It’s no secret that beauty standards change culture by culture, but what exactly changes as the “ideal body” moves around the globe?
That’s the question a U.K.-based group set out to seek. They took an image of a man in his skivvies and sent it out to get doctored into the ideal version.
Related: Here’s How The Male Standard Of Beauty Changes Around The World
Takeaways? The U.S. really like 6-packs (no surprise there), Russia is all about those pecs, and some people really need to learn better photoshop skills. A few of the results are a bit off-putting (China, South Africa), not because of the beauty standards but because of some shoddy editing.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Also, Serbia liked the original guy just fine, he just needed some arm ink. Who knew?
Take a look below:
via Cosmo
pastafazool
those are not beauty standards. those are statistical averages.
a beauty standard is practically impossible to define other than totally arbitrarily.
Paco
The United States example wasn’t surprising at all.
ingyaom
Why did they start with a picture of a fat guy, to see if people would make him thinner? Why not start with a thin guy and see if they made him fatter? Who got to be the arbiters of taste, anyway?
Glücklich
On terminal hold at this end so I’ll save everyone some effort:
Blah blah blah sixpack but fall in love with a belly
Blah blah blah ab privilege 🙁
Blah blah blah hate the ink
Blah blah blah too fat/thin/hairy/smooth/pale/dark/old/young
Blah blah blah of course it’s a white guy
Blah blah blah he’s not/he is a bear/otter/cub/wolverine/jackal/dodo
Blah blah blah male homosexual desires gay-identifying I haven’t gotten laid since the Carter administration
Did I miss anything?
Bryguyf69
This is stupid. Not only is the China one poorly edited, but most Asian countries don’t look kindly on any chest hair. You only see chest hair from foreign influence or in a few indigenous groups (i.e. in Japan and Taiwan), and both are often seen as inferior in the past. So why didn’t they edit that hairy patch out of the “Chinese” man as they did with the American and Venezuelan? On the other hand, chest hair is making a comeback in the US, so that US ideal may not be correct either. But chest hair will never be popular in Asia because of simple genetics. My guess is that it’s probably also true of Indonesia and the Philippines, despite the Islamic and Western influence on those countries.
DDstar1me
@Glücklich……LMAO. I can’t with you guys lol.
Stefano
@Glücklich: Yes you forgot something…take some vacation.
Jer955
I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But I feel that the majority of US men do not look like that jacked beef cake.
Bryguyf69
FEEL FREE TO SKIP MY MATHEMATICAL RANT AND GO STRAIGHT TO THE VIDEO FOR HUNKS IN SWIMWEAR!
@pastafazool: Believe it or not, beauty can be quantified and several studies have already done it. That’s not to say that the above project isn’t bogus, but the mathematization of beauty has been done for centuries. In fact, I wrote a college paper on The Mathematics of Aesthetics. One of the most prevalent constants is Phi (1.618033…), otherwise known as the Golden Ratio. You see its expression in natural objects like flowers, Nautilus shells, hair growth, etc and artists such Dali have used it. In fact, the Parthenon of Ancient Greece was built based on the ratio. Studies have shown that rectangles whose sides are based on the ratio (one side is 1.6x the length of the other) seems the most pleasing to the eye. Here’s where it gets interesting…
Some researchers claim that humans tend to prefer a body whose height to navel height is based on Phi (aka Golden Ratio). In other words, your total height should be approx. 1.6x the height of your navel. So a 6′ man should ideally have a navel that is 45″ high. The claim is debated but it’s not as outlandish as it sounds since Phi is seen in so many natural phenomena. Hence, there might be some innate preference for the ratio because it was a sign of optimal growth in early human evolution…? I have a hunky friend who studies morphogenesis so I’ll have to ask him about this.
