well, excuuuse me if i find attractive people attractive!

The BBQ Pit
1

my local newspaper has its ‘quote of the day’ section. recently there was one by gwyneth paltrow, surely recognised as a ‘beautiful person’. ‘there is nothing worse,’ gwyneth proclaimed, ‘than having to spend the night talking to a really beautiful, really boring person.’ (this is the jist of it, i cannot recall the exact quote.)

apparently, this was terribly ironic because gwyneth, as a recognised ‘beautiful person’ simply must be boring, because she is beautiful. we all know that beautiful people are terribly boring, don’t we?

even gwyneth appears to be conforming to this awful anti-stereotype. i have very little opinion on gwyneth; i do not find her terribly attractive, nor do i consider her a very good actress, yet having never spoken to her, i can’t see how i could presume anything about her character. she could be vapid or exceedinly intelligent, lively and witty or dull and boring. i do not know. what i do know is that she has erred in her above quote.

you see, ms paltrow, i think there certainly is something worse than speding the night with your imagined beautiful bore. surely if nothing else, this figure of human tedium can offer visual pleasure, if nothing else? truly awful would be an individual who is both boring and ugly. there’s neither a lively character nor a pretty face to admire. true horror.

however, this appears to be unacceptable to say! ugly people are all kind, wonderful, terribly interesting people. models suck, dammit!

first, let us differentiate between forming an evaluation on someone’s character and forming a judgement on that same individual’s personality. to admire someone’s attractiveness is by definition superficial. beauty is skin-deep, and any judgement based upon this quality is and should only be on the surface.

if i can’t talk at length to someone, then looking at them is the only way i can determine anything about them. yes, i am attracted to thin girls. that’s the way i am - not through any societal conditioning; there are many other societal expectations of beauty that i simply do not adhere to (big breasts, for instance). but apparently, i’m meant to look at fat girls and say ‘god damn, she is sooo hot’. well i don’t. fat people aren’t attractive (not to me, anyway). this is not a judgement on your character! only on your appearance!

yet if i don’t want to see roseanne modelling for playboy, then i’m an anorexia-causing asshole, right? i’m being superficial and i think that the only girls ever worth getting to know are the cheerleading homecoming queens?

:rolleyes:

no, i’m commenting on attractiveness. that is all. obesity is not attractive, nor is being over-weight. we don’t see over-weight models on the covers of magazines because, no matter how nice they are, when i pick up a magazine, i don’t say, ‘oh look, she’s really nice!’ it’s just not attractive! then again, most people don’t find balding men, or hairy men, or men with really big noses sexy. nor do they find women with buck teeth or warts or loads of cellulite attractive. they like these people because they have other qualities that outweigh their negative attributes.

ok, so one more time, very carefully: no matter how much you say that thin girls aren’t really attractive, and the ones i should really like are the ones with a little bit of sag around the tummy, i won’t agree. when judging on aesthetic qualities, i take into account on aesthetic qualities, ok?

this isn’t to say that i’d never date someone who doesn’t live up to an ideal of beauty; there are much more important things (i’m no catch myself, anyways). but don’t tell me that fat is beautiful because it’s not.

2

I wonder what the context of Gwyneth’s quote was. Perhaps she was talking about her own efforts to not be boring - like, “Oh, I read a lot, and am taking photography classes. I don’t want to be boring because there is nothing worse than having to spend the night talking to a really beautiful, really boring person.”

3

Tame Cat

It rests me to be among beautiful women.
Why should one always lie about such matters?
I repeat:
It rests me to converse with beautiful women
Even though we talk nothing but nonsense,

The purring of the invisible antennae
Is both stimulating and delightful.
– Ezra Pound

4

Please don’t tell me what’s attractive and what isn’t. Apparently, you haven’t grasped that attractiveness is purely subjective. Some men think big women are attractive, and some women find hairy men sexy. And so on.

I don’t see the point of your post at all.

5

(bolding mine)

are you following here?

and what planet do you live on that you are forced to buy magazines which contain things you don’t want to see?

that’s funny, my Mode has a fat chick on the cover every time. hmmmmm.

Who’s saying that? An unhealthy level of thinness can be very unattractive, IN MY OPINION, but otherwise I think slender chicks are hot, too.

Ok

Um–somewhere along the line you seemed to lose your point–which (I think) was—to each his own. How about this—I won’t tell you fat is beautiful, if you don’t tell me it’s not. Deal?

