Playboy made me do it

based around this principle: the men-viewing-women phenominon. so what are we to extrapolate from earlier in-your-face depictions of female beauty? i suggest we look at some. for instance, this gem is blatantly not true in the past: anyways. i'll start with one picture. we'll compare it to playboy, and the average woman, whatever that is. so here's the one i'll start with:botticelli's "birth of venus"now, i've selected this for two very specific reasons. the most obvious being that venus is the goddess of love and beauty. she represents the female ideal. the second might be less obvious. look at her proportions, especially her neck: is that realistic? in fact, is any of her realistic? look at those proportions. i'm pretty sure her breast is actually a perfect circle. her shoulders are basically nonexistant, and her limbs huge and extended. her face is incredibly long, and has this blank serene look on it. all of her features are precisely placed, highly symetrical. she's got longer hair than anyone i've ever seen.is botticelli portraying a realistic ideal? what do you think young girls looking at his art in the late 15th century thought?as a contrast, here's this year's playmate of the year, tiffany fallon: which one is promoting an unhealthy image? just for comparison, of course, here's what she looks like minus airbrushing, and photographic trickery and setup. which image is less modified from life? which ideal is more realistic?edited by AdminJar to downsize pictures.This message has been edited by AdminJar, 07-15-2005 05:00 PM

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so you admit then that the playboy ideal is more based in reality? ok, let's look at someone who's not a goddess. here's raphael's "la fornarina" no, some say she's a common baker's daughter. we don't really know. but it's pretty clear that she was a real person, and probably not someone of higher class. so that's about as far away as we can get from venus, the goddess of love and beauty, right?or is it? look at the similarity of the hands. the rounded shoulders. the spherical breasts. i picked this image because it seems especially reminiscent of the last one we looked at, yet contains the same renaissance ideals and stylization. she's more down to earth and a little more realistic, but the same ideals are present. and if you're not really paying attention, and haven't seen some more extreme examples like botticelli, you just accept this as real. it's also easy to understand that photography is easily manipulated. maybe not so 50 years ago, but today who hasn't heard of photoshop? the popularity and commercialization of other photographic tools undoes your argument.yes. we are mroe willing and prone to accept photographic depictions as reality over paintings -- but when we go to the movies, we all know it's make-believe, editting, and special effects. and renaissance and baroque artists weren't selling imagery? i'm pretty certain they lived off it. the majority of art history has been about the idea of beauty. sometimes this is replaced by reality; it kind of goes in cycles. but the female form has been portrayed in art in idealized way for, well, ever. it's not even a tautology, it's even more fundamental. men favor more attractive women -- it's just sexual selection. we all do it, even the women.but do you seriously contend that the distortion of the female ideal away from average is a NEW concept?ok, let's start at the beginning. this is the venus of willendorf. you'll have to ignore the name, it's not ACTUALLY venus. this is well before greek mythology. there's nothing we have that says she was a god, a depiction of a real human, or anything else. our best guess is that she was used as a fertility charm. but it could be anything really. these are found all over ancient europe.look at her though. perfectly round -- real fat doesn't hang that way. giant boobs, and way before implants. no hair... anywhere. in fact, no facial features either. just some weird cap on her spherical head.

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has it? i posted a few pictures that are 500 years old of naked women. are they beautiful?well get to this lady sooner or later, as example of more restrained and realistic hellenistic standards: she's about 2200 years old. is she beautiful?yeah, there's some mild changes here and there. smaller breasts were preferred in the 20's, where larger breasts were preferred in the 40's. our definition of ideal weight wobbles a bit between skinny, and slightly rounder. but much of the standard has remained the same. for instance, western culture has always preferred younger, fit women with long lines. we like our breasts at a certain height, and in a certain shape (in contrast to afircan tribes who prefer dropping knee-knockers). symmetry is preferred in EVERY culture, as is smooth skin free of blemishes.it's very, very rare that people go against these standards. but it's not an exact science, and the excepts are glaringly obvious. for instance, the wife of francesco del giocondo of renaissance florence was a rather ugly (possibly toothless) woman, but has come to stand for female beauty: but if you think about it, it really shows what this renaissance idealization is all about, and how much of a distortion of reality it really is.another classic counterexample are ruben's nudes. (compare his "three graces" with michaelangelo's)but these are of course only little bumps in the road. the female ideal of beauty has remained largely unchanged in well over 2000 years. and that's what i'm working on demonstrating with all of these pictures you've probably seen before. no. it doesn't. in fact, i think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone today who still considers the barbie twins attractive. but don't get me wrong, this isn't a huge turnaround. it's similar to the difference between classical greek sculpture and hellenistic scultpure. our ideal today is more restrained, a little stockier, and mroe attaintable. we prefer more athletic bodies do those that are ridiculously muscled (in men) or skinny and inflated (in women).but i want you to take note of a very important point here -- we're talking about ideals. i want to suggest that the barbie twins were NEVER the cultural ideal. i remember the late 80's and early 90's, and i remember who *I* thought was the most beautiful woman in the world. just for giggles, here she is playboy: pay attention in particular to the shape of her hips, the size of her waist, and the muscle tone. look like one of the images i posted above?do we consider this beautiful today?Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Change very large photo to thumbnail.

