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Hyper-masculinity & Hyper-femininity


Ran

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First, a disclaimer: I'm sure many will argue over just what the terms of the topic title suggest. For me, "hyper" means an exaggeration of particular physical features with which we define the masculine and feminine traits.

In the "Who is Adonis?" thread, Stego posted this photo of bodybuilder Frank McGrath. To me, McGrath and many other people are part of a hyper-masculine aesthetic.

Let me throw up an example of hyper-femininity, as I see it: Ice-T's wife, Coco. More pictures here. This Jessica Rabbit look, with proportions well outside the norm for her frame (helped, I gather, by implants).

Now, I understand the mechanics, I think, behind these aesthetics -- muscles are good, indicative of physical fitness, good health, personal discipline, so more muscles are even better; curves are good, indicative of good health, good genes, so more curves are better. Now, for me personally, there's a line that is crossed. McGrath and Coco have both crossed that line. The proportions of the professional bodybuilder are to my eye generally disproportionate. And Coco ... I like an hourglass figure, but it's gone from realistic to cartoonish.

I think back to the origins of the species, on the African savanna, hunter-gatherers who'd travel long distances afoot on a limited diet of meat and roots and the like. I expect that this is why, contra Stego, many women consider the men they've been admiring perfectly masculine is because the lean, toned physique is in a sense the "original" masculinity. It takes more wealth and better diets than those distant ancestors had to be able to indulge in pursuit of a hyper-masculine ideal of lots of muscle mass.

As to the origins of the feminine and hyper-feminine, there's a lot of arguments and discussion about this in anthropology and the like. I've always figured that the curves at breast and hip were signals of good health and good potential for motherhood, and that the breadth of the waist didn't matter so much until later. Once you had the luxury or ability -- through clothing design, through exercise, through surgery -- to work on enhancing one's curves, the waist naturally ends up on a downward pressure because the narrower the waist, the more voluptuous the hips and breasts look. And so you're on your way to hyper-femininity.

It's of course interesting that the 21st century aesthetics seem to be pushing away from the hyper-end of the scale, although sometimes to a baffling degree (the extreme slenderness -- to the point of boyishness -- of the Paris Hiltons of the world, for example; and I'm sure there'll be those who feel that the admiration of the Orlando Blooms of the world is a similar, androgynizing impulse).

So, thoughts, critiques, additional examples of the hyper-masculine and the hyper-feminine?

I'll note Linda's already disagreed with my definition of hyper-feminine as uber-curvaceous. She feels that that term means extremely petite, very girlish women. I find that that, too, could fit under hyper-feminine... and so it's interesting that, perhaps, "femininity" can cover a wider diversity of traits that all add up with one another, while "masculinity" perhaps covers a much narrower range (at least as far as physical traits go). Or maybe not.

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I think you raped my assertions, Ran. Thanks for that.

McGrath is amazing while Coco is nauseating. McGrath did not use surgery to get his physique.

Brad Pitts physique is not 'original masculinity' it's 'original twink.' He looks like a young boy or perhaps a girl. Men have hair on their bodies, unless they are pre-pubescent. The guys that could protect the women folk from the sabretooth tigers looked like this, not like this.

The attraction to the latter is no different than men liking too-young girls. I'm not saying it's wrong, per se, but there it is.

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I think you raped my assertions, Ran. Thanks for that.

McGrath is amazing while Coco is nauseating. McGrath did not use surgery to get his physique.

Brad Pitts physique is not 'original masculinity' it's 'original twink.' He looks like a young boy or perhaps a girl. Men have hair on their bodies, unless they are pre-pubescent. The guys that could protect the women folk from the sabretooth tigers looked like this, not like this.

The attraction to the latter is no different than men liking too-young girls. I'm not saying it's wrong, per se, but there it is.

Many body-builders take drugs and food additives though, the lack of sugary does not make it less artificial.

McGrath has no hair either though.

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Can we take this evo-psych bullshit outside and shoot it in the head please? Until you have hard evidence that:

1) Sabre-toothed tiger attack was a constant fear in all human societies in history

2) Only hairy male muscle-freaks could fight them off

3) This was the sole criterion for power and status in all these societies

4) Women were in a position to choose their mate based on this, and were in no way forced to reproduce with men they didn't fancy

5) Attractiveness is genetic and is not affected in any way by social trends

...then the argument is utterly worthless. Hey, I can suggest that while all the bodybuilders were off fighting the Terrible Wild Beasts, the wimminz were busy shacking up with Caveman Douchebag whose poetry was soo sensitive. It has exactly as much scientific backing as the other theory.

