November 7, 2013

Venezuelan mannequins

Typical
Venezuelan
mannequin
From the NYT:
Mannequins Give Shape to a Venezuelan Fantasy

Venezuela's Inflated Vision of Beauty: In Venezuela, women are confronted with a culture of increasingly enhanced physiques fueled by beauty pageants and plastic surgery. 
By WILLIAM NEUMAN

VALENCIA, Venezuela — Frustrated with the modest sales at his small mannequin factory, Eliezer Álvarez made a simple observation: Venezuelan women were increasingly using plastic surgery to transform their bodies, yet the mannequins in clothing stores did not reflect these new, often extreme proportions.

So he went back to his workshop and created the kind of woman he thought the public wanted — one with a bulging bosom and cantilevered buttocks, a wasp waist and long legs, a fiberglass fantasy, Venezuelan style. 
Typical Venezuelan
window shoppers
The shape was augmented, and so were sales. Now his mannequins, and others like them, have become the standard in stores across Venezuela, serving as an exaggerated, sometimes polarizing, vision of the female form that calls out from the doorways of tiny shops selling cheap clothes to working-class women and the display windows of fancy boutiques in multilevel shopping malls. 
Mr. Álvarez’s art may have been meant to imitate life. But in a culture saturated with such images, life is returning the compliment. 
“You see a woman like this and you say, ‘Wow, I want to look like her,’ ” said Reina Parada, as she sanded a mannequin torso in the workshop. Although she cannot afford it, she said, she would like to get implant surgery someday. “It gives you better self-esteem.”

The article doesn't get around to mentioning that the mannequins are white in facial features, which also isn't true of most Venezuelan women.

The article does feature an interview with gown designer Osmel Sousa, who has been the de facto Generalissimo of Beauty in Venezuela since 1981. Sousa highly approves of women doing whatever it takes to look like mannequins. In fact, he insists upon it.
Osmel Sousa, the longtime head of the Miss Venezuela pageant, takes credit for the [plastic surgery] trend. He recommended a nose job for Venezuela’s first Miss Universe, which he says made her victory possible more than three decades ago.

“When there is a defect, I correct it,” Mr. Sousa said. “If it can be easily fixed with surgery, then why not do it?” 
For Mr. Sousa, beauty really is skin deep: “I say that inner beauty doesn’t exist. That’s something that unpretty women invented to justify themselves.”

Call me crazy, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that old Osmel isn't the straightest guy in the world.

If this Venezuelan beauty pageant gig ever peters out for Osmel, he should move to America, where he'd be welcomed in Washington and New York as a natural leader of the Immigration Reform movement. Who better to upbraid the white racists resisting the Path to Citizenship?

103 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would be interesting to study a gay man's perception of what female beauty entails.

Anonymous said...

The large butt thing has increasingly entered the American mainstream as well. It used to be confined to the black community but it's more mainstream now.

Anonymous said...

He reminds me of Elton John.

Auntie Analogue said...


One wonders: have certain bits of Venezuelan male mannequins also been outlandishly exaggerated.

By the way, this post brought to mind the 'Twilight Zone' episode in which Anne Francis discovers that she is really a mannequin and must relinquish her sojourn in animation.

Anonymous said...

does isteve complain when white folk get their teeth artifically whitened?

Would isteve refuse a paying job as a TV talk show host because he would be required to dust on some anti-glare makeup on his cheek bones?

Anonymous said...

You have posted article(s) mentioning averaging female faces enhances beauty through eliminating extreme features. Which is absolutely true, but that does not mean average is ideal.

http://www.allpsychologycareers.com/topics/neuroesthetics.html

www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0TKYxAYGGA

There is innate mechanisms of pattern recognition in human brain that determine how beautiful a subject is.

Your "Is love colorblind?" and related material mentions how some sexually dimorphic features are also differ racially and it may explain differing rates of interracial marriage.

Some african women use skin whitening creams, some asian women eye widening surgery, and some white women have glute implants. Whereas I may find actual body modification too much, in proportion to how dangerous it is, I do not judge people for trying to enhance their appearence. I actually appreciate the effort if the end result is actually pleasing to the eye.

I do not go about accusing people: "Noone has that long eyelashes", "No one has that glossy lips" etc. No normal sane person does. As you have pointed out female journalists do, too often; but the point was that they are not normal, sane, wise, mature enough to lead public opinion.

Real women do not look like mannequins, but they do not look like supermodels either. And I prefer a supermodel to an average woman, and an average woman to an average woman in her natural state: with dreadlocks and possible fuzzy taliban beard and body hair all over, and sagging here, bulging there. If that means I am not straight anymore, I'll burn my membership card with fanfare right away.

Anonymous said...

