The Judgment of Paris Forum - Curves more attractive, men say (article)

22nd February 2011

Karsten

Senior Member

Join Date: May 2010

Posts: 101

Curves more attractive, men say (article)

Over the years, many threads at this site have discussed the fact that men (i.e., heterosexual men) prefer women with curves. From the Daily Mail comes the best summation yet of this premise -- written by a male reporter. The text is so good that one would almost think that it was written by a Judgment of Paris contributor.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...o=feeds-newsxml

It starts off as the usual celebrity fluff about Gwyneth Paltrow, but a few paragraphs in, it becomes quite a bold statement of size celebration. Here are the best passages:

Quote:

Wish you were skinny like Gwynnie? Let me tell you, ladies, we men are turned off by skeletal chic...

By Philip Robinson

22nd February 2011

While Gwyneth, with her willowy figure, exercise addiction and macrobiotic fussiness, seems to drive most ordinary women insane with resentment, most men are oblivious to her wan "perfection."

We happily flick through the paper until we hit upon a small shot of Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks’ ample bosom, or Kelly Brook buying wallpaper while wearing a large sheepskin coat.

While Gwyn is proud of her taut, yoga body, men aren’t enthused. Men don’t hang around in pubs talking about how many sit-ups their wife can do. While shots of the stick-thin Gwyn might appeal to women, men prefer lumps, bumps and wobbly bits.

Gwyneth, bless her, has no jiggle. She is gawky and rake-like; puritanically thin.

To a man, this screams of neuroticism, a fear of being out of control. This is the opposite of all the qualities that make a woman attractive: confidence in her body, a love and lust for life, and sensuality — rather than an obvious terror of being even the tiniest bit out of control.

Women’s bodies change after they have children. They accumulate pleasing curves and their hips widen — but while women loathe the phrase ‘child-bearing hips’, men are instinctively attracted to this shape; a woman with a bit of meat on her bones is more likely to be fertile.

Just as I hope to become handsomely craggy and characterful as I age, I expect women’s bodies to soften; it seems like an affront to nature to see a mother all sinewy and wiry and likely to beat you in an arm wrestle.

Men are supposed to be stubbly and dry with hard angles, so we do not crave more of the same from our wife or girlfriend. We want women to be feminine, which means a slightly rounded belly is preferable to a washboard.

Your girlfriend’s squishy bum and touch of wobble might look less than Pirelli Calendar "perfect" under the harsh midday sun, but it feels great under the duvet at the tail end of a northern European winter.

There has always been a massive gap between what men really want and what women think they want, not helped by the fashion industry and designers who only want to dress women with the same dimensions as lampposts, whose bodies won’t interfere unduly with the uniform drop of their dresses.

Heterosexual men, however, are pretty simple and do not require women to look like freakish giraffes with perfect teeth. What men regard as a nice figure would astonish most women...

I’m a man...I want to go out with a girl who’ll eat her own bloody steak, with chunky chips on the side, without having to go on a ten-mile run and beat herself with organic birch twigs the next day.

Women who insist on a holier-than-thou existence are no fun. I’ve met the Gwyneth type at dinner parties, and heard the litany of their painstakingly dull macrobiotic, zero-carb existences. They are obviously proud of their etiolated figures, but look ill, sallow and drained of energy.

The problem could be rectified by eating and drinking normally for a couple of weeks — but the damage to their personalities seems permanent. More sinisterly, I often wonder if these complex, faddish diets are a cover for old-fashioned eating disorders.

It’s at this point men are often blamed, but the pressure it seems comes from within.

Here’s the problem: what makes ordinary women appealing is anathema to Hollywood and the HD camera. To be truly sexy is about disregarding all this shallow stuff and just living. People who make other people, themselves and their partners feel guilty about living, about indulging in simple pleasures, are deeply unerotic, even unlovable.

The article sums up just about every truth about how real men actually feel about women with curves.

As the writer says, men are not attracted to women who exercise, and we emphatically dislike the look of "toned" bodies. We find the fashion/media look to be unattractive, "ill" and "sallow."

The writer even correctly reveals that when men say that they love women with curves, they're not just talking about media-sanctioned features like a silicone bust or a JLo/Beyonce bottom, but rather, those very feminine physical characteristics to which the fashion industry is antagonistic: "child-bearing hips," bodies that "soften," and, yes, "a slightly rounded belly." He's right that when women's hips "widen," men find this "pleasing." When was the last time that a movie or TV program acknowledged that these are the physical characteristics on women that men find attractive? But it's true.

Also, kudos to the writer for pointing out that men don't want women who are tediously "in control" around food. Rather, men desire women who can lose control around food and really indulge with pleasure. When the writer mentions that he is attracted to a woman who can "eat her own bloody steak, with chunky chips on the side," it made me think of the previous post about Vertigo, which noted how Kim Novak's character (ideally gorgeous, and full-figured by today's standards) enthuses about wanting to eat a "big, beautiful steak." That's wickedly seductive.

