[lbo-talk] Queen for a Day: My Gay Makeover

[Gail Brock]

> Miles: where are the societies that prize/prized assymetry, waiste/hip
> ratios (for women) in excess of .7, baldness etc.?  If you're going to
> argue in favor of a social learning theory of all of our beauty standards,
> you really can't dodge this question.  (Speaking of social learning:
> apparently, it doesn't take infants very long to "learn" our beauty
> standards: they respond more positively to beautiful faces long before
> they can flip through the pages of _Vogue_.)
> 
> -- Luke

_____

Assume that infants learn basic forms of beauty from their caretakers -- in how
many societies are the overwhelming majority of mothers asymetrical? of fathers
of infants bald?  The innate standards of beauty argument seems to rest on the
observation that features so rare that we label them "abnormal" are not prized. 
This doesn't explain how different cultures prize different emphases and even
exaggerations of different body parts -- weight, breast size, foot size, skin
color.

  -- Gail

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