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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

I don't really have this, but also I don't watch that much TV, I don't read magazines or look at instagram. The people I spend time around mostly aren't people like that, and also I've put a lot of work into unlearning conventional beauty standards, with some very interesting results.

I wish there were a movement to reject the normalization of artificial beauty.

Isn't that in some sense part of what feminism is?

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BabyCroc wrote

with some very interesting results

Is there any way you could elaborate?

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

It's not easy without describing myself more than I would like to.

I can say that part of my unlearning of these standards did a lot of things, one major one I'm only recently dealing with is that I'm only really attracted to people once I get to know them.

Before, (back when I mostly thought I was cishetero, with very racialised and normative attraction), I looked at people I was 'supposed' to be attracted to (tall, model types), and had a kind of learned attraction for them.

Unlearning this has landed me in a position where my current best understanding of myself is that not only am I potentially attracted to anyone (rather than a very small portion of one gender), but that I'm not actually attracted to anyone until I've gotten to know them.

I'd say about one in 500 people I have an immediate "oh they're attractive" moment, but it usually just passes when I think about how they're probably an asshole.


And as regards myself it's often even more confusing, because I really like how I look, while also having dysphoria and other confusing things. But unlearning expectations about how how people should look has really made it easier for me to be able to see certain body areas/parts of mine in ways that fit my gender rather than others.

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AlexanderReidRoss OP wrote

For sure. But I mean like a grassroots #metoo-type movement that strikes back against body shaming and the normalization of women as disposable sex objects.

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