Talk:Physical attractiveness

Penis size

Don't women, on average, consider large penis size to be a turn on? Why isn't this included in second paragraph?

Edit war over images

Okay, it's time to address the edit war going on between User:Tobby72 and an IP hopper. I observed it long enough. Discuss your differences here or be reported for edit warring. IP, I know that you think reporting won't faze you, but it will because it will likely result in this article being semi-protected (and you know what that means for your IP editing). I will state that I am in agreement with the IP that this article should not be dominated by images of white individuals. The IP is right that this caused the Physical attractiveness article problems in the past, and, because of those problems, no images except for the main image were left in this article. Sometime last year (July), images were allowed again, but only ones that significantly enhance the reader's understanding of this topic. We don't need images of people just being good-looking; they should actually add something of encyclopedic value to this article, and I do not see how the pictures Tobby72 wants included do that.[1] See the end of the #Ideas for improvement section and all of the #Picture possibilities section about representing more than one type of racial/ethnic background. Flyer22 (talk) 17:27, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I see your point, it makes sense. Thank you for the clarification. Tobby72 (talk) 18:50, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Chiseled Jawline

One of the features listed as a male facial dimorphism is a "chiseled jawline". What the hell is a chiseled jawline? Obviously it doesn't literally mean men should carve themselves with chisels. I think a more literal term should be used to make more sense, as this article should be from the point of view of science.Der Elbenkoenig (talk) 05:28, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I understand your confusion, but the entire purpose of adjectives and phrases, is so we don't have to spend a paragraph describing every little thing, Urban dictionary exists for a reason. Bumblebritches57 (talk) 19:47, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Agree. I would like to second Der Elbenkoenig's argument. The term "Chiseled Jawline", although fairly self explanatory, should be described more scientifically. Using the term, without defining the word, could lead to confusion due to the fact that readers are left to make their own interpretation of the term. I completely agree that "every little thing" shouldn't be explained, but this is the only example on the page, in my personal opinion, that should be clarified. Wilro (talk) 04:01, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Wilro, something that should always factor into things like this is that, per WP:Verifiability, we should go by what the sources state. If there is a WP:Reliable source that describes what is meant by the term, then it is fine to add that description using that source. But describing what is meant by the term based on our own interpretations(s) is hardly any different than a reader basing the term on their interpretation. We should not engage in WP:Original research. Flyer22 (talk) 04:07, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Heterocentrism

Seriously...judging from this article you would think that only straight people are attracted to each other and there's no existence of any other forms of physical attraction. AlfiePepper (talk) 00:16, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Agree. It reflects the bias of the literature on the topic though, unfortunately.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:17, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

There is some mention of gay male physical attraction in the article, but a little more about that and a bit about what lesbians find physically attractive in other women could be added to the article. However, like Maunus stated, most of the research about physical attractiveness relates to males being attracted to females and vice versa, whether we're talking about humans or what goes on in the rest of the animal kingdom. Flyer22 (talk) 19:35, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

People are attracted to attractiveness? No kidding!

"the most important factor that attracts gay men to other males is the man's physical attractiveness"

Does this sentence seem tautological to anyone else? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.17.82.160 (talk) 02:42, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I know, but what'd you expect? This article is a joke, and I think all the alleged 'studies' regarding gay people are a bunch of bs. I'm straight and I find it idiotic, I guess a lot of man and female gays didn't found themselves indentified with this at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.191.23.40 (talk) 07:48, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, I'm sure by "man's physical attractiveness," the source is not talking about the fact that it's a man. It's talking about how good-looking the man is. And considering that how good-looking a person is (or isn't) is not the most important thing to everyone, including gay men, when selecting a romantic/sexual partner, the line makes perfect sense in that respect. Flyer22 (talk) 18:47, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

On that same note, men being attracted to "beautiful women" in the opening line of female attributes really makes you want to slap your forehead. I didn't edit this out, but it definitely needs to be defined or fleshed out if not removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarstan (talk • contribs) 17:52, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

What about mannerism: pose, gait, gesticulation, etc?

