human body?
What do you think? Do you find these pictures to be offensive for some reason?
Are these people ‘good expressions’ of the ideal human body? I think I could find better ones, but, sure, not much to complain about.
Do I find these photos offensive? No.
What are you driving at?
Different times, and different societies, have different ideals. There are societies, for example, who find skinny women ugly. There are also people who are attracted to muscular men, and people, who are not. There is no such thing as an ideal body, independent of cultural values. And I, for one, do not think the girl has an ideal body because her teeth are too perfect–my ideal, is a girl with at least one crooked tooth (I see perfection, only in imperfection).
I think a problem with today is, people seem to idealize what they consider ‘normal’ now instead of searching for an ideal. It is like the Aristotilean belief, two vices surrounding a virtue, in that people want what most everyone is capable of looking like. Liberalism has created the false perception that looks are not important, and because of this, acceptable ways of appearance are even in some ways turning against more idealistic bodies, and the ideal is being labeled as unacceptable. A girl I know, recently told me that the man at the top, a wrestler named Randy Orton, is too good looking to be good looking. Thank gods for the bodybuilding movement, or else the fat, lazy could have become the ideal of the future.
I sense projection here on your part. As a blanket statement, this holds no water at all. Think about it: ‘People idealize what they consider ‘‘normal’’ instead of searching for an ideal’ …
Really?
I think the average (or ‘normal’) person, intellectually, is more or less an idiot. I certainly do not therefore consider idiots to be any sort of ‘ideal’.
If you mean to limit this statement to physical qualities, in which case my above objection would be misguided, then there would still be counterexamples available: for example, that because obesity is reaching epidemic proportions in the United States (i.e. is becoming ‘normal’) people are therefore ‘idealizing’ obesity. This is simply not the case.
The simple fact is that appearances are important in some circumstances, and are unimportant in others. I’m not sure liberalism, nor any ideology, independent of a host of other factors, has anything to do with it. Maybe you can convince me otherwise.
To this, I would quote The Underground Man:
I would only add that, for the most part, the ‘ideal’ set of physical attributes, at bottom, corresponds to factors of health and fertility. The rest is purely subjective and culture-driven.
I find that psychiatrists in particular like to idealise normality - ‘If you’re thinking like a normal person, that’s great!’
I wouldn’t consider them “ideal,” or perfect by a long shot. But the chick is fairly hot.
I heard somewhere that we are physically attracted to bodies that look well equipt for survival. But as our prefrontal cortex developed, this became muddied with contextual add-ons, like whether that fat short guy over there happens to be carrying an uzi – very good for survival, or whether that ugly troll of a lady has a masters degree in child-raring and a rich dad, both very good for survival. Attraction reconciles the sum of our amygdalic and cortextual reactions…it is a mistake to rely on just one. The perfect male form is rough, tough and pretty, but not TOO pretty so as to be unattainable or an inevitable serial cheater or wife hopper, someone who looks like he had to use his mind at least a little to get ahead. The ideal woman looks equally at home in a bikini as she does in an apron. She also must look a little rough from certain angles, because she’ll have to be versed with that later when it comes time to raise a kid right.