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Moonlight meanderer

How do you make a sexy/attractive character? What makes a character sexy and or attractive?

KimLuster
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Ozone, I'm not sure why you're hesitant to say there's a universal aspect to sexual attaction.  For a species that depends on sexual reproduction to survive, there has to be ways for one gender to identify the other and also determine if they are fit enough to bear/sire their offspring.  Nature does this with sexual characteristics that are pretty much universal for each species.  If we just decided what we thought was attractive instead of there being some sort of built-in mechanism to determine what the best mating pairs would be, I think we would have died out long ago…
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For a man to find a woman attractive, first she has to look like a woman (meaning there has to be certain traits that men don't have), and for her to be attractive those 'womanly' traits have to stand out in some way…  (and of course the same applies to women looking at men)
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Yes, the particular proportions (and accessories like clothes and jewelry) can vary by culture and time but the basic traits stay the same
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Men of today do not find a woman who looks exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger attractive…
Men in Edwardian England would not find a woman who looks Prince Albert attractive…
Stone age women would not find a man with giant boobs (like the Venus of Willendorf) attractive
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Disclaimer: yes, our human brains can do weird things with our base urges, making some men think a woman who looks like 'Ahnold' attractive, but in pre-civilized times those types tended not to stick around ;)

Ozoneocean
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The idea of "universal atractors" veres too far into evolutionary psychology for me, which is a field based on a good dose of bulshit and guessing, with any real science few and far between,
 
What you're really talking about is sexual dimorphisim, the physical differences between the sexes. BUT, how far do physical, superfical cues go in influencing the survival of the species? Making a connection between those two factors is a very long bow to draw.
 
With all the differences between proportions, body shapes and features between individuals and ethnicities around the world I think the best that can be said is that straight men and women are atracted to each other and those that look as if they fit into the prime child bearing age range are the most atractive, with points off for deformaty.
 
-Breast size, hip to waste ratio, penis size, chest size, muscularity etc. We know these can't be true universal factors or we'd have maxed out the stats on those (so to speak) eons ago, but human bodies haven't changed too much since we evolved into the modern creatures we are.

KimLuster
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I think most psychology (evolutionary or otherwise) has it's fair share of bullshit,  but even so, I still think there is such a thing as a unviversal sex stat that we all subconsciously check out…  but I think the reason they don't get 'maxed out' out like you say is because we know when too much is too much…  When boobs and dongs get too big, they hinder survival, and we don't won't our children having such 'maxed' traits!
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But a tendency toward 'maxing' can (and does) happen…  Look at lots of bird species…
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A great example of a 'sex stat' almost so maxed out that it hinders the survival of the species is the Peacock. Take a male peacock's tail.  That lovely thing in no way increase an individual peacock's chances of survival - all it is is a Peacocks version of 'big boobs', and if it got any larger, then those that the larger version would most likely die, not passing on the genes - thus make the maxed trait undesireable.  Large tail = sexy… Too large = untouchable freak!
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And you can't say all that is cultural!  It's a Peacock!  It's instinctual
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I agree that we humans throw tons of cultural things on top, and as a species with thinking brains we have gotten pretty good at making cultueral preferences sometimes override our the 'base traits' - I just think the base stuff is still there, and we still notice it, even when we don't want to…  You said
straight men and women are atracted to each other and those that look as if they fit into the prime child bearing age range are the most atractive, with points off for deformaty.
.which I agree we do this.  I just don't we consciously choose to do it.  We see the traits that indicate this is so, and we find it sexy.  Okay I'm done - we're probably just going in circles now haha – Cheers!

tupapayon
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Fight! Fight! Fight!… I'll put $5 on Kim… another factor we have to consider is the beer to beauty ratio… how many beers do I need to find sexy a woman who look like Arnold?

bravo1102
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tupapayon wrote:
Fight! Fight! Fight!… I'll put $5 on Kim… another factor we have to consider is the beer to beauty ratio… how many beers do I need to find sexy a woman who look like Arnold?
Psychology only becomes BS when it challenges your belief systems.  It's BS and can't be right because personal cherished beliefs are inviolate.  Accepting that you can be wrong is one of the first steps to greater wisdom.  Or so my psychologist tells me.
 All the of the cultural differences STILL all come back to the "S" of the hips and bust and the goalpost of the male shoulders/chest.  No matter what the relative size is it still comes back to those features.  The sizes and proportions vary but the it's still the same stuff culture and time and again.  There is a universal pattern and to deny it is akin to denying gravity to which human attractiveness is often compared.