Despite media lies, despite fashion-industry falsehoods, real men find women with a robust appetite and the voluptuous, feminine curves that go with it to be the epitome of beauty and desire.

23rd February 2011	#2
Luminosa Member Join Date: January 2009 Posts: 43	Re: Curves more attractive, men say (article) Thank you for posting this article, Karsten. These types of articles are very comforting to truly full-figured women. We have been lied to and systematically brainwashed by the media, and pop culture, with false beauty ideals. The reaffirmation from men, that curves, fullness, softness and lush figures are truly desirable, is just what we need to hear.

23rd March 2011

Graham

Senior Member

Join Date: May 2007

Posts: 234

Re: Curves more attractive, men say (article)

Here's an intriguing follow-up to the mantra that men prefer full-figured women. A male fashion designer from India (but one who clearly finds women attractive, not one of the degenerate types) not only expresses his preference for curvier women, but even slams the worship of androgynous emaciation as being unmanly.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/11103...ry_13684447.jsp

His testimonial:

Quote:

Real men love real women

Sabyasachi Mukherjee

At the outset, let me just say one thing — real men like real women.

I have seen that super-fit women can only be idols for other women and men who are still struggling to attain manhood, but talk to any other man — a man’s man — and he will tell you that he likes real women, with their curves, smiles, laughter et al.

The imagery of the "perfect" woman is alarmingly bordering on pre-puberty boys. Women of UK size 14 are socially pressurised to feel f**. And who decides who’s thin and who’s f**? If you accept your body weight and refuse to believe you are f**, in the eyes of the beholder you will automatically start to look fit without using the gym. Most often than not I have seen that women who are happy with their curves are a lot more emotionally stable than women who are killing themselves to burn that extra ounce of f** in their bodies.

With stability comes customer loyalty as well. And if fashion just realised the importance of making people feel good about shapes and curves (albeit towards a larger size), the industry wouldn’t have been hit by recession. Proof? The proof lies in the pudding. Look at any fashion magazine, the most successful covers have always been their shape issues!

On a personal front, it is quite easy for me to make hip and ‘fashionable’ clothing for a selected few, but the select few cannot make a business. I do not want to live in an egotistical bubble. So for me it is more challenging to dress real women and large women, and when I make them marginally more beautiful I sleep well with the thought that it was a job well done.

For that I might be marginalised by fashion magazines, but I can boast proudly that my circulation is more than theirs!

First of all, it's gratifying to hear of a designer following his own pro-curvy vision in defiance of pressure from the magazine industry. If only more designers had this kind of courage. Yet he clearly indicates that this doesn't hurt his bottom line; it's both a social cause for him, and it makes good business sense.

Second, it's wonderful to hear him state that women can be beautiful "without using the gym." It's not just the fullness of a plus-size goddess's figure that makes her beautiful, but also her untoned softness, undiminished by any gym-torture.

Third, it's interesting to hear him point out that "women who are happy with their curves are a lot more emotionally stable than women who are killing themselves" with diet-starvation. This is undoubtedly true, and it's part of what makes curvy women more altogether attractive than their underweight rivals (in addition to their superior physical beauty).

And finally, when the designer points out that the only men who find skinny girls attractive are "men who are still struggling to attain manhood," that's a very fine euphemism for such men (if they can be called "men" at all).

If the fashion industry were populated by more pro-curvy men such as this Indian designer, rather than the type of people who dominate the industry today, then the images that the fashion world creates would celebrate natural feminine fullness and would thus be a boon to women's self-esteem, not a detriment, as they are today.

Let's hope that more such individuals enter the fashion/media world in the future.

22nd April 2011

Kaitlynn

Senior Member

Join Date: July 2005

Posts: 618

Re: Curves more attractive, men say (article)

The wording is a bit inelegant in places, but I found this article by a male journalist writing from Korea to be quite interesting. Apparently, his wife, who is curvy, has faced considerable discrimination for her curves, and her self-esteem has suffered as a result. He writes this column (in an English-language Korean newspaper) to address the issue.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/new.../137_85471.html

Hopefully the article will help curvier women in Korea recognize that men do find them attractive, and may help other men become more vocal about their preference.

Here are the better points:

Quote:

I have never understood the attraction of the angular, bony and emaciated maidens who mince across the pages of fashion magazines worldwide. Whence this feminine ideal?

While it is politically incorrect to argue such things these days, let us be clear: The male and female anatomies are, indeed, different.

Let’s examine the contrasts.

The ideal male aesthetic is tall, lean and angular with toned muscle...The ideal feminine figure was the opposite.

Judging from European art, this ideal of a rounded, curvaceous female has been admired for most of history: it is only in the mid/late 20th century that the emaciated maiden has come into fashion ― which brings us to the unnatural horrors of, well, fashion.

