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Author Topic: Impossible to get rid of this complex  (Read 1466 times)

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Knik

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Impossible to get rid of this complex
« on: July 19, 2017, 08:54:49 AM »

I started to go over this. I stopped coming here, but everythings lead us to keep this complex. People are talking about it often, and when they are asking you it's difficult to avoid the question. Outside, there is always this obsession that make us compare to people around. You think people are not judging (short, average or tall it's same) you for this, but they are. Not in front of you, of course.
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TIBIKE200

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Re: Impossible to get rid of this complex
« Reply #1 on: July 19, 2017, 11:33:51 AM »

How do you know they judge you for this not in front of you? Especially you who is 173cm
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Jack1066

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Re: Impossible to get rid of this complex
« Reply #2 on: July 19, 2017, 11:55:47 AM »

I have to say I hear people judge a lot too.

I don't want to help bring this forum down so I don't tend to write stuff like this. But the other day I was walking behind a (tall- maybe 5'9") girl and her mother in the street. The mother was telling her daughter (who sounded upset) to split up with her boyfriend because he was short/shorter than her. "He's not!" The girl said, "he just slouches..." If you think about it that's insane. But I've heard it from other girls too; if they date a man under x or y height (normally 5'10" or 6') their family will be disappointed, whereas they'll be proud if they date a tall man.

I heard another group of students basically laughing at a short man they were talking about (although it was specifically a short and skinny man). Again, just a conversation I overheard in the street.

I do live in a  ty and image obsessed place, though.

I'm not saying this happens a lot but it does happen. People do think about it and people do judge. I guess all sorts of aholes body shame people and judge them on their appearance, so it shouldn't be taken personally, but it's hard when you also have an issue with your body image. Body image problems aren't an individual thing that can exist apart from society, just like anorexia can't exist apart from the media's unrealistic standards of beauty and so on.
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TIBIKE200

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Re: Impossible to get rid of this complex
« Reply #3 on: July 19, 2017, 11:59:29 AM »

I have to say I hear people judge a lot too.

I don't want to help bring this forum down so I don't tend to write stuff like this. But the other day I was walking behind a (tall- maybe 5'9") girl and her mother in the street. The mother was telling her daughter (who sounded upset) to split up with her boyfriend because he was short/shorter than her. "He's not!" The girl said, "he just slouches..." If you think about it that's insane. But I've heard it from other girls too; if they date a man under x or y height (normally 5'10" or 6') their family will be disappointed, whereas they'll be proud if they date a tall man.

I heard another group of students basically laughing at a short man they were talking about (although it was specifically a short and skinny man).

I'm not saying this happens a lot but it does happen. People do think about it and people do judge. I guess all sorts of aholes body shame people and judge them on their appearance, so it shouldn't be taken personally, but it's hard when you also have an issue with your body image. Body image problems aren't an individual thing that can exist apart from society, just like anorexia can't exist apart from the media's unrealistic standards of beauty and so on.

What a crapty mother.

 But it's interesting as it shows there is a high social pressure to date "perfect men" and not this "biological evolution thing" which is talked about especially in reddit.
  I have heard people laugh about frail men (I admit I am also guilty at times.. Especially if the guy is cky or something like that).
Also me, after I bulked up, people and women told me that before I had a  ty body and looked frail and stuff. This is why I reccomend people of all heights (especially the average height guy here) to lift because the comments I got afterwards (and how I was treated by women) changed dramatically. Even girl who I am friends with made some rude remark on how I was before in comparison to now (physically speaking).
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Jack1066

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Re: Impossible to get rid of this complex
« Reply #4 on: July 19, 2017, 12:01:08 PM »

Yep, she cared more about bull  social "standards" than her daughter's happiness it seems, but this kind of thing does not seem uncommon. And I think this kind of pressure happens to shorter men and women who date them more than most people would think.
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Knik

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Re: Impossible to get rid of this complex
« Reply #5 on: July 19, 2017, 12:11:34 PM »

How do you know they judge you for this not in front of you? Especially you who is 173cm

That's the case for everybody, tall or short
and that's not especially negative, just remarks about it
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Jack1066

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Re: Impossible to get rid of this complex
« Reply #6 on: July 19, 2017, 12:33:13 PM »

Yeah. I've studied evolutionary psychology and beauty norms a bit in recent months. Things are complicated. This is my theory, anyway, based on what I see the evidence as:

There are almost no universal standards of beauty, save for a few: a waist to shoulder ratio of 0.75 or below is seen as universally attractive in men (I have 0.70 and I don't work out at all, and my shoulders are, I think, average breadth, so I am sure all men can get this) and a waist to hip ratio of about 0.70 in women. Also, of course, a pretty face (generally I mean facial symmetry by that, although that isn't always the best predictor, and also for example a big nose is attractive in some societies and not in others).

After that, beauty norms become a lot more complex. A lot of beauty norms have nothing at all to do with sxxual dimorphism, but are still tied to people's culturally conditioned ideas of masculinity or femininity, for example, a lot of western women don't like Asian men because western people are socially conditioned with a racist idea of Asian men as effeminate; conversely many western men see black women as less feminine, because black people are seen as hypermasculine. It has nothing to do with black or Asian people being less "beautiful", because there is very little empirically verifiable objectivity in beauty- much more to do with the social associations with certain physical qualities (which is why I used the example of race, which works really well to explain this imo).

