Playboy made me do it

I just realized something interesting. In the threads on Evo Psych I was defending the notion that culture and personal experience plays a lot in forming preferences and other psychological mechanisms against those stating that evolution had preprogrammed certain mechanisms which we cannot change culturally.Yet here we have someone stating that culture is a dominating force in creating our psych mechanisms while at the same time defending Evo Psych and quotes an Evo Psych author who describes a process of culture impressing a standard.That about wraps up Evo Psych to me. Like Creo and ID, which flit back and forth on their own dogma in order to support moral positions, here we have Evo Psychers doing the same.If this is not inconsistent, then I want it explained. Supposedly beauty can be quantified and qualified according to evolutionary demands, yet here we have people arguing that culture can change our desires into wholly unhealthy and unreal expectations.... how can it be both?Can hip to waist ratio interests be changed by society? If so, one major study by Evo Psych (and quoted earlier here by schraf) is shot down. If not, then how can Playboy be selling to people except by conforming to evolutionarily formed ideas of beauty that represent health for humans?It seems to me that traditional feminist doctrine regarding the media and Evo Psych stand opposed to each other, though its not surprising to find them strange bedfellows given that each of them emerge from the "liberal progressive" intellectual sphere.Doesn't there need to be an explanation of how they can coincide within the same model of human behavior?This message has been edited by holmes, 08-09-2005 06:12 AM

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

missed this the first time through. go back and look at the pretty pictures in my first few posts here. thin is pretty popular throughout history. fat is not.but what i suspect your thinking of is heroin chic. even though it went out of style 15 years ago, wasn't even that popular when it was in, and only lasted a few years.

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אָרַח

Actually what she was refering to were studies that she was unable to understand beyond a correlation. It showed, assuming that the study was accurate, that since the introduction of western media to nonwestern nations there was a switch in ideals from chubby to nonchubby and an increase in body dissatisfaction.What she failed to understand and point out that the study itself suggested, that:1) The cultures themselves had ideals that were not necessarily average2) That they mistakenly assumed western media fictional shows were accurate depictions of real life in the west (which totally supports your and my position regarding mistaking fantasy for reality)3) That they switched their ideal to emulate the life depicted in this new and interesting culture, just as every culture has done from well before commercial media existed. I gave her specific examples of this, including eyelid surgery in Japan and the sadly comical cargo cults.She decided not to reply to the rather obvious points I made, as well as her cited study made, to repeat her initial unsupported assertions within her "summary".There are true believers everywhere, including the left. This seems to be a case.This message has been edited by holmes, 08-09-2005 06:14 AM

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)