That is, dynamic physical attractivebess, as opposed to the 'static type already discussed in this article. EIN (talk) 05:55, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Section on skin color

That could well be true about the Caribbean and Hispanic and Latino Americans to which Americans are the most exposed to, but it certainly can't be generalized to Latin America in general. We have enormous discrepancies in what it is regarded to attractive in both men and women, and some cultural bias in certain areas favoring quite the reverse about the common idea of Latin Americans idealizing white people as superior are especially strong. I'd cite Brazil (more than half of the population of South America), where the norm in the beauty ideal to face and hair phenotypes being the European or the mestizo is still very true, but in color and body darker people are largely a national preference.

Most people except wealthier pardo and black men tend to prefer people darker than themselves for at least 50 years, and as in the West darker skin tones are associated with health and suntanning was always a trend, and since even much earlier times, when crosses were still burning in the USA (the very reason why your average Brazilian will usually become furious when told by American scholars that we have a chronic apartheid system and a racism problem) the body shapes of women of Amerindian and African descent was idealized as enchanting European men and their local descendants of every origin and age (not that I also celebrate this particular myth, I know well how it is rooted in colonial ideas of submission of women, specially those of color, but I can bet money that the ideal girlfriend of our average teenage boys and young men in the 30s and 40s here would be a mulata rather than a blonde, that is, consequence of the delirant mentality of "society without racism" or not, it is very incorporated in our culture). So, no, there is no such non-POV thing of affirmating that "as a matter of fact, Latin Americans demonstrate preference for lighter skin colors".

It requires research on several perspectives, not just a bunch of opinions from life experiences by an editor of some magazine, even if such statement was linked to studies done by scholars, their political and ideological objectives would be still questionable (obviously not being gauchephobic, just saying I am not the first to see an authoritative and neoconservative light even if with a libertarian intention in these conclusions of social relations in Latin America, seeing the U.S. as a model role, specially Brazil, seldom the feeling of "zOMG cant u guis see that we arn animoar in th timz of slaveri???!" can be even described as strong), especially if they questioned a very known common sense and/or generalized some individuals in this largely agrarian, full of poverty, ignorance and thus prejudice state together with that of historical strong European settlement and idealization of it and said it represented the country.

Not to say how heteronormative those researches on top and bottom gay guy preferences sound, as if versatiles weren't a majority among queer guys and there weren't lesbians or bisexual guys (even if a little bit of cissexism is to be understood as gender-variant people are relatively rare and the divisions of all transgender identities that are very distinct between themselves makes it even less simple to consider). Hell, it reinforces stereotypes (about how the non-normative sexuality works as a copy of the ideal one) rather than helping or making important or intelligent conclusions, pretty much like the problems we see in Bi the Way (a film that I saw and didn't find queer to any degree in this galaxy). But OK, it is properly sourced to a trusteeable secondary. 177.65.53.191 (talk) 15:39, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Male-male physical attractiveness

I took out the section on how homosexuals view males mainly on physical attractiveness. I didn't think it was relevant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Allieflett (talk • contribs) 21:46, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

What you removed was not a section, but rather a sentence in a section. I added it back, because, like I stated in that edit summary, "per WP:Verifiability, a better reason for removal is needed than the one given on the talk page. People have already complained about this article being heterocentric; no need to make it more so." Flyer22 (talk) 23:23, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Body scent subsection in the Male physical attractiveness section

Editor Jvgama separated the Body scent subsection from the Facial attractiveness subsection for the reason stated in this edit summary. While that reason for having a Body scent section separate from the Facial attractiveness section is valid, the body scent information is about how odor relates to facial attractiveness; therefore, it makes more sense to me that it stay a part of the Facial attractiveness section. Flyer22 (talk) 23:23, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Ok. It makes sense.Jvgama (talk) 19:37, 10 April 2013‎ (UTC)

Okay. I just undid your change. I also saw you having trouble with your signature, and I just added the time stamp to it. To sign your user name, all you have to do is simply type four tildes (~), like this: ~~~~. Flyer22 (talk) 19:49, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Double eyelid surgery

... is not a Western standard of beauty. Larger eyes have always been desirable in East Asian culture. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.22.215.167 (talk) 14:35, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

(Male) face averageness "beauty"

I mostly see averageness mentioned for female's (faces). I wandered if it doesn't apply to male's. I Googled and found it also to be true for them. It doesn't mean that it's one of the first things women (or men) look at/for, as the primary indicator of overall attractiveness/desirability. I wander if the subcategories for male's and female's attractiveness in this page are ordered (and maybe it should be mentioned that it's not the first factor (for males)?).

