unhealthy paths (especially when trying to emulate celebrities with far more time and resources compared to the average person). Not sure how you got to the point where you're responding by telling women what *you* think is sexy, like they should care.
Well, I was saying natural is sexy, as in be confident and don’t go getting surgery on your face. Taking diet pills and looking super skinny isn’t healthy, healthy is attractive. All the fake stuff that women are damaging their bodies with to try to be more attractive, I’m encouraging them that they don’t need it. They look more attractive naturally. That’s what I was saying.
I'm not trying to be a dick, but you're still centering what men find attractive as the primary issue of concern, rather than that women are making unhealthy choices to try and live up to societal standards of attractiveness. Rather than calling women who try to appeal to certain standards "horror shows" and "holocaust camp thin", take some time to deconstruct why women might have procedures, or go on diets. That constant pressure to be sexy/attractive (which your comments are furthering) is the exact reason many women have the procedures. But women can't win. Either they try to appeal and get called a horror show, or they don't and other men will denigrate them anyway for what a natural woman actually looks like, with the accompanying cellulite, stretch marks, acne, wrinkles, and other "flaws". The solution isn't to center the "natural woman" as a beauty ideal (since there is no "natural" way for all women to look, everyone has different body types and characteristics) it's to decentralize beauty from female worth.
Krista, you’re not making much sense. First you’re dismissing my comments as “being centered” on what men like… but in the very next breath admit that women are trying to live up to beauty standards, which we all know significantly includes what men find attractive. Men.
All I was doing was reaffirming that natural lips, natural bodies are beautiful in their variety of forms. That you don’t need to surgically inflate your lips, etc. I don’t know how that affirmation comes across to you as negative. Of course there are different types of bodies, of course! And guess what? I’m saying that each of them are beautiful in their own way, that you don’t have to try to surgically alter one into whatever other type is popular at the moment.🙄
I'm not sure what's not making sense. My point is that women should stop worrying about what men (like you) want all the time. My advice for you was to not, as a man, voice what you want women at large to do with their bodies. It shifts the conversation towards what standards of attractiveness should be, rather than why society is so concerned about what women look like in the first place.
I think a secondary conversation about the distorting effects of photography and film needs to happen. People look different in pictures. We typically look larger and softer. Some people look great in photos and less so in real life, and vice versa. Jessica Alba’s picture is also visibly photoshopped. Which is all to say, the critiques we make of photographs of people are not even that relevant to real life. (Of course it’s debatable how much that matters when so much of our lives are now lived online.)
People look different too when they are animated by their own personality. A lot of people are striving for an image that they can only ever achieve in pictures, because once you meet someone in real life, no matter how physically conventionally attractive they are, their looks will be modified by their state of being. A depressed, anxious person, no matter how ‘hot’, is always going to appear depressed and anxious. This isn’t a criticism of poor mental health, something no one really chooses, but I think it exposes a core fallacy that needs to be addressed in people’s beliefs; constantly striving to look hot will not make you attractive, except for in print. If you want to be IRL attractive, you have to cultivate your whole life, which can include but not be limited to your body. You don’t have to be perfect, you have to give people the sense that you are really living and not just curating your life for their approval. Iconically, you have to stop caring so much about how you look in order to be good looking.
And even then, there is more to life than being *really, really ridiculously good looking*. Some of the most interesting times in my own life would never have happened if I had been constantly concerned with being appealing to others. Being unappealing is actually kind of fun, and gives you the space to do other things with your time than control your appearance
Bulks it half the right word and half the wrong word for the examples given. They're definitely too hard, lean and muscular. They're a bit too thin as well. When it comes to women soft is preferable though with a little bit of firmness or lean in the centre. The right amount of tension is hard to describe. Rounded as well. It's natural and normal for women to have as though a layer of subcutaneous fat all around enough at least to smooth it out. Lost of definition, bones sticking protruding, muscles, etc is not good.
It's also reciprocal. The man is meant to be a little harder or bulkier. You see, I'm a brick and when I'm looking for a woman what I'm looking for is a pillow. It's like brick on brick action otherwise rather than brick on pillow. Brick on brick is worse than pillow on pillow.
I did not realise this was a lesbian and gay website. It makes sense though. It should have been obvious with female body builders which is attempting to achieve a male body type on a woman.
This is of course also just typical feminism with female supremacy where they put themselves above men and demonise heterosexuality especially male sexuality when it is simply nature. They seem to think that the man has no rights at all and should be passive. That he is supposed to adjust his tastes to match her. What a pathetic man that would be. I am sure you imagine that tastes are arbitrary and therefore you get to dictate those of another which is dehumanising not just emasculating. What a horrible way to treat others.