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Brad Pitts physique is not 'original masculinity' it's 'original twink.' He looks like a young boy or perhaps a girl. Men have hair on their bodies, unless they are pre-pubescent. The guys that could protect the women folk from the sabretooth tigers looked like this, not like this.

The attraction to the latter is no different than men liking too-young girls. I'm not saying it's wrong, per se, but there it is.

Um, case in point. The attractiveness of definition over tone does not seem to be a modern one. Likewise a lot of classical art of women dosen't seem to go for huge breasts as a selling point either.

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I think back to the origins of the species, on the African savanna, hunter-gatherers who'd travel long distances afoot on a limited diet of meat and roots and the like. I expect that this is why, contra Stego, many women consider the men they've been admiring perfectly masculine is because the lean, toned physique is in a sense the "original" masculinity. It takes more wealth and better diets than those distant ancestors had to be able to indulge in pursuit of a hyper-masculine ideal of lots of muscle mass.

Absolutely right. You don't see people with bodybuilder physiques in hunter gatherer societies generally. And for good reason. That level of muscularity is not a pre-requisite for success in that environment and the massive amount of calories it requires to build and sustain it is simply wasteful and hard to obtain.

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I don't say this enough, but I love you MinD

N

Seconded, also even if they were in fear of sabretooth attacks, sorry but no way is a human going to be fighting it off via muscle mass, it will be through speed and intelligence!

So I am sorry Stego but your fat guys have no chance unless your talking massive amounts of armour of some sort.

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I would say that our successful hunter-gatherer ancestors who successfully fed themselves and protected their kin-groups probably tended to look a lot more like this or this than like this.

I'm not sure I understand the "The bodybuilder types would have protected their women from a Sabre Tooth Tiger attack" argument. Put two guys in front of a modern day Tiger, let alone one as big as a Sabre Tooth, with one a lean hunter gatherer type and the other a bulked up bodybuilder and all that's going to happen is the lean guy will outrun the bodybuilder with the result that the bodybuilder will be dead.

A bit of extra bulk doesn't magically empower you to defeat Sabre Tooth Tigers. Evasion would have been by far the best option.

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I'm not sure I understand the "The bodybuilder types would have protected their women from a Sabre Tooth Tiger attack" argument. Put two guys in front of a modern day Tiger, let alone one as big as a Sabre Tooth, with one a lean hunter gatherer type and the other a bulked up bodybuilder and all that's going to happen is the lean guy will outrun the bodybuilder with the result that the bodybuilder will be dead.

A bit of extra bulk doesn't magically empower you to defeat Sabre Tooth Tigers. Evasion would have been by far the best option.

Another big problem body builders have is a lack of stamina, I used to be a furniture removalist and we would get body builders come along thinking they can work, but seriously doing sets of 15 reps of high weights does not give you stamina, yeah it builds muscles and wrecks veins but stamina and an ability to work?

not a hope, the only reason they ever got hired was as comic relief and they never lasted a full day and never came back.

Thats not to say we didn't have some big boys working but they were WORKERS not bodybuilders.

They got their muscles by working long days lifting heavy furniture.

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already disagreed with my definition of hyper-feminine as uber-curvaceous. She feels that that term means extremely petite, very girlish women.

probably can reasonably encompass both because the aesthetics for female bodies has evolved over time. a nice summary might be read in susan bordo's unbearable weight, wherein rubenesque figures become the ideal at one point, but the aesthetics then eventually become twiggy. those poles merge in ice-T's wife, who has barbie doll isthmi, but also breast and ass implants, apparently.

ass implants - WTF?

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Quoting stego from the other thread

Hair and voice change are controlled mostly by test. Regardless, you are right that muscularity is not the only trait of masculinity. It is certainly the overwhelmingly obvious one at first glance.

I am simply correlating the female preference for a smaller musculature in males with the male preference for a lack of breasts and hips in females.

I find it hard to understand. Is this a societal thing pushed upon us by magazines? Do more people than we'd like to admit a little bit of Humbert Humbert in them? (I've listened to plenty of male friends say inappropriate things about 16yr old girls. Do women talk like this?) Are women intimidated by men who are outwardly more powerful than them? (I know, for instance, that I am, as a male. I would not want to be in a relationship with someone who could pick me up and throw me if they so desired.)

