Photo: “Neither Mine Nor Yours, 9- view 2” by Michelle Dickson – (Website) (Instagram) Used with permission of the creator.
Listening to: Video Killed the Radio Star – Bruce Woolley & the Camera Club
A Guardian article ‘They said I wasn’t hot enough’: Carey Mulligan hits out again at magazine review just pissed me off (again) about the media’s attempts to control what or who we find attractive.
As a society we should grow up and recognize that everybody has different tastes and stop “listening to the voices”. Personally I find “character” attractive. What kind? Who knows, until it smacks one upside the head. Imagining what it’s like to talk to someone seems far more relevant than wondering how the masses will judge you with “that on your arm”. After all, there is only so long you can strut around in public, and a whole lot of time spent in private communicating with that person.
The same can go for media we consume. If you were casting a movie, would you want to pick actors that were right for the part or a generically attractive cast to please the broadest of fan bases (and the marketing department)? And I’ll admit here to indulging in a bit of reverse discrimination. If looking for a show to watch and the caption picture is filled with a (oft retouched) attractive ensemble cast, I’ll not read the description and move on. After all, if the casting is that generic, imagine what the script is like.
There have been a few interesting science articles about attraction in the past. From the chemical science behind lust, attraction and companionship to mid-20’s females are the most attractive to the broadest range of people or that if you average the faces of multiple people it turns out attractive. The age based bias seems obvious because of ingrained reproduction strategies, but the latter is interesting in that stereo-typically attractive people could be considered “generic”. And perhaps visually boring.
Or perhaps that’s just my own slant on things.
(edit: deleted personal content)