Andrew notices that the winner of Miss Arab World is veiled. What strikes me is that the runners-up, and possibly the winner under all those layers, are at least twenty pounds heavier than the average American beauty contestant. There's real, live, actual body fat under those dresses--and the judges, presumably male, still thought these women were attractive! What's more, the girls are revelling in it, wearing mermaid-style dresses that emphasize their lush curves. Looking at more photographs from the pageant, there seems to be a decent inverse correlation between how westernized a country is, and how thin its representative is . . . although even the thinnest girls would be on the heavy side for Miss America.
It's kind of impossible to overstate how grossly unrealistic American beauty pageant winners have become. The photographs from Miss Teen USA in the 1930's show very pretty girls with normal bodies . . . every one of whom would be on a Spartan diet and excercise regime if she wanted to compete today. Compare them to the Miss America swimsuit competition today, with its starved bodies topped by huge breast implants.
Compare them to the Miss America swimsuit competition today, with its starved bodies topped by huge breast implants.
I am guessing that is because it seems that today's American beauty contests are judged by women and effeminate men .
Oh Great!! Now I have to spend my lunch hour studying pictures of girls in bikinis instead of getting caught up on my backlog of work. Thanks a bunch, Jane. ;-)
Seriously, though: Aside from the zoftig vs. anorexic aspect, notice how the Arab girls manage to be darned good-looking even though they are (mostly) covered up from shoulder to ankle. Lesson: Being almost naked is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for being sexy.
(I may back with more comments after I finish *carefully* studying all the photos.)
Paul L. - You hit the nail right on the head!
Real men want WOMEN with curves not GIRLS with the bodies of 12 year old pre teens. Get some real men judging and you will have some real women winning.
Why is it so shocking that beauty pageant winners have bodies that are impossible for most women to obtain? You could say the same thing about bodybuilding competitions, and the same principle applies to any professional sport. The average man can't be like Michael Jordan, that's why he was a professional, he was extraordinary.
The Arab contestants just seem so normal compared to the American beauty queens, who by comparison look like extraterrestrials. I suppose one explanation for that is the Arab contestants don't think of this as their destiny--they haven't been teetering around in bikinis and high heels ever since they were preschoolers.
well, it looks like we already blew up the bandwidth of that geocities site... and that first pic Megan, is the thumbnail. eliminate the thumbnail. from the address, and it gives the full version.
On the other questions, mmm, pageants are competition, so it seems like maximization is to be expected... if the pageants are under a conservative religious system, their maxim are close to the edge of toleration, but not over it. Since western pageants are conforming to societies that are far broader in toleration, you have contestants that are maximizing physical attribute as they see them. Who wins or loses is based on trends. If we were to have one winner that had better curves, and did the swimsuit comp in a vintage 30's combo that was stunning, well the following years the contestants would change styles and you might have differing bodytypes.
Seems like this gets back to designers that are designing for the willowy boy figure, and actually DRIVE that image. If those same types of people judge pageants... well they will look for similar things. The fact that the models feel compelled to be stacked artificially is maybe with an eye to the ratings and eyecandy needed to get on TV.
This doesn't seem any different to me than any other competition, except for the fact that you are judging female looks too rather than their accomplishments... and we seem to be saying that the looks competed with should be maximized without SEEMING to be maximized. Perhaps too that the people defining the looks are out of touch with general physiology.
It has always seemed to be a crass evaluation to compete on looks in this way. But perhaps the truly beautiful think it's normal.
For another example of varying standards, look through a chronological display of Titian's paintings - the women in his late painting are noticeably fatter than those in the earlier ones. Evidently Venetian taste changed during his lifetime and he followed the market. On the other hand, his models' breasts are much smaller than today's beauty queens'. I'm sure he would have found modern supermodels ungainly, ugly, and misshapen. The ironic thing is that his ideal of beauty is just as unrealistic as today's - it's just that his idealizations go in a very different direction.
The point was made after the Miss Universe 2007, that the winner Riyo Mori is not seen as an ideal of beauty in Japan. She essentially won by showing a Western ideal of beauty to Western judges, and it is unlikely it will translate well into the Japanese market.