Height is not an important signifier of masculinity (in men) in most non-Eurasian cultures (Native American, Aboriginal, African). However, other traits, such as stockiness, tend to be. Of course, short men tend to be stockier than tall men on average...  In fact, many societies do not have a male-taller norm, and the Nilotic peoples in Sudan are an example of a group who specifically have an equal-height norm between men and women (explained by their very tall average height, imo- which is probably not physically healthy).

We can say the same thing for whether fat women are seen as attractive in x or y society or not.

The trait of tallness (in men) is preferred in industrial societies where tallness is a very good indicator of childhood wealth. It was also part of the classical European standards of beauty going back to ancient and medieval times- as was slenderness in women- but it only became most pronounced in the industrial era, when coincidentally problems like famine were eradicated, but also urban poverty and malnutrition among the working class meant average height decreased substantially.

So slenderness, within reason, and height, both became tied to health- that explains the evolutionary pressure. But more importantly, both are tied to social status. Healthy slenderness and tall height both reflect female "smallness" and male "largeness" in ways that we associate with high social status/class.

How this will go in the future, I don't know, but beauty norms always exist inside their own cultural, historical, and social context. Beauty norms are just one way in which gendered relations are expressed imo
« Last Edit: July 19, 2017, 12:57:16 PM by Jack1066 »
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Knik

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Re: Impossible to get rid of this complex
« Reply #7 on: July 19, 2017, 12:43:32 PM »

Yeah. I've studied evolutionary psychology and beauty norms a bit in recent months. Things are complicated. This is my theory, anyway, based on what I see the evidence as:

There are almost no universal standards of beauty, save for a few: a waist to shoulder ratio of 0.75 or below is seen as universally attractive in men (I have 0.70 and I don't work out at all, and my shoulders are average breadth, so I am sure all men can get this) and a waist to hip ratio of about 0.70 in women.

After that, beauty norms become a lot more complex. A lot of beauty norms have nothing at all to do with sxxual dimorphism, but are still tied to people's culturally conditioned ideas of masculinity or femininity, for example, a lot of western women don't like Asian men because western people are socially conditioned with a racist idea of Asian men as effeminate; conversely many western men see black women as less feminine. It has very little to do with black or Asian people being less "beautiful", imo, because there is very little empirically verifiable objectivity in beauty.

Height is not an important signifier of masculinity (in men) in most non-Eurasian cultures (Native American, Aboriginal, African). However, other traits, such as stockiness, tend to be. Of course, short men tend to be stockier than tall men on average...  In fact, many societies do not have a male-taller norm, and the Nilotic peoples in Sudan are an example of a group who specifically have an equal-height norm between men and women (explained by their very tall average height, imo- which is probably not physically healthy).

We can say the same thing for whether fat women are seen as attractive in x or y society or not.

The trait of tallness (in men) is preferred in industrial societies where tallness is a very good indicator of childhood wealth. It was also part of the classical European standards of beauty going back to ancient and medieval times- as was slenderness in women- but it only became most pronounced in the industrial era, when coincidentally problems like famine were eradicated, but also urban poverty and malnutrition among the working class meant average height decreased substantially.

So slenderness, within reason, and height, both became tied to health- that explains the evolutionary pressure. But more importantly, both are tied to social status. Healthy slenderness and tall height both reflect female "smallness" and male "largeness" in ways that we associate with high social status/class.

How this will go in the future, I don't know, but beauty norms always exist inside their own cultural, historical, and social context. Beauty norms are just one way in which gendered relations are expressed imo


How you explain it about Afro American ?
And also modern westernized asian countries (South Korea, Japan)
It seems that tallness tend to be generalized in every westernized countries but even in a westernized country it's not general - Aboriginal for example-
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Jack1066

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Re: Impossible to get rid of this complex
« Reply #8 on: July 19, 2017, 12:48:26 PM »

Because African Americans, Koreans, Chinese live in the same socio-economic set up as most of the rest of the world. It is partly because these societies have been colonised by European standards of beauty (although some of these also existed, albeit not as strongly, in Oriental societies pre-capitalism) but also partly because certain beauty norms present themselves as an evolutionary pressure according to the economic reality alongside that. So tallness really is attractive in men within the context of an industrial society because it does signify childhood health and social status in a way that also complies with gendered norms of male largeness.

Yes, that was what I was saying. It does not seem to exist as a strong beauty norm outside of modern capitalist societies. Neither does slenderness in women. In fact in many societies fat women are actually preferred.
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MoveUp

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Re: Impossible to get rid of this complex
« Reply #9 on: July 19, 2017, 09:42:33 PM »

The closer you are to average height, the more the "problem" is in your head than in your height.

But you are right,  it is impossible for you to get rid of the complex because it is hard wired in your neural circuitry. Fortunately you can divert attention from an obsession over height once your realize that you can have a tremendous amount of control over the thing that is the most important to control. Your mind.

Humans are conditioned to search out for what they don't have. Don't think tall people have immunity from this
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