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I would be all over gills like a cheap suit. I would *love* to be able to swim at will under water.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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One problem with prehensile tails is that it would be very hard for pants to be modest. I would be *very* uncomfortable. Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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As alluring and intriguing those possibilities are to me, I don't think I would have those things done to myself. Some of my reasons are similar to the ones Porter stated. I do think wings and a tail would get in the way, but the tail I could perhaps live with.
If there were some way to have the changes be temporary, like some sort of virtual reality, I think I would love to play around with it. Does that make me a furry?
*imagines self covered in fox-soft fur with a long tail*
I could go for a guy with wings, though, guys with wings are HOT (a la Escaflowne).
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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But it should, and normally does come with a big not-- Changing ones outside does not help with the problems on the inside.
Being shy and having low self esteem doesn't change with large breasts, smaller noses, or more manly backsides.
I have not watched the makeover shows because I don't find them interesting. My body is not something I use to attract followers. It could be better if I worked at it, but I have other things I would rather do.
The first shows, that describe and detail the transormation of a person were OK, if you want to see that sort of thing.
The Swan is not.
It is exploitive, dangerous, and disgusting.
Its Plastic Surgery as a competitive sport. The victims--er recipients of this surgery must undergo massive amounts all in a short period of time. Their insecurities which may have sent them in search of painful answers are not being addressed, but are being broadcast to the world to scoff at, then after the pain and suffering to try to improve ones self image, half of the contestants are quickly told, basically, "You are still a loser!"
Sorry. I just don't like the whole idea.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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I don't know how they dive deep distances, but they manage it. There are people that do what I think is called "free diving" -- no scuba gear -- and they go down something like 200, 250 feet. I think they can manage that because they aren't breathing while they do it.
Any scuba-divers here? I understand that it's coming back up that they have to be careful to avoid the bends.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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The human body is mostly incompressible. The only parts that compress are the lungs and a few other small air cavities such as your sinuses and ear canals. Diving quickly (so long as you remember to clear your ears periodically) doesn't really hurt you at all. Free divers don't have to worry about narcosis or the bends, because those effects are caused by breathing compressed air; the nitrogen in the compressed air has a very high partial pressure and gets into your bloodstream, causing narcosis, or into your joints, causing explosion (the bends). Swimming with gills would avoid all of that. The only other danger is embolism of the lungs, which, if you are not breathing compressed air, is also not going to be a problem. There will be a point at which your lungs (and therefore your chest) will want to compress beyond the yield strength of your ribs, but you'd have to be pretty deep, and you could also avoid that by just filling your lungs with water (since you don't need them underwater anyway).
Now, back to the actual purpose of the thread:
I do have a gut reaction against these cosmetic surgery shows, but when I stop and think about it, the real problem I have is not necessarily that the women (and sometimes men) on the show feel that they need the surgery. It's that I think the whole concept of the show promotes surgery as a good way of dealing with your problems and potentially undermines healthy body image for the viewers. I know that these shows do show the surgery and it comes across as quite an ordeal. Maybe if the show ended there I would feel differently, but no, they end with a smiling, pretty, purportedly happy person. I cannot believe that these shows don't hurt efforts to combat low self esteem, body image problems, and eating disorders.
And finally:
We missed you, Ralphie!
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003
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About scuba, there was a guest on Letterman (some chick) who had the world record for deepest free dive (or whatever it's called). They drop you down really quickly (like seconds) and then spend most of the time on the coming back up. And that's all I have to say about that.
About plastic surgery, I don't think the good outweighs the bad. I think at this point enough's been said. And also (this is kind of an aside), why would you not want to look your age? Why take the lines out of your face? You should wear them like battle scars that say, "Look. I've been here for awhile. I've laughed. I've cried. I've seen a grown man naked."
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I saw a show where they actually had footage of free divers and what I saw, if I recall correctly, was that they used weights to get down deep fairly quickly and then a portable flotation device of some kind that they inflated once they had gone down as far as they could so that they could get back to the surface quickly.
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By the way, Toni, just to let you know, despite your request that I not run off with her, in your absence celia has replaced you as my #1 fangirl.
