Who are you comparing your beauty to?

[Just Mandy]

I was talking to a very beautiful GG this weekend and she made a comment that I had
never really put much though into before.

She said that women often make the mistake of comparing themselves to the top
1% or 2% of the female population. She thinks they often  compare themselves against the people
they see in movies and on television. She said to think about how many people in you
have in your life, friends, family or maybe just know distantly, that are as beautiful as actresses?
Most will only have one or two at the most. I know over my life time I have known or even
met a few women that I would put in the top 1% or 2%. Maybe 15 total?
A lot of you may have already known this but it was eye opening for me.

I won't name names but I would place several of the girls here on this board in the top
1% or 2% female population. And then there are many "average girls" or less like me.

But it makes me feel better now that I think in those terms, I won't be able to
ever compete with the 2%'er but maybe I can get to average. 

Just curious am I alone or are the number of "beautiful people" out there really that small that any
given person will only have contact with a few?

[buttercup]

I think now there is an explosion of cosmetic surgery and beauty therapists, there are definitely lots more beautiful girls than ever before!  I've rarely seen girls with large noses, or thin lips, thick uni-brows, unsitely moles or blemishes or excessive wrinkling.  Yes, I've known may beautiful girls and I think it is way more than 2%.
I've known literally 100's of beautiful girls, so what am I gonna do, I ask ya??     

[Just Mandy]

I've known hundreds of beautiful girls also, but not top 2%ers. Maybe
90% or 95%er's.

She was not saying that only 2% were beautiful, just that women in general compare themselves
to the top 2%, the models, film and TV superstars.

The point she was making and I guess I agree is there are very few girls in the league of the
superstars which most say are the top 2% of the population as far as female beauty goes. And that may
be a whole other topic... are today's stars beautiful or fake with all their plastic surgery?

[katia]

no one.  i don't like to look like anybody else.  i'm unique!

[NicholeW.]

Yes, there are lotsa beautiful, great, nice and average, probably nice-looking women. But my experience with MTF women are that as a group there is way too much obsession about whether or not "I look like ....(whomever)"

I think the point here is that try to be somewhat realistic in one's expectations of what is possible. The Big Three FFS docs all do excellent work and sometimes someone's disposition causes her to get fantastic FFS results. Others of us get better-than-we-expected HRT results.

But, I have known a few who go into transition at 40-50 and still wind-up looking pretty much male. Of course they are often the one's with the most money on losing 6 inches of height, 150 lbs of weight and having broad-shoulders and large heads shrink and feminize when they start. A recipe for mental and emotional disaster.

A bit of common-sense and the realization that possibly 1-2% of women in the world can be said to be ultimately beautiful kinda makes the odds pretty long on the above-described individuals making that grade, even with surgery.

The idea is congruity is it not? I can get that without looking like a young Michelle Pfeiffer or someone of that sort.

Excellent post, Amanda

[Keira]

I think your going at it backward by saying the media
is the one's pushing standards of beauty on us.

Well, standards of beauty exist in all cultures and they
are remarkably similar at the facial level
in most (but not all, in certain
localized pockets in Africa in particular,
standards of beauty diverge remarkably).

Beauty is linked to
- Child like features
   - Small chin, large, eyes, high forehead, small upturned nose
- Signs of high fertility and estrogen, health and youth
   - Smooth skin, silky hairperfect teeth, fleshy baby faced face,
     outside corner of eye higher than inside one,
     hair that is not grey, fleshy lips, little body hair, symetry
     voice with average to higher than average pitch,
     good muscle tone, WHR < 0.8
- Features that accentuate good features
   - high cheekbones, high, defined darker brows, eye not to close
     together, rounded not too pointed chin. Constant smile.

The reaction in male and female to this beautiful face is feeling at ease, not treatened.

The same reason you find a face beautiful is the same reason you find some animals cute and not others. Baby animals in particular have all these traits and how do we react to them!!

If you look at the stars in the media for a long time, they've often have had all of this. Makeup is used to try to get a non perfect face within what is considered beautiful

They became stars because they corresponded to the universal ideal of beauty, not because its been invented in some back room.

My own assessment is that in Hollywood, at least 20% are very beautiful to someone, 60% are beautiful and 20% are just average (those are often filling character roles, there are a lot more men in this category than women, like Giamatti from Sideways.). I think in Hollywood, 85% of women are beautiful for some part of the public.

[NicholeW.]

I think your going at it backward by saying the media
is the one's pushing standards of beauty on us.

Well, standards of beauty exist in all cultures and they
are remarkably similar at the facial level
in most (but not all, in certain
localized pockets in Africa in particular,
standards of beauty diverge remarkably).

Beauty is linked to
- Child like features
   - Small chin, large, eyes, high forehead, small upturned nose
- Signs of high fertility and estrogen, health and youth
   - Smooth skin, silky hairperfect teeth, fleshy baby faced face,
     outside corner of eye higher than inside one,
     hair that is not grey, fleshy lips, little body hair, symetry
     voice with average to higher than average pitch,
     good muscle tone, WHR < 0.8
- Features that accentuate good features
   - high cheekbones, high, defined darker brows, eye not to close
     together, rounded not too pointed chin. Constant smile.

The reaction in male and female to this beautiful face is feeling at ease, not treatened.

...

The tendency toward child-like features is a genetic human trait. It's called neotony. Ever wonder why lotsa old men, particularly the bald ones, look like babies? Neotony. Same with baby animals. And as humans our brains are equipped to tend neotonic-featured individuals. It's why we think kittens and puppies, lambs, baby-birds, etc are sooooooo cute and loveable. Except for the puppies, probably not all that loveable and likely no more so than their adult parents.