The Warner Brothers examples I used are very specific to the mid 20th Century.  But the eyelashes and lipstick would not be out of place in Ancient Egypt.  As would the goalpost shoulders and chest of a male and the gentle curve of the bust and swaying hips are on a woman. 

KimLuster
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No, it's just that phychology is way too inexact to be a proper science for me.  There's too much of a gooey, touchy/feely aspect to the profession.  Definitions of mental disorders and their causes change constantly and yet they have to sound like they know exactly what they're talking about when working with you…
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"Your son has autism…"  Oh really!  And what caused it?  Is Jenny McCarthy right?  I took all my prenatal vitamens… !  Different doctors prescribing some pretty serious drugs to your kid and arguing/disagreeing with each other's diagnosis…  One shakes his head upon hearing what another prescribed… Finally you say to hell with it, raise your son without their help as best you can, and by 10th grade he's making almost all A's! (not atypical for someone with autism) but he's also become very social, joins school choirs and sport teams, and just acts amazingly… normal.  Who'd a thunk?!!
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(perhaps I have some personal experience here ;)
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I understand there's lots of starts and stops, breakthroughs and setbacks in science, but when the object of study and experimentation is your (or your loved one's) minds, the stakes are a bit higher…  And of course the brain is only the most complicated thing we've encountered so far in the universe…!
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Perhaps a little humility in the field isn't a bad thing…
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But I agree on everything else you said Bravo! ;)

Ozoneocean
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Bravo you make massive generalisations there and they aren't correct- as happens when anyone takes that approach.
Evolutionary psychology has been very roundly critised  and discredited quite a lot in the last few years- that's the practise of relative bahvaiour patterns or whatever else to behaviours that started out in prehistory. It's basically 99.99999% speculation.
 
Your insistance on the "univeral" factors seems just a touch too desperate there. You WANT it to be true. So you may as well beleive it :)
 
Kim- the peakcock example isn't right. You could only relate that to humans IF you had a sexually dimorphic trait that was as pronounced. We don't though. Humans are notable among animal speices as being pretty similar gender wise. Our differences are subtle compared to dmorphic differences in other animals. Boobs and no facial hair on females are probably the most obvious dimorphic traits: our primate cousins don't share those sex differences so those are particularly human. :D
Yup, forget the rest, that's what our early (male) ancestors liked: ladies with no beards and a set of chest-bumps.
Thankfully our idea of beauty and attraction DOES change. ;)
 
-Don't ever forget about clothing, makeup, jewlry, hairstyles, posessions, and all the rest. Those purely cultural things have been part of our species for many thousands of years now and have played a role in our evolutionay choices.
Kim, your peacock example comes in to play here: Like birds humans have been carefully arranging their plumage since before recorded history. And like bowrbirds we even arange our "nests" to attract mates as well.
I will stop before I vere too far into the trap of speculative evolutionary psychology… D:

bravo1102
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ozoneocean wrote:
Your insistance on the "univeral" factors seems just a touch too desperate there. You WANT it to be true. So you may as well beleive it :)
Yes, but the broad generailzations work in a comic character. Isn't what this talk is about?  It may not be real or evolutionary, fine I concede the point. I was stretching it too far and 99% suppostion of a lot of guys with too muchh time on their hands and not enough girls. But for Pinky TA or Kimber Lee what makes them sexy?  That "S" shape of female proportion will give you a sexy female in a comic. Bumps and no beard won't unless you add some basic proportions that mimic that "S" proportion.  Bumps and no beard will give you a female character but not a sexy one as in certain minimalist comics. To get her sexy suddenly she has hips and her body assumes a rough "S" with the breast becoming more rounded.

This may not be so in Asians wearing traditinal dress like the straight lines of a woman in a kimono but it does hold true in Asian pornography.  Asian traditional sexual depictions show big butts and big boobs and men with broad shoulders the same as the dressed man has exaggerated shoulders and the female none. 