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If they could really have no side effects, sure it would be great fun to change bodies all the time, be a shapeshifter. But there's a lot more to a body than what shows. To be able to fly like a bird, for instance, you must make FUNDAMENTAL changes in the cardiovascular system, the lungs, and the skeleton. You have to have huge breast muscles to make the wings work, for instance, and probably a huge keel of a breastbone to attach them to. To maintain our same brains (or as closely as possible) we'd have to have rougly the same body mass or more, and that would entail a gigantic wingspan. To keep our large heads from messing up the aerodynamics of flight, we'd probably need a big bony crest and long tapering face. In fact, a flyable person would have to be very much like one of those big pteradactyls with the 50 foot wingspans. And flapping flight would be minimal. We'd have to mostly soar on thermals.
And then you get to the changes in spirit and personality that would necessarily follow from taking up life in the air. There is necessarily an enormous shift of viewpoint when you change your life experiences so much. Don't get me wrong. I believe that when it is possible, people will do it. And I think it will be very cool. I look forward to the diversification of the human species when we are in space and in all sorts of different environments. It enhances the beauty and complexity of existence.
Just don't think it will be a simple thing you can try out with no risk of changing yourself profoundly. Changing your body like that will be no safer than falling in love.
Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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*hugs Ralphie* It's so nice to see you post! I realized in reading the initial post how much I miss you. Did you know that shortly after we saw you last fall, Ross asked me if I was going to cut off my hair again or let it grow out... then he said he missed when I had hair down to my waist. I won't say that you had an influence on that, but...
About plastic surgery and Extreme Makeovers... I used to be absolutely set against vanity surgery. Then I learned that a close friend had had breast reduction surgery in her late teens, and her reasons were pretty clear -- she is an athletic person and being extremely top heavy made running more painful than it needed to be. Not to mention very conspicuous. At 19 she was already having back problems. Ten years later, she was still glad she'd had it done.
Then another friend of mine had breast augmentation surgery. She was naturally top heavy anyway, but having had a baby when she was 15 had a pretty dramatic effect on them. At 38, she wanted to be able to buy regular bras, rather than the $100 bras that kept her from looking much older than she was. She wanted to be able to wear regular swimsuits. Mostly, she wanted to not feel so self conscious when she went out clothes shopping with her daughter.
Lastly, one of my dearest friends had one of those stomach bands put on. She's morbidly obese, and felt that this was the only way she could lose the weight. So far, she's lost 40lbs in 6 months. Like gastric bypass, it's a starvation method of losing weight, so she's losing her hair and has low energy.
In the first case, I completely understand why she did it -- it was a quality of life issue. She does have body image issues, but she is careful not to let it get too much the best of her. The worst side effect of her surgery was not being able to breast feed when she had her children. It bugged her with the first one, but she got over it fairly quickly.
In the second case, while I think the reasons were spurious, her choice had its own consequences -- she's having surgery again this summer to correct problems resulting from the first surgery. Due to stress, she lost 20lbs that she didn't really need to lose, and now you can see the saline implants right under the skin. She's having the implants replaced with silicon. It's not a choice I would have made, but she states outright that she knows it was pure vanity, but it wasn't to make her look better to everyone in general -- she already looked really good and knew it. She wanted to look good to her husband and to her daughter, and most of all to herself. I couldn't argue with that reasoning -- it's why I wear dresses sometimes.
In the last case, I fear for my friend. Her obesity stems from an extremely difficult childhood. She medicates with food and inactivity. Those problems will not go away simply because she loses weight and becomes thin. A study came out not too long ago that found that gastric bypass patients often suffered extreme depression a year or so after they hit their goal weight. Having lost all the weight, in a year or so, it hit them that becoming thin didn't solve or change the problems that drove them to overeat in the first place. I suspect that my friend will be one of those also. It is very hard to watch, because to be totally honest, I never even noticed her weight. She's such a vibrant, lovely, loving person, I just didn't see that she was obese. When she told me she was having the surgery, I was so shocked I blurted out, "But you're not fat enough to need anything like that!". She looked at me like I had lost my mind.
So I guess how I feel is that if the motivation is quality of life, to feel less self-conscious about whatever it is, then I don't have a problem with it. I don't know if I could do it, but if it doesn't harm them too much, it's their money. I think, however, that where the motivation is to gain external affirmation, to solve problems that might be better addressed by a psychologist, or to bow to the pressure of someone who thinks you should get this or that done, it's a HUGE mistake.
