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[Facekillz058]

In a moment of genius I managed to poor Kool-Aid on my cereal instead of milk this morning.
But it still tasted kinda decent, so meh.

[Yoink]

Just... just... just don't go starting any cults, okay?
Not even ones to do with cereal.

[lemon10]

Goddamn windows autoupdate.

[miauw62]

I forgot to go to a store I had to go to to fetch some shit for the pointless drawing class, which frustrates me immensely. Also, the guy that delivered my books (and my mom's new mixer) just tossed it over the goddamn fence, so now my books are slightly damaged.

...I just want to scream in rage about the first one and I have no idea why.

[mastahcheese]

...When I got back home and booted up my computer, all of the colors on my computer are inverted. I did a system restore back to before I left, and nothing. I think something must have fell on the screen while it was in the laptop case while I was gone. Dang it.

[Aklyon]

Goddamn windows autoupdate.

You wouldn't have this problem if you changed the update settings

[Vector]

I am really exhausted by how people talk about flat-chested women.

No, if I lose weight, I won't secretly discover my beautiful hourglass figure and perfect waist that will drive the men wild.  I'll secretly discover that I have no breasts at all and look like I'm about to keel over in the gutter, and my hair will dull out, thin, and straighten instead of being shiny and full of enormous curls.  Trust me, I've done this experiment and it doesn't turn out well for anyone.


Also, stop complaining about men having big thighs or hips.  Sure, you can make anything look bad, but there ain't nothin' wrong with an hourglass figure on a man.  Or just being endomorphic in general, seriously.

[Rose]

But what about those poor girls with narrow hips? What about /them/?

[Vector]

They look great, too.

[Rose]

Yes, yes they do.

* Japa looks meaningfully at Vector.

I have no idea why I said that. I think I completely forgot where I was originally going with that.

[Solifuge]

You mean starving yourself doesn't magically make everyone want you?

*garsp* :U

Okay, this kinda cheeses me off too. There's this "Beauty" thing, right? It's represented by how closely individuals match a certain set of traits that cultural authorities have deemed ideal. We spend a lot of our time codifying what it is, and how we might more closely approximate it.

I actually remember during childhood, some of the conversations with peers I had about who was and wasn't good-looking. I remember that my innate feelings on beauty clashed with the ones that most people were purporting... the ones they'd been taught through their enculturation. I remember when I started to question my own ideas on what made a woman "beautiful" or a man "handsome", and remember how they changed to be more in-line with the popular ideal. Another one of the things we do, as part of our responsibility to blend in to our cultural environment.

But yeah... reacting positively to that ideal is a very learned response, and it's largely irrelevant to things that we actually find aesthetically pleasing. Things like symmetry, contrast between angular and round lines, balance of form, and so on are where the beauty our brains naturally see lies. It's kinda funny to hear some people complain about how such-and-such an actress has this "weird" body type or this "funny" face, but somehow she's still pretty... like it somehow defies logic that their forced feelings and learned ideals of "beauty" actually have nothing to do with what they fundamentally see as aesthetically pleasing.

I know it's not just me that actually gets put off by people who starve themselves to maintain an unhealthy figure. That bodily stress and unhealthiness seeps into all these other aspects of their appearance and behavior, and makes them seem less lively. But I suppose there's always makeup and photoshop to restore that rosy-cheeked and lively look to half-dead flesh, after you've sucked it all out to warp your body-shape, right?

Eating well, getting enough exercise, and generally keeping your body clean, healthy and well-maintained. These are some of the best ways to look good that I know of. And when you recognize the cultural "Beauty" blinders you've fitted yourself with, it's easier to recognize how things like a person's energy level, how genuine their facial expressions seem, the clarity of their voice, the symmetry of their face, how fit and healthy they are, and so on determine how attractive we actually find people.

[Xantalos]

To solve this, you could forget what you look like, but I wouldn't recomend it; it strips away that part of your identity and can be a bit traumatic.

[Kadzar]

I know it's not just me that actually gets put off by people who starve themselves to maintain an unhealthy figure. That bodily stress and unhealthiness seeps into all these other aspects of their appearance and behavior, and makes them seem less lively. But I suppose there's always makeup and photoshop to restore that rosy-cheeked and lively look to half-dead flesh, after you've sucked it all out to warp your body-shape, right?

This made me think of vampire supermodels, which, if it isn't already a thing, should probably be a thing.

[Flying Dice]

I've never met someone who thinks of the skeleton-supermodel look as anything but creepy, much less beautiful. It's almost a false norm, in the sense that it derived from the snowballing of a slight shift in cultural opinion on the ideal weight, which resulted in the dieting fads, which resulted in the fashion industry's perception of public opinion as being an absolute "skinnier = better". Worse still, backlash against this ideal of beauty which doesn't even exist save for the minds of participants in the industry that fosters it has lead to the equally unhealthy notion of clinical obesity being healthy and beautiful as well.

You know, one of the most subtle and yet most profound things I noticed while traveling abroad was the weight of non-Americans. Almost nobody I saw was anywhere near what we consider to be overweight (the occasional beer gut, sure, but not rolling slabs of fat everywhere-no painfully thin dieters, either), and the general ideal that we have was on the heavier end of the spectrum for normal body weights. I guess what I'm saying is that it isn't really right to act as if two wholly artificial conceptions of beauty are representative of popular opinion, when each was intentionally created with a specific goal (sell products/feel better about your body without doing anything about it). Individual tastes vary, yanno, but for most people they tend to like their likees with a fairly average weight for their size and frame, with a little deviation on either side for personal preference. If that fashion-model ideal of beauty is mentioned at all, it's in an external context, not in the sense of "Wow, I'd like to be in a relationship with that person," which I think displays an awareness of its false nature.

[10ebbor10]

Yup, America is wrecked nation ruled by corporations.