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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   3759 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 20, 2023

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Curious: are there any serious studies/papers/books/etc. on what constitutes beauty and physical attractiveness, particularly for women? (Would also be fine w/ a personal write-up). I'm interested in something relatively layman, but not boring party line platitudes like "beauty is subjective" and such (or, OTOH, incel-adjacent dorks sperging on about "canthial tilt" and such crap.[1])

For a while now... I've been feeling disoriented about my inability to verbalize when I find a specific person physically attractive, beyond broad, almost-meaningless (and shallow—makes me feel vaguely uncultured) descriptors like "thin", "good face" or "young". It's like I'm lacking control, unable to even articulate what I feel; it's a very torturous feeling.

[1] perhaps I'm being uncharitable here. But I'll admit I do feel an almost-atavistic sense of disgust toward them, for reasons I cannot really fully articulate why (but is perhaps related to their being incel = low social value, ergo disgusting, or something crude like that...yeah, I know. Irrational me 😿)

I'm not sure of a source that is both serious and targeted at layman. Awhile ago, possibly on a related forum, there was a thread discussing the pair of articles "Why Are Women Hot?" and "Dispelling Beauty Lies: The Truth About Feminine Beauty".

I'm pretty sure not everything claimed in those pieces is supported by the academic literature. There are a bunch of academic studies, though it's unclear how repeatable the results are. From memory, generally people prefer faces that are close to but not exactly symmetric. Composite images of population average faces score highly, but not highest, on attractiveness. People tend to approach a "8s" with traits they find particularly compelling rather than "10s."

I'm pretty sure not everything claimed in those pieces is supported by the academic literature. There are a bunch of academic studies, though it's unclear how repeatable the results are. From memory, generally people prefer faces that are close to but not exactly symmetric. Composite images of population average faces score highly, but not highest, on attractiveness. People tend to approach a "8s" with traits they find particularly compelling rather than "10s."

This actually meshes well with what "J. Sanilac" writes. In my opinion, both men and women having an individual "type" when it comes to faces is the more important message than "men overwhelmingly prefer figure-eight female bodies". The typical heart-shaped face that is common in AI-generated art is attractive, but it doesn't make you go "hnnng" if you know what I mean.

People tend to approach a "8s" with traits they find particularly compelling rather than "10s."

This is something like what the old OKCupid blog found. There, it was that people whose physical attractiveness ratings averaged out as an "8" did much much better if that "8" was an average of very high and much lower ratings than if it was a simple low-variance "everyone rated them 8/10". Their hypothesis was that it was a game theory thing, that each person has better odds going after someone they find uniquely attractive rather than someone who is equally generally attractive ... but based on the data in this other blog post I can't rule out the hypothesis that everybody was just disproportionately messaging their own personal 9s and 10s and the general 8s were thus at the back of a lot of lines.

OKCupid blog found.

I think that is the source I was thinking of. I'm glad my description was at least accurate enough to dig up the correct post. It's a bit tricky to recall nowadays, especially since so many of the original blog posts have been memory holed.

Going to second “Dispelling Beauty Lies”. The guy who wrote it gives off serious quack energy, but pretty much everything in the article rings obviously true to me.

His whole deal on twitter seems to be tilting at strawmen. He seems to think he's addressing women who could be curvy sex goddesses but instead choose to be flat-chested stick-girls.

The reality is that nobody has that much control over their body shape. Keira Knightly isn't going to become Christina Hendricks just by putting on a few pounds. They're both working with what genetics gave them.

Women already know that curves are attractive.

Although he is right about long hair.

The reality is that nobody has that much control over their body shape.

Or do they? He quite specifically calls out stick-girls and tells them to get a titjob and wear skirts that flare out instead of emphasizing how much they resemble a closet door.

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