Its those extreme idealizations of beauty, the clownish geishas, the slutty Britney Spears, the African tribal body modifications that somehow bring about disgust to people who view it from a different context.
I've noticed that the dancers in Bollywood videos are, similarly, much fatter than American professional dancers.
Hm. Well, the anthropological explanation for this has traditionally been that men are evolutionarily hardwired to seek healthy mates. Now, for quite a long time, "health" has equated to "wealth": it's only in the last half-century or so that the differences in longevity between the rich and poor have dwindled significntly.
So, since health is hard to evaluate in any depth from a quick once-over (aside from obvious external defects), the male eye has trained itself to seek wealth markers.
Prior to the twentieth century, most poor people (indeed many "middle-class" people) have been malnourished, and have been obliged to work at hard manual labor, often outside (farming and other "primary sector" occupations). So a 19th-century man looking for a welathy (and therefore healthy) woman would seek a woman who had some "good, healthy flesh", had soft hands, and had a pale complexion.
Fast forward to the present day. Poor people now suffer from obesity, not undernourishment: the primary sector--farming in particular--has almost vanished. Pallor is no longer an asset: indeed, "pasty-faced" is an epithet. The rich are jet-setters, who go to the Riviera and Gstaad, and who can afford personal trainers to keep them lean and mean. Hence, the new standard of "beauty" (i.e., wealth, ergo health) is lean, tanned and fit.
Once the pharmacolgical industry figures out a cheap way to keep people from bulking up, it's only a matter of time before the standard changes again. With cheap airfares and tanning salons, the tan look is already on its way out as a sociological marker of wealth: you can hear that already in the "health" discussions of "overexposure" to the sun and how bad it is for your skin and so on.
It's all very high minded to think that real men don't want thin women with big breasts, but I don't think that's true. After all, real preferences of men tend to be revealed by looking at the most popular porn stars, women ONLY appreciated for their sex appeal. And they tend to have large breasts on thin frames.
I recently read a book that touched on this subject call “Why Good Looking People Have More Girls” (I think that’s the title; I don’t have it in front of me). The author would probably argue that, while they may be heavier, they want to be a lot skinnier. There are a number of other interesting tidbits in it relative to beauty and culture: one being the male’s view of ideal beauty is the same across cultures because attributes like breast size, hair length and color and waist size, etc. are all key to a man’s ability to judge age, which is an inherent, evolutionary trait.
I think the explanation is prosaic - where women wear more clothes, they can be plump and still look good. Put them in skimpy bikinis and they'll all look flabby. This explains both the 1930's swim contests and the middle eastern ones.
Too bad there were no Iranian contestants, btw. Everyone knows that Persian women are the best in the Middle East!
Does anyone else notice that faces are much more prominent for women who are veiled?
" ... After all, real preferences of men tend to be revealed by looking at the most popular porn stars ..."
Not necessarily. The market for Porn stars is driven by that subset of men who spend significant amounts of money on Porn. And those men might not be representative of the male population as a whole.
Miss Egypt is probably the only blonde-haired person in her country :)
it seems that today's American beauty contests are judged by women and effeminate men
Chris Matthews is effeminate?
Being fat is still a status symbol in many poor countries? Go back in time and watch some music videos from the 70s and 80s and you will find even more starved faces and bodies than you do today?
The increase of eating disorders in the West (but also in developing countries) is a sign for what, apart from the obvious positive which is wealth and security?
We have recently reached a tipping point on earth. Never before in the history of histories has this happened..:
"For the first time in human history, the number of overweight people rivals the number of underweight people, according to a forthcoming report from the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based research organization. While the world's underfed population has declined slightly since 1980 to 1.1 billion, the number of overweight people has surged to 1.1 billion.
The public health impact is enormous: more than half of the world's disease burden-measured in "years of healthy life lost"-is attributable to hunger, overeating, and widespread vitamin and mineral deficiencies. "The century with the greatest potential to eliminate malnutrition instead saw it boosted to record levels," said Gardner.