My theory is that plastic surgery rates for women is an indicator of how fierce competition is for high-status men. Greater income/wealth inequality among men, and larger gender gaps in income make the stakes higher for women. As usual, feminist organizations completely miss the mark when criticizing "unfair standards." Women's willingness to undergo plastic surgery is a reflection of their desire to snare presumably rich men who are judging them on their looks. If those women would start valuing money a little less it wouldn't be a problem. Of course, this is completely lost on most women.

Anonymous said...

There is a sizable portion of the white community that like their asses to be on the large and round side. I was liking it way before the Kardashians came on the scene. I think it's just something I liked innately. But you are right in that it became something that was acceptable to think of as conventionally attractive.

In a lot of cases, people have an attraction for the phenotypes that they could express if they had the opposite chromosome. So the very fact that you find a lot of women with such features indicates that men find them attractive.

I think the difference is that it became acceptable for women to also think of that as attractive. Men have long liked women of such proportions, as indicated by porn. Women, no. Ten years ago a lot of white women would have professed envy at a Kate Moss style figure.

Anonymous said...

One thing I've noticed about gay men that I've been acquainted with, is that despite not being attracted to women, they have a remarkable affinity towards recognizing what is an attractive and beautiful look on a woman (for a heterosexual man), and what is not.

Anonymous said...

>> For Mr. Sousa, beauty really is skin deep: “I say that inner beauty doesn’t exist. That’s something that unpretty women invented to justify themselves.”

most of the manosphere agrees, of course.


>>> The large butt thing has increasingly entered the American mainstream as well. It used to be confined to the black community but it's more mainstream now.


You obviously haven't read a lot of home-sewing articles from the 1940s and 1950s.

Anonymous said...

"Sousa"?

As in USMC Band Director Mr. "Star -N- Stripes Forever"?!?

Well I'll be damned:

"John Philip Sousa was born in Washington, D.C., on November 6, 1854, to John Antonio Sousa, who was of Portuguese ancestry, and Maria Elisabeth Trinkhaus, who was of Bavarian ancestry."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Philip_Sousa

I wonder if his mother was Hussite/Anabaptist/Mennonite?

And I've never heard of Protestantism in Portugal - unless maybe they had some flavor of Huguenotism down there?

I'd like to know more about the genealogy of that family.

They weren't Sephardic, were they?

Unknown said...

Or Osmel Sousa could become the first host of a real-life Hunger Games; he has the wardrobe and attitude for it.

Hunsdon said...

Anonydroid at 11:00 PM said: I would be interesting to study a gay man's perception of what female beauty entails.

Hunsdon said: Go to a fashion show.

Anonymous said...

The large butt thing has increasingly entered the American mainstream as well. It used to be confined to the black community but it's more mainstream now.

I remember my high school girlfriend back in the 70s -- beautiful, petite, white -- remarking once on her very flat behind. She felt quite good about it, and thought it was one of her better points.

Also, I read the Times web site regularly, and had already seen the mannequin article. It takes a lot to creep me out, but Mr. Sousa managed it with room to spare. He would be over-the-top playing the psycho in a B-grade horror movie!

rightsaidfred said...

Maybe this is the guy who will take us across the "uncanny valley" in the design of sex bots.

Anonymous said...

"I [sic] would be interesting to study a gay man's perception of what female beauty entails."

Camille Paglia has made a strong case, e.g., in her breakout tome "Persona", that homosexuals invented the concept of female beauty and have been its arbiters since then

slumber_j said...

So hot.

Simon in London said...

The mannequins could do with much larger hips to match the giant breasts. With their emaciated torsos and narrow hips they don't look right to me. I guess Venezuelans disagree.

Anonymous said...

Put this in the plus column for the Hispanicization of El Norte.

Anonymous said...

Those ridiculously huge-breasted mannequins would make a good SNL sketch or something, they're hilarious and it's hard to believe someone is actually making them. I mean, the point is to model the clothes right? Not to make you want to have sex with the mannequin.

Anonymous said...

I can state with confidence that men in my circle of mostly white, early middle-aged, upper-middle class homos would agree that Jennifer Lawrence, Natalie Portman, Kiera Knightley, and Charlize Theron are among the most attractive female celebrities. My sense is that straight guys aren’t so into Knightley’s willowiness. Perhaps they think Theron’s tits are too small as well.
Kim Kardashian is considered utterly (udderly?) repulsive. My friends do like moderately large breasts on women if they carry them well. No steatopygia: too ghetto.
Kai

Anonymous said...

"Call me crazy, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that old Osmel isn't the straightest guy in the world."

Male hips and mommy's breasts - like Hollywood's idea of the ideal woman.

Anonymous said...

Hurricane Obamacare is like Hurricane Katrina. Government can't do nuttin'. From Fema to Obama.

Gabe Ruth said...

Stories like this make me pine for civilizational collapse. This story might make crazy women think twice though:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/blogs/gone-viral/os-man-sues-exwife-over-ugly-daughter-and-wins,0,2086843.post

Anonymous said...

