#cultural beauty ideals

[thisisthinprivilege]

Is it xenophobic or racist to bring up East Asian beauty standards regarding thinness and how many lives were lost to restrictive eating disorders on a post about body image and shaming? Especially because many people think they’re “healthier” when in reality it’s actually damaging. I know many other countries are like this, especially if they have a “fashion capital”.

On the contrary. It is important to understand the genesis of cultural mores that incorporate fatphobic beauty standards and observe how cultures all over the world have evolved fatphobic beauty standards. It is even more important to understand how fatphobia is itself tied to racist or "purist" racial ideals. Anti-blackness, for instance, manifests in how many aspects of fatphobia are realized in American/USian/Western beauty standards.

I think sources matter on this, and that observations and accounts from folks who are a part of the culture should be elevated above other discourse.

What do other folks think about this?

-ArteToLife

[aboardthescheherazade]

🌹🤍🌻

(reference/inspiration under the cut)

Original illustration from "Veil" by Ikumi Fukuda/Kottori

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

sorry but i dont understand why they had to cast margot robbie as tonya harding. she was perfect for barbie - the quintessential tall, skinny blonde that is barbie. she was perfect as sharon tate who was also admired for her beauty. and im sure she performed great as tonya harding because she is a talented actress - but it really bothers me they cast a woman this conventionally attractive for the one leading role where the real life woman she played was „unfeminine“ and „unattractive“ by ice skating standards and was constantly pitted against her rival who got all the sponsors and better ratings despite not being the more talented ice skater. margot robbie didnt need this movie for her success but it could have been a one time chance for an unattractive womans break as an actress. instead they „uglied down“ margot robbie like they did with nicole kidman in „destroyer“.

they couldnt find other talented actresses for the roles who just look like this?

and yet there are still feminists who deny „pretty privilege“ exists because incels have negatively impacted the discussion around beauty bias. no serious feminist says attractive women have it easy but it just annoys me when people claim there are no advantages to being conventionally attractive because „beauty is subjective“ or „misogyny just takes different forms“ or „beauty shouldnt matter“ - well it does. and yes beauty can fade too and beauty standards change but weight, ability and age are also characteristics that change, they still can have an unfair advantage or disadvantage. and i understand that feminists are uncomfortable categorising women as more or less attractive, i am too, but it is also hindering real conversations about beauty and attractiveness in our society when we act „beauty blind“. there is definitely negative bias towards conventionally attractive women too but that is a product of misogyny, not their looks. whatever someone will twist this to call me insecure and petty anyways

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

if the purpose of contemporary worship is to meet the culture where it's at, we are about to lose the need for contemporary worship

I don't think I'm imagining that the trend in both high-profile and social media conversion testimonies in recent years is that people are broken down by the self-focused, anti-corporeal, progressive spiritualism of modern secularism and instead are looking for community-based, embodied, historical religion

this is why they tend to start with and end up in the Latin Mass Roman Catholic or conservative-leaning mainline protestant churches

all I'm sayin is that when you have Richard Dawkins declaring he wants to remain in a culture that sings hymns and builds beautiful churches...that's your sign to start thinkin bout liturgy

[philosophybits]

The two antagonistic spheres of society have always coexisted; the higher culture has always been accommodating, while the reality was rarely disturbed by its ideals and its truth. Today's novel feature is the flattening out of the antagonism between culture and social reality through the obliteration of the oppositional, alien, and transcendent elements in the higher culture by virtue of which it constituted another dimension of reality. This liquidation of two-dimensional culture takes place not through the denial and rejection of the “cultural values,” but through their wholesale incorporation into the established order, through their reproduction and display on a massive scale.

Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man

[devondespresso]

friendly reminder as new years comes up and companies double down on exploiting marketing to people's weight loss resolutions: please please please please PLEASE be kind to yourself. love if you can, be neutral if you can't. there's about a million posts about this that i want to restate but then we'll be here all day so ill just stick to my two cents.

a lot of fitness culture (nice and well-intentioned people, not just shitty companies) will tell you you can do it right. you can be educated and smart, know the macros and minerals and do the best HIIT and have your rest days. And i don't have the authority to say that idea doesn't exist in reality, but i can say i was doing it as smart possible. reduce dont cut, stay above your calorie minimum, balance cardio and strength, eat healthy fats and get good protein.