Humans have evolved toward neotony. We get more rounded as we get older. An odd trait among other animals. Their young are neotonic, but change as they get older. Humans start and finish that way.

The dogs are loving simply because over the past few ten thousand years of living with humans they have been bred for becoming attached to their human packs.

The constant smile, a simian cue for submission. Smiles tend to disarm. Canines smile as well when they are submissive, and mob. We are caught by our biology lotsa times and what we think is cultural is actually fairly biological.

[Nero]

Have you ever seen some of those candid shots of top models and actresses? Where they're out shopping or whatever and not expecting to be photographed?

What we see in Playboy and on tv is considerably altered. The girl next door could look just as good if she had personal stylists, special lighting, and air brushing. Every flaw is edited out in magazines. There are tricks of tv lighting and other like techniques.
the vast majority of female celebs have had 'work' done on top of everything else - bigger tits, nicer nose, face lifts, tummy tucks, etc.
Even Angelina Jolie who's arguably one of the most beautfiul women alive has clearly had facial work done. Which really pisses me off because I fell for her in her earlier pictures because her beauty was raw and unique and now she's all cookie-cutter.

There have always been standards of beauty, but never before have women been bombarded by and expected to adhere to such stringent and artificial ideals of beauty.
I mean - beach ball tits balloooning from 17 inch waists! Come on. The average gg is 5'4, 145 lbs. Women really aren't engineered to be that way.
That's why the menses stop when the weight drops to a certain level. because at that point the woman is too unhealthy for childbirth!

Society won't change. Beauty ideals only get more ludicrous as time goes on. That's why women need to recognize it's all bull.
And one more thing - most men don't really like all that. Why do the stick figure model like dancers always go home empty handed?
Because they ain't got what men want.

[Pica Pica]

I tend to compare my beauty to an orangutan

[Nero]

I tend to my beauty to an orangutan

Oh Pica. You're much yummier than that!

[Pica Pica]

But orangutans are lovely looking ish.

[tinkerbell]

To the girl I used to see in the mirror before transition...today she is not trapped within the frames of such mirror, today she is free..

tink

[Ember Lewis]

I think we all have the right to work towards achieving an apperance that we can be happy with. I don't specifically want to look like anyone but I do want to look like girls that the media considers beautiful. I don't plan on having more surgeries than it takes to make me satisfied. I say satisfied because no mater how beautiful you can be there will always be someone more beautiful. But we all have our own levels of what beauty is, it's never the same for anyone. You can be as "vain" as you want, but I think it's only a problem when it becomes an obsession and controls you.

[melissa90299]

no one.  i don't like to look like anybody else.  i'm unique!

I bet!

[Nero]

I think we all have the right to work towards achieving an apperance that we can be happy with. I don't specifically want to look like anyone but I do want to look like girls that the media considers beautiful. I don't plan on having more surgeries than it takes to make me satisfied. I say satisfied because no mater how beautiful you can be there will always be someone more beautiful. But we all have our own levels of what beauty is, it's never the same for anyone. You can be as "vain" as you want, but I think it's only a problem when it becomes an obsession and controls you.

You better dare not touch that gorgeous face (can't see the bod well)!!!!!!!!!!!!! EVER!!!

[Keira]

Nero,
As I said, its quite unfair maybe,
but the assessment of beauty is hard wired
in the brain. And as was said, many of
those traits tend for neotony and youth,
both indicates fertility. The reason beauty
is hard wired because human's needed
a quick and easy way of assessing who
was most likely to be fertile. Now, there's
a bit of a pointlessness to this, but that
doesn't mean our brain has changed to
adapt to the new situation.

hat's why long
term humans have tended historically toward
towards homogeneity
and neotony, maybe one day, we will all be
blandly beautiful and beauty won't mean anything.

As for all men wanting women to be busty with small waist, I think women are actually more influenced by what they think men want than what they actually want!! Many studies have prooved that what women think is beautiful is actually more extreme (and most time more extreme even than what magazines show) than the what men think is beautiful. Even movie stars have body image issues!!

I think what's really needed is to work on women's self esteem so they're not so hard on themselves and don't have this distorted view of themselves. Putting the accent of exercise and eating good food instead of diets would be a good start. The fact that women are afraid of lifting weights is totally ridiculous and leads to low metabolism and a constant fight to not gain weight by only eating salad.

[shanetastic]

But orangutans are lovely looking ish.

They're also solitary creatures and that doesn't sound like you!

[Wing Walker]

I have never chosen a model for my looks.

I am proficient at using makeup when I use it.  I dress according to where I am going and the season.  I shop for what looks good on me.

I am not petite.  I am 5' 11.5" tall and weigh well over 200 pounds.  I don't have thick, long hair, but it's all mine and it's still growing

I am the best me that I can be, and that pleases me.  Pits on whoever doesn't like it.  As long as I am happy with me and my soulmate and lifepartner is happy with me, that is all that matters to me.

Wing Walker
Flying My Own Comfy Path

[cindybc]

Me happy and me not a fussy person. As long as we do what needs to look presentable to go out then just go out and have fun. I'm no beauty queen either but I strongly rely on my personality and that at least will get me a seat at a restaurant.

Cindy

[mickiejr1815]

i'm no rose but i feel my wife is best when comparing my beauty. physical, emotional, and spiritual. but of course i don't want her to ever think that i am trying to be prettier than she is. she is my muse