"Sousa highly approves of women doing whatever it takes to look like mannequins. In fact, he insists upon it."

It looks like he insists upon it for himself, as well.

Anonymous said...

The popularity of the big butt has increased, but I think most women want an athletic, but feminine, and elegant look. Alas, big butts are usually not very elegant and often border on vulgar.

Anonymous said...

"I would be interesting to study a gay man's perception of what female beauty entails."

Look at any high fashion magazine and you'll pretty much see.

heartiste said...

although there are universal male sexual preferences, there are notable differences that anyone can tell merely by hanging out with white and black men and listening to them orate about what kinds of women really get them going. all else equal, r-selected men prefer big butts. K-selected men prefer bodacious boobs. the theory goes this has something to do with the difference between signals for max fertility and signals for max nurturance of offspring. who knows? it sounds parsimonious.

Anonymous said...

It's a riot that the article focuses on the breast size of the manikins but completely misses the whole racial angle. Very typical NYT - they don't know what to make of the fact that short, squat brown women would really like to be tall thin white women with big bosoms.

The gay designer is interesting - I thought that the gay designer vision of beauty for women is to make them look like pre-pubescent males?

Anonymous said...

Women seem to be be even bigger suckers for advertizing based on beautiful and highly sexualized female imagery than men are.

Rohan Swee said...

I refuse to believe that Venezuelan ladies could be suckered into admiring these laughable caricatures of female bodies, and willing to risk health and wealth to attain these freakish proportions. Setting up some ugly troll of an old queen as the go-to guy for beauty tips is something one would expect of pathetically insecure gringas, oppressed as they are by the sterile, materialistic, misogynistic rape culture of us norteños. But wise Latinas, secure in their femininity and deep family values? Never!

rob said...

From reading the article, he doesn't seem as gay as American fashionistos. Both go for extreme and unusual physiques: girls with pretty-boy androgynous looks here, cartoonish big boobs, big butts there. Maybe gay men don't have the same intuitive perception of how pretty a woman is. They maybe have to consciously pattern match, and so have to use fewer, narrower, and cruder cues. It's as if the V-suelan checks off big boobs, big butt, and narrow waist from hearing that those appeal to straight men.

I think the big butt thing is partially negrification of culture, but mostly a shift from pair-bonding to low paternal investment, polygamous relationships. Cad types focus on butts, not super sure why, but they are way less interested in pretty faces than other guys.

Matthew said...

I think you've discovered a valuable new export market for Venezuela to exploit.

sunbeam said...

I thought boob fixation was some kind of euro thing, and everyone else in the world was into booty.

Marc B said...

At least Osmel isn't pushing androgyny as the norm among female models like the fashion industry does in Europe and the states. I'm surprised the mannequins have such narrow hips with such large breasts. It looks like a specific type of medically enhanced look is being pushed instead of an idealized natural hourglass figure.

Anonymous said...

Political Correctness works the same way.

The ideal put forth has little to do with reality, but the affected go out of their way to do psycho-moral plastic surgery on themselves to fit in.

Just look at the loonies at Oberlin.

Ans speaking of unrealistic portraits, how representative are saintly homos on TV with the real ones in the actual world?

How representative of real blacks are the likes of Obama, Holder, Jarrett, Gladwell, etc?

Just look at Obamannequin.

Anonymous said...

http://age-of-treason.blogspot.com/2013/11/ron-unz-is-anti-white.html

Pat Boyle said...

We will know soon what men - real men not fashion industry homosexuals - really want in a woman.

The Japanese, I read, are building robots to help the elderly. Boy are they missing the market! The big money in robots will almost certainly be in sex-bots. Just as porn consumes a huge of the Internet's bandwidth, when there are realistic anthropomorphic robots a lot of men will want one to screw.

Will these sex-bots look like real women or will they look like these Venezuelan mannequins? I'd bet on the Venezuelan approach.

Albertosaurus

Jimbo said...

Predictably, this story immediately brought out examples of Sailers First Law of Female journalism:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/11/08/mannequins_in_venezuela_at_least_upfront_about_how_fake_and_impossible_our.html

Anonymous said...

http://www.unz.com/article/our-american-pravda/

Anonymous said...

Some mannequins are meant to be emulated.

Some mannequins are meant to be worshiped. (MLK on the mall as saintly negro god or negrod).

Both are unreal.

Unknown said...

Those breasts are man's fantasy, but woman's nightmare if they have brains. That kind of breasts should warrant partial mastectomy to relieve the burden on woman's back. The mannequins are more of porn images than of clothing. It really distracts from the purpose of cloth sale.

Anonymous said...