That said, my guilty pleasure is Extreme Makeovers. I find it fascinating in morbid sort of way. The Swan, however, is repugnant.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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To everyone who said "hi," "hi" back. You still my hizzoes.
Thanks for posting your thoughts, guys. So, it's pretty much boiling down to the fact that plastic surgery has as much character building potential as bondo on a wrecked car and, really, it doesn't look all that great when it's been done, anyhoo.
I can see that.
However, it does seem that saying it's unequivocally a bad idea is a gut reaction. Cosmetic surgery is something that could be judged on a case by case basis, and that would be more reasonable, right?
btw, Dan - I have to admit, I don't necessarily agree that altering your outtards for the better will not help you with your innards. Anecdotally, I can say that feeling better about the way I look, which HAS altered over the last ten years, has been very helpful for me, all around. But maybe there's another undefined line of being unable to tell which is the cause and which is the effect between looking better and feeling better. And maybe cosmetic surgery takes away that natural progression, which stunts both.
But, boy howdy, would it have saved me some time and thousands of dollars of money wasted on unflattering clothes and ineffectual beauty products.
quote:On the other hand, I think something that our racially diverse society should be ashamed for promoting is a universal standard of beauty. Think about it - even famous actresses of minority races; Halle Berry, Lucy Liu - have European facial structures and slim, girlish builds.
quote:What's considered to be beautiful changes way too often in society
quote:Beauty, the appearance of what is beautiful, is a social construct.
To a certain extent I disagree with all these statements. There have been studies across all cultures that have tested what these cultures deem beautiful in a face. The participants were shown pictures of different faces and asked to decide which faces were most attractive. The majority of the faces that were chosen as most attractive fit the classic face mold - the faces were symmetrical, they fit certain proportions of nose width to mouth width, the eyes were spaced apart a certain amount proportional to their face, etc.
These findings seem to indicate that facial beauty is not a social construct, but is an evolutionary adaptation that most of us have. It has not changed very often (these evolutionary things take a long time in humans - damn those long gestation cycles and lifespans!). That certain type of face may be an outward indicator of healthy genes or some other evolutionary advantage.
That said, determining beauty by weight is a social construct. There are some cultures who view being very obese as extremely attractive. Perhaps because in those cultures the only way you could become corpulent would be if you were very successful and had enough surplus to indulge in eating excessively. Yet today we consider obesity as a very serious health problem. Wouldn't evolution have led us to only like proportionally shaped people? The thing is, it's only recently (in evolutionary terms) that we haven't been walking everywhere and getting more exercise. It's possible to be fat and be fit. It's just that our sedentary lifestyles today make it very unlikely, and the kinds of unhealthy foods easily available are more abundant now. Which makes being obese a larger health problem currently.
There has been some evidence that eating less allows you to live longer. I want to speculate that exposure to different toxins and free radicals in foods causes you to age faster, but I have no evidence. But you need regular exercise to live longer as well, and more food is needed to give you more enrgy to exercise. There might be some middle ground which allows you to live the longest.
I have no ideas about fashion and beauty. I heard fashion was cyclical.
There are lots of things that have been said that I agree with - but I'll try to say something new. We see tons more people than we meet and talk with. We probably judge most of them. The only basis we have to judge the people we see but do not meet is their appearance. Maybe their smell as well. Sometimes in the case of public figures we have articles in the media to help us judge. Since so many judgements are based on appearances is it any wonder we place such an emphasis on beauty?
From a psychological standpoint, I would speculate that it is more likely for us to want to engage in conversation with those we consider attractive in appearance than with those who are less attractive, assuming that their appearance is all we know about them. That's simple conditioning. It's not politically correct. Hmmm, now I want to find a thread about political correctness...
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I dunno. I saw a program awhile back about what humans find attractive. They said that the answers were so varied, that the only common aspect they could find was that attractive=perceived health and youth. What signified health and youth varied greatly from culture to culture.
And looking at art, it seems that what is deemed beautiful does change over time. Before this last century, we know of no Caucasian culture that valued sun-tanned skin or skinny hips. Also, apparently in centuries past, the only European women portrayed as large-breasted were peasant women. Royalty was portrayed as small-breasted.