Many men are just not going to like muscular women and it's not just an aesthetic. Men are tactic thinkers and their visual system is physical. To see is to touch. This is integrated and there is more to it than that. Some men might like muscular women due to certain needs such as if they themselves live a certain lifestyle and want someone who can keep up or they can relate to but it's somewhat unusual.
For goodness knowns how long men and women have slept together in part for warmth, safety and also monogamously. This is especially so as humans build abodes. Physical compatibility is integrated in. It is also not so normal in nature for women to engage in activities that build up the muscle mass seen in men. They're not optimal for it either with a weaker bone structure in most cases. Women also need to be flexible for child baring and hard muscle over the abdomen is off putting. In division of labour when a man sees a woman who is competing with him it is no conducive to cooperative mating.
A woman can if she wants choose a muscular physique but to do so and expect men to still like it is the height of arrogance. It is self centred. It is a legitimate conundrum that there is a trade off for women being physically exercised or optimised for physical activities and attractive. It's not always just body building. This is soured by rather than accepting the problem putting it on others. To attempt to solve the problem by blaming the person who doesn't like it is controlling and it's also not going to workout in the long run.
I am simply making a point. Men generally don't want a game of conkers when it comes to women and that's what many see when they look at muscular women.
Shoulder-waist-hip ratio is also a thing, separate from muscularity, for both males and females. When women have extremely masculine proportions, or men have exceedingly feminine proportions, it's less of a "Yuck, what's wrong with women's bodies nowadays?" question, and more of a "What kinds of hormone disruptors are in our food and water?" question.
I can't speak for anyone else, but to me women with fit bodies resulting from athletic activity are very attractive. Bodies grotesquely bloated by bodybuilding and drugs are not. Hulk Hogan in a bikini is not my thing.
Yeah, IDK about the survey, but I feel like there needs to be more discussion on proportions. There is healthy weight but also natural body growth from training/exercise. You can tell if people neglect working out parts of their body, as it looks odd/unnatural. Also, I think people can start to look odd if they grow certain muscles beyond what it naturally would be. I understand I am using the word "natural" and that its meaning differs by person, but I think there is an objective "average" that should be used.
I’m so glad muscular women are in right now, and I hope it’s permanent. You have to give credit to superhero movies for this, say what you will about their effect on the culture in other respects.
The fact that the stupid ’00s “skinny vs. curvy” debate was won by “jacked” is a super significant cultural upheaval, and it’s primarily because of women in superhero movies imo.
i didn't say anything about whether her body has anything to do with healthy body image, i just included her as an example of the kind of muscularity some women achieve in the modern day that they didn't in the past
You say " I shudder to imagine what those 2009 women would think of [her]", implying it's wrong of them to not like her body. The only problem you have with idolising muscular bodies it that it takes a lot of resources to achieve (the impliaction being it's unattainable).
Well those 2009 women are right about what the would think of the crossfit woman. And a much bigger problem than attainability when women idolise her body is that the steroids required are absolutely disastrous for health. How many bodybuilders do we need to see dropping dead in their 20s? Ultimately you chose that picture and spoke about it in at minimum neutral to positive tone, I think it was a bad choice :)
Shedding light on unknown, unpopular music albums, books saturated in an ineffable spirit of darkness, science and open-mindness... That was the initial idea of my jaroslavnovosyolov.substack.com
Everyone is welcome to subscribe and support! I also have fiction writings to share with You. Their turn will come as well! :)
Wild that some people read, “We’re all entitled to our own looks-based preferences for our bodies” and jumped in to share their opinions on what bothers them about other people’s bodies.
I don’t know who answered that survey back then… Jessica Biel’s body in those photos, she was a goddess. Superior to Jessica Alba of the time by far.
And I’m not sure how many women need to hear this, but the holocaust camp thin Hollywood chicks with ribs and bones showing are not appealing. The plastic surgery they are getting now is a horror show. The stretched face, the swollen lips that looked like they’ve been punched in the mouth… Ladies, please, being punched in the mouth is not an attractive look. 🙄
Athletic women are the hottest creatures on earth, even when they’re low body fat gives them a rather flat chest.
Obviously tastes differ; some men enjoy women with more curves. The full bodied Julia Roberts of Mystic Pizza was far superior to the skinny dieting version after she got famous.
In short, just don’t be fat and you will be well above average.
