Rocket Talk: When's the TTC Going to Roll Out More Fare Collection Methods?
Newsstand: November 9, 2009
Zack Taylor in Disney Mama Drama
The Daily Photoist: November 9, 2009
Santa's Weston Workshop
What's better than sex? Maybe writing about sex. Sex and Our City is a special week-long series that looks for questions and answers about love and sex in our city.
Photo by fdecomite.
Before heading out for a night of dancing at El Convento Rico, a friend shared two things: a bottle of wine and a story about his high school days. Years ago, a male schoolmate had got into trouble with the girls when he had mentioned his fondness for blonde women with large breasts. The girls were furious that he was perpetuating a negative stereotype of what made a woman attractive. The friend—also male—defended his schoolmate because he believed that it was the boy’s choice whom he found attractive: it wasn't that other types of women were unattractive, but that buxom blondes were his type.
Although you can’t fault someone for being attracted to one thing or another—aren’t we all—it's easy to see the point of the women. They were afraid that attraction was too narrowly and unrealistically defined, shutting out the majority of women.
It’s well noted that our tastes have changed over the decades. While a more curvy woman like Marilyn Monroe was—and still is—a sex symbol, our tastes now run thinner. (You could probably fit both Posh and Brit in Marilyn, but neither in her shoes.) It’s got so bad that Dove has profited stupendously with Campaign For Real Beauty, which featured flawless women of different ages, races, and sizes. If a marketing campaign is trying to shape our definition of beauty, then how much leeway is there to overwrite who we like? Attraction: nature or nurture?
Science has tried to figure out the numbers behind attraction. One measure of attractiveness can be the waist-hip ratio (WHR), the ratio between the circumferences of the waist and the hip. WHRs of 0.7 for women and 0.9 for men have been suggested to be a proxy for health and fertility. In addition to body shape, facial symmetry has also been studied as a key to attractiveness, potentially as a sign of a high quality genetics.
Photo by lamkevin from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
What science probably won’t figure out is the long list of things that we are individually attracted or not attracted to. One person’s dream can be another person’s nightmare. It’s perfect then to use personal ads as a petri dish for our desires. People are constantly being asked what their ideal is and who they want to meet. Given how picky people can be with their coffees, you can imagine what people are like online. It’s usually some variation of "I’m not picky, but all I really want is someone my age who is funny, smart, fit, stable, over six feet, handsome, and with freckles that are in the shape of Jesus from afar." To be fair, those are the rules of the game: to be as choosy or not choosy as you’d like. No one says he or she is out there, but you’re free to hope for him or her.
But all is not right in the land of Winks and Smiles. Imagine the surprise when a small percentage of profiles (in men looking for men) listed what they didn’t want: no fatties, no baldies, and no Asians. Huh? You can lose some weight and get some plugs, but how can someone change his or her race? The words sat on the profile page and was a reminder of a phrase so outdated, who would have figured it to reappear: no coloureds. We can claim many features as attractive or unattractive, but can we consider a whole race unattractive?
In bars, it’s easy to overhear judgements all the time: we judge a person’s height, weight, hair colour, clothing, and, yes, sometimes people dismiss a whole race: "She doesn’t date black guys" or "He would never go out with an Asian girl." And it's not always a "us versus them" scenario: some people tend to exclusively date outside of their race as a rebellion to their childhood. Science can explain body shape and facial features that are appealing, but can it explain a whole race being unattractive?
Photo by William Self from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
A study done in the United Kingdom suggests that babies are unable to differentiate between race from birth, but by three-months-old start to recognize their own race more. The authors note, however, that a baby continually exposed to different races loses the other-race bias. Could the fact that minorities are, well, minorities then play into their lessened inherent attractiveness? If so, at what point does preference become prejudice?
When asked, a friend who had basically dated everyone out of a Benetton ad thought it was more of a nurture thing as well. He credited not being raised to think of other races as different in a negative way, which led him to not think of race when dating. In the end, he said, what attracted him were specific personality traits in people rather than skin colour. A bonus for him was getting to know about their heritages and the different backgrounds they came from—isn't that part of the advantage of living in a city as diverse as Toronto?
We may not be able to explain all the nuances of why we are attracted to certain people, but how we pursue that attraction is more important. It may all come down to a state of mind: there’s a big difference between a mention of whom we like rather than an emphasis on whom we dislike. (It’s impossible to state that you will never find someone of a particular race attractive.) While it’s obvious that who we are attracted to reveals a lot about ourselves, sometimes what we uncover isn’t so attractive.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
I hate to say, I'm primarily attracted to other white guys (I'm white). That's not a hard rule, but usually...
I chalk that up to growing up at the edges of suburbia. When those sex neurons (or whatever) started firing in my brain when I was a teenager, the other people around me were all, well, white guys..
"Race" or, I assume skin colour in this article is simply a physical charecteristic, one of many people are generally picky about - hair, height, weight - we all have our seemingly vain preferences in others - however, for some if can go deeper when that "race" or skin colour takes on a cultural bias, or at least a perceived cultural bias. Certainly, having preferences that run along sterotypical cultural boundries can be a dicy thing to talk about, of course no more than a preference for large breasts or a full head of hair.
Read Desmond Morris on some interesting opinions about this sort of thing.
i read an article somewhere a little while back that suggested we were most attracted to what was familure growing up. the people who surrounded us as children are most familure to us, and for that reason part of what we find most attractive.
personally, i think it holds alot of truth, but you never know.
>Science can explain body shape and facial features that are appealing, but can it explain a whole race being unattractive?
Some other races have much different physical characteristics which could be a large part of the 'explaination'
I'm primarly attracted to these 'features' and have actually been called 'racist' for it. Which is laughable at best.
I think with repeated exposure to ethnicities that are different—especially at a younger age—the wider the "attractiveness" net gets cast. It's kinda like in the same way that someone you meet who is unremarkable at first can start getting really attractive once you get to know them. Which is really how it should be...those who only date women with big, fake breasts, or who only date Asians, or who only date people under thirty are fetishizing an element of attractiveness. That's okay, I guess, but it only goes so far.
A certain amount of thought about who you like, and why you like them, is a good thing. But overthinking it, or discussing it at length, is a terrible thing. Admit (when appropriate) what you desire and who you desire in an open and honest manner, and don't go out of your way to hurt people's feelings.
I def. believe it has to do with exposure to some degree, but I also think it can be even more shallow than that.
I like full lips, dark complexions and deep dark eyes. Not to say that you can't find that description in any race, but on average you'll find it more with say people of African descent, therefore I tend to only date within that race.
>It’s impossible to state that you will never find someone of a particular race attractive.
However the above always proves me wrong. I have said similiar things to only have eaten my words soon after.
Physical attractiveness is one thing; emotional/intellectual/spiritual/mental attractiveness is quite another.
I agree with iantri and Marc that where you grow up and what you're exposed to at a young age definitely influences (shapes) your future notions of physical attractiveness -but the other big piece of the puzzle (for me) is that most-seemingly-easy, yet most elusive of things: Having Stuff In Common That You Can Both Talk About Equally. Doesn't mean you agree. Doesn't mean you are carbon copies. Just means you're on the same level mentally (& otherwise) that you should be physically.
Again, similiars attract.