REAL women

I doubt that, I think most of them would be at least overweight by BMI.

This woman has a BMI of 29.5, well into the overweight range and only a few pounds away from obese. She doesn't look that much bigger than the dove models.

more-to-love-anna.jpg


I didn't say BMI because I think it is a stupid system, especially since they lowered the figures at one point (arbitrarily as far as I know). What evidence is there that being overweight, NOT OBESE, according to BMI makes you less healthy?
 
A disability isn't usually something we've either done to ourselves over time through bad habits (thus making us feel guilty) or something we can remove through hard work and dedication, and if we don't, causes further guilt. The reasons it so easy to fall into the mindset of feeling bad is because we feel we should feel bad about it. If we feel bad, the messages and images these companies put out effect us so much more.

The Dove ad was thus focusing on how we feel bad and guilty about not achieving the "ideal" body type, and telling us everything will be ok, don't feel bad, I can fix you!

I guess I thought the message was acceptance of ourselves the way we are, not that we needed or wanted fixing.
 
I guess I thought the message was acceptance of ourselves the way we are, not that we needed or wanted fixing.

A person trying to sell you something will never tell you genuinely that you do not need to be fixed or in some way change yourself or behavior. It is through your feelings of imperfection that they are able to manipulate you into buying something.
 
Pretty much all of our knowledge and panic about fatness is based on BMI, it's about as objective as we can get at the moment, just sayin.
 
A disability isn't usually something we've either done to ourselves over time through bad habits (thus making us feel guilty) or something we can remove through hard work and dedication, and if we don't, causes further guilt. The reasons it so easy to fall into the mindset of feeling bad is because we feel we should feel bad about it. If we feel bad, the messages and images these companies put out effect us so much more.

The Dove ad was thus focusing on how we feel bad and guilty about not achieving the "ideal" body type, and telling us everything will be ok, don't feel bad, I can fix you!


I don't see the Dove ads that way. Even women who are considered beautiful by the standards of Hollywood or the modeling industry like to use things that will pamper them.

honestly I don't think any cream/lotion/whatever will make someone look more beautiful. But everyone likes to pamper themselves just to relax now and then, right?
 
A person trying to sell you something will never tell you genuinely that you do not need to be fixed or in some way change yourself or behavior. It is through your feelings of imperfection that they are able to manipulate you into buying something.

Ah, silly me. Well, I often miss the point of these things.
 
Why does one need to pamper themselves with lotion and/or creams to relax though?
 
Is it a biological urging? This, slathering on of lotion to relax?
I'm not saying it doesn't produce relaxing effects..but it's an idea sold to us.
 
Is it a biological urging? This, slathering on of lotion to relax?
I'm not saying it doesn't produce relaxing effects..but it's an idea sold to us.

No, it is in your biology. You cannot resist it. Go buy some lotion and get slathering now.
 
Is it a biological urging? This, slathering on of lotion to relax?
I'm not saying it doesn't produce relaxing effects..but it's an idea sold to us.

It relaxes me to rub lotion on myself or have it rubbed on me.


...and sometimes excites me!
 
From what I've read the features men across cultures find attractive are, in decreasing order of importance:

wide hips - good for child bearing

relatively thin waist - definitely does not have to be thin in absolute terms, just enough to make the hips and breast shapes noticable. Men prefer an hourglass, not stick figure.

firm/shapely breasts - large is typically preferred because it is easier to determine if they are still firm and shapely. Large and saggy is worse than small and firm, but since large breasts sag sooner shapely large breasts better indicate youth and health.

fair skin - women are naturally slightly fairer than men, are fairer still when young. Although modern western culture puts forth tan as an ideal, men almost always naturally prefer skin that is naturally on the fair side for the girl's ethnicity. (Racial differences are not too hard to filter out, so a fair skinned black girl may still be preferred to a still lighter but heavily tanned white girl.) Women do not in general care about male skin tone. It is hypothesized that the main reason Europeans are so fair skinned is not so much because of environmental factors in and of themselves but rather that the harsh ice age environment encouraged monogamy, as it was more difficult for a man to provide for many wives. When a man can choose only one wife he tends to choose a fairer woman and only fairer women pass on their genes, but in polygamous societies most women of all skin tones get the chance to reproduce.

light eyes - not a factor in many ethnic groups, but this is another indicator of youth which can also mark sexual fidelity. Certain hormones released during pregnancy cause a woman's eyes to get slightly darker, so very light blue or gray eyes can are associated with virginity. Blue eyed men show the strongest preference for blue eyed women, probably because the recessive nature of the eye color genes mean that eye color can be used to help determine if she is bearing his child or another man's. (Technically it is not strictly recessive as there are at least 5 different genes controlling human eye color and some gene combination that allow two blue eyes parents to have a brown eyed child, but these are very rare and so do not really influence Evo-psych.)

(fair hair is not naturally preferred, but does tend to correspond to the preferred eye and skin tones.)
 
From what I've read the features men across cultures find attractive are, in decreasing order of importance:

wide hips - good for child bearing

relatively thin waist - definitely does not have to be thin in absolute terms, just enough to make the hips and breast shapes noticable. Men prefer an hourglass, not stick figure.

firm/shapely breasts - large is typically preferred because it is easier to determine if they are still firm and shapely. Large and saggy is worse than small and firm, but since large breasts sag sooner shapely large breasts better indicate youth and health.

fair skin - women are naturally slightly fairer than men, are fairer still when young. Although modern western culture puts forth tan as an ideal, men almost always naturally prefer skin that is naturally on the fair side for the girl's ethnicity. (Racial differences are not too hard to filter out, so a fair skinned black girl may still be preferred to a still lighter but heavily tanned white girl.) Women do not in general care about male skin tone. It is hypothesized that the main reason Europeans are so fair skinned is not so much because of environmental factors in and of themselves but rather that the harsh ice age environment encouraged monogamy, as it was more difficult for a man to provide for many wives. When a man can choose only one wife he tends to choose a fairer woman and only fairer women pass on their genes, but in polygamous societies most women of all skin tones get the chance to reproduce.

light eyes - not a factor in many ethnic groups, but this is another indicator of youth which can also mark sexual fidelity. Certain hormones released during pregnancy cause a woman's eyes to get slightly darker, so very light blue or gray eyes can are associated with virginity. Blue eyed men show the strongest preference for blue eyed women, probably because the recessive nature of the eye color genes mean that eye color can be used to help determine if she is bearing his child or another man's. (Technically it is not strictly recessive as there are at least 5 different genes controlling human eye color and some gene combination that allow two blue eyes parents to have a brown eyed child, but these are very rare and so do not really influence Evo-psych.)

(fair hair is not naturally preferred, but does tend to correspond to the preferred eye and skin tones.)

I think you're on point with this post, and I'm betting there's research to back it up as well. But I can see it, as far as preferences are concerned. And even in my culture, the "lighter skinned" women have been, over the centuries, treated with more respect than the "darker skinned" women. And the debate continues today.

Just this morning my mother said, "you have such pretty skin color" even though my skin is somewhat scarred. Mostly it's because of the lighter, warmer tone I guess. :P
 
Society wants us to believe that a real woman is thin, white, blond, tanned, big breasted and in a bikini posing in the most seductive of all poses. These are the images that were are selling to our young boys as well. They are taught that this is how women look from magazines like playboy, from porn; all unrealistic depictions of how real women looks.

Right. And real men aren't funny, cute, confident, interesting nor have jobs.
 
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