I'm only seeing it now, but I don't like this comment and will tell you why. I don't tolerate the shaming of body types/appearances around here; there's a way to talk about the forces that shape body/beauty pressures without criticizing individuals and the choices they make. I don't like comparing women to each other, I don't like the idea that women are exclusively doing things to appeal to men, and I don't like you telling people "just don't be fat," as if that's 1) easy and 2) necessarily an imperative toward any particular end. Please try to be more considerate next time if you're going to comment here
I feel like this comment misses the point of the article. My takeaway is that body trends are fleeting, and trying desperately to appeal to male approval has the potential to lead you down unhealthy paths (especially when trying to emulate celebrities with far more time and resources compared to the average person). Not sure how you got to the point where you're responding by telling women what *you* think is sexy, like they should care.
Well, I was saying natural is sexy, as in be confident and don’t go getting surgery on your face. Taking diet pills and looking super skinny isn’t healthy, healthy is attractive. All the fake stuff that women are damaging their bodies with to try to be more attractive, I’m encouraging them that they don’t need it. They look more attractive naturally. That’s what I was saying.
I'm not trying to be a dick, but you're still centering what men find attractive as the primary issue of concern, rather than that women are making unhealthy choices to try and live up to societal standards of attractiveness. Rather than calling women who try to appeal to certain standards "horror shows" and "holocaust camp thin", take some time to deconstruct why women might have procedures, or go on diets. That constant pressure to be sexy/attractive (which your comments are furthering) is the exact reason many women have the procedures. But women can't win. Either they try to appeal and get called a horror show, or they don't and other men will denigrate them anyway for what a natural woman actually looks like, with the accompanying cellulite, stretch marks, acne, wrinkles, and other "flaws". The solution isn't to center the "natural woman" as a beauty ideal (since there is no "natural" way for all women to look, everyone has different body types and characteristics) it's to decentralize beauty from female worth.
Krista, you’re not making much sense. First you’re dismissing my comments as “being centered” on what men like… but in the very next breath admit that women are trying to live up to beauty standards, which we all know significantly includes what men find attractive. Men.
All I was doing was reaffirming that natural lips, natural bodies are beautiful in their variety of forms. That you don’t need to surgically inflate your lips, etc. I don’t know how that affirmation comes across to you as negative. Of course there are different types of bodies, of course! And guess what? I’m saying that each of them are beautiful in their own way, that you don’t have to try to surgically alter one into whatever other type is popular at the moment.🙄
I'm not sure what's not making sense. My point is that women should stop worrying about what men (like you) want all the time. My advice for you was to not, as a man, voice what you want women at large to do with their bodies. It shifts the conversation towards what standards of attractiveness should be, rather than why society is so concerned about what women look like in the first place.
Me I am sick to death of women who post about women’s bodies.
you may be in the wrong place
yeah but here you are, gobbling it up
I think Misty Copeland is beautiful.
I think a secondary conversation about the distorting effects of photography and film needs to happen. People look different in pictures. We typically look larger and softer. Some people look great in photos and less so in real life, and vice versa. Jessica Alba’s picture is also visibly photoshopped. Which is all to say, the critiques we make of photographs of people are not even that relevant to real life. (Of course it’s debatable how much that matters when so much of our lives are now lived online.)
People look different too when they are animated by their own personality. A lot of people are striving for an image that they can only ever achieve in pictures, because once you meet someone in real life, no matter how physically conventionally attractive they are, their looks will be modified by their state of being. A depressed, anxious person, no matter how ‘hot’, is always going to appear depressed and anxious. This isn’t a criticism of poor mental health, something no one really chooses, but I think it exposes a core fallacy that needs to be addressed in people’s beliefs; constantly striving to look hot will not make you attractive, except for in print. If you want to be IRL attractive, you have to cultivate your whole life, which can include but not be limited to your body. You don’t have to be perfect, you have to give people the sense that you are really living and not just curating your life for their approval. Iconically, you have to stop caring so much about how you look in order to be good looking.
And even then, there is more to life than being *really, really ridiculously good looking*. Some of the most interesting times in my own life would never have happened if I had been constantly concerned with being appealing to others. Being unappealing is actually kind of fun, and gives you the space to do other things with your time than control your appearance
Bulks it half the right word and half the wrong word for the examples given. They're definitely too hard, lean and muscular. They're a bit too thin as well. When it comes to women soft is preferable though with a little bit of firmness or lean in the centre. The right amount of tension is hard to describe. Rounded as well. It's natural and normal for women to have as though a layer of subcutaneous fat all around enough at least to smooth it out. Lost of definition, bones sticking protruding, muscles, etc is not good.