The more original images were used to create the composite, the more attractive it was rated. (r = 0.57 ** for female faces, r = 0.64 ** for male faces). On the one hand this result tends to support the averageness hypothesis put forward by Langlois & Roggman (1990), on the other hand we could clearly show: The ratings of the morphed faces also depend on the attractiveness of the underlying original faces (r = 0.75 ** for female faces, r = 0.68 ** for male faces). [..]

Surprisingly, especially male faces benefit from being blended together with respect to their attractiveness. This does not support older findings that found positive effects only for women.[2]

However the averaging seems to work "better" for females:

model agency from Munich chose 88% artificial faces (14 out of 16 selected faces) for potentially being interesting as a model for the category “beauty”. Only two natural male faces could keep up with the computer generated ones, within the group of female faces no natural faces have been selected! We also asked test subjects to indicate the most attractive faces found the same pattern: 81% (13 out of 16) of the selected faces had been generated by the computer.[3]

favoured women with facial shapes of about 14 year old girls. There is no such woman existing in reality! They are artificial products - results of modern computer technology.[4]

Yes, no such women, but 14 year old girls exists.., maybe no wander that they start modeling about that age or thinking about it..

What’s interesting is that attractive male and female faces seem to have similar structures and similarities. When aligning the images in Photoshop; I could see that faces which appeared completely different actually have similar basic proportions. You can see this in the averages and in relation to conformity with the Marquardt mask.

The most interesting aspect, to me, is the incoherence seen in the ‘unattractive’ averages. Attractive faces seem to conform to a basic attractive structure, with little variance of internal features. Unattractive faces have more varying features – this would explain why the unattractive averages are less coherent.[5]

The link above links to scientific articles, for averageness, sush as: [6] and has lots of interesting pictures (and the other links) including "‘Kids with Santa’ is an average of 100 pictures of which children pose with Santa.".. More trivia: [7] comp.arch (talk) 11:57, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Men prefer shorter women?

Well known that women prefer taller men but "It has been found that, in Western societies, most men prefer shorter women and tend to view taller women as less attractive" (the ref, "How a Gambian Population Compares to the West", that I do not have access to, might say something about Gambia (but not non-Western in general?)). Is this really true, at all, in Western societies? Or anywhere (the lead doesn't say Western and I didn't find height mentioned in the source there). As the women are the choosers the men might not/or less try to go after women that they can't have or end up marrying, can we really say anything about their preference based on relationships? The quote imples that Gambian men go for taller women or are indifferent. Do we know that they do not end up with shorter women (by as much) as in the West (would not disprove if not, as women are the choosers) or have sex with taller women on average? comp.arch (talk) 12:50, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes; men prefer shorter women, but the height-difference-preference is not as big (sorry) of a factor for a man choosing a woman, as it is for a woman choosing a man. About Gambian men and women: if there is any preference by men for taller women, it is probably not a huge (again sorry) variable since, as we know, most men are taller than most women, so it would be difficult to measure any preferences (while isolating other variables?). Would be cool to see the Gambian study though.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 14:44, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Comp.arch, men definitely (generally) prefer women who are shorter than they are, and that's not just a Western preference either. This is a well known matter as well, and I'm wondering how you had not heard of it before. Perhaps it is not as well known as women generally preferring taller men. Anyway, Tomwsulcer added a bit in response to your query.

And, Tomwsulcer, it's been nice seeing you again. Saw you here for the first time again at this article in a long time. Flyer22 (talk) 15:42, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Flyer22, I watch this article too and appreciate how you've kept it shipshape and professional. I'm 5'11" and yes I somewhat prefer shorter women although I carried a stepstool when I dated members of a women's basketball team. See, I was a Boy Scout and followed its motto: Be Prepared. I'm writing a sci-fi novel and if you like there are many non-named characters (bit parts) so if you want me to name one Flyer I could do so possibly.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 16:19, 17 January 2014 (UTC)