6

Thank you very much for setting me straight, gex gex. As an overweight person, I was under the false assumption that someone, somewhere might find me attractive and not hideously ugly. You have proved me wrong. Now I know that because my genetics won’t allow me to ever have a body with no ‘sag’ and no cellulite, I am doomed to be shunned by the masses of attractive people. Even talking to me is apparently too much to bear, because what should I have to say, as an ugly person?

:rolleyes:

You seemed to have utterly missed the point of what Paltrow was saying. She didn’t say you had to find X attractive, but rather that beauty doesn’t make you interesting. I agree; I’d much rather spend an evening talking to someone who was interesting but not physically attractive than talking to someone who was stunning yet vapid.

By the way: in case you hadn’t noticed, the standard of beauty DOES change over time and varies greatly between individuals. But hey, congrats on a useless and narcissitic post that is sure to attracts lots of nasty responses.

Oh, and word to Slip Mahoney.

7

fluiddruid wrote:

Definately. Rubin didn’t paint ugly women. There’s no demand for that kind of art. His subjects were all large women, which was a standard of beauty in those days.

I don’t know what this means, though:

But if it’s good, I’m for it.

8

Gee, Gex, defensove much? Cuz I sure don’t see where you were being attacked for who you are attracted to. And as fluiddruid pointed out, you really didn’t get Paltrow’s point.

And by the way, your preference for thinness is absolutely something that you were conditioned to feel by the society you are in, give me a break. Society does not condition you to find big breasts attractive, Hustler does.

So what?

9

This post has been made, with slight variations,many times before. Each time the poster tries, with varying success, to separate his own standards from soome sort of absolute standard. In this case, Gex Gex ends his post by declaring authoritatively:

I would never tell you what should be beautiful to you; please do me the same courtesy. As it happens, I think that the Callista Flockharts of the world are quite unattractive; the woman looks like a survivor of the Battaan Death March. For me, sexual attractiveness includes a brief mental foray into the fantasy of how it would be to be in bed with the woman – in Lara Flynn Boyle’s case, I’d be afraid of accidentally breaking her. Give me a woman like Camryn Mannheim any day, who seems real and ready for some sweaty and enthusiastic fun without worries that some fragile limb might snap.

But that’s me. I’m sure that the ladies I’ve named above don’t lack for suitors of their own, who obviously find them attractive.

In short, each one of us responds in our own way to others. There is no ultimate universal attractive feature or proportion.

  • Rick
10

Waitaminit here. Gwynth Paltrow says she doesn’t like to speak to beautiful, boring people and you take it as an personal insult gex?

Bryant Gumble once said talking to Jerry Hall was like talking to an open window-- does that get you blood roiling too?

Really, what shellfish crawled up your urethra?

11

Bricker is my new favorite poster.

12

Sorry, Slip Mahoney, I meant it in terms of “Word to your mother on the east side”. I like using slang that is completely inappropriate for a just-out-of-college, tree-hugging liberal white girl ‘intellectual’ (or pseudo-intellectual, depending on who you ask). This includes “word”, “dude”, and other cute colloquialisms of my own concoction like “crudmuffins” and “stankfactory” (the latter applied to siblings and family members only).

I guess I wanted to vary my response from the “Oh, and what he said” mold. I, apparently, failed.

Let me clarify something: I don’t intend to shit all over gex gex because he has a certain standard of attractiveness. I know that if I was personally going to pick an ideal person based solely on what they looked like, they would be a whole lot better looking than I am! However, there’s a different between ideals and real life, and there’s a difference between objective and subjective beauty (which gex gex, in the same post, both admits and denies, oddly).

I think we’d all be better off if we focused a lot less on ideals and putting people up to ideal standards. Is it just me who looks at other people and doesn’t rate them in this way? Is it just me who doesn’t instantly put people in categories of “would sleep with”, “wouldn’t sleep with / too ugly” and “wouldn’t sleep with but attractive”? Is it just me who hardly ever thinks of people as ugly, and when I do, it’s usually because of personality?

I know lots of people, and very few of them (if any!) could be models. Yet, I don’t go around thinking “wow, look at the huge honker of a nose on that guy” and “Jesus Christ, that person is so ugly I need to mention it to my friends” or “wow, she could use a boob job”. If I’m looking for someone to TALK to, what on earth does it matter?

13

Yeah. Not to you. We continue, though.

For who made you sole arbiter of what is attractive? I’d say being a jackass is a lot uglier than being overweight (which I don’t consider ugly anyway, but more on that later), but maybe that’s just me.