There is a large and growing phenomenon on Tumblr of bimbo blogs. These are women, mostly college educated, who try to look and act as much as a stereotypical bimbo as possible. In fact, in sheer numbers of blogs, the bimboverse dwarfs the manosphere. It is like feminism has repressed women's femininity for so long we are experiencing a Freudian return of the repressed, and as we know, when the repressed returns, in comes back exaggerated and ravenous.

Camlost said...

The average "Latina" woman much more resembles a muffin top rather than Penelope Cruz.

Anonymous said...

Mestiza women want to look like Castizas (3/4 white and 1/4 Amerindian). Meaning, high delicate noses, oval faces, bigger eyes, taller, hourglass body shape and fair skin.

East Asian women want to look Eurasian (half white-half oriental). Meaning, high delicate noses, big eyes, oval face and fair skin.

Southeast Asian women want to look East Asian, with fairer skin tone, different nose and taller height.

Black women want to lighten their skin to extreme light shade (forgetting that brown-skinned Indian women have the right hair, body and facial features).

Indian women want to lighten their skin too, though they are already fine in my opinion (dark Caucasoid aren't that bad).

Anonymous said...

"The large butt thing has increasingly entered the American mainstream as well. It used to be confined to the black community but it's more mainstream now."

Time for Hillary to 'twerk' dat thang?

Anonymous said...

"The large butt thing has increasingly entered the American mainstream as well. It used to be confined to the black community but it's more mainstream now."


"You obviously haven't read a lot of home-sewing articles from the 1940s and 1950s."

In the 40s and 50s, it was about the hips. Now, it's about the BUTT or BOOTY.

In the 40s, hips were for holding.
With rock no roll, it was for shaking.
With disco, it was about shaking the booty.
With hip hop, it's butt-in-your-face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DL7Ole9sHI

From hip-sters to buttsters.

Anonymous said...

In reply to Heartiste:

although there are universal male sexual preferences, there are notable differences that anyone can tell merely by hanging out with white and black men and listening to them orate about what kinds of women really get them going. all else equal, r-selected men prefer big butts. K-selected men prefer bodacious boobs.

Really? I'm a straight white man and I think a woman's ass is more important. I do love a big ol' pair of titties, probably more than most men, but I'll take an A cup and firm, plump ass over DDs and a flat ass any day, if I really must choose. I haven't taken a poll, but my impression is that most other white men would agree.

Now, I'm not interested in sheer size, unlike some black men. A woman who is significantly overweight can't compensate for it by having a gigantic ass. Nevertheless, as far as I'm concerned, for slim healthy women (BMI in the 18-23 range), the bigger her ass and tits, the better, up until the point where they become grossly disproportionate (e.g. Kim Kardashian's derriere).

the theory goes this has something to do with the difference between signals for max fertility and signals for max nurturance of offspring. who knows? it sounds parsimonious.

It's possible. I doubt breasts were a signal of nurturance, however. I assume you're referring to the hypothesis that breasts evolved to trick men into thinking the women were full of milk. I subscribe to the idea that they're honest signals of genetic quality and good health. Under conditions of high infant mortality, men could plausibly have evolved to emphasize those qualities over high fertility.


In reply to Anonymous:

There is a large and growing phenomenon on Tumblr of bimbo blogs. These are women, mostly college educated, who try to look and act as much as a stereotypical bimbo as possible. In fact, in sheer numbers of blogs, the bimboverse dwarfs the manosphere.

Where are you getting this? I couldn't find any articles or discussion regarding this supposed "bimboverse".

Anonymous said...

The mannequins could do with much larger hips to match the giant breasts. With their emaciated torsos and narrow hips they don't look right to me. I guess Venezuelans disagree."
That's affirmative. On a recent night out in Miami for shipmates (natives 2 Mexicans an Argentine and a Miami Cubano) scoped this bartender. They immediately derided her as being Venezuelan which I didn't understandhow they could know that. The Cuban explained tthat they have large tits and straight hips in sort if a dismissive way which I didn't understand as I thought she was so hot I was starting to worry about a runaway supercriticality incident.

Anonymous said...

I just made up the term "bimboverse" but the blogs are all there. Waring, they are very very NSFW.

Anonymous said...

Big Butt --> Kim Kardashian

Kim Kardashian + BBC = Big Money

ipso facto! --> Big Butt = Big Money

Anonymous said...

I just made up the term "bimboverse" but the blogs are all there.

I haven't found any after 30 seconds of looking. Links? Also, do you have any articles/data suggesting this is actually a notable phenomenon?

Anonymous said...

Just google Tumblr bimbo. It might not be a notable phenomenon, maybe its just a bunch a women with a shared fetish. But just about every day it seems another one pops up with someone saying thank you to the other bimbos for not making me feel ashamed for wanting to be a bimbo.

Chicago said...

There's no such thing as "inner beauty" according to some fruitcake who swishes about town in lavender jackets. Well, that settles that, we have the last word on the subject from the greatest expert on women in the whole wide world.

agnostic said...

