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from the the-very-concept-of-beauty-is-part-of-the-entrenched-patriarchy dept.
For over a year, I worked as a beauty editor, writing and researching about the products, trends, and people that make us want to look a certain way. And as research for many of the stories I wrote, I consulted with dermatologists, plastic surgeons, makeup artists, aestheticians, and more trying to answer a simple question—how can I make myself more conventionally attractive?
"Beauty is confidence," they'd always say, prefacing the real answer. Inevitably, these experts would eventually tell me that you feel more confident, and thus more beautiful, when you look blemish- and wrinkle-free. (Pending on the product they were promoting, this could also incorporate being tanner, or more contoured, or thinner, or paler, or less made up, or curvier, etc.) Regardless of respondents' different aesthetic tastes, everyone seemed to agree—younger is more beautiful. Beauty was about anti-aging.
Naturally, the problem here is the premise. What is beauty beyond someone else defining it? For as long as humanity's obsession with the term has existed, we've equally known about its subjective nature. After all, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is merely a cliché that posits that exact subjectivity of attractiveness.
But what if the beholder can eliminate subjectivity—what if the beholder wasn't a person, but an algorithm? Using machine learning to define beauty could, theoretically, make beauty pageants and rankings like People's annual Most Beautiful in the World list more objective and less prone to human error. Of course, teaching an algorithm to do anything may involve some bias from whoever does the programming, but that hasn't stopped this automated approach from defining equally subjective things like listening preferences or news value (we see you, Facebook et al).
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday March 21 2017, @10:31AM (1 child)
Seriously - ask an Indian (asian), persian, japanese, finnish, italian, american, sub-saharan and caribbean man about what beauty is.
Heck - I want my finnish men to be tall cuddly bears, my swedish men to be scrawny treats, my japanese men to give ladies a good run for femininity, and my italian men far away from me (just not my kink, wrong kind of roughness)
With women I want the east asian to have big breasts, the finnish to be thin, the swedish to be curvy with a tedency towards thin, the norwegian to be slightly plump and big breasted, the persian to be slender. And I want none of them to be tattooed nor look like they've just taken a beating (fat lips), and I want their breasts to have a slight bounce (if big enough), and I want the skin to be pale. (Note the absence of butts).
Also - I consider the geisha/geiko(+maiko) (and some goth-makeups) aesthetics to be attractive but I dislike noticing makeup in general.
Oh, and red lips are for me a sign of allergic reaction, and rosy cheeks causes me to want check the person for a heart condition (unless they currently engage in physical activity)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:05PM
And I want none of them to be tattooed
tattoo is extreme conformity as is piercing. Under the age of 40 only extreme radicals and non-conformists have no ink or piercings or a natural hair color/style. Its hyper conformist mainstream now.
The problem with tattoo is its got the same quality distribution as female beauty standards, inevitably most 10/10 have like 5/10 tattoos. There's too many hipsters who want tattoos and too few quality artists.