you don't get an eating disorder by being dumb or uninformed or well-intentionedly doing it wrong. you dont get sucked in deeper by being flippant, by choosing with a sound mind to take those risks. and you dont get out of that shit by being smarter or learning more or figuring out how to do it right. you get out of it by being kinder to yourself, and most fitness companies dont want that for you so you have to want that for yourself

i like thinking of going to the gym as a hobby, and three years after my lowest point i still like weightlifting and yoga a lot. the difference now is that im recovering, making protein shakes that are closer to glorified milkshakes (ice cream and all, plenty of ice cream), putting effort into eating enough and not forcing myself to do stuff ill hate in the name of discipline or whatever. you don't force yourself to attend a painting class because you hate how your hands are shaped and youre told that if you just put all your willpower and discipline into painting regularly you'll be able to fix them. being creative on your own time and as you enjoy it *is* good for you and can definitely make you feel better, but staring at a canvas for weeks agonizing over the work you're only doing because you 'have' to is not.

so please please PLEASE be kind to yourselves💕💗💖

[fem-lit]

Men, […] since they made gods in their own image, feel that their bodies are essentially all right.

Women’s flesh is evidence of a God-given wrongness; whereas fat men are fat gods. The actual demographics of obesity are irrelevant because this religion is not about whose body is fat, but whose body is wrong.

— Naomi Wolf (1990) The Beauty Myth

[ali-1996]

Chinese natural culture wall paper

[butchlifeguard]

the she/theys vs he/theys and wlw vs mlm posts are symptoms of a larger problem within the queer community 👍

[loregoddess]

saw the first volume of Cursed Princess Club in the store last Sunday as I was walking by the manga section, and the name was so unusual that I looked it up online when I got home, and found out it was on webtoons to read for free, and just finished it, and holy shit

literally one of the best stories I've ever read

[fandom-space-princess]

spent the morning tentatively constructing an essay in my head about the differences between Golden Age and New Wave science fiction and their conflicting approaches to the concepts of utopia and cultural perfection. and then realized that it's yet another thing I'm happier daydreaming about than actually writing. alas.

[blujayonthewing]

man, posts like this make me feel so fucking weird. like, thanks for the shoutout, I guess, but people just Have Tastes, and no amount of moralizing fingerwagging is going to change the fact that much fewer people's tastes will be inclined toward bodies that look like mine. Beauty and appeal are subjective but it's fucking weird to pretend they don't exist. Like, I dunno man, it sucks that I'm not as pretty as other people! It does! But it's still just a thing that is true and that's fine! I want people who give me attention to do so because they actually fucking mean it, not because someone scolded them for not having morally correct enough tastes in women on tumblr dot com

[two-hearts-beat]

"objectively attractive" 🙃

great as a stilistic tool for exaggeration but not as a concept to be used seriously

[toastling]

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is the Gran Turismo series. What Polyphony Digital manage to pump out is always the most beautiful example of photorealism of every gaming generation, and I think the why comes down to the fact that on top of chasing that photorealism, they are also just really, really passionate about their craft, and are all artists in the truest sense.

The real secret is that art is not a zero sum game. You do not need to commit 100% to one or the other, nor do you have to commit 50% to both. You can commit 100% to as many things as you want forever so long as you give yourself the time and bandwidth to see it through.

While it may just be another vroom vroom simulator to some, at the end of the day, it, too, is art, and goes to show what a good eye, a strong understanding of your hardware, and solid art direction can accomplish.

Even if you go back several generations, to aged hardware where attempts at photorealism often end up looking awful through a modern lens, their understanding of their craft and dedication to making the most beautiful representations of the cars they love so much and equally beautiful environments to drive them in has left us with some of the genuinely prettiest games of their era.

And it's still pretty not because they still look "real", because honestly, just look at it, it's cartoonish. The trees are paper, the people are laughable, the 3D is dated, the physics are ridiculous. And yet, all these years later, it still looks pretty, especially in comparison to other attempts at realism of the era, because their goal was always more than *just* photorealism. It was about pushing the boundaries of their hardware and representing their passion in the most beautiful and authentic way they could.

And I don't mean authentic in the sense of gritty attention to detail either - that's definitely part of it, but is almost a side effect as opposed to the actual goal. It's authentic in the sense of this is how they see their world, their passion, which in this case, is cars. It's more real than real in some sense. And yet, there is also an air of unreality and idealism to it. Because this is art, *their* art.

When you love what you do and you love what it is that you seek to represent, then even photorealism, with all its diminishing returns and insignificantly incremental improvements, can stand the test of time and be artistically beautiful and valid.

this person gets it

[turnedpalefromlackofsun]

i am so fucking glad i waited until i was higher level grad student to play sumeru

i would not have understood the weight of these words and academia life before

avo you genius! thank you for your patience

[random-bookquotes]

An ethnically ambiguous beauty ideal represents a middle ground – one that everyone can strive to achieve. For darker-skinned women, access can be achieved through skin bleaching, wearing wigs, relaxing afro hair, contouring the nose or getting surgery to erase ethnic features. For white women, a tan is a necessity.

Ellen Atlanta, Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women