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yes, that's why i posted a picture of someone who was NOT a goddess, to demonstrate that the ideals are still present in the depictions of normal people. it's not until the baroque period that we get realistic, lifelike depictions of people. but even then, there's ideal. and there's stylization going on.but hey, i think you're missing the point a little here. actually, rather, by alot. do you suspect botticelli BELIEVED in venus? i strongly suspect he was catholic. these are things they painted specifically to portray idealized beauty. the renaissance and baroque painters admired the greek traditions of idealized beauty, not the gods themselves. the greek goddess of the renaissance are exactly equatable to playmates. there's good evidence that half the time, they just painted them so they could get some nudity in their work.so, well, how should i phrase this? not coming close to beauty standard of a playmate in understandable. i mean, it is called "playboy." playboys don't go after average girls, do they? we'll look at a real woman below. but tell me, do you seriously think that these artists just drew from their imaginations? no, they had models and references. there's was no photography in the 16th and 17th century, was there? when a real person was depicted, they were depicted in paint or stone. wanna bet? they were used to sell the artist's talents. they themselves were sold. patrons would pay a great deal, and the art world was HIGHLY competitive. there rivalries -- often eadly -- between artists. so it's a grave mistake to think there were not selling something. you should re-think this one too. although i've shown some pagan art, most of the art produced in the renaissance and 17th century were comissioned by popes and cardinals. when you go florence or rome today, where do you see all of the art? churches. so, yes, these paintings were getting seen.even the pagan and secular paintings were proudly desplayed in palaces and homes. they were quite the status symbol, the bling of its day. the whole purpose was to show them. and boticelli's birth of venus has been billions of people worldwide in various forms. this is not an image with no impact.so anyways, just to keep this going, we're going to look at stylized baroque ideal, vs. a somewhat realistic depiction. to keep it interesting, i'll use someone who's not a god or godess, but still not your average person. (if she were average, it would defeat the point of idealization, wouldn't it?)here's bernini's "santa bibiana" personally, i love bernini. just the right blend of realism with stylization. and you gotta love how makes marble come to life. why bibiana? no particular reason. i couldn't find a naked female figure by bernini who wasn't a greek goddess or an angel. now saints are, of course, somewhat ordinary people, but idealized ordinary people. so it fits. now his stylization is a lot less obvious. you can see it more easily in his other works. he likes perfect almond-esque heads, and youthful supple figures. the softness he puts into his female figures is incredible; the marble looks exactly like skin. in "pluto and prosperpine" pluto's fingers actually press into her thigh in such a realistic manner that you probably couldn't tell a b+w detail of it from a photo of real human beings. the realism here is incredible -- his only stylization is the creation of ideals.so look at the features bibiana, a dignified saint and more importantly a real person, has in common with venus in the botticelli. while we can't compare boobs, we can compare her more visible features. her face and hair are very similar to venus. her hands are exactly the same, one's just turned out. the impression we get of her figure is that it's very similar to venus, long and slender, although more realistically proportioned. in fact, the only major difference i see are the clothes, and her squarish shoulders. but that might just be an illusion of the fabric.for contrast and comparison, here's bernini's mistress finally, a realistic depiction of a woman, right? an attainable idea of what women look like. well, keep looking. she has as much in the way of similarities as she does differences. her features are still very perfected, her neck long, and her shoulders VERY curved. she's different in that she's got a little more body fat. a little, not a lot. this might be a somewhat accurate depiction of the weight of the average working-class woman was in 17th century italy. her other difference is her hair and clothing. she's at once evidence that these ideals are not average women, and that average women can still be portrayed in the same fashion.she probably would have stopped sleeping with him if he made her look ugly.shall we look at greek sculpture next? i think the issue here is that average person now is further from the ideal than at any time during history, due largely to the conveniences of the modern world. for instance, cars probably contribute the obesity problem. there's some thought that says that the hellenistic sculpture was actually somewhat realistic in its ideals. it explains why the idealization of classical greek sculpture is so far over the top (especially for the men, who wouldn't have looked out of place in those boby-building competitions).

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no, what i'm trying to tell you is that the mainstream ideal hasn't changed excessively in western culture in more than 2000 years.calvin klein's heroin chic ads of the early 90's were a little blip on the radar, and even then they weren't accepted by everyone as the ideal. i'm sure you've heard the ever-popular sir-mix-a-lot song, "baby got back"? apparently, he wrote it in response to these very ads.how long did they last?now, how long did pinups last, in comparison? you can find pinups as early the turn of the century (i'm rather fond of alphonse mucha's paintings, many of which seem to have inspired pinup trends) right through to the 1950's.here's of course where the turnabout comes into play. playboy picked up where pinups left off. and the trends are all the same -- healty, curvy women, often volumptuous. round hips, larger breasts. very stylized poses. it's all the same stuff, really.so we have nearly 100 years of pinups, and 2 of heroin chic. one is arguably the mainstream ideal of the 20th century, and one is just not.not that there weren't subtle changes. you'll notice difference in preferenc between the 20's and 30's, and between the 80's and 90's. but which one looks more like the women i've been showing pictures of? nobody's arguing that calvin klein promoted an unhealthy image with their auschwitz victim ads. but we're debating whether or no the picture BELOW it is unhealthy.