It's also reciprocal. The man is meant to be a little harder or bulkier. You see, I'm a brick and when I'm looking for a woman what I'm looking for is a pillow. It's like brick on brick action otherwise rather than brick on pillow. Brick on brick is worse than pillow on pillow.
This post is not an invitation for you to say what is “too” anything or what is “not good” with women’s bodies
Since we really need yet MORE men telling us how THEY would prefer us to look.
I did not realise this was a lesbian and gay website. It makes sense though. It should have been obvious with female body builders which is attempting to achieve a male body type on a woman.
This is of course also just typical feminism with female supremacy where they put themselves above men and demonise heterosexuality especially male sexuality when it is simply nature. They seem to think that the man has no rights at all and should be passive. That he is supposed to adjust his tastes to match her. What a pathetic man that would be. I am sure you imagine that tastes are arbitrary and therefore you get to dictate those of another which is dehumanising not just emasculating. What a horrible way to treat others.
Many men are just not going to like muscular women and it's not just an aesthetic. Men are tactic thinkers and their visual system is physical. To see is to touch. This is integrated and there is more to it than that. Some men might like muscular women due to certain needs such as if they themselves live a certain lifestyle and want someone who can keep up or they can relate to but it's somewhat unusual.
For goodness knowns how long men and women have slept together in part for warmth, safety and also monogamously. This is especially so as humans build abodes. Physical compatibility is integrated in. It is also not so normal in nature for women to engage in activities that build up the muscle mass seen in men. They're not optimal for it either with a weaker bone structure in most cases. Women also need to be flexible for child baring and hard muscle over the abdomen is off putting. In division of labour when a man sees a woman who is competing with him it is no conducive to cooperative mating.
A woman can if she wants choose a muscular physique but to do so and expect men to still like it is the height of arrogance. It is self centred. It is a legitimate conundrum that there is a trade off for women being physically exercised or optimised for physical activities and attractive. It's not always just body building. This is soured by rather than accepting the problem putting it on others. To attempt to solve the problem by blaming the person who doesn't like it is controlling and it's also not going to workout in the long run.
I am simply making a point. Men generally don't want a game of conkers when it comes to women and that's what many see when they look at muscular women.
Shoulder-waist-hip ratio is also a thing, separate from muscularity, for both males and females. When women have extremely masculine proportions, or men have exceedingly feminine proportions, it's less of a "Yuck, what's wrong with women's bodies nowadays?" question, and more of a "What kinds of hormone disruptors are in our food and water?" question.
I can't speak for anyone else, but to me women with fit bodies resulting from athletic activity are very attractive. Bodies grotesquely bloated by bodybuilding and drugs are not. Hulk Hogan in a bikini is not my thing.
Yeah, IDK about the survey, but I feel like there needs to be more discussion on proportions. There is healthy weight but also natural body growth from training/exercise. You can tell if people neglect working out parts of their body, as it looks odd/unnatural. Also, I think people can start to look odd if they grow certain muscles beyond what it naturally would be. I understand I am using the word "natural" and that its meaning differs by person, but I think there is an objective "average" that should be used.
I’m so glad muscular women are in right now, and I hope it’s permanent. You have to give credit to superhero movies for this, say what you will about their effect on the culture in other respects.
The fact that the stupid ’00s “skinny vs. curvy” debate was won by “jacked” is a super significant cultural upheaval, and it’s primarily because of women in superhero movies imo.
Think of baseball instead.
That crossfit woman is clearly on steroids, she's a weird inclusion in an article about healthy body image.
i didn't say anything about whether her body has anything to do with healthy body image, i just included her as an example of the kind of muscularity some women achieve in the modern day that they didn't in the past
You say " I shudder to imagine what those 2009 women would think of [her]", implying it's wrong of them to not like her body. The only problem you have with idolising muscular bodies it that it takes a lot of resources to achieve (the impliaction being it's unattainable).
Well those 2009 women are right about what the would think of the crossfit woman. And a much bigger problem than attainability when women idolise her body is that the steroids required are absolutely disastrous for health. How many bodybuilders do we need to see dropping dead in their 20s? Ultimately you chose that picture and spoke about it in at minimum neutral to positive tone, I think it was a bad choice :)
Shedding light on unknown, unpopular music albums, books saturated in an ineffable spirit of darkness, science and open-mindness... That was the initial idea of my jaroslavnovosyolov.substack.com
Everyone is welcome to subscribe and support! I also have fiction writings to share with You. Their turn will come as well! :)
Shut up