I decided to make another post about peoples perception.

I just watched a movie "Shallow Hal" and people took it just as a good comedy, but the reality is exactly as the movie portrays - so, why are people still blind even though that movie gave out a big message to the people?

People are influenced from the very moment that they are born, conditioned to accept what things fit in the wide spectrum of so called normality. Anything too big, too small, too unusual is cast aside as not normal. Thefore people avoid them because they become embarrassed, usually because of what other people might think, if you are seen associated with those people who are outside of the "social norm box"
This is disrespective of whether or not that person in every way imaginable suits your lifestyle and beliefs, image is everything (and that saying "image is everything" is something my mother brainwashes me with everyday)

How many people here have decided to look for people only who have a kind heart to get to know a person before they judge? How many people have gone online dating places without posting a photograph and spoken to people ages before showing their photo?
If not many of you have, then try it for a while and see what happens.
You will find someone 100% in your ideas of life, lifestyles and beliefs, if you look only for that. The person will sound absolutely perfect for you.
This has happened to me several times. However, when a person asks for a full length pic of me they get completely turned off me or accuse me of photoshop. I am petit faced and very small bones, but my hips and stomach are the only things which are large. I look pregnant. But the whole rest of my body is slim, it's unusual I know.
But when I show men this, they sometimes get disgusted because they want what they percieved the rest of my body to be with a head shot photo. They even agree my personality is everything they wanted and they are really hurt that I am not thin. They get irrational and attack me for it. Many say come back to me in 3 months time when you have finished a cabbage soup diet, because I dont want to miss out on someone like you. HELLO! They wouldnt need to miss out on someone like me if they opened their frigging narrow minded eyes and see that its the person inside that means everything, the person who will stick around if you get disfigured, ill etc. And most of the time when somebody is in love they make that little bit more effort to be healthy for that person, so it would be inevitable that some people might diet once the relationship is established, because the relationship would give that person confidence, motivation, a reason to live. (ok, what I just said there might be a little shallow in it self) but it is more shallow not to go out with someone who is otherwise 100% perfect for you other than their weight, buck teeth or whatever else they have!

Because I understand the media brainwashes people to have a perception which is acceptable by the majority (even people who are ugly, avoid ugly people because of it) Because I understand what kind of mind control the world is under, I get to know the person months before I consider dating them. I've had some people which have made others faint or ask me if I am ok, because they are so unusual. I've gone out with someone whose suffered from gigantism at 6ft 10, and he had a bad heart, people first look at his size and thinks he would kill me if he got the horn because he is like 21 inches taller than me. Then people try and influence your decision by being ridiculous by stating that, they dont live long or whatever. like they do when someone likes a person who is overweight... ok, ok you say that they are sweet etc, but how long would have with them before their heart packs in? Now, this gets me really pissed off - because my grandmother has been 95kg all her life, thats around 230 pounds, shes 86! She used to be a life guard, shes never ever been thin in her whole life!
My grandma who was always 50kg around 7 stone, she had 6 heart attacks in her life and 2 blood clots, and died aged 69.

The meaning of this thread... get to know a person before you see what their body is like.

Because I've known some really beautiful angelic looking people, who seem like the boy or girl next door to turn out to be real nasty bastards and bitches. Now I talk from experience. Because although I say I had all these problems in my past. When I was slim, very slim, I was like a model and very vain and I was an evil cow to anyone who didnt match me. That again, isn't the persons fault. It is the influenced they have succomb to by the media, their families, their friends, peer pressure, so they become blind, their perception becomes altered.
It is your duty, to help peoples perception change - by not adding to their influence, that thin is beautiful, blond is perfection, or that beauty and brains are seperate and can never be in the same force.

Because again, when I was thin, I had lots of model offers etc - but no one treated me as though I was intelligent, when I came out with long words and scientific meanings to things, people would laugh at me and not take me seriously, because they think my knowledge came from a magazine, or that you had to be beautiful or intelligent, never both.
I just wished people would become less shallow.

Tina xxx

My ideal woman is thin and somewhat large breasted, but only my first wife in anyway came close to that. My second and now third look more like you describe yourself. But my present wife came by it through the right of passage of having 6 sons, before we had a daughter together.

But I find in life, we often or seldom do not get what we want, that is just life.

But it did not help when her first 3 husbands wanted her to stay at home, when she was used to exercising and going to fitness clubs. Dealing with the stress of it all, and also being a senstive, she turned to junk food sweets, and now she is paying the price; 100 lbs over weight, and type II diabetes.

My image of more perfect woman gets in the way, and it affects her too, knowing I think that way.

