The_Yoda said:
I would not be 100% certain that it is completely a societal definition. Have you ever read up on the link between the golden ratio and what many people find to be aesthetically pleasing ... 1.618 it may be as much mathematical as societal. That said "to each their own" of course. I just always found it interesting that the golden ratio even ties into "beauty". |
It's biological.
Fit people get more attention, good hunter gatherers / protectors.
Women with broad hips and big breasts get more attention, good for bearing and raising children.
What society has distorted is promoting slim bodies while nature gives preference to more rounded individuals. Rubenesque, Peter Paul Rubens knew what beauty was.
In ancient times 'society' pushed the ideal the other way:
8,000 year old statue found in Turkey
30,000 year old statue found in Autria "Venus von Willendorf"
Stone Age Venus figurines were totems of survival, not sex -- the bodies are not swollen as symbols of sex, but as symbols of survival. Study hypothesise that the overnourished woman became an ideal symbol of survival and beauty during episodes of starvation and climate change in Paleolithic Europe.
Yet wide hips, big breasts, muscle tone and symmetry (golden ratio) are all universal signs of a healthy person and thus desirable.