Go back to the original topic of drawing a sexy character.  Use the "S" or the goalpost shoulders and you got it. And it'll work across cultures from Africa to Polynesia.  The philosphy and evolutionary biology dosen't help me create a sexy femme fatale for my hunk guy to fool with, but "S" proportions do.  I want to sex up a girl in a kimono and the butt sash grows a little and sticks out a little more and the body becomes more of an "S" even in ancient depictions from before Western influence.  

binaryfaye
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I was going to comment as to what I find sexy, but I think I missed the boat because this is a little more extastential than I was expecting.
Aaaanyway, I was just going to say that I find characters who are treated as real people much more interesting. With real flaws and foibles. I love me a good visual quirk! As soon as a comic or storyteller mentions that they're a perfect adonis or some idealized beauty my brain just tunes out. Maybe by now it's such an obvious happening that it's become boring. "Yeah yeah, yeah. Yet another impossibly handsome millionare with severe emotional problems. Next please!" I would be much more keen on a comic with a sultry woman covered in freckles, or a stud with one eye than a comic whose creator just went down the hot-person-checklist and called it a day.

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To weigh in on the academic end of the dicussion, I would say there are three heirarchical factors that influence sexual attractiveness: 1) Biology, which is hard-wired. It's the stuff that makes humans attracted to each other, and not attracted to chimps or horses 2) Socialization. Some cultures think overweight is sexy, some cultures think skinny is sexy 3) Personal experience and personal idiosyncracy, which can contradict the other two. There is a whole category of porn out there that deals with people having sex with animals, so sometimes human idiosyncracy will trump biologically wired instinct. As for my own personal idiosyncracy, what ultimately determines sexiness for me is the narrative of the sex. If the characters aren't surrounded by context, motivation, and story, then the sexiest drawing in the world will not arouse me very much.

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ozoneocean wrote:
Men or women it doesn't matter, your own character or someone elses's- from TV, a comic, a film, a radio play, game, whatever.
How do you make a sexy character? What's a good example of a sexy character?  What makes a character sexy? 
 
It can be pretty individual in a lot of ways (what apeals to some is silly or gross or boring to others), but there are a lot of universal traits as well.
It'd be good to hear about it all though! Personal prefereances and all!
 
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For me, one of my main preferances for sexyness is for a female character to have a nice round, callipygous bottom and a slim waste, maybe a small tummy… An hour glass shape. Aaaand strong shapely thighs. Not Crumb style though… well, close. Example: Pinky TA
A sexy personality type for me is: confidence, intelligence, competance. An example would be the sexy librarian trope tied with the sexy teacher trope. But there's room for interpretation. In the Anime/manga series Ah My Goddess, the character Urd fits it, well at least the confidence part.
 
When I tried to design a sexy male character with Ace Kinkaid, I thought:
- Strong build: Broad shoulders and big chest with lots of muscle.
- Enough hair to make it messy and windswept if need be.
- Strong eyebrows.
- broad chin.
- Small nose.
His clothing is 1930s style heroic flying ace/motorcycle dispatch rider because I aways thought of that as a "dashing" look.
Aaaannnnnd I frequently show him with his shirt unbuttoned quite low.
For me, it's just the overall presentation of a character and how they represent themselves. A character can be sexy without having to show off a lot but can also come from their overall character and how they interact.
Take Cereza/Bayonetta for example, she's cartoonishly sexy but she's also sexy based off her mind, the ability to take care of things, and a maternal presence to protect. That makes her sexy overall than just her outward appearance.

KimLuster
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Well I thought I was done haha…!
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On the contrary, I think female breasts are a classic example of human sexual dimorphism?   Of course they are not near as extravagant as a peacock's tail.  The question is, why do they have that very recogniziable protruding shape to begin with (which, by the way, has absolutely nothing to do with breast feeding - a totally flatchested woman can breastfeed just fine…)?  Sizes and shapes vary greatly  but there is a universal quality that's instantly recognizable and the difference with males is so notable that you can easily tell the gender of almost anyone by looking at chest pics alone.  And this trait only becomes noticeable with the onset of pubetry and the ability to reproduce (prebuscent boys and girls look exactly the same).  Why does this happen?
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And we are supposed to believe the association with breast and sexual attraction is largely just cultural..?!
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Alrighty then… ;)

KimLuster
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fallopiancrusader wrote:
To weigh in on the academic end of the dicussion, I would say there are three heirarchical factors that influence sexual attractiveness: 1) Biology, which is hard-wired. It's the stuff that makes humans attracted to each other, and not attracted to chimps or horses 2) Socialization. Some cultures think overweight is sexy, some cultures think skinny is sexy 3) Personal experience and personal idiosyncracy, which can contradict the other two. There is a whole category of porn out there that deals with people having sex with animals, so sometimes human idiosyncracy will trump biologically wired instinct. As for my own personal idiosyncracy, what ultimately determines sexiness for me is the narrative of the sex. If the characters aren't surrounded by context, motivation, and story, then the sexiest drawing in the world will not arouse me very much.
I'm in full agreement with all of this.  I do maintain, though, that #1 is the basis the other two are built on.  Even when the other two contradicts #, there is often a keen awareness by everyone else (and even yourself) that you are 'going against the grain', so to speak!  ie. to be deviant, there has to be base starting point to deviate against!