"The large butt thing has increasingly entered the American mainstream as well. It used to be confined to the black community but it's more mainstream now."

It's a return to mid-century va-va-voom, and to the Victorian bustle before that.

Svigor said...

Real women do not look like mannequins, but they do not look like supermodels either.

So, what are supermodels? Faux wymmin?

I think the difference is that it became acceptable for women to also think of that as attractive. Men have long liked women of such proportions, as indicated by porn.

Why do people hold up porn as indicating anything (much) about female beauty? The salient characteristic of a female porn star is that she is willing to have sex on camera with strangers for cash. Mildly cute, overweight chicks abound. The typical porn star is far better characterized by "stupid" and/or "damaged goods" than by "ideal beauty." They're also far more man-faced than women in general, probably because testosterone levels in women correlate to sex drive.

Ten years ago a lot of white women would have professed envy at a Kate Moss style figure.

The top of the crop go into fashion, modeling, acting, etc., or pretty much anything but porn. The dregs with no scruples go to porn.

Natalie Portman, Kiera Knightley

I.e., man-jawed. Pretty, yes, ideal, no. Theron's gorgeous, though.

Anonymous said...

It's a return to mid-century va-va-voom, and to the Victorian bustle before that.

It's not a return. The sheer size and interest in the buttocks is novel and seems to come from black influence. The "mid-century va-va-voom, and to the Victorian bustle" are much more svelte by comparison.

agnostic said...

Victorian bustle was not svelte -- was about 10 times the volume of a normal butt.

Anonymous said...

Victorian bustle was not svelte -- was about 10 times the volume of a normal butt.

The bustle was to prevent skirts from dragging. It wasn't intended to mimic steatopygia.

agnostic said...

Gays are like small children thrown into an adult world. Their tastes are under-developed and caricatured, and their twin ideals of female beauty are the twink-in-a-dress and the kabuki drag queen.

Women who pursue such ideals are clearly not trying to attract men, but indulging in a catty status contest against other women -- who can get the biggest implants, who can survive on the fewest calories, etc.?

Women with body dysmorphia are happy to tell anyone listening that they don't care about whether or not they're sexy to men. It's to boost their self-esteem from looking in the mirror while alone, not to feel wanted by getting asked out on more dates by men.

Anonymous said...

Men see women as riding horses.

Homos see women as show horses.

mike said...

When are you justified in assuming a woman has been surgically augmented? I mean, about a decade ago there was this stunning persian chick at Berkeley, so beautiful that I actually saw a back-up wide-receiver walk straight into a light pole while staring over his shoulder at her. So she's Iranian, from Brentwood (next to Beverly Hills?), and has the stand-out headlights and perfect nose and lips. However, a flat butt. Is it harder to inflate the booty than the boobs?

vinteuil said...

The wildly disproportionate influence of gay men on women's fashion & standards of female attractiveness is really, truly weird. Whether they're pushing willowy, boyish figures, or big boobs & big butts - they're *always* there, running the show. So what's up with that?

I mean, would any self-respecting heterosexual male ever even think about accepting the rulings of a bunch of lesbians on what counts as *male* attractiveness?


Anonymous said...

Heartiste might be on to something with the whole r/K division in men's body preferences.

I can only speak for myself, but I am very much a big butt man. Not fat: I can't emphasize that enough. My ideal is more like an exaggerated hourglass shape. I've often remarked that Kim Kardashian is my ideal woman, looks-wise. Heck, that's how I met my fiancee — she's Italian, definitely has the whole Mediterranean thing going on, and she first caught my eye because of her similarity to Kim K.

I've had a very strong big-butt preference since puberty, leading me to believe it's somehow hard-wired. I've never spent much time around blacks and I have zero interest in black culture — seriously, my iPod playlist is as white as you can possibly get — so I don't think it's somehow the result of "black preferences" rubbing off on me. (Though to be fair, my body preferences are unusual enough among white guys that "wow, are you sure you're white?" is something I've heard from multiple women I've dated over the years; several have told me I was the first white guy to compliment them on their figures.)

At the same time, I've always had a pretty intense desire to have lots and lots of kids. It's important enough that I make sure to mention it upfront with any woman I become seriously involved with. It's ingrained enough that I have great difficulty understanding the mindset of someone who'd want "just one" kid. The supposed economic benefits leave me ... unmoved.

Again, this is a feeling that's always been there. It's difficult for me to believe I somehow "absorbed" it from, you know, rap music or whatever. (I'm not sure I could even name a current rapper, other than that Kanye weirdo who's currently using Kim K as his beard.)

So for what it's worth, I'd probably count as evidence toward the whole "big butts = r strategy, big boobs = K strategy" thesis.

vinteuil said...

@agnostic: "their twin ideals of female beauty are the twink-in-a-dress and the kabuki drag queen..."

