You have a ditch?

You lucky lucky bastard.

tuco wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:

tuco wrote:Fair enough. It may also worth be noting that there is such a thing as sex tourism in Thailand and probably majority of sex tourists come from White West which then could relate to the phenomena you mention.

Yes, living in Thailand for 12 years, I am familiar with the fact that there is sex tourism in Thailand, but this is not related to anything I said above. It's not as if all girls in Thailand are in the sex trade, or interested in westerners. In fact, it's kind of a stereotype here that only 'ugly' girls go with farang. This stereotype, as usual, has a kernel of truth in it - in Thailand, the white, Chinese middle-class is the ideal of beauty, whereas it is mostly the north and north-eastern dark-skinned Isaan girls who have Western boyfriends/husbands or who end up in the sex trade. The common link there, though, is poverty. Isaan is a very poor, mostly agricultural area.

Not related to anything you said? I tend to think otherwise but alright.

You're free to, but I explained why that wouldn't be a very robust thought.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:I always find it funny when people discover for the first time that fat women used to be the ideal beauties.
It's a good example of how societal priorities affect the general beauty image.

True but as Desmond Morris has shown it's not all in the thinness or fatness, it has to do with the waist to hip ratio of women around the world.

Marylin Monroe

was rather plump but is still recognized as very sexually attractive partly because her ratios were just right.

But the same goes for a much thinner Twiggy
of the 60's.

Even today the ideal body is not subject only to size or weight but to ratios.

Christina Hendricks


Vs. Taylor Swift.



Both sexually attractive women.

So, weight and size are relative in what is sexually attractive, but other things are not; Clear eyes, healthy looking teeth, symmetrical facial features and bodies all appeal to our sexual desires, but clear skin seems to be paramount. Too many serious diseases produce pustules for pocked or pimpled skin to be ignored.

These things can't be ignored or wished away because they are ingrained in us by our evolutionary history. This is not to say that someone couldn't fall in love with the young woman in the video and find her beautiful, but the sad fact is that he would find her even more beautiful if she didn't have the acne that she has.

Oldskeptic wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:I always find it funny when people discover for the first time that fat women used to be the ideal beauties.
It's a good example of how societal priorities affect the general beauty image.

True but as Desmond Morris has shown it's not all in the thinness or fatness,

Actually, the time and women I'm talking about did have to do with fatness, more specifically food abundance:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:I always find it funny when people discover for the first time that fat women used to be the ideal beauties.
It's a good example of how societal priorities affect the general beauty image.

True but as Desmond Morris has shown it's not all in the thinness or fatness,

Actually, the time and women I'm talking about did have to do with fatness, more specifically food abundance:

The slight fly in the ointment there is the number of contemporary people known to find that figure either attractive or unattractive is zero. It's a stylized representation of fertility, not a glamour magazine.

Thommo wrote:The slight fly in the ointment there is the number of contemporary people known to find that figure either attractive or unattractive is zero.

Wut?

Sendraks wrote:

Thommo wrote:The slight fly in the ointment there is the number of contemporary people known to find that figure either attractive or unattractive is zero.

Wut?

There are no written documents from 30,000 years ago. You can't actually say "people found this attractive" because there's no evidence they did. Someone made that figurine as art, they didn't create it as a record of contemporary trends in sexual attraction (or "ideal beauty" as Thomas put it).

Thommo wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:I always find it funny when people discover for the first time that fat women used to be the ideal beauties.
It's a good example of how societal priorities affect the general beauty image.

True but as Desmond Morris has shown it's not all in the thinness or fatness,

Actually, the time and women I'm talking about did have to do with fatness, more specifically food abundance:

The slight fly in the ointment there is the number of contemporary people known to find that figure either attractive or unattractive is zero.[

You know this how exactly?

Thommo wrote: It's a stylized representation of fertility, not a glamour magazine.

Again, you this wasn't a beauty ideal, how exactly?

Thommo wrote:

Sendraks wrote:

Thommo wrote:The slight fly in the ointment there is the number of contemporary people known to find that figure either attractive or unattractive is zero.

Wut?

There are no written documents from 30,000 years ago. You can't actually say "people found this attractive" because there's no evidence they did. Someone made that figurine as art, they didn't create it as a record of contemporary trends in sexual attraction (or "ideal beauty" as Thomas put it).

You have no reason to assert they didn't either and it's not unreasonable to assume figurines like this were representations of ideal figures.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

The slight fly in the ointment there is the number of contemporary people known to find that figure either attractive or unattractive is zero.

You know this how exactly?

I know there's uncertainty how? Because there's no certainty. We can't ask these people they've been dead for 30,000 years. We don't have written evidence of how they felt about it do we?

The lack of evidence for your position is exactly the problem.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

Thommo wrote:It's a stylized representation of fertility, not a glamour magazine.

Again, you this wasn't a beauty ideal, how exactly?

Burden of proof is with the claimant Thomas. That's you.

If you want to say that even my claim is too strong and that we don't even know that it is a fertility idol, then I actually agree. We don't know that for sure (although it's the predominant view).

Edit: Tags.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

Thommo wrote:

Sendraks wrote:

Thommo wrote:The slight fly in the ointment there is the number of contemporary people known to find that figure either attractive or unattractive is zero.

Wut?

There are no written documents from 30,000 years ago. You can't actually say "people found this attractive" because there's no evidence they did. Someone made that figurine as art, they didn't create it as a record of contemporary trends in sexual attraction (or "ideal beauty" as Thomas put it).