Ozoneocean
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Kim- you misunderstood me.
I said that breasts and lack of facial hair were the two main visable sexually diamorphic traits of humans, as opposed to other primates. When we were simpler creatures, not wearing clothes, those things would have been very important.
 
It's the fact OF the difference that is atractive more than a hypothetical in-built boob-magnet though, which is why we transitioned so well into cultural distinctions of gender when we started augmenting ourselves with clothes, possesions and all the rest.
  
Like I said earlier: People are atracted to each other. All the various things we're inculcated and socialised to associate with the gender you prefer, also become sexy because they represent that gender to YOU.
That includes eveything, from breasts, to wide hips, to big bums, muscled chests, fancy cars, beards, stockings, dicks, vaginas, muscled thighs, uniforms, underarm hair… whatever.
 
It's basically what Fallopian said, but obviously the distinctions are not clear cut, they blend into the same thing.

Ozoneocean
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The "deviant" feeling is due to culture as well though: you're not going against biology, you're going against prevailing cultural norms.
That's a VERY, very powerful driver because humans are a highly social speicies, like wolves, or apes, parrots etc.
We know we're doing something that is not generally socially acceptable to our fellow humans, we're going against the social norms and it feels wrong because deep down we want to be accepted and we think that the devation will damage that for us.

bravo1102
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fallopiancrusader wrote:
(W)hat ultimately determines sexiness for me is the narrative of the sex. If the characters aren't surrounded by context, motivation, and story, then the sexiest drawing in the world will not arouse me very much.
Comes back to what Gunwallace said earlier. So Gunwallace's Law of Characterization is that the basis of all good characterization is the writer with Fallopiancrusader's collolary that sexiness is defined by context motivation and story.  Which feeds back into Gunwallace's Law.  Yup it's all on the writer.  

Damn that poor sod is so overworked.
 
So everything is lain at the feet of the writer.  A context can be created where the most culturally unattractive potential partner becomes the person to die for.  Shakespeare and Jane Austen both treated the topic in some of their stories. Creating the person you want out of "clay" or a very rough canvas (the cockney flower girl or fat, plain Jane down the street)  Other than Pygmalian there is the ancient Stockard Channing film Girl Most likely to…  The good old Ugly Duckling transformation is a classic trope. And often the moral is that the beauty/sexiness was there all the time just not arranged to the satisfaction of prevailing culture. 

Even the underrated Kevin Kline film In & Out dealt with it in some of its permutaions (fat versus thin and even gender preference)

But if these cultural mores are so seemingly changeable and ephemeral doesn't that argue for some sort of universal standard underlying them?

Ozoneocean
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"But if these cultural mores are so seemingly changeable and ephemeral
doesn't that argue for some sort of universal standard underlying them"

 
When people become sexually mature they're atracted to a gender. Aaaaand that's pretty much the only universal there really needs to be. The desire is already there, everything else is just window dressing to guide preference.
 
Asside from the superficial stuff we've focussed on there's interests, personality, smell (there are no human pheremones discovered that induce atraction), body langauge, chance, humour, situation. and the most important of all: proximity.

bravo1102
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ozoneocean wrote:
When people become sexually mature they're atracted to a gender. Aaaaand that's pretty much the only universal there really needs to be. The desire is already there, everything else is just window dressing to guide preference.
Asside from the superficial stuff we've focussed on there's interests, personality, smell (there are no human pheremones discovered that induce atraction), body langauge, chance, humour, situation. and the most important of all: proximity.
And so human sexual selection is not about Miss or Mr Right but Miss/Mr Right-now and nothing else matters.  There is no other universal to procreate a crone is as good as a maiden so long as she is the right gender.  There are no other universals for human sexual selection.  It's all window dressing and none of it matters.  This explain nothing to human sexual selection because all the matters specific to it are unnecessary window dressing.  Reductionist silliness and can only be greeted with Horace Greely's belly laugh as absurdity and worthy of no further consideration except by the most uninformed and seemingly inexperienced of individuals.  Don't date much do you?  So now I call your manliness and ability to attract a potential mate into question further demolishing your arguments and reducing them to pure drivel.  Victory to the guy with the board shoulders, impressive stature and the list of past lovers that fill nearly all the fingers of one hand.  (Not, I actually agree with you. Just that certain things make for quick and easy window dressing in fiction and leaving them out makes for a hard sell)

