jamokes

HPM, did you say anything to the stylist? i'm very cowardly about my hair, so i rarely ask for anything more risky than a trim, but i have had a very bad experience which ended in a conversation with the owner of the salon
 
if you explain the situation to the owner or manager, you may be able to get a free haircut in the future

jamokes, thanks for the reply, glad there's an exchange going on. this is a subject i'm interested in, though only obliquely. i'll refrain from using hyperbole since it obscures my points a bit. i think you've misinterpreted some of the main parts of my argument, i'll try re-iterate and make it clearer. my position is: yes there is an abundance of different beauty standards (which i personally think should be preserved/continue), but counter to this is an increasing standardisation of a few specific forms which is driven by social circumstances more so than evolutionary ones.

it's been my pleasure! i just wish this community didn't actively discourage discussions of the political variety

i stand by what i said about how difficult it is to draw a line between those circumstances, but in any case, globalization has brought that standardization upon us

what we must ask ourselves is how and why it's happened

has globalization enforced that standardization by making it socially advantageous to adopt those standards? has globalization introduced standards to demographics that previously didn't have access to them? if those demographics begin to prefer the global standards to their own, are they doing so because the global standards are associated with authority and advancement? is it impossible for those demographics to develop such preferences for any reason beyond the social advantages?

why have tomatoes and peppers become integral to so many cuisines? they're native to the new world and have been widely cultivated outside of it for only a few centuries

you cite some models/actors that have a marginal presence among a, to some extent, homogenous majority. it is also somewhat telling that non of these models/actors look anything like their indigenous counter parts of their original hereditary (im making the case assuming they aren't of mixed heritage, they probably are).

what countries are you referring to? i couldn't say what aline's heritage is since she's from the cultural mosaic that is brazil and has released no information about her origins

karreuche is african and vietnamese, and while africa isn't a country, i suppose the darkest sudanese people come to mind before the fairest somali people in cases like this

propensities like that relate to the reductiveness i mentioned

back to the korean and asian (eyes, nose, jaw) surgery point: i think you're right in mentioning the point about chasing youth. but it doesn't really hold validity when you really interpret what's going on with the changes in morphological features of their face: no where in any biological history does a person's eye structure change; you don't suddenly grow a freaking bridge in your nose or have your jaw completely restructured (unless you're male) in the course of age change. 

when someone says another person looks younger or older than they really are, their judgement is based on what they associate those features with, and while there must be people who do think someone would look abnormally old if they have nasolabial folds or something like that, it isn't because they've carefully inspected a proper sample of the population and had no choice but to conclude certain features spontaneously occur as we age and are generally restricted to older people 

whether or not they realize it, people associate proportionately small eyes, large noses, and large jaws with age

i think the structure of the eyes is relevant mainly because it has an effect on the perceived size of the eyes, and i can think of many reasons why people of any ethnicity would find relatively large and round eyes to be ideal

even after surgery, most koreans have eyes that are unmistakably those of an asian person

i've also heard the size and narrowness of the eyes along with the size of the pupils plays a part in determining how trustworthy a person is thought to be, and i now see that reflected by countless illustrations and written descriptions of fictional characters originating from a large variety of cultures and periods

unfortunately, there isn't much to draw conclusions from when trying to determine what the most desired people looked like centuries ago in asia

illustrations from that era aren't very useful because they're stylized representations of the subjects they depict while cameras were rare and primitive

according to written descriptions, a small face was and still is seen as ideal for women, and i suppose larger eyes will make the face itself appear to be smaller in comparison

chinese people have repeatedly described attractive eyes as being clear and bright, so perhaps the larger surface allows more light to be reflected

why is this certain 'idealised' face available to so few koreans, genetically and financially? why do they look so different compared to the undoctored populace? why would their face look so exceptional if they were to be transported 150 years ago, before the contact of the west? I'm not sure there is much more convincing to do when you completely dismiss the social influence of these changes. also, practicing occidentalism does not need to be intentional or even conscious.