This shit is interesting to me.

Massive muscle mass of the type you refer to isn't a sign of masculinity, its a sign of unnaturalness. Men aren't supposed to look like that, hence why women may not find them attractive.

Thats how I see it anyway.

The dude in my sig is the number one sex symbol (pretty much) in the phillipines, and many other countries in that part of the world. Why is that? He's pretty small. Hardly aesthetically pleasing (at least in my view). I say its because he defines what you guys are calling hyper-masculinity.

Muscles by themselves are not masculine. Being a football player or rugby player however IS, and it shows since so many women (perhaps not on this forum) lust after them.

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i remember a survey in womans magazine a few years ago where women were given 100 celebrities and asked who was 'a real man'. IIRC Harrison ford was the only man who every woman said was a 'real man'.

with regards to the Sabre tooth tiger nonsence up post, clearly the nerd of the day, the man who invented the bow and arrow, the sling or the boomerang would have been perceived as the epitome of masculinity. not some big beef neck, knuckle dragger who couldn't remember where he left his stick.

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First, a disclaimer: I'm sure many will argue over just what the terms of the topic title suggest. For me, "hyper" means an exaggeration of particular physical features with which we define the masculine and feminine traits.

In the "Who is Adonis?" thread, Stego posted this photo of bodybuilder Frank McGrath. To me, McGrath and many other people are part of a hymper-masculine aesthetic.

Let me throw up an example of hyper-femininity, as I see it: Ice-T's wife, Coco. More pictures here. This Jessica Rabbit look, with proportions well outside the norm for her frame (helped, I gather, by implants).

Now, I understand the mechanics, I think, behind these aesthetics -- muscles are good, indicative of physical fitness, good health, personal discipline, so more muscles are even better; curves are good, indicative of good health, good genes, so more curves are better. Now, for me personally, there's a line that is crossed. McGrath and Coco have both crossed that line. The proportions of the professional bodybuilder are to my eye generally disproportionate. And Coco ... I like an hourglass figure, but it's gone from realistic to cartoonish.

Yuck. I don't think either one is attractive, to be honest. Coco is cartoonish, just like you say. Real women have curves, but not like that. The ideal waist/hip ratio in the United States(according to men) is 0.7. She is way under that. She looks off balance and is going to end up with some major back problems with breasts that size.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio

Some researchers have found that the waist-hip ratio (WHR) is a significant measure of female attractiveness. Women with a 0.7 WHR are usually rated as more attractive by men from European cultures.[13] Beauty icons such as Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren have or had ratios close to 0.7, even though they have different weights and heights. In other cultures, preferences appear to vary according to some studies,[14] ranging from 0.6 in China,[15] to 0.8 or 0.9 in parts of South America and Africa,[16][17][18] and divergent preferences based on ethnicity, rather than nationality, have also been noted.[19][20]

Proportion is the key. You can be a woman with a 30 in waist, but as long as your hips and bust are proportional to that, men will find it attractive. That's something I'm just figuring out. On a personal note, I was 110-115 lbs. till I was about 35, and then I hurt my back. (To put that in perspective, I'm 5'7", which put my BMI right at the low end of normal. In other words, I was a stick. When I got married, I had a 19 inch waistline.) I gained almost 30 pounds after that, and I felt fat and ugly, yet men seemed to find it more attractive to them. It took me a long time to realize why--I actually had curves, and once I finally got medical clearance to go back to the gym and toned up, I was more proportional. I never did lose the weight and right now am hanging right around 140 lbs., and my waist/hip ratio is right at 0.7, but I'm finding out that it doesn't matter. In fact, I feel much better physically, so much so that I never want to be that thin again.

As for Frank, he's just too big. I'm just not attracted to men like that. I always feel like they're going to break me in half. Maybe it's my personal preference, but I like leaner men--not skinny, but lean waisted and broad shouldered, with good muscle mass and tone but not built like a Mack truck. You don't have to have a full 6 pack. My ex-husband was built like a linebacker--tall (6'3") and muscular (220 lbs.) but not overdone.

Actually, as I get older I'm happy with a man not having a beer belly. :lol: But the younger guys are still really nice to look at!

Those guys are fun to watch at the gym. They're going to stroke out some day. They try to deadlift and the veins in their foreheads are bulging out and their faces are red--some women might think that's attractive, but I just think it's funny.

...really? When was the last time you saw a body builder with body hair?

How about swimmers?

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