As for proximity there is that whole conditional gender preference thing.  Evidence indicxates that normally heterosexual humans (among other mammals and birds) will become homosexual if no mates of the opposite gender are available but then revert to being heterosexual once a mate of the opposite gender presents itself. This animal will never again evidence any attraction to its own gender so long as potential mates of the opposite gender are available.  Conditional gender preference or gender choice based on proximity.  A possible behavior suggested by studies of single sex environments.  There is also asexuality which could be the reaction of an animal that has no desire to procreate based on a single sex enviornment or a poor selection of potential mates.  All theory but gist for the writer's mill in considering the themes of sexuality and sexiness.

Ozoneocean
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No need to get riled up and personal Bravo, all's fair in a friendly discussion. :D
Tackle the issue, not the person.
 
As I said: humans are a highly social spiecies, that fact alone would tell you what guides these things. We're social so we take cues from each other on how to dress and present ourselves and what we have to do to fit in and be popular, and at the same time we compete based on those things as well.
Of course all that "window dressing" matters. It ALL matters. It's all we have.
 
-Reading your post again, I'm not really sure if you dsagree with me or not, sarcasam and humour can be hard to read online.

KimLuster
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I do think I understand you, Ozone.  You seem to be saying, more or less, that human sexual characteristics (boobs, butts, shoulders, and dongs…) are not prominent enough to be considered the primary basis of human sexual attraction.  That, combined with us be very intelligent, imaginative, and social creatures, means that social cues, memes, constructs, etc. are the more potent drivers of attraction, and thus the same sort of thing as one's preference in art, music, food, or any other thing that brings about some level of emotional satisfaction to an individual.
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tl/dr version: a man doesn't find the shape of a breast sexy due to any genetic hardwiring, but because generations of stories and pictures have ingrained in him that culture considers it sexy
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To me, that seems to be the quick and dirty gist of what you’re saying – if that’s not the case feel free to try to explain again and I’ll try to glean a better understanding from your words…
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But… I think we're all just really recycling our opinions at this point, and I don't think anyone is going to convince the other of anything.  So just once more I’ll state my stance (which I feel evolutionary science backs up) that sexual attraction is rooted in the hardwired drive to reproduce, and that ALL creatures capable of perceiving physical fitness (subconsciously) want to reproduce with other that are more fit, more likely to survive, not less so, and the hardwired way we have of knowing fitness is due to visual cues on the body.  There’s permutations to this, but this is one of the basic driving forces behind evolutionary theory (I know there are others but this is a very important piece).
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Cultural things do not do this: I may like a man's tattoos or how he cuts his hair, or his style of jeans, but none of that helps me determine genetic fitness…
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However, I readily admit that we humans are indeed highly imaginative and intelligent, and we've developed strong individual personalities and we often have very outré personal preferences, and these can easily override our hardwired urges (very easily sometimes).  I think we both agree on this, but you seemed to think we humans have reached the point where these social things have pushed the hardwired stuff to the backburner, to near insignificance.   I still thing the biological stuff has considerable subconscious power and that sexual attraction wouldn't even exists as a phenomenon without it.
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Finally, we’re debating something that is ultimately a mental phenomenon (sexual attraction).  I say it’s largely genetic based – you say it’s largely cultural.  But the mind is such a complex thing that I can’t point to anything concrete to say conclusively you’re wrong.  Yet another reason the mind-sciences like psychology annoy me ;)

Ozoneocean
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Kim, that's not what I mean, no.
When people reach sexual maturity they have a biological urge to hook up. The things associated with their preferred gender become sexual distinctions to them and take on a new level of interest: 
That's all things. Stuff that's physically there like boobs and bums, and stuff that's more cultural and esoteric…
 
Boobs for example are not sexy in a hardwired way. In most cultures we cover them so they become hidden and naughty. In cultures where they don't though boobs are NOT regarded as particularly sexy at all, merely something that women have.
 