You have no reason to assert they didn't either and it's not unreasonable to assume figurines like this were representations of ideal figures.

Read. The. Post.

I've never once heard the notion that any of the prehistoric Venus figurines, like the Willendorf or Hohle Fels, were considered an ideal woman, or the shape of an ideal woman.

They focus on specific anatomical qualities of femininity concerned with reproduction and fecundity: that's why - supposedly - the corresponding anatomical parts of the female figure are stylistically exaggerated, and other parts of the woman are missing or just simply molded. It's always a faceless woman, often even lacking a head. I doubt that prehistoric human men were not equally as attracted by facial features as men are today.

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/janthro/2011/569120/

A. Dixson and B. Dixson wrote:Some figurines depict obese, large-breasted women, who are in their mature reproductive years and usually regarded as being of lower attractiveness. At the time these figurines were made, Europe was in the grip of a severe ice age. Obesity and survival into middle age after multiple pregnancies may have been rare in the European Upper Paleolithic. We suggest that depictions of corpulent, middle-aged females were not “Venuses” in any conventional sense. They may, instead, have symbolized the hope for survival and longevity, within well-nourished and reproductively successful communities.

I stand corrected.

Tagential possibly stupid Fallible question - those figures of obese women are pretty accurate-looking. Were they working from life or imagination? I mean did obesity ever even happen back then? Derp?

Thomas Eshuis wrote:I stand corrected.

I wouldn't say that: I don't think anyone knows or can know quite what was intended by these figurines. But given their obvious artistic competence, it seems odd that the creators would manufacture such stylized figurines and not put a face or appendages on it. And have you seen those pudendas? That would surely be uncomfortable in a deer skin if it were a real person - right chafing of the mons veneris!

Fallible wrote:Tagential possibly stupid Fallible question - those figures of obese women are pretty accurate-looking. Were they working from life or imagination? I mean did obesity ever even happen back then? Derp?

Presumably IF such women did exist in a time of hunter-gatherer scarcity and hard work, she must have been either of high status, or a revered figure. It's possible, I suppose, that such women did exist - that they were effectively treated like the girls in India as a goddess, or as the women of Mauritania. Basically, they would have had offerings made to them, and they would not have been expected to, or even allowed to work, to make sure they stayed nice and rotund.

But I personally think it's more likely they're just stylized. Again, why no face, and appendages if these are representations of actual individuals?

There could be several explanations for no faces:
1. Faces being to difficult to sculpt.
2. Face giving power to the statues:
a. Statues becoming 'alive'.
b. Statues capturing the spirit of the sculptor or the woman they're modelled on.

I don't think, though, that it's that far-fetched that men would be attracted to women on the weighty side of the spectrum as that would indicate an abundance of food and thus healthy mother/environment for any potential children, especially in those desperate ice-age eras.

Spearthrower wrote:

Fallible wrote:Tagential possibly stupid Fallible question - those figures of obese women are pretty accurate-looking. Were they working from life or imagination? I mean did obesity ever even happen back then? Derp?

Presumably IF such women did exist in a time of hunter-gatherer scarcity and hard work, she must have been either of high status, or a revered figure. It's possible, I suppose, that such women did exist - that they were effectively treated like the girls in India as a goddess, or as the women of Mauritania. Basically, they would have had offerings made to them, and they would not have been expected to, or even allowed to work, to make sure they stayed nice and rotund.

But I personally think it's more likely they're just stylized. Again, why no face, and appendages if these are representations of actual individuals?

Thanks. Yeah, I dunno. It could simply be that's not the part of the figurine which is intended to be significant. It's just the way the titz are carved - like they've sagged at the top having been dragged down rather than just being big and round - and the way the thighs have all the weight exactly where it appears on an actual obese person. It's even got the way the fat migrates into the top of the lady bits. It's very accurate. Perhaps that's just down to artists with good imagination being able to visualise what would happen to a female body taken to an extreme.

Spearthrower wrote:And have you seen those pudendas? That would surely be uncomfortable in a deer skin if it were a real person - right chafing of the mons veneris!

The complete lack of pubic hair is also an interesting feature.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:There could be several explanations for no faces:
1. Faces being to difficult to sculpt.

I think, given the obvious artistic expertise exhibited here, that a passable attempt could've been made by these artisans.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:2. Face giving power to the statues:
a. Statues becoming 'alive'.
b. Statues capturing the spirit of the sculptor or the woman they're modelled on.

Certainly possible, but once again we're into speculation that only comes about via comparisons to other known phenomena.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:I don't think, though, that it's that far-fetched that men would be attracted to women on the weighty side of the spectrum as that would indicate an abundance of food and thus healthy mother/environment for any potential children, especially in those desperate ice-age eras.

I'm not really sure how a Paleolithic woman would get so large without the support of her tribe, and particularly the males of her tribe. Presumably, such a woman would already have a husband. That's why I mentioned they might, if based on actual people, be an indication of social status - their husbands were the chiefs and thus commanded the division of food and labour, and so their wives could grow extremely plump.

I am not sure, though, that being so large is really ever considered to be healthy - I don't think it follows a biological logic, if you get my meaning. Someone who is obese struggles to perform even mundane tasks in the modern world where we've crafted a reasonably optimal human environment. In a Paleolithic world, an obese person would be all but useless, unless she had other value, which is why I'd opt for some connection to divinity if these statues are actually representative of real women.