Meanwhile, the population of overweight people has expanded rapidly in recent decades, more than offsetting the health gains from the modest decline in hunger. In the United States, 55 percent of adults are overweight by international standards. A whopping 23 percent of American adults are considered obese. And the trend is spreading to children as well, with one in five American kids now classified as overweight. Liposuction is now the leading form of cosmetic surgery in the United States, for example, at 400,000 operations per year
Surprisingly, overweight and obesity are advancing rapidly in the developing world as well. "Often, nations have simply traded hunger for obesity, and diseases of poverty for diseases of excess," said co-author Brian Halweil. Still struggling to eradicate infectious diseases, many developing nations' health care systems could be crippled by growing caseloads of heart disease, cancer, and other chronic illnesses."
________________
PS: Are overpopulation and the rise of overeating the final case for private insurance and less statist welfare?
Mind you that these numbers above are old (2000). Today 2/3s in the US are overweight (and 1/4-1/3 are obese)? Who are those remaining 1/3? Either way - cut the damn agricultural subsidies!! The same thing that is destroying our planet is destroying our bodies.
Among wild animals - what is the average percentage of animals who are either starving or obese?
Hugo Pottisch wrote: Among wild animals - what is the average percentage of animals who are either starving or obese?
Relatively low, but that also applies to the number of animals that have figured out how to build skyscrapers and computer information systems.
I confess that I'm a bit puzzled by the claim that she's veiled. She's wearing a hijab (i.e., a headscarf) but that's not the same as a veil, which would be a stretch of cloth covering the face. Clearly the winner's face is perfectly visible.
That said, I will agree that Arab standards of ideal beauty are quite different than what you find in America and that they are, arguably, much healthier.
It's a pity that so much misogyny is bound to the Arabic concept of womanhood (which strikes me as ironic given that Muhammed had relatively progressive views towards women... for his time).
Men like thin women with big breasts, and shapely, full-figured women, and size 10s with smallish breasts, and pretty much whoever is some combination of shapely, healthy-looking, possessing a nice face, and other things depending on the man and the woman in his view that sometimes even the man can't explain.
Why actresses and models and beauty pageant contestants are icreasingly boobs-on-a-stick types comes about for several reasons: 1) fashion designers find it easier to fit, and to make their stuff look good on, thin women with either no breasts or substantial breasts; 2) the insular nature of the beauty-related industries creates a self-reinforcing assumption that that ideal MUST be adhered to; 3) the increasing use of plastic surgery to allow women to maintain their thin figures longer, thus maintaining and further reinforcing the illusion that you must look that way if you want to be part of that environment.
Look at the recent amazement by the media that America Ferrera is attractive. And it wasn't about her ridding herself of her character's get-up, but rather her figure. Coverage of her at the awards shows was telling - they treated her like it was a big empowering moment for her to get dolled up and show the USA how good she could look. Uh, hello? We know. It's the entertainment media that is so blinkered. And examples abound of actresses who get thinner as they get older, with the men of America yelling, "Stop!" As though looking gaunt is better than allowing even a tiny bit of cellulite to exist on one's thigh.
Finally, there is some teaching going on. The more we men look at thin, hot babes in magazines, on TV, and during pageants, the more we are trained to think in terms of that being bettter in some way. The shape the sex urge takes is a conditioned response. So there's another aspect to reinforcement.
" ... After all, real preferences of men tend to be revealed by looking at the most popular porn stars ..."
Another rebuttal to this is that their look is the lowest common denominator. It's fairly easy to get a lot of men to agree that big boobs and thin is attractive, but is not what many of those guys would consider the ideal shape of a partner.
Further, most men aren't that picky. Most of us would take any of those 1930's, or those miss arab women in a hot second. We do like curvy women, we just don't like fat or obese women.
Further, most men aren't that picky.
We have a winner.
Thank you all for coming. Good night.
Anybody else here find the 'fat' 25 year old Britney Spears as having a more attractive figure that of the 20 year old 'jailbait-past-shelf-date' Britney?
Anyone?
Not really, Xenos.