realistically, you could ask the same thing about people of any nationality

it's what separates the masses from the idols

however, it's worth nothing that there are plenty of korean idols and fewer commoners who have never had cosmetic surgery yet display many if not all of the characteristics valued by their society

i believe those are the individuals koreans are trying to emulate when they go under the knife

being exceptional doesn't necessarily mean being attractive, but i'd wager they would be seen as exceptionally attractive by the majority so long as they still had access to the modern cosmetic products they rely on

while i believe the results of such operations are usually eerie and too easily recognized as products of surgery, i can understand why other people would overlook the clumsier aspects

ultimately, i doubt they would be regarded as epitomes of beauty, but i'd be very surprised if they didn't appeal to most of the people they met

sexual dimorphism is a good topic, that can earn a separate discussion. but i'll try make some precursory notes. besides the main things like height and weight ratio between the sexes (also voice and jawline etc.), sexual dimorphism in its exaggerated form is not so prevalent across cultures and across subcultures. taken to its extreme it can be very ugly, think hypermasculinity (body builder, jay cutler) and hyperfeminity (XXXXL boob surgery). again the social specificity must be stressed. most high fashion models of both genders are very androgynous, bodliy composition especially. Paul Boche is a really succesful male runway model, someone likes him. put him on the show jersey shore, and i don't think his looks will be well received. sure, overall as an aggregate, the athletic body is the ideal. but given that there's a strong liking for large range -- thin to overweight, muscly to svelte -- i don't think any scientifically framed argument can account for it.

the social component takes precedence in this argument of attraction and beauty, i'm not sure if i can try convince you any further.

i apologize for giving the impression that i reject the idea of social currents playing any role in preferences because they do play a role, and that's undeniable

i'll acknowledge the importance of the social component, but i don't see how it takes precedence over everything else

in the grand scheme of things, it's normally minor and occasionally negligible as it almost always manifests in the form of brief trends which have little if anything to do with fixed features

your comment regarding paul and jersey shore is a good reminder of that because almost all men can darken their skin, build muscle, and use hair gel

paul is an attractive man, and i think even the citizens of new jersey's coast would recognize his attractiveness despite the fact that he would look hilariously out of place next to them

it's easy to say he's androgynous when you see him wearing foundation and feminine clothing, but i encourage you to observe his appearance in an unadulterated state

his fundamental features are so masculine that i'd expect him to be readily identified as a man even if he were to dress and groom himself like a woman typically would

in my neck of the woods, few women would care about how brawny he is or isn't because he has broad shoulders, slim hips, tall stature, and a thousand little details pushing his appearance into masculine territory; we all know heterosexual women can appreciate different levels of adiposity and muscularity in men, but how many of them have a liking for proportions which resemble those of men affected by klinefelter syndrome?

many of the features required or preferred by the industry in question are primarily generated by testosterone, so female models of that variety are certainly less conventionally attractive than their male peers are

"the comments i typically encounter which address how ethnicity impacts attractiveness strike me as reductive at best and resentful at worst"

am i interpreting this correctly as:

"some people say certain ethnicities/races are more attractive than others, and this strikes me as reductive and resentful "   ?

if that is the case, then i agree, and it is NOT what my argument was about in the previous post.

i'm saying: there are different beauty standards, especially across cultures, subcultures and histories, but, there is a social element that standardises some specific forms of beauty on an aggregate level, and as a result some ethnicities get celebrated and some ethnicities get downplayed.

it's a divisive matter, so it seems like nearly everyone takes a fairly predictable side

to be honest, i don't know if you take either side

there's a group of people who believe certain characteristics have been glorified mainly due to the dominance of european cultures

they believe particular proportions and colorations are widely preferred merely because they're associated with caucasian people

another group insists caucasian people are the inarguable pinnacle of beauty and that any attractive person who isn't caucasian is only attractive because they appear to be caucasian or have caucasian ancestors 

it's as if most people view ethnicity as some kind of spectrum! alas, extremely complicated concepts such as this have inevitably been vulgarized by the bulk of the populace

you mention hygiene, health and youth. i've suggested before, that these are correct mentions, but they are incredibly trivial and obvious to point out. when i listed 'nice teeth, nice skin' i could of been more exhaustive. 

you believe science can quantify beauty. this can be done, so long as you keep to the most trivial aspects: symmetry, nice hair, nice skin, nice breath, all limbs in tact. it's clear it can't ever account for the large variance of appreciation for other physiological features. a messy science that can make no predictions or generalisations beyond the trivial is a science like astrology.

less obvious is what exactly signifies health or youth and what exactly makes skin or hair nice

if anything, it's a field of established sciences, and while the legitimacy of psychology and sociology as sciences has been questioned by many people, comparing it to astrology is absolutely absurd

you can't attribute such specific patterns to the forer effect

 

funny note on the computer mediated beauty correction (which, by the way is an algorithm, as in, a set of instructions written by a subjective human being). me and a few friends thought it would be good sport to go into one of them japanese photo booths (purika?). the experience of getting the photos taken was all fun and games, but when the printed results came out we said "wtf??". the computer enforced this 'eye enlargement' on everyones eyes. i'm aware these pics are supposed to be exaggerated and fun, but the result was more disturbing than cute. ... i could not compute.. science please help me..

all technology available to us is ultimately at the mercy of people, but i don't see that as a weakness unless the technology fails meet its objectives

what do you think of the examples? do you think the software succeeded in making the faces more attractive? do you think most people would say it succeeded?

the software employed by those booths is designed to compliment a few specific styles, so the effects of its stylization can be exceptionally unsettling and amusing when the subjects aren't a part of the usual audience

also a book recc, that i'm sure you'd very much like: 'pricing beauty' by ashley mears. not entirely related to what we're discussing, but it does touch upon it. she makes a really good typology of some subsets of the modelling industry. the one i remember most was the 'high fashion editorial' models -- how they are not conventional looking, how they push the boundries a bit (think, julia nobis). this was compared to the glamour/mainstream models (kate upton).

i just read the first chapter, and now i'm hooked! what you mentioned made me wonder if it would just be a book of echoes, but i now see why you recommended it

i admire and envy people who have great relationships with most of their relatives

it would be nice to see what your photos look like prior to drastic color grading

when i talk about attractiveness in this context, i'm interested in how pleasing it is to look at someone or something from a passably impersonal point of view, so i won't touch on the side of attractiveness covered by whitney and don't think i even should since everything she said is solid

good opening for discussion: i'll start by picking apart your argument. it is tl;dr but i'm in the mood for walls of text.

 

your initial drug metaphor caves in when you compare the great deal of variance of human attraction against the numerical predictability of people's reactions to drugs. human attraction has an all to obvious variance across time and culture (even within subculture) that really makes 'innate universal beauty' dubious at best (of course there are likings for a few universal things like clean skin, nice teeth). there's a revealing biologist's provincialism when you make such claims in the social realm.

 

also, equating visual stimuli and physical stimuli does a grave disservice to the former, since it's a human faculty in an entirely different ballpark, in that it's a place housing an entire complex system of semiotics. surely, people's ability to inscribe values and read differences between r.o dunks and nike dunks, and between a jewish 'hook nose' and a button nose, is far more complex a thing than being able to sense between hot and cold, and taste between sweet and bitter.

 

pulling the hair back like that reveals inconsistencies in the hairline that you wouldn't notice otherwise

issey miyake

excuse my dusty stockings

YYPH

i just noticed that seller has several things that some of you may be interested in

http://www.ebay.com/usr/oivilivio

minimum orders are a thing though, and a lot of the time full size runs are stipulated. this is in the label's best interest because it wastes the least amount of fabric and looks best for their books.

 

more to the point you can't predict what will and won't sell, necessarily, and just cutting more XS or whatever can backfire if you end up with piles of XS at clearance instead. doing the big sizes is part of hedging your bets on what will get the maximum amount of sales and the minimum amount of clearance items. they're selling plenty of XLs, the stuff at the end of the season is just outliers and commercially unsuccessful designs.

 

like if anything it's just indicative of fat people being self conscious in leather jackets, not poor business choices.

i should have realized this simply because i rarely see sizes excluded when the current collections arrive, but i appreciate the enlightenment!

not sure if this factors in but do a lot of people buying sizes bigger than their true size because that's how they want to wear it make a difference? Say medium is most popular amongst brand but people who wear medium buy the certain piece in a L or XL because they want a different fit. Is that a thing

"most of us" actually meaning most of us here on the miniscule sample that is superfuture > supertrash. if u start spending more time in brick-and-mortars especially u begin to realize that a huge portion of the luxury market still is these larger (generally older) men & women -- 'specially men. these are the people & spouses with high, steady incomes, and they're out there casting dollar votes in bloomingdale's, bergdorf's, flagships, etc. buying sz. 52 rick leathers at full retail while the university student looking for an XS drkshdw tee deep sale on yoox is sitting at home wondering "now why doesn't anybody ever stock MY size ... ?"

i think it's easy to look at whatever streetstyle blog, WAYWT thread and say, here's the skinny young ppl who make up the bulk of the mid-/high-end market because they're the ones who get the most representation. but really, nothing could be further from the truth . . . larger, well-established retailers have to lean on the guys & gals making seven figgers at age 38 to turn a profit, so it's ultimately their interests that are going to get representation. on the other hand, you've got places like LN-CC that say, "no, we WANT to focus on those kids, we think there's money in this online customer base who's not making that money, who's never set foot inside a high-end retail store" then crashes & burns, has to be bailed out because the model just isn't viable.

i've accepted the fact that heavily circulated images don't represent most consumers, so i base my estimations on what the major retailers have available in their stores or on their websites in addition to what can typically be found in consignment shops and on auction websites

it has to do with the way that you plan fabric orders and make cutting markers; plus the labels don't really care unless they get items sent back, their customers are the retail stores.

i'd think the retailers would see that smaller sizes are in greater demand and adjust the orders they make in the future accordingly if only to make the most of their investments, and i'd think the manufacturer would have to accommodate those orders and would eventually produce fewer garments in the unwanted sizes for their own good

if it hasn't happened yet, then i guess it isn't ever going to happen, so we're going to keep seeing clothes that most of us could swim in at the end of each season

seeing such bland forms of eroticism makes me romanticize the past

 

why post pictures of the collections? because it's nice to have everything in one place and not have to search through all the websites to get what you want. the format of the pictures are bigger than the ones on sz but the quality is the fucking same. also the same for every other website who don't get them straight from the brands or pr agencies.

The quality and clearness of the pictures is another thing. The quality of the pictures posted on style.com or fashionising aren't the best and I cannot change this.

 

that's exactly why i don't recommend them

when sales hit only the m, l, xl for clothes are left

the shoes, only 5.5, 6s are left

i haven't noticed that, but i'm probably biased since those are the sizes i usually wear, so it seems like i can never find them when i want to

also, why do they even continue to produce so many garments in such large sizes when they always go on sale? it doesn't even help labels maintain exclusivity

so you are saying that i should hotlink the 640x480 pictures of style.com like other websites do instead of uploading the HQ ones and resizing them in a 800x600 format?

you are welcomed to email all the PR companies to tell them to send high quality PNGs and JPGs my way so i can upload them for big formats and thumbnails so i won't have to spend my time saving all the pictures, sorting out the good detail shots, renaming everything, uploading the whole lot and post everything on superfuture.

 

or you can do it yourself if you really want to! members can post collections too!

why would you assume that?

i think you can see it's not a matter of what's allowed; you've already claimed this as your territory, so there's no point in anyone posting the same collections when whoever minds the size and quality of the images views them elsewhere

you must believe it's a superfluous issue, but posting whole collections here when better images are available on so many other websites is already superfluous

life would be so much easier if everything in my wardrobe had silver hardware

thing is that  most of those fools dont climb shit.  there are magazines devoted to this "style."  i mean there are some that aren't that offensive, but it's basically equivalent 2 japs who dont surf yet who dress and come off like they do

the pheonomenon you're describing has always irked me, but i don't think it's more or less deplorable than the dandified glamorization of running and other physical activities that's become so popular lately

i just realized all of my staples are black, and that's funny considering how annoyed i am by people who worship the idea of wearing entirely black or colorless ensembles

i need to learn how to style my hair like this

that's not a very positive outlook

 

who cares about societies constructs of what's good looking and what isn't?

 

and if you aren't pleased with the way you look personally ask yourself why, every flaw somewhere is an advantage somewhere else...