Also, look at the features accentuated by make-up in just this century. Compare the 20's, the 40's, the 80's. Think of female eyebrows. Then, look at the faces of the women in Renaissance paintings. The faces are amazingly similar, but I don't see faces that look much like that today.
Do standards of beauty change over time? From what I have seen, yes. A lot.
Edit: Many times I have joked that I would have been quite a foxy lady a few centuries ago. Not so much by today's standards of beauty.
posted
I've seen the studies JNBS is talking about and he is correct. While the ornamentation may change, the basic body type and facial ideal does not.
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Note: I never said anything about skin color ("sun-tanned skin") or body type ("the basic body type," "small-breasted," "skinny hips"), although I did say that determining beauty by weight is a social construct.
I will also say that basing standards of beauty on old paintings is a little silly. A lot of the older paintings were commissioned mostly by royalty, and royalty can certainly be ugly. And it is a very small percentage of the people deciding which paintings are being commisioned. Then later, paintings began to be commissioned by the increasingly wealthy middle class, like in the Netherlands area, where the Dutch masters began doing portraits for the merchant class. Again, people can be ugly. I am certain I'm leaving out a lot of art history - I am not an art historian. You cannot look at paintings and assume only beautiful things were painted. What you can measure is people's reactions to pictures and paintings - unfortunately we don't have that data from the older time periods.
I disagree with saying someone is "correct" in this debate. This is not a black-and-white, you're-with-us-or-against-us issue.
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Good point, this is about as subjective an argument as you can get. And also, good point that royalty was doing a lot of the commisioning and they may very well have been ugly.
I have heard others make the point that since a lot of people did not know what the famous individual looked like, the model for the portrait may very well have been someone other than the rich person, someone, say, a bit more attractive.
And I still don't think that the rich/royal commisioning the paintings explains the proliferance of a very similar look. I think this is strong evidence that it represented a standard or ideal of beauty. I am an artist, and I tend to draw what I think is most beautiful or appealing to me. That is not to say that artists will not paint what is ugly, but artist tend to idealize. You may think that the image portrayed isn't very attractive, but I am strongly convinced that the people of the day thought those pale, pasty, chubby ladies were the epitomy of beauty! Why paint a nude woman you think is ugly? That goes against reason.
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You reference "pale pasty chubby women." I have never said anything about skin color or weight as a standard of beauty not changing very often. In fact it might have. My point is merely that standards of facial beauty have not changed frequently. And that is the extent to which I disagreed with certain posts.
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I did talk about their faces. All my life as I have looked at paintings around certain eras, I thought, "My goodness! They all look the same!" What's more, I have never seen someone that (to me) looked like that.
I also talked about the use of make-up in different recent decades to accentuate different features of the face. At times, small, pouty, rosebud lips were deemed most attractive. What was attractive on eyebrows has varied quite a bit. During the 60s and 70s when less make-up was worn, large eyes were particularly important. It is true that symmetry and roundness of the "baby-face" look tend to be important, but those are pretty general attributes to say the least.
Edit: Oh, and I don't have any clue why, but ancient Japanese thought putting two dots on a woman's forehead above her eyes was so incredibly beautiful. What's that about?
posted
Here ya go. Venus , the epitomy of beauty. I'll bet most Playboy centerfolds of any decade have a different bust to hips ratio. If you look at the website this comes from, looking at the myriad of nude women painted around this era, you will find this ideal body type again and again. This is what they found beautiful. She would not be considered so hot today.
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Most of the models, especially Michaelangelo's, were males. That is mostly why the bust to hips ratio is so oft. Try taking a male and painting him as a female. Not too hard these days, but I bet it was a challenge then.
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Hmmmm, that would explain some of it. I was aware of that with his sculptures, but I didn't know about the paintings.
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Now whas all dis jimmer-jamma 'bout? You all betta cut dis out right now or Immagonna throw you helluvafah!
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quote: Edit: Oh, and I don't have any clue why, but ancient Japanese thought putting two dots on a woman's forehead above her eyes was so incredibly beautiful. What's that about?
It represented eyebrows actually, and had something to do with a woman being regal and ethereally beautiful. Beyond that, I'm not sure...
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I was aware of that with his sculptures, but I didn't know about the paintings.