I think Megan needs to put on an easy 40 pounds though. At six feet tall, keeping in tune with the new measure of Absolute Beauty by the Arab culture, she ought to weigh at least 200 pounds, so another 40 AT LEAST, Megan!!
I'm floored that I'm having to write this in response to a post by Ms. McArdle, whom I revere, but:
I am tired of this nonsense about Miss USA's figure being "unrealistic." Clearly her figure is realistic, because Miss USA is an actual person. Indeed, there is a whole set of women whose proportions more or less match Miss USA's. Most of them work hard to achieve this level of thinness; many probably don't. Who says life is fair?
Mad6789j hit the nail on the head -- where are the complaints that Ken Jennings sets a grotesque standard for trivia knowledge or that Michael Phelps sets an unreasonably high bar for swimming prowess? The difference is that very few people fret about their inadequate stores of general knowledge or inability to swim laps quickly, but the human female with no hangups about her looks has yet to tread upon the Earth.
In a beauty contest, it's perfectly reasonable for the standard of beauty to be whatever whatever look is hardest to attain. For most people, being uniformly trim is hard; carrying 20 extra pounds is easy, edging on inevitable.
Milk For Free:
I think what Megan meant is that it's "unrealistic" is that the pageant winner's beauty is not real and is enhanced. (As opposed to "unrealistic"="unattainable" for the average person.) Thus, her reference to breast implants.
I would actually like to know what is the standard level of enhancement for top-level pageants. We all know about the duct tape and vaseline on the teeth. There are rumors about implants of various sorts, etc. What is true? Are there "natural" pageants like there are natural bodybuilding contests with drug tests?
I think the analogy to Jennings falls flat in that (likely due to US culture) incredible smarts is viewed as something that is gifted by Nature or God, while beauty is something that can be worked at, encouraged, etc. For whatever reason, social pressure for girls to be pretty is much, much stronger than social pressure to be intelligent, literate, etc.
Echoing "D at 3:21pm", what we are seeing is not necessarily what is authentically desired by the young man on the streets of Dhubai or Riyadh. We are seeing what is barely tolerated by the various religious leaders in the region, who will certainly watch long enough to denounce every last contestant down to her eye color.
So we really have no idea what the standard of beauty is in that region given the restraints on free expression.
(Also, why do women tend to brand every woman everywhere who has big breasts as having gone under the knife unless they are huge snufulufuguses?)
Who is watching this 'beauty contest'? It's interesting that for 'Miss Arab World' there is a lot of English in view, and not a lick of Arabic.
And I don't think I'm overgeneralizing in saying that Arab culture is fairly conservative and that perhaps the idea of parading women around as if at a livestock auction is considered vulgar at best.
So maybe the idea of drawing any sort of conclusions about Arab ideals of beauty from this travesty is ridiculous.
Finn,
I expect it's because women realize that when you lose weight, you lose it everywhere, so previously ample areas deflate. Likewise, when you gain weight, you get a larger bust. We are talking about fat, after all. This is a painfully familiar fact to new mothers, who as they lose pregnancy weight, get to have their previously ample bosoms start drooping. Hence the suspicion of skinny, 40D women. It just doesn't work that way.
"Hence the suspicion of skinny, 40D women. It just doesn't work that way."
It sometimes happens that way, just rarely.
Saying that breast size fluctuates with weight as a response to my comment is to suggest that at any given weight there is no breast size variance.
That's nonsense. (I hope)
And most of the comments I hear tend not to be about incredibly skinny women with breasts, but rather, any remotely attractive non-fat woman with breasts.
I think that type of breast hatred and envy has to stop if we are truly interested in solving the major problems in the world. Amy P, just stop it! Stop it! Next you will be saying there are no DD's in America. Gawd people like you and Ahmadinejad.
Amy P, there is a way to get bigger breasts without gaining weight, or getting an augmentation. Hormonal birth control. It doesn't work for every woman, but it does work.
Also, am I the only person to notice how stacked high school girls are now? And not just the chubbier ones. It's pretty much been an increase across the board. I don't what to attribute it to, maybe the majority of 14 years olds are going on the Pill these days, but it is remarkable.
As to the porn, I would argue that the fact that the 'lowest common denominator' is thin with big breasts, means that is the culturally accepted norm. Besides girls in porn are so disposable, the fact that a girl gets to become a star means that she's considered very hot by most consumers.
Christina:
I think I've noticed the same thing about high schoolers. I suspect that it has something to do with diet, combined with tighter clothes accentuating, etc.
I'm sure there's room for theorizing about endocrine disruptors, but I'm skeptical.
There are women who have large breasts on an otherwise slender frame, but by the time they're 20, they are usually struggling mightily with their weight.(Look at Liz Taylor's old movies, frex). That kind of figure, with single-digit bodyfat percentages and large breasts, happens only when you're still growing, or have just stopped, and your body is using the extra calories as fuel to build tissue--including, obviously, in your breasts.
Beauty pageant contestants aren't 18, and they aren't merely slender--they have body fat percentages in the same range as pro-athletes. Women whose bodies naturally look that way, like Cameron Diaz, do so because their bodies are sending signals not to store any extra calories as fat--not in the breasts or anywhere else. If you diet down to those levels, your body cannibalizes breast tissue in preference to needed padding on your butt and hips. Those women have the opposite conformation: huge breasts, no hips. Moreover, the reason I made that remark is not jealousy; it's that their breasts are, well, visibly implants. You can see the top of the implant pushing up against the wall of their ribs; normal breasts don't act that way, nor do they stand up unassisted in skimpy halter tops.
I don't actually have anything against breast implants--as one of those who naturally looks more like a celery than a pear, why should I reject options?--but I find the combination of breast implants with these levels of self-starvation pretty grotesque.
Christina,
I can believe that hormonal birth control would have that effect, just as pregnancy and nursing do. But isn't the pill famous for causing weight gain, too?
Megan,
Very good points. Also (due to art or selection) American beauty queens all have the very same face. There's a good deal more variety in features among the Arab contestants, which helps them look more normal.
Whatever the ideal, some people will match it more closely than others.
In the very nature of things most women cannot be exceptionally beautiful, any more than most men can be exceptionally rich.
Whatever characteristic you rank people by, some will be closer to the top than others.
If it was not thinness, it would only be something else.
Shortness would make as much sense as thinness.
What's the Spartan Diet?
I've seen the 300 workout attempted (don't try it--you'll probably need back surgery from all those deadlifts), is the Spartan Diet related? Or is it Spartan in terms of sparing, making it more of a starvation diet?
There's a difference between a standard of beauty that's rare (beauty always tends toward the uncommon) and That Which Does Not Occur In Nature.
Extremely low body fat and large, round, perfectly symetrical and very firm breasts do not naturally co-occur.
Fairly low body fat and largish fairly saggy (and usually asymetrical) breasts can and do co-occur, though often accompanied by other features that would disqualify one from beauty pageant status (like unusually broad shoulders and unusually scrawny legs).
Perfect beauty is as impossible as perfect anything, whatever the fashion is for. Therefore no woman will ever be a perfect beauty.
And whatever happens, some will be closer to the ideal than others.
BTW - lipstick, mascara and bras do not exist in nature. By definition, any woman who uses any of them is "unnaturally" beautiful.
No, any woman who uses lipstick, mascara and bras is following the age old human tendency to modify the human body, the natural state of which most human beings seem to find singularly unappealing.
The same is true of those who get breast implants, body waxes, body build, get elaborate piercings or stop eating for six months. It's all body modification, part of the human drive to improve on a flawed, shoddy product.
Those women are not anorexic, they just work out a lot. If you have a slender frame, and you work out a lot, and you're young, that's what you look like. Implants, whatever, but they're not anorexic. They would be too fat to be models, most of them.
I think high school girls seem to have larger than historically observed breasts because of the advances in bra technology! You cannot buy an A without HUGE wads of padding or a B cup without substantial padding, underwire, etc. In the old days, A and B cups might have had a couple extra layers of fabric - now there's a pre-formed, free-standing, space-age foam cup in there.....
"Those women are not anorexic, they just work out a lot."
They don't body build or have elaborate piercings either, my point was that all those activities are part and parcel of the same human desire to upgrade the always unfashionable natural human body.
I just want to smack around the people who are claiming that it is impossible to have a Barbie type body. I have one ex and 2 university classmates (shared 80% of my classes with them for 5 years with no change in shape, etc) who were petite, exceptionally slender, and large Cs. It isn't statistically likely, but it is absolutely possible.
It is far more likely to have a body that is slender everywhere or padded everywhere. But is definitely possible for a woman to have a 6-pack, spectacular C-cups and be 25. She actually fulfilled the other primary fantasy of men, so she's so unlikely its rather ridiculous, but people like her do exist. They just aren't common.
Seeing highly exceptional people who are far beyond "uncommon" shouldn't be surprising in any high-level competition for a large population. Some of the contestants obviously have implants, but not all of them.
As to porn-consuming men being "unrepresentative of the majority". HAHAHAHAHAHA. Seriously I'm going to have to sue you for cracking my ribs from laughing so hard. Net you'll be saying that men interested in sports are unrepresentative of the majority, or those who enjoy looking at women in bikinis are unrepresentative of the majority.
"but it is absolutely possible"
But really, really rare; unlike gullible guys who want to believe.
Earth to commenters:
It is possible to be slender and have a large bust. In college I weighed 125lbs and wore a 34D bra. You won't find a "skinny" woman who wears a 40D, because 40 isn't skinny (that's your chest circumference). Let me assure you that 34D is a hard size to find in stores (with the sometimes exception of Victoria's Secret).
And before you all start harassing me, my proportions are totally different now. Pregnancy and an extra 15 years will do that to you. Also, being pregnant does make your boobs much bigger, but eventually they shrink back to their original size.
I wouldn't call the American contestants "Starved." They look to work out as much as the military women I served with. I think the term you're seeking is "buff." You see the opposite with men where models and stars have these bulging muscles while athletes and soldiers tend to be lean and wiry.
Nor do those breasts look fake. There are no end of bad fake boobs out there.
As to the Middle Eastern standards, they're looking for well-fed women as a mark of wealth. Not at all the same standard.
If you want "Starved" look at any supermodel. Nothing wrong with them 50 lbs won't fix.
And I think it's disingenuous to compare TEEN contestants of 50 years ago to ADULT contestants now.
And I also dated women who were lean, muscular and had C cups that stood firmly enough no bra was needed. Two hours a day in the gym instead of watching TV will do that.
Now, if you tell me it's impossible for a web-potato who plays video games, watches Bratz or soaps and munches junk food to have large breasts and lean muscles, I'll agree with you.
I currently know a woman (Ukrainian Jewish immigrant) who is 36, a D after reduction surgery, easily able to meet US Army body fat standards and can do 60 pushups. I assure you she's very much "real."
I guess it depends on priorities.
"As to the Middle Eastern standards, they're looking for well-fed women as a mark of wealth. Not at all the same standard."
This is ridiculous. I am Arab and this way of thinking stopped about 100 years ago. The only reason for these women being full figured is that their daily schedule is completely different of those Americans contestants. And Arab women don’t generally work out because the society doesn’t encourage them to become summer skinny size zeros. Men just like them fuller!
I wonder if there is any correlation between cultures that equate beauty with relatively weighty women and cultures that have a strong preference for male offspring. Does a Venn diagram of the intersect show a significant correlation to the point where it could be concluded that the cultural beauty ideal is related to the sex of the offspring? Survival of the most male offspring becomes a cultural evolutionary pressure on perception of sexual attractiveness?
The top people in any field are often way out on the tail of the curve... which is why women like Anna Ohura (Google her for photos) exemplify extreme beauty (derided by Megan as "boobs on a stick," but go look at her photos, Anna Ohura is beautiful) without needing breast implants. The big change in the modern (post-1945, at least) world is that everyone can learn of these special women and see photos of them. Many more ordinary women get implants in a (futile) attempt to compete. It is just as natural for men to prefer the looks of the top-looking women as for women to prefer the achievements of the top achieving men. (If those 1930 beauties had been expected to appear in bikinis on TV, they would've been slimmer.)