For those more mathematically-inclined, Phi can be easily derived from the Fibonacci Series, 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21… where n is the sum of the previous two numbers. As the series goes toward infinity, ratio of each successive pair converges to Phi. For example, 8 divided by 5 is approx 1.6. By the 40th number, we get Phi to 15 decimal places. Amazingly, Phi can also be derived in many other, often beautiful, ways.
http://www.intmath.com/numbers/math-of-beauty.php
I’ve cued the following videos to the beefcake in swimsuit part but rewind to the beginning for an interesting intro.
https://youtu.be/EsL1xat7aPs?t=3m26s
robho3
I’m not sure what the point of this is.
alterego1980
The only thing the world has proven to me today is an all out assault on Photoshop skills. This is atrocious. I understand in some countries photoshop might be a little too high tech but I am disappointed in many of the examples. Take some pride in your work people!
Stefano
With a 2 minutes search on thé internet, i found this about Dr Stephen Marquardt. Enjoy !
http://www.femininebeauty.info/stephen-marquardt-phi-mask-refuted
Bryguyf69
FYI, the above video is an example of what we math geeks do for fun. Yes, some of us are so geeky that we spend our spare time doing “recreational mathematics” (used to be my favorite column in Scientific American). One wonders how I managed to snag a sexy girlfriend… lol
@pastafazool: A “universal” beauty standard is actually not too farfetched. And yes, I recognize that “universal” is a misnomer since we don’t know what they like on Pluto, etc. That said, some serious academic papers have been written about it. I believe one was even published in the prestigious journal, Nature, and made the front page of the NY Times. Essentially, it found that some facial features seem to be universally desired across cultures. In fact, the features were mathematically quantifiable, i.e. the distances between eyes. If I remember correctly, a strong jaw line in men was desired by all of the cultures surveyed. More relevant to Queerty was the fact that the ideal composite male face had traditionally feminine features. I believe the ideal female face also had masculine features. The resultant composite drawings were expectedly attractive but oddly generic.
In these days of facial recognition technology, it’s easy to see how one can maje the science of beauty very precise. Indeed, one day, we may be able to genetically manipulate how a baby will look.
Along those lines, both Playgirl and the gay porn magazine, In Touch, did their own ideal men composites (yes, I got to read and watch A LOT of porn in the name of academia). If I’m not mistaken, the body parts were taken from various celebrities and porn stars. And likewise, the results were attractive but oddly generic.
A related — and very Queerty-relevant — Swedish study found that non-homophobes tend to find gay men more attractive than straight men. Interestingly, although the researchers were Swedish, they used subjects from UC Berkeley. I forget how the study was structured and what the controls were, but the bottomline was that if the subjects were told that a male model was gay, they tend to rate the model as more attractive. I’m not sure if the researchers asked whether the models were actually gay (which may be important since gay men often have more feminine features).
FYI, the PBS program NOVA, had an episode devoted to the topic of quantifying beauty. I’ll upload it if I can find it in my archives.
Glücklich
@Stefano:
Actually I *did* forget something:
Blah blah afraid to disappoint his queer-hating daddy by being gay so he butches it up.
Any guesses?
Vacation? What’s that?
Stefano
@Glücklich:
Blah blah afraid to disappoint his queer-hating daddy by being gay so he butches it up.
Any guesses?
Hummmm no. I don’t really follow conversations so…tell me !
If you ask me what “vacation” is, you really need a vacation. 😉
Stefano
There is a shorter version of the critic of Dr.Stephen Marquardt here :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18175168
Bryguyf69
@Stefano: I’m not sure why you are refuting Marquardt’s theories since I did not once reference him, nor the influence of Phi on facial features. Scientific quantization of the face did not occur until the 20th century, but studies on the phi and the body have been done since Ancient Greece. And the results have been mixed. The fact is that no study can refute that we may have an innate preference for phi. That’s because we live in a time where innate preferences are easily overpowered by cultural norms and peer pressure. Unless you can find someone who has been isolated from other humans since birth, there is simply no way to control for cultural influence — especially since any preference for phi is most likely a mere vestige of our evolutionary past. And no, you can’t perform the studies on infants either because they don’t have the visual ability to detect/differentiate something as subtle as phi ratios.
As for the refute of Marquardt… I’ve never been his fan, but as a someone who designs/analyzes studies for a living, I have to say that his critics are also flawed. Basically, saying that Marquardt’s methodology is flawed does not prove that his hypothesis is wrong. It simply says that the hypothesis is unproved. To prove him wrong, you need to perform your own study and come out with opposing results.
