Scarleteen

why is it that in basically all forms of art that I've seen for the most part, women, nude or otherwise are inherently pretty unless intended to be ugly fat etc, while males are depicted almost exclusively as average-ugly, with very few adonis type characters subjects etc that have that kind of beauty. Like it seems just expected to be pretty for women when that isn't the case for men

Hi bikinksterboy,

I think it depends on which form and era of art you're looking at. For instance, Greek art has a history of lovingly depicting the bodies of men. There's also an element of when the art was made and what the "ideal" type of man looked like, which may not match modern ideas about what constitutes attractiveness (the same pattern applies to representations of women). That's at least the pattern I've noticed.

I'm talking about modern current media

Also, I'd sort of question whether ugliness is just as much of a construct as beauty, and as gendered. So just as we see people depicted in different ways with relation to standards of attractiveness, it is also those standards of attractiveness which are being constructed.

I will say that for a long time, men (especially white men) have been depicted in TV, Books and Movies as attractive because of their power, wealth and confidence rather than their bodies. I'm thinking of 'Big' in sex in the city, or 'Christian Grey' or even 'Tony Soprano' and characters like that. There are still physical attributes which are valued but I agree it seems less strict than it has been for women in most visual media from the past 60 years at least. I am happy that I see a lot more diversity in body shapes being celebrated now than I did a decade ago but there is still a lot of moving goalposts of how women 'should' look.

I think we should just get real and admit that attractiveness and aesthetics are different. I love the way that people use fashion and fetish and style to rock and celebrate their own body shape, and also love how plenty of people simply don't give a f about their appearance either way which is itself pretty awesome. We are also not all super comfortable with our bodies either. But none of that seems to get in the way of attraction when we have a connection with someone. So attractiveness really, it seems to me, comes from connection, of which, style and sometimes shared (at times problematic) standards can be one part, but not the whole.

(We should also mention that 'media' is really varied in itself, there are lots of competing media, some of which we ourselves are making all the time and posting on the internet or through our art or journalism etc)