Insane beauty standards

submitted by anxietyaccount8 from self.GenderCritical

Is it just me or do they keep getting worse and worse...women are supposed to pay attention our hair, our skin, our makeup, our shoulders, our boobs, our waist, our hips, our ass, our legs, our feet, be hairless, wear the most trendy fashion 24/7...how many of these things do men think about?

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[–]FlippyKing 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

"... how many of these things do men think about?"

Straight dude here. I can't speak for others, but I find the changes in beauty standards trending towards not beautiful at all. I don't just mean the photoshop'd eyes, or the impossible and photoshop'd hip to waist ratio thing. I was a young adult during the "big hair" era, and while I found it as attractive any other reasonable hair style, the chemical residue was not fun. It was very much more work than needed from my perspective. Nails and lips I never paid attention to. Obsessing over nails and lips seems like wasted effort imho. Big lips vs "thin" lips I never took note of. I remember years ago a woman I know pointing out someone's thin lips I was like "is that a thing?" Also, trendy fashion is not something I pay attention to.

I think most guys do not notice these things to the extent we're thought to. And even noticing them, like boob size which sort of can not go unnoticed, do not necessarily make for more attractive to everyone. I think the idea of just being generally attractive, and how our appearance often reflects something about ourselves, is under-rated. I don't know if that's helpful.

The "hairless" thing, I've seen people talk about that here in this forum as it being about being attracted to teens. I never saw it that way, but I also found it an unsettling look. But, my understanding is that makes things more sensitive there, and made oral sex a very different experience from my perspective. I can see though that for a woman the idea of looking prepubescent could be much more than just unsettling, especially if a guys like asking for that.

[–]jet199 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Normal women aren't expecting to pay attention to all those things, no.

Sometimes people get themselves in jobs or cliques where they feel they need to but that's not the majority of women by a long stretch. Intrasex competition is also a big problem for women as they often are allowed to accept it exists so can't challenge it in themselves.

In fact at the moment we are now moving towards a situation where many women will be working from home so they won't care at all.

[–]Irascible-harpy 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There's a book called The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf which explains beauty as a means of reclaiming control over women which has been lost as women started to escape the role of domestic servant. Since women are no longer "domestic goddesses" and the spiritual center of the family, beauty and male centered hypersexuality (particularly porn) have become the means by which women's energies are diverted and women are parted from their personhood.

It's a very solid read. Unusually stream of conscious for a non-fiction book, but densely populated with important concepts. I highly recommend it for all women, particularly those struggling with beauty.