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out of curiosity, do you read playboy?this might be because the average woman is fatter now than she's ever been. i mean, let's be honest. it's not about number of curves, but placement. she's got a lot more curves than a playmate, doesn't she? clearly quantity has very little to do with it.

quote:

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shows that the average height of a man aged 20-74 years increased from just over 5'8" in 1960 to 5'9" in 2002, while the average height of a woman the same age increased from slightly over 5'3" 1960 to 5'4" in 2002

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we're quiblling over an inch or two, in 50 years? i can bat your statistics right back at you. in a trend of people getting taller and thicker around the waist, this seems rather silly, doesn't it? of course they're changing by an inch or two in 50 years.now compare this years playmate of the year (which i already posted) to that heroin chic model. which is the unhealthy ideal, do you think?and i'd like to point out that your statistic is probably referring to actual models themselves -- NOT the images. this year's pmoy seems to have her waist line digitally altered to be smaller, which exagerated her hips. kinda shoots your "boyish figure" argument out of the water, doesn't it?

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well here's an idea. maybe women are actually superficial and shallow. afterall, the men in this thread have already voiced their opinions on the matter.afterall, they say that women wear makeup for other women; men don't really care. so maybe the problem is not men looking at women, or men's expectations of women -- but womens' competitiveness.

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you did not want to see the pictures i found googling for pictures of fat women...actually, this brings up another point. there's a lot of men who are (apparently) into morbidly obese women. they say that the fastest growing market in the porn industry is bbw.playboy, only barely equatable with other porno mags, is just one market.

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i thought so myself. in 50 years, that's a rather small change, don't you think? except that, and you'll have to take my word for this as a male, big boobs are out. the trend right now is actual smaller and average breasts. it's been well known for years that women do not get breast implants for men, they get them for themselves. it's generally a self-esteem or self-confidence thing. is that kate winslet? hard to tell in such a tiny graphic.well, kate winslet has actually been in playboy [at least] twice. in november and december 1998. i don't know whether or not she was nude, but both times playboy listed her as one of the sexiest movie stars of the year. and anyone who saw "titanic" the year before probably agreed. [added by edit: apparently, she was also in 1999. didn't see the previous post]in other words, you could not have picked a worse example. it completely demolishes your point of who playboy considers sexy. i agree. that's why i didn't post it the first time. still, it's contrary to your point.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 07-17-2005 08:49 AM

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were these men or women saying this? i thought she was hot.

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so we've been looking at pictures here, let's look at some of mine.this a close friend of mine. she's about 5'10', i think. at 6'3" myself, i look down on everyone, so it's hard to tell. she was about 95lbs when these pictures were taken. and of course, she ate like a pig. and, no, she's NOT bullimic. she's romanian. she was technically underweight, but she was generally healthy.we threw her a little party when she broke into triple digits. she's just generally tiny. we kid her all the time about shopping at baby gap. she really does shop in the kids section, and she's 23.now, tell me, is she the current ideal? do you think she'd ever make it to playboy? is she still sexy? Edited to adjust image sizes. Use peek to see the changes.This message has been edited by AdminJar, 07-17-2005 10:55 AM

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my 95lb friend doesn't wear makeup (except for pictures), doesn't dress in style, doesn't pay much attention to her hair style, and gets hit on all the time.same with most of the girls i know who don't pay much attention to those things. a man's head will snap around if he sees a poorly-dressed, poorly put-together wearing no makeup too. believe me, i have friends who've been known to cause car accidents.so no, men don't care. i can't believe you're even debating this with me. i'm a man. i don't care. other men here are voicing very similar opinions. tell me, as a woman, what can you possibly know about what men are thinking about?here, i'll lay it down, nice and simple. men aren't hard to understand. we look at women's bodies. all of it, generally. our attention is held by shape, posture, movement, and skin. makeup and clothing don't have much to do with it. women look sexiest to us when they are comfortable, in comfortable clothes and shoes. makeup is generally an undesired feature ("what is she hiding?"). personally, i find makeup unattractive.

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really? huh. like i said, i look down on everyone, so it's hard to tell/

speaking of which, i really wanna try that vietnamese restaurant sometime. you game? thank god someone said it. on the same token, dresses seem to be made with larger boobs sizes in mind. i went out with peppy today, and she saw this dress in a window. went in to try it on, but decided she didn't have the boobs to fill it out.i think our problem is with the fashion industry, not playboy. excercise is cathartic. it makes people feel good. sit around all day, and you'll be depressed. excercise is good -- part of the problem is that we don't move enough. we sit here at our computers. we sit in the car. we sit in the movies. we sit at the couch. no wonder the only thing we develop are asses.

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yes. people who dress badly like slobs tend to leave a poor impression at job interviews. do yourself a huge favor, and watch "what not to wear" on tlc sometime. they routinely dress people with funny body shapes in good clothes, and every one of them pulls it off. body shape has NOTHING to do with dressing well.

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