Trouble is, the gay arbiter of female beauty in the present case seems to favor big boobs & big butts.

So you must be missing something or other.

Heck if I know what it is!

agnostic said...

"The bustle was to prevent skirts from dragging. It wasn't intended to mimic steatopygia."

Rationalization. Like there was no simpler way to prevent skirts from dragging... how did they ever manage to do that before or after bustles?

Victorian women wanted tiny waists, boobies lifted up in your face, and jungle booty.

agnostic said...

Another freakish thing about those mannequins / gay men's warped ideal, is how rail-thin the thighs are, and how flat and cavernous the stomach looks.

A "whole lotta woman" kind of woman, like Sophia Loren or Kim Kardashian, has thick thighs and a little pooch going on in the belly. It's part of her overall softness.

Gays apparently don't get that. They just zoom in on the major sex parts, and blow them up as much as possible.

Women with body dysmorphia follow the same weird ideal. They might get gigantic breast implants or even butt implants / padding, and inject silicone into their face to give it baby-like plumpness. Yet they don't aim for thigh implants or inject silicone around their belly to give it that soft look. They'd die just thinking about it.

Rohan Swee said...

At the same time, I've always had a pretty intense desire to have lots and lots of kids.

[...]

So for what it's worth, I'd probably count as evidence toward the whole "big butts = r strategy, big boobs = K strategy" thesis.


I'd say it's a bit of stretch to equate wanting a large family with "r selection". Unless you're planning to toss the little buggers onto the street as soon as possible, or into orphanages, JJ Rousseau style. Or, if my inference that you're planning to pursue this goal in a stable monogamous marriage is wrong, that you intend to knock up as many women as possible with little to no paternal investment in the resulting offspring. Then yeah, you might be a hopelessly hard-wired r strategist.

I sincerely hope this isn't the plan.

Anonymous said...

Rationalization. Like there was no simpler way to prevent skirts from dragging... how did they ever manage to do that before or after bustles?

Victorian women wanted tiny waists, boobies lifted up in your face, and jungle booty.


No, this is the rationalization: the idea that Victorians wanted to look like Hottentots or something. There's no evidence for that. It's like saying that 19th century cowboys were all closet cases who rode horses as an expression of repressed homosexuality.

Anonymous said...

"I'd say it's a bit of stretch to equate wanting a large family with "r selection". Unless you're planning to toss the little buggers onto the street as soon as possible, or into orphanages, JJ Rousseau style. Or, if my inference that you're planning to pursue this goal in a stable monogamous marriage is wrong, that you intend to knock up as many women as possible with little to no paternal investment in the resulting offspring. Then yeah, you might be a hopelessly hard-wired r strategist.

I sincerely hope this isn't the plan."


Good point. Yeah, that's not my plan. :)

Dahlia said...

In the 18th c., the skirt was held out at the sides to accentuate hips. The Baroque also saw plunging necklines and the ornamentation was far more over the top than in the Victorian period.
Agnostic is right. The utilitarian explanation for the bustle is very silly.

Anonymous said...

1. I think Osmel is a colleague of Bruno's in the Polizei Fashion. "You, with the defective nose: raus!"

2. This is a reminder that, while Hispanics are not "natural conservatives," they're not natural liberals, either. These Venezuelan gals wouldn't go out of their way to tune in to Rachel Maddow.

In the generality, Latins seem too low-brow (or tacky, as Steve once put it) to be conservative or liberal in any intellectually rigorous way. They're just...there.

Dahlia said...

To be more precise, I'm describing the late Baroque, Rococo era.

Anonymous said...

vinteuil

"Trouble is, the gay arbiter of female beauty in the present case seems to favor big boobs & big butts."

The media is gay and ... hostile elite, dominated.

The gay component is the big boobs with no hips.

The hostile elite component is the africanization of the traditional culture i.e. promoting r-type behavior because r-type behavior can't compete with the elite's k-type behavior.

The traditional western ideal was ***wide*** hips ***not*** big butts for entirely obvious adaptive reproductive reasons.

#

Who invented the bustle?

Anonymous said...

"I can only speak for myself, but I am very much a big butt man. Not fat: I can't emphasize that enough. My ideal is more like an exaggerated hourglass shape."

There are two completely different things: big butts and wide hips.

One is African for some unknown reason possibly completely unrelated to fertility (or it is related to fertility bit not when wearing clothes) but it is *associated* with black culture so the hostile elite element in the media are pushing it as part of their general pushing of r-type behavior.

Anonymous said...

The utilitarian explanation for the bustle is very silly.

The point isn't that the bustle was purely utilitarian. The point is that it didn't mean the Victorians were into steatopygia.

What's silly is the idea that the bustle suggests that the Victorians were into gigantic butts. Those bustles were bigger than the butts you see promoted in the heavily black influenced pop culture of today.