We live in an odd world, one in which the female fashion industry is largely the domain of gay male designers. Given the sexual prerogative, it seems that such haute couturiers ― even though they are designing for females ― are unconsciously projecting their beau ideal of the young male onto the opposite gender.

Today, their favored form ― tall, skinny, angular and curve-free, reminiscent of a gangling teenage fellow rather than a naturally endowed female ― has been adopted worldwide.

While this “tyranny of the thin” may rule globally, it is particularly harsh in the R[epublic] O[f] K[orea]...On the social front, there is enormous pressure to conform to the dictates of fashion. Hence the stress affecting my wife and (no doubt) many, many women like her.

I am arguing for a return to/rethink of the female aesthetic ― one that is designed around the anatomical blueprint of a properly-nourished woman, rather than a starving waif or a teenage male.

The article serves as an important reminder that not only does the underweight standard trigger full-blown eating disorders, but also that in many women its effect, while not that drastic, is still extremely harmful, both physically and psychologically: creating dissatisfaction with their naturally full figures and rendering them miserable.

The writer's call for a return to the timeless, full-figured ideal that was celebrated throughout human history is well worth supporting. I wish more journalists would pen cris de coeur like this.

25th April 2011

Maureen

Senior Member

Join Date: September 2006

Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan USA

Posts: 117

Re: Curves more attractive, men say (article)

Salsa singer Marc Anthony has joined the chorus of men voicing their preference for curves. His wife, Jennifer Lopez, recently diminished herself, much to his displeasure.

http://www.digitalspy.com/celebrity...pez-curves.html

Quote:

The salsa singer is said to be upset that his wife recently lost ten pounds, and is hoping that she will begin to put the weight back on and return to her normal size.

"He wants her to gain weight," a source told In Touch Weekly. " [He] doesn't want her to turn into one of those super-skinny Hollywood types."

30th December 2011

HSG

Administrator

Join Date: July 2005

Posts: 1,721

Re: Curves more attractive, men say (article)

The article that Karsten linked may be the most accurate account of the nature of male attraction toward women that has ever been printed in a mainstream newspaper.

In all the world, there is likely no myth that more glaringly contradicts actuality than the fiction that men are attracted to the hyper-toned, radioactively tanned, scrawny-framed models who populate the world's runways and magazines, from fashion weeks to Victoria's Secret shows. The very obvious fact that these models are selected by the people who run the female-oriented divisions of the media (i.e., women, and men-who-are-not-attracted-to-women), and not by heterosexual men, attests to this.

There is also no area in which that chimera fabricated by feminism--the so-called "patriarchy"--is more patently nonexistent than in this field. The idea that a "patriarchy" is supposedly responsible for an anti-feminine ideal that heterosexual men despise is beyond illogical, given that it is heterosexual men who supposedly comprise this mythical "patriarchy."

And the idea that men create this androgynous standard to "keep women down" is ludicrous. When it comes to bare physical attraction, men are not interested in women's power or political status, pro or con. (To assert that they are is a textbook case of projection.) Men are simply interested in beauty, and emaciated androgyny is not beautiful.

The truth--and this is a truth so counter-intuitive to those who have internalized modern "progressive" beliefs that they simply ignore it--is that it is the increased media power that women and non-heterosexual men wield that has enacted the imposition of the androgynous ideal. These groups have enshrined a standard of appearance that they, not heterosexual men, favour. If there actually were a patriarchy dominated by heterosexual men which had any cultural influence, the icons of ideal female appearance would sooner resemble Lillian Russell than Kate Moss. After all, in Lillian's day--a day when heterosexual man actually did wield power over the production of visual culture--Lillian was universally acknowledged as the supreme object of men's desire.

* * *

Perhaps the most revealing observation in the article that Karsten linked is the comment that

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karsten

men don't want women who are tediously "in control" around food. Rather, men desire women who can lose control around food and really indulge with pleasure.

Despite media lies, despite fashion-industry falsehoods, real men find women with a robust appetite and the voluptuous, feminine curves that go with it to be the epitome of beauty and desire.

This is pure truth.

It is the freedom, the liberation, the ability to surrender to pleasure, to revel in it, to let it overwhelm all other considerations, which a fuller figure betokens about a goddess, that makes plus-size beauty the manner of appearance in women that men desire most. And not just for the obvious associations with intimacy. Rather, it speaks of a passion for life, an openness to overwhelming intensity of feeling, an ability to experience ecstasy, to reach epiphany, that makes the full-figured goddess the paragon of female loveliness.

Today, more than ever, we live in a world of stifling regulations. We endure circumscribed existences of crushing constraint. Full-figured femininity embodies a transcendence of any such limitations, a yearning for more, an insatiable hunger for the endless and the infinite. It is Beauty itself.

Latter-day Aphrodite Sophie Sheppard (Bella Models; Milk Management). Limitless beauty.

- More from this test . . .

Last edited by HSG : 30th December 2011 at 09:46.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version Email this Page	Search this Thread: Advanced Search
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode