The Ancient Greeks greatly esteemed physical perfection. Hence the statues that they sculpted of their gods reflect perfect proportion, nice musculature, no obesity, etc. My question: did most people in Classical Greece look like this?I mean, there was no fast food, obesity was rare, and most people had to work hard. So did most of the men look like Apollo? And women like Diana? If not, why not?
I think most of them got more sun than that. 
My understanding is that both the Greeks and Romans admired perfect proportions and so of course statues would be idealized - look at our own Romanized statue of Washington. I believe there are statues of non-ideal figures as well, though.
Am I the only one who’s not a big fan of their women?
The greeks and romans painted their statues with realistic colors. They are only white today because the polychrome has worn off over the centuries. When renaissance sculptors started copying classical statuary they kept their statues white marble so they’d look like the white antiques, rather than what they would have looked like when new.
Do most modern Americans look like Hollywood star(let)s? Or even TV newscasters?
Too wide a net to cast. Definitely stupid top x lists. Mind-bogglingly so.
Jr., there are lots of other threads to open if you don’t like this one. Comments like yours are called threadshits and they’re widely frowned upon. Think ‘Golden Rule’ and you can then expect the same consideration in any threads you start.
Who said I didn’t like the thread? My question was genuine. I don’t find the few statues of women from Greece and Rome I’ve seen anything to fall over.
Give me a statue of a fit Katy Perry and then we’re talking. Although there are many options. Big breasts dispensable.
And yes, Golden Rule thought of.
If you meant something else by stupid top x…
Oh goodness I hope not. Greek statues were typically painted before the effects of time left them all white but I am not sure if that was a good thing. Colorblind clowns have better taste than the original statues. If those statues are true depictions, Ancient Greece must have looked like Mardi Gras all the time.
I meant the Hollywood and other lists of for instance top 10 sexy are idiotic. Just staggeringly so… might’ve misinterpreted the post I was responding to though… kind of badly perhaps.
checks clock for medication time
The classical Greeks had a culture of fitness and a love of the body beautiful, so in general many citizens kept themselves fit. Men were obliged to be ready and able up to age 59 to put on armor, march or sail long distances and fight, so it would be looked at as something of a duty to stay fit and healthy. And as mentioned above, mostly they sculpted idealized versions in full body. You see a lot more variety and realism in busts of philosophers like Socrates, who can look old and homely as long as it is only the face of wisdom you have to look at.
Interesting to run into this as I have recently been investigating foot types due to some problems I’m having with mine. I have a second toe significantly longer on both feet than my other toes. It’s called a Morton’s Toe. Other sites call it a Neanderthal Foot or a Greek Foot and mention that it is the way that Greek statue’s feet were modeled.
Toes that are shorter than the great toe make up a foot sometimes called an African foot. Of course I’ve run into all manner of genetics arguements about this. But I’m just trying to find some relief for shoes not fitting well and the whys and whereabouts.
All interesting reading, nonetheless.
Incidently, I read that the long second toe is called a Princess Toe in some street slang. The nerve of that hussy, thinking she’s better than the Big toe!
I hope the Greeks penis weren’t that tiny in real life.
No wonder they were so aggressive in warfare. They had to make up for their shortcomings somehow. 
Did any of the greek women statues have private parts? Seems like it was only the male statues that needed the fig leaf in my school textbooks.
It hardly gets much better. I took an art history course and was stunned by a Minoan.
Not sure if I was looking at a close-up or this was the one… or how exactly I came up with this sentence.
Little girls were putting that one in the kiln on max back in the day.
To us, bright colors and flashy decoration look cheap and gaudy. That’s because bold primary colors are cheap to make today. But dyes and colorants were expensive luxury products before modern chemistry. There were cheap natural colors if you wanted brownish green, yellowy brown, reddish brown, tan, beige, dark brown, muddy gray, and so on. But bright pigments like indigo were luxury goods.
So stuff that looks gaudy and cheap to us would have looked expensive and aristocratic a couple hundred years ago.
I’m sure they wanted to finish up with that part as soon as possible.
Oh, and it wasn’t just the statues. All those marble columns and pillars and cornices and suchlike were brightly painted as well. No stark white marble for the Greeks and Romans, they painted that shit up like Mardi Gras.
I know, I just wrote that same material in another thread recently. Just couldn’t resist the snark.
Ah. Yes. Any female figure with the slightest padding is grossly overweight, and the sight of pubic hair will make you throw up in your mouth a little. Touching it would probably make you die.
Gotta love that under-30 crowd.