Ooh, body odor! That's a big one, because it brings up so many cultural and biological issues. What's acceptable to smell like is a hugely cultural thing, but by the same token, there's tons of evidence that natural body odors can still function as animal pheromones for most people.

Now, I come into contact with a lot of uh, natural odors, in my line of work, and I can say straight out that different cultural groups have distinctive, easily identified, different body odors. Some I find more or less pleasant than others. But this fact has been used to justify the case against racial mixing.

It's also been used to support it. (You're attracted to smells that offer the most genetic variation.)

In western culture, it's become virtually unacceptable to smell like body odor, and yet why is hooking up so common in the gym, when we all stink? A lot of standards of beauty have some basis in the original product and are exaggerations of some kind, but the removal of the natural scent of a body is absolute and total. Why is this, when we often recognize the appeal of, say, a clean, but identifiable, sex? Maybe because it's the sexuality we demand to have hidden in normal society...but then why is the visual element so sexualized?

Grr!

With a fair amount of shame, I can confess that I'm attracted to the unrealistically-skinny girls/models with perfect cocoa-brown or milk-white skin and pastel-dyed hair.

I think a huge problem lies in how lots of North Americans have trouble distinguishing between slender (hot!) and skinny/scrawny(not!).

Slender people have proportionally small waists, muscled outer shoulders, and long limbs that are fleshed out in smooth curves.  It's a look that requires a balanced lifestyle to get.

Skinny people have waists that may not look any narrower than their already narrow pigeon chests, bony shoulders, and stick like limbs with elbows and kneecaps jutting out.  That plus sparse hair would be almost certainly a sign of starvation or other health problems.

I don't see why many consider slender to be unrealistic/unhealthy in North America, considering how many non-celeb girls in Europe, especially Russia, are all like 6 foot, leggy, 24 inch waists and with high hair density (what's near impossible for starving people to maintain).  They're also Caucasian from what I can tell, and instead of fast food, they seem to have lots of beans and fruits in their diet which I guess helps people to be slender.

And if you've been to Japan, especially those countryside areas, you might see how many of the ordinary teenagers there are just as slim as the Utena characters (if often not quite as leggy). 

I remember in middle school swooning over boy-crushes with my friends using the frequent phrase "oooh, he smells like boy etc-love" - and I'm still quite attracted to that natural masculine odor.

I think I saw some ad saying that masculine odor can be attained by this sandalwood mixture, but to me that smells too much like fire place.

Riri-kins wrote:

I'm also really interested in how color can make some people seem like better mates. Two or three hundred years ago pink was considered masculine and now it's just the opposite. Why does this happen?

I feel like I was just reading an article to that effect - pink was the baby boy's color because it was, essentially, baby's first red. Pale blue was the color for baby girls because blue is a calming, passive color and therefor associated with more feminine vitues. I guess the swap occurred mid-1800's, but I can't seem to recall why the swap happened.

Now I'm gonna have to go look it up because it bugs me that I don't remember.

Edit: Mission Accomplished.

Full article - http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-cult … -Pink.html

Apparently, gender-ed clothing, as opposed to gender-neutral clothing, arrived in the 1800's. Pink for boys and blue for girls gained popularity in the early 1900's and we have the Baby Boomers to thank for the pink-blue gender swap. The boomers were brought up with pink for girls, blue for boys and they've been outvoting everyone else on the issue ever since.

Last edited by Rotten Mooring (04-22-2012 07:09:24 PM)