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From: kenm@maccs.DCSS.McMaster.CA (...Jose)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Sexual attraction (was: diversity)
Message-ID: <273034D6.18115@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca>
Date: 16 Nov 90 02:41:28 GMT
References: <1990Oct31.165320.15137@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
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Organization: McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
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In article <1990Oct31.165320.15137@nntp-server.caltech.edu> morphy@truebalt.cco.caltech.EDU (Jones Maxime Murphy) writes:

>There is a definite double standard between the genders as far as the
>percentage of each gender that matches its "ideal body type". The
>ridiculously lean image of feminine beauty leads to dire consequences.
>Excerpted from Time's new issue on women--twice as many women ages
>30-64 as men think they're overweight. In a UC study, 58% of
>17-year-old girls said they were overweight; only 17% actually were.
>This farcical situation leads to low self-esteem and unneccessary
>dieting.

From my own, purely subjective, viewpoint, I have gotten the
impression that it is much easier for a woman to be considered as
physically/sexually attractive than a man.  Men can be attracted to a
broad range of physcial types: some like very thin, others more
volumptuos forms, some prefer women who are definitely plump.. some
men like small breasts, others find large breasts attractive, some
like narrow hips, others prefer rounded.  With the archetype of the
physically attractive male, it seems to be less varied: trim and
muscular, with varying degrees of muscularity.  The point is, that it
would actually take more effort (physical) for a man to fit the beauty
archetype than a woman.  This, of course, does not consider that women
may be less concerned that their man fit into the beauty archetype
than men are (about their women).  Basically, I think that men have a
more difficult/narrower ideal to conform to, but less pressure to
conform to it.

Of course, as a man, I only feel the societal pressure placed on me as
a man... a woman might argue the exact opposite to what I have said,
given her subjective experience, based on the societal pressure she
feels.

-- 
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".sig quotes are dippy"|Kenneth C. Moyle          kenm@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca 
 - Kenneth C. Moyle    |Department of Biochemistry     MOYLEK@MCMASTER.BITNET 
                       |McMaster University       ...!uunet!mnetor!maccs!kenm