Do you seriously believe that Victorian era white people were into bigger butts than black people are?

Anonymous said...

"The gay designer is interesting - I thought that the gay designer vision of beauty for women is to make them look like pre-pubescent males?"

It is mostly but some of them have a mommy fetish on top hence the massive boobs on an otherwise male body.

Dahlia said...

To anon perplexed by the bustle,
You should check out the pregnancy look popular during the Gothic period. No utilitarian theory can explain walking around with a pillow over your tummy. Only hopes and dreams there. Utility is mostly confined to the fabric and whether it keeps you hot or cool. Closures? The Amish will tell you buttons show pride.
Little about fashion is utilitarian or it wouldn't be subject to constant change. What would be the point?

Anonymous said...

>> Is it harder to inflate the booty than the boobs?


Yes. The butt needs to be able to move/flex much more than titties do.

Most women don't need to able to sit on the boobs.

Unknown said...

A preference for big boobs, for men, correlates to an increased propensity toward casual sex. Big boobs probably does not indicate K-selected.

ogunsiron said...

I find that venezuelian ideal shape hideous and as a previous commenter said, some other latinos also disagree with it. The worst about it is the manly hips and the frog legs. I don't like.

As far as my own taste goes, I may be the most hardcore of oreos and one of the most white washed black guys on the planet but when it comes to hips and butts I'm kind of stereotypical, lol.
Just kind of, because at some point I find that ghetto butts are just too round and too prominent and don't look good anymore. But I'm obviously much more into them (butts) then a traditional european or north-american.


Can anyone characterise beauty ideals among the various hispanics and south americans ?

In brazil the ideal woman is a white woman who happens to have a slim waist, large hips and a round butt.

What do they like in Columbia ? In Mexico ? In Argentina ?
As previously alluded, the venezuelian ideal seems sui generis.

I'm not sure but it seems that north east-asians hate both big boobs and big butts.

Anonymous said...

Pelican jaw Steve at it again. Why do female porn stars have large fake breasts Steve? Is it because the heterosexual porn industry is controlled by heterosexual men? Yes. How do the images heterosexual males beat off too affect how women want to look like? You can thank the heterosexual porn industry controlled by heterosexual men for these mannequins.

Anonymous said...

A lot of whitish latin-American women don't need much accentuation.

Some years ago, I visited Costa Rica for the first time. Many (?most) of the 20-something women looked like cartoon figures, with prominent headlights, skinny waists, and flared hips. All encased in midriff-baring tops and tight jeans.

I am sure they didn't have (or need) any artificial enhancement.

Anonymous said...

Yep, it was black guys who invented the bustle, totally.

Anonymous said...

Oh. My. Gawd. Beckie.

ysv_rao said...

I for one welcome our new flaming peroxide blonde elitist anorexia inducing white Hispanic overlords

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of the "men today want boys with breasts" line in Wolfe's Man In Full.

alexis said...

Big butts are part of the gospel of Mississippi, preached by Bobby "Chickenhead" Rush. Preaching starts at 4:00.

Prof. Woland said...

My favorite is the mannequin on the cover of the Frank Zappa album, We're only in it for the money, where they mock Sgt. Peppers.

Anonymous said...

The mannequins could do with much larger hips to match the giant breasts. With their emaciated torsos and narrow hips they don't look right to me. I guess Venezuelans disagree.
_________________________________

It's as if the gay designer starts his mannequin by saying, "Well, women have breasts and I know straight men like breasts," then by the time he gets to designing the hips he says, "Screw it...I hate curves, I'm gay, I hate curves and love long lines." Voila--the big boobs "matched" with the pre-adolescent male lower form.

Anonymous said...

I don't get it.

Think of WWT.

So, if a guy wants to cut off his whanker and put on fake boobs, that is wonderful and a civil rights issue...

but if a woman wants larger boobies, that is terrible 'sexism'...

It's like 'steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king'.

Well, maybe the desire for big boobs is natural... just like trans naturally want to be the other sex.

Boobosexual Rights the next big thing?

No more boob jokes. Why, that is so boobophobic.

Go Dolly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw2W8ZC7pkM

Anonymous said...

Kind of like making black store models with big lips and Afros. It's only wrong if it's done to whites. I'm almost as embaressed as a female as a black person should be everytime he reads about flash mobs.

Anonymous said...

http://youtu.be/p4OxNVmrgfo?t=1m2s

Latin culture.

Boobs and butts, no brains.

I think a British tabloid featured topless women to attract 'readers'.

Maybe Sailer should post nekkid pictures every now and then to attract more viewers.

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdvOj2kV6Pk

Who's more to blame? guys or gals?

Anonymous said...

Little about fashion is utilitarian or it wouldn't be subject to constant change. What would be the point?

Again, the point isn't that the bustle was purely utilitarian, the point is that it didn't mean the Victorians were into steatopygia.