I think you've miss-read me somewhere, my position is similar to FallopianCrusader, in that there are a mix of factors. The problem is that a lot of what we imagine as biological is in fact cultural.
 
OK, for physical fitness, I'll postulate that isn't a driver for the urge to mate at all, it's dominance. Which is related but definitely not the same thing.
We're a social species, what we care about is symbols of dominance, position in the group hierarchy.
Tattoos, haircuts, muscles, a nice dress, a cool car: all those things play into that paradigm. They show how well people fit into the group (very important) AND how well they stand out: i.e. what their level of dominance is, how far they are ahead of the pack, while still being a part of it.
Physical fitness doesn't appeal for its genetic possibiities, it appeals because it shows how dominant a potential mate is. Other aspects of dominance can trump it: intelligence, wealth etc.
- By the same token, submissive traits are also attractive because they make the attracted party feel more dominant/further up in the hierarchy.
  
Back when we were simpler primates, this would have meant wanting to be the Alpha. But being an alpha isn't just about strength (even among other animals it can take intelligence, better skills, politics, experience and so on). It doesn't matter how the alpha becomes the alpha, it's their position in the hierarchy that's attractive.
  
This has moved to a deeper level now. Which is interesting! Kim, you ARE very right in that there IS a deeper imperative that drives choosing a mate, but it's about hierarchy. And the elegant thing about that is that it very neatly ties in all the cultural aspects at the same time as well most if what everyone has said about all aspects of what makes a character attractive.
That's not a great revelation, but it's something we all missed for some reason.

bravo1102
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ozoneocean wrote:
No need to get riled up and personal Bravo, all's fair in a friendly discussion. :D
Tackle the issue, not the person.
 
 
-Reading your post again, I'm not really sure if you dsagree with me or not, sarcasam and humour can be hard to read online.
 It was entirely humor to break up the scholarly tone the conversation was taking.
 

A lot of what you say could be construed as is nice rationalization for why I can't get a date for Saturday night. That is how a psychologist would interpret it. You are rationalizing your own feelings and then bringing up hierarchy which paints the individual as even more hopeless. It all reeks of despair and depression and wanting to crawl off into the corner and bemoaning all my inadequencies and crying a lot evey night because you can't get a date.  (as opposed to friendship and companions)
More gist for the writer's mill. All of this is facinating and agreement isn't necessary but how we use it in our work. Again agreement isn't necessary jas each side can make for a facinating stroy and set of characters.  Test each theory with a group of characters and you might create a great world that readers will value for years to come.

Ozoneocean
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I'm not trying to be confrontational or mean with this Bravo, but I have to say it:
Taking that particular tack is Ad Hominem and I'd appreciate it if you didn't do it. No one in the thread should be in a position where they have to justify, explain, or defend themselves instead of their ideas.
The only response I will give is that my level of dicourse is soley theoretical.

KimLuster
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lol you say I'm not getting you Ozone, but when you explain further I still come away thinking your saying more or less the same thing.  Maybe it's a limitation on me - I'm fine with that!  We'll just agree to disagree ;)

bravo1102
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ozoneocean wrote:
I'm not trying to be confrontational or mean with this Bravo, but I have to say it:
Taking that particular tack is Ad Hominem and I'd appreciate it if you didn't do it. No one in the thread should be in a position where they have to justify, explain, or defend themselves instead of their ideas.
The only response I will give is that my level of dicourse is soley theoretical.
And mine was purely meant as a writing exercise not an attack. I was thinking out loud of a possible scene with this conversation.  You take offense where none was intended.
Read my second paragraph.
More grist for the writer's mill. All of this is facinating and agreement isn't necessary but how we use it in our work. Again agreement isn't necessary as each side can make for a facinating story and set of characters.  Test each theory with a group of characters and you might create a great world that readers will value for years to come.
It's not theoretical for me.  It did so happen that I had similar discussion once upon a time only to have it thrown in my face by a lovely brunette.  And then I proved why the theory fit me when I wimped out and didn't ask her out. I could talk theory for hours but when it came to practice I proved why I wasn't the alpha male and my socialization skills left something to be desired.  No one needs to kick sand in your face when you bury your head int he sand of your own accord.  More girst for the writer's mill about sexiness and sexual selection.  The person who can't act on their sexiness because they lack social skills.  

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