Stefano
@Bryguyf69: First, the link you provide (http://m.intmath.com/numbers/math-of-beauty.php) clearly refer to Dr. Stephen works (Credit: This portion is based on the work of Dr. Stephen Marquardt (external site).)
Secondly, you wrote :”to prove him wrong, you need to perform your own study and come out with opposing results.” False. It is the person who claims something that have to prove what he claims. This is called the scientific method. Sorry but i don’t beleive anythimg you say. It is just blah blah blah. It may impress some people but not me. Have a nice day ! 🙂
Bryguyf69
@Stefano: So what if the link I provided mentioned Marquardt? The question is whether I — or anyone else — mentioned him. Just because a website I referenced said something, does that mean I support everything it says? SO when someone provides a link to anything, i.e. a WIkpedia page or Youtube video, it means that s/he agrees with everything on that link? If so, you’re obviously used to webpages that have only one or two paragraphs. If I had wanted to talk about Marquardt, I would have mentioned it. Duh.
Yeah, right. Just saying “false” is a valid argument in your book. Pathetic. You obviously have no idea what the Scientific Method, or scientific research entails. Your retort doesn’t even apply to what I wrote. QUOTE where I said that Marquardt was correct. All I said was that Marquardt wasn’t proven wrong. Duh. Nowhere did I say that he was right. Study some epistemology if you don’t understand the difference. You need not believe me. Call your local university or ask your physician. And seriously, look up the Scientific Method if you that your description is correct. lol
The most pathetic thing is that your ignorance reminds me of Maggie Gallagher and NOM’s attempts to “prove” that gay marriage and gay parenthood are harmful. Instead providing proof of harm, they simply point out the flaws in studies showing no harm (which isn’t hard to do since no study is perfect). Sorry, but to prove harm, you actually have to prove harm. Showing that the opposing side is flawed is not logically equivalent to proving that your side is correct. Duh.
And seriously, do you think that I, or anyone else, cares whether you’re impressed or not? Why did you feel the need to make that announcement? What did that add to the topic. Do you think I post to impress you? THINK about it.
Glücklich
@Stefano:
I just happen to have a really good memory.
Queerty has who I derisively refer to as a resident shrink, Atticus, who without fail turns every post on which he opines into a daddy-issues (as in father who raised you) thing. If you disagree with him, it’s because your daddy hates you for being gay. TIRESOME.
Masc Pride
The Russian version of him is clearly the hottest.
ProfessorMoriarty
I really wish Queerty would spend the $1.95 to fix the way their fucking website renders on iPhone Safari browsers.
Hillers
@Glücklich: You win the internet for the day. Nay–for the week.
BigWill
I saw this earlier in the week on HuffPo. I like the beefy Russian look, and confirming the findings I guess, the U.S. I guess Americans have a thing for strong, defined shoulders; none of the others have those shoulders (Egypt and Philippines are what we consider buff but their shoulders don’t have that broad, defined look).
cutemikey
@Stefano: *yawn* You’re truly delusional if you think anyone here cares about impressing you. I know I don’t. And based on your pointless replies to @Glücklich and @bryguyf69, I’d say no one is impressed by you. bryguy69’s post are helluva more interesting, informative, well-argued and yes, more impressive than yours.
cutemikey
Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries so why is he the only one with colorful underwear? This must be a joke, right?
cutemikey
@Bryguyf69: Thanks for the golden ratio thing. Our 9th grade teacher actually had us choose the most appealing rectangles. After hundreds of tries with randomly drawn rectangles on the computer, sure enough we liked the ones closest to the golden ratio. Too bad we didn’t get to rate those hunks in the video!!!
dutchman67
@pastafazool:
So. Everywhere but in the United States, men should have saggy tits, and baby-birthin hips?
Johnathan
HILARIOUS !!! UNITED STATES LOOKS LIKE LUMBERJACK HIPSTER !!!! RIDICULOUS!!!
scotty
today i learned i am Serbian.