What planet are you from? “Only Skinny Women are Beautiful” world? Magazines geared toward skinny people (or those attracted to them) have skinny people in them. Magazines geared toward non-skinny people (or those attracted to them) have non-skinny people on them. Preferences.

Wrong. It isn’t attractive to you.

Actually, hairy men…well;)

So you’re solely attracted to skinny women. I’m not. When judging aesthetic qualities, bet your ass I’m going to be more physically attracted to someone with meat on her bones than a waif.

Oh, I have GOT to disagree with you there.

Memo to gex: you are not the sole arbiter (I said this already, I know) of beauty. So stop thinking you are.

14

Since when do artists only paint on subjects for which there is no demand.

I have no idea if Rubin’s paintings were representative of the views of his time. But every time the “what is attractive” argument begins, somebody always says “standards of attraction are fluid, Rubin painted large ladies.”

How does the latter prove the former? I think we can all agree that the current <i>standard</i> for attractiveness (not that there isn’t much individual variation in preferences) is on the thinner side. Yes, I would have no problem finding an artist who likes to paint or photograph or otherwise represent larger women.

Will that artist be held up in 200 years as an example to show that the United States, in the year 2002, preferred (as a societal average) chunky women?

I guess this is just a long winded way of asking:

Does anybody have any evidence they can point me towards to support the idea that Rubin was painting the societal ideal rather than just his personal preference?
(I’ve also seen acient Greek art that depicts men having sex with goats; does this mean that was representative of Greek society?)

15

I’m wincing here…

His name was Rubens, with an “s”, and in case anyone wishes to use the word “Rubensesque”, please remember that “s”.

Also, it’s a fact that until the 20th century, the ideal of beauty was fat women, (as it still is in many developing nations, particularly those that have not yet begun to drown in Western culture.) Not huge women, not 300 pounders. But women who would today be considered unquestionably chubby. This is because fat=health.

stoid

16

Actually, they should forget the “s” in that case. It’s “rubenesque”, not “rubensesque”.

17

That is contrary to my education. What grammatical or spelling rule would require that the “s” be dropped, seeing as it is a part of his name? I am painfully aware that it has become the conventional spelling, but that doesn’t make it correct.

If there’s something I’m missing, I welcome the enlightenment. I strive to be correct in my spelling and usage.

stoid

18

Rubens.

Got it . Maybe I was thinking of the sandwich. No, I’m pretty sure that’s a Reuben.

Anyway, I have no evidence for obfusciatrist except to point out that Rubens was not the only artist to paint statuesque women at that time. Many others did as well, although they are not as well known.

{b]Stoid** hit the nail on the head. In fact, even in our society, being overweight was a perceived sign of health until a few decades ago.

19

'Cause that’s the way it was done. Why do we talk about Don Quixiote (Kee-oh-tee) but say someone is quixotic (kwix-ah-tik)? Offhand, I’d say we don’t use “rubensesque” because it’s a bitch to pronounce. “Rubenesque” is much easier. You can try to popularize “Rubensesque” if you like, but I’d advise against calling people out for using the accepted spelling. I have not seen one dictionary that uses “rubensesque”.

Merriam-webster:
Main Entry: Ru·ben·esque
Pronunciation: "rü-b&-'nesk
Function: adjective
Date: 1925
: of, relating to, or suggestive of the painter Rubens or his works; especially : plump or rounded usually in a pleasing or attractive way <a Rubenesque figure>

American-Heritage:
SYLLABICATION: Ru·ben·esque
PRONUNCIATION: rb-nsk
ADJECTIVE: 1. Of, relating to, or in the style of painting of Peter Paul Rubens. 2. Plump or fleshy and voluptuous. Used of a woman.
ETYMOLOGY: Sense 2, from the frequent depiction of such women by Rubens.

WordSmyth:
Syllables: Ru-ben-esque

Part of Speech adjective
Pronunciation ru bE nehsk
Definition 1. of or like the paintings of Rubens, esp. in being sensual and opulent.
Definition 2. of a woman’s figure, full, rounded, and voluptuous.

Dictionary.com:
Ru·ben·esque (rb-nsk)
adj.
Of, relating to, or in the style of painting of Peter Paul Rubens.
Plump or fleshy and voluptuous. Used of a woman.

All: Search Results
Sorry, “rubensesque” not found

20

Ditto.

And in the vein of fluiddruid’s pithy use of ghetto slang:
The OP is whack, yo.