contrast in beauty
Jul. 26th, 2010 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serynI read something somewhere about how we distinguish between masculine and feminine by contrast. So women wear makeup that exaggerates facial characteristics and men do not.
Although I think I could believe that about the contrast without artificial emphasis, I don't believe it overall.
There's Duke on Haven, he's got extremely dark hair, very prominent eyebrows, and a dark moustache. He seems very striking in that Superman's Clark Kent kind of way. The majority of women preferred Aragorn to Legolas in the LOTR movies. And most men seem to gravitate toward the blonde bimbo kinds of women where there's very little difference between hair and skin color but the lips are painted blow-job red.
So high-contrast is appealing to women. The proverbial "Tall, dark, and handsome."
I don't know what men who aren't interested in artifice-laden women prefer in terms of contrast, but there isn't a parallel "dark and beautiful" saying.
It makes me wonder how much of women's standards of "beauty" are less about what's appealing to men and more about what women like on themselves.
On the whole I am quite pleased to be with a man who thinks makeup is ugly on women and that I am more beautiful without it. Not only because it's beneficial to my self-esteem, but because I don't waste an unholy amount of money on artificial colorants.
Although I think I could believe that about the contrast without artificial emphasis, I don't believe it overall.
There's Duke on Haven, he's got extremely dark hair, very prominent eyebrows, and a dark moustache. He seems very striking in that Superman's Clark Kent kind of way. The majority of women preferred Aragorn to Legolas in the LOTR movies. And most men seem to gravitate toward the blonde bimbo kinds of women where there's very little difference between hair and skin color but the lips are painted blow-job red.
So high-contrast is appealing to women. The proverbial "Tall, dark, and handsome."
I don't know what men who aren't interested in artifice-laden women prefer in terms of contrast, but there isn't a parallel "dark and beautiful" saying.
It makes me wonder how much of women's standards of "beauty" are less about what's appealing to men and more about what women like on themselves.
On the whole I am quite pleased to be with a man who thinks makeup is ugly on women and that I am more beautiful without it. Not only because it's beneficial to my self-esteem, but because I don't waste an unholy amount of money on artificial colorants.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 03:56 am (UTC)I've probably heard the opening lines of "Night Moves" about 40 times in the past month (thank you overplaying oldies station): "She was a black haired beauty with big dark eyes..."
This is completely bizarre, but I just had this thought: is it possible that we might have a genetic basis for preferring recessive traits? A dark-eyed woman can carry genes for lighter eyes, but not vice versa (because blue eyes are recessive). If a blue-eyed man chooses a blue-eyed wife and they have a brown-eyed baby, he has a much better guess of whether she cheated on him than a brown-eyed man with a brown-eyed wife and blue-eyed baby.
I know that's crazy talk, but it might explain men having a preference for recessive traits in women (or at least in the mother of the children they hope are theirs) and vice versa?
no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 05:28 am (UTC)But then the way women darken their eyebrows and smoke-ify their eyelids and blacken their eyelashes seems like it would be counter-productive.
Of course I believe everyone looks better in makeup. But men don't wear it. And scientific theory suggests that makeup shouldn't attract the kinds of men who would be good husbands.
I'm hard pressed to find a single woman who doesn't think she needs makeup in order to get a boyfriend or even when her life is in a stopped-up toilet that she should spend money on new makeup.
It's like what women are doing with the makeup is actually intended to attract women. Not necessarily sexually. I just mean that it seems like baiting a man trap with a chocolate bar because you have PMS.