Anonymous said...

One thing I've noticed about gay men that I've been acquainted with, is that despite not being attracted to women, they have a remarkable affinity towards recognizing what is an attractive and beautiful look on a woman (for a heterosexual man), and what is not.

You must be acquainted with some very unusual gay men. The ones that run the fashion/glamour industry are still forcing androgyny on the rest of us. How else to explain Kate and Gisele and Candace and all those other supermodels with bodies suspiciously like 14-old boys?

I suppose it’s also possible that flat-chested women are a turn-on for closet pedophiles and former pre-adolescent perverts whose first sexual fixations were with on the other girls in junior high, but how else could that particular fetish ever become the gold standard of feminine perfection?


The large butt thing has increasingly entered the American mainstream as well. It used to be confined to the black community…

In earlier decades, back before the internet mainstreamed porn, upper-class Venezuelans (or maybe it was Brazilians), who were the only ones able to afford plastic surgery, avoided breast augmentation for the very reason that large breasts were also considered an indicator of blackness.

Anonymous said...

"Yep, it was black guys who invented the bustle, totally."

Missing the point, totally.

1) The bustle was fashion
2) The bustle was a very *temporary* fashion.

The point is did the bustle coincide with the hottentot venus thing - not because it was to do with fertilty or anything like that but simply because the designer was inspired by all the media interest at the time.

.
"Pelican jaw Steve at it again. Why do female porn stars have large fake breasts Steve? Is it because the heterosexual porn industry is controlled by heterosexual men? Yes. How do the images heterosexual males beat off too affect how women want to look like? You can thank the heterosexual porn industry controlled by heterosexual men for these mannequins."

Wrong.

It's not about the breats size. It's about the *combination* of massive breasts with *no hips*.

Strippers / porn stars have hips.

.
"Do you seriously believe that Victorian era white people were into bigger butts than black people are?"

As a temporary fad sparked by the hottentot venus or genetically?

Anonymous said...

"Anonymous said...Male hips and mommy's breasts - like Hollywood's idea of the ideal woman."

Yeah, what's with the male hips? Also fake breasts look off-putting to me. Why do women think men like fake breasts?? Or am I just not representative of the average heterosexual male? Has anyone done a survey on this topic?

TontoBubbaGoldstein said...

Maybe Sailer should post nekkid pictures every now and then to attract more viewers.

Fine by me. Of course, I would still come here for the articles.

Anonymous said...

Are the mannequins sold in the US?
WOULD LIKE TO PURCHASE ONE OR TWO.

I_LIKE

Anonymous said...

Also fake breasts look off-putting to me. Why do women think men like fake breasts?? Or am I just not representative of the average heterosexual male?

I think most straight men agree. Fake breasts can look great under a t-shirt or even sports bra, but when you see them uncovered or in a small bikini top, they usually look blatantly fake and thus unattractive, in my opinion. I suppose their size and firmness does partially compensate for their artificiality, but on the whole I strongly prefer naturals (and I love large breasts). That being said, I have seen a few exceptionally well done boob jobs that looked like the real thing. Also, women who already possess large natural breasts can add implants without getting the fake look, but obviously they don't have much incentive to do so.

I actually know a girl who has a body exactly like that mannequin. Young blonde from Long Island with a rich dad who bought her a massive pair of tits when she was a teenager. She's otherwise stick thin with a perfectly flat stomach. Her breasts look absurd, like giant balloons glued to her chest. But she does look good in a sweater.

Anonymous said...

"Are the mannequins sold in the US?
WOULD LIKE TO PURCHASE ONE OR TWO.
I_LIKE"

Looks matter so much. We keep hearing race-denialists telling us that looks don't matter since so much of human DNA is alike.
But looks do matter.

Mongoose, for instance, are genetically closer to hyenas and cats than to weasels, but in outer appearance and behavior, they're more like weasels, and we are likely to see them that way.

And suppose handsome and intelligent robots could be made that look and act so human-like. Even though they are only 'artificial life' and not related to us genetically at all, I'll bet we'll interact with them better and more naturally than with mentally retarded midgets who are genetically nearly identical to us.

Figures on movie screens and images in portrait paintings are just illusions, but they can have more power over us than actual people.
So, looks cannot be discounted. They really matter.
Genes programmed us to react to looks and sounds. And our eyes can see the faces and bodies but not the DNA code and atoms. So, looks matter. Blame the DNA programming us that way.

Unknown said...

Some women are feeling the need for body reconstruction because what they get to see on TV and even in mannequins are sexy or slender figures of women. I have also read the women in Venezuela are very conscious with their body. That is why this is now the time that body surgeries when take place. For mannequins shown above, the body figure is really not proportional. I know that these mannequins where made because store owners wanted to have these kinds of mannequins to attract the attention of the passerby and can also help increase their sales. -www.zingdisplay.com