It did not help to see the mild prono mags when I was a young teenager in the 60s, it form that image in my mind.

Though even before that, I was replused by fat people. I think that comes from my ancestors and genes. I have read scientific articles on procreation selection in humans and other animals. It is about suvival of the species and those that are like you.

Birds of a feather flock together, more to it then you think.

Reseach was done, and they found that most men were atracted to a certan ratio between hips, waist and breats size. Amazingly, most women within those specs are the most fertile; so it is all about passing on your genes, and suvival of the most fit or adaptiive. Animals choose their sexual mates with thier own criteria, by size or color or etc.

Media exposure though just feeds into to all of it.

People also seem to choose mates by pheromones and different immume systems, which could make their off spring healthier and less prone to diseases. This is desides mental and spiritual attraction.

I married my first wife, she was very sexual and slim, first real love. But she turned out to be an emotional nymp, wanting sex 24/7. She decided to leave me, instead of seeking sex while married, knowing I would not be able to handle the arrangement.

Second wife was a little over weight, but afterwards realize it was a bounce off, from my first wife. She was mentally abusive and finally after 17 years left, to save my health and sanity.

My present wife, decided to marry someone like my mother, the first two were more likem father, especially the second. She was over weight, and had 5 sons, talk about a night mare, the kids, not my wife. They were all mentally stressed social deviant hypersenstives.

But my wife was a shiatsu therapist, who I meet in our church. When she first touched me, to work on me, energy flowed between us. We both knew we had meet before we came to earth, and that we had promised to meet if we could and help each other make it through life and return to Heavenly Father.

I choose to full fill my comitment to her, inspite of how she looked and we started our marriage that way. Times have been rough on and off, and we both polished our rough edges on each other rough edges and past spousal excess baggage. Things are better, but it has taken nearly 10 years to arrive where we are at now.

The biggest problems was my sensitivity to here emotional anger, and her to my idealistic way of thinking and seeing things. She did not like being fixed, and brought to my level, so I had to be retrained, and she was too.

I married her because I loved her, but her body does get in the way. More on her part then mine. She knows what I like in human form and feels uncomfortable about it, which I understand. Being a Empath, how I could not.

Except that also adds to the problem too, her feeling less desirable to me, I feel the same too, so it is compounded. I tell her, if she does not like how I respond to her, change how you think of yourself, I know much easier said then done.

I hope I have not carried this post off course.

To speak more on media contaminating mental pictures. You are correct, the first nude one sees, I think espeically men, sets it up, so you are always comparing everything else to it. And I guess being a Idealist/perfectionist, make life that much harder for me and those around me.

The media exposure of nude bodies, creates expectation in men, and they want the same. If men only every saw their own wives, and vise versa, they would never know they were missing something, and the focus would then bem more personality and etc.

Eh - I have to disagree with you on this Knight - humans as a general rule have very vivid imaginations - I can't imagine (no pun intended) that a person wouldn't be able to imagine that another body (however fully clothed) might be better (or worse) than the one to which they are bound through matrimony.

Just an opinion

I'm sorry you fell in love with what you saw
I'm sorry you fell in love with what you heard
I'm sorry fell in love with what you felt
I'm sorry you never loved me

I agree in part when you put it like that. I have a very wild creative imagination. But it stems from what I have seen, not what I have not seen. I have many pics of cloth women, and then seem then in pictures without, and sometimes words cannot describe how bad they really look, if I may say that, for a better way to say it.

For ones imagination to flair, it has to have something to work from. I find that you cannot get something from nothing, just like matter cannot be destoryed or created, but only changed form one form to another.

I might imagine what a woman might look like under clothes, but if I had never seen a naked woman before, it does notr really give me full details.

Though I can say, even in clothes, one could tell if you like the form, tall or short, think or plump, or more hour glass in shape.

Then then some of my feelings stem from my own bodily image. It was great,, now is ok, but I have always been very selfconscience about my body and others as well.

I assume that some of my feelings and impressions may come from my ancestors, as inherited character tracts and impressions, they do in other areas. I know that my mother's mother felt that mens bodies were great and that hers and womans in generally were filthy and dirty. I guess that may of been a common impression with some women born and raised up in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

I seem to have inherited more of what I am that side of the family.

I find when I answer some one, and they respond back, I discover more about myself, then I do about others. Some times it has caused me to realize some things are not me and what I really think. Often we have so many thinks we have not thought about in a long time, like old out of date data in a computer, which need deleted and flushed.

The media does influence - and the part that is most important is that it objectifies the human body - causing us to separate physical features from our sense of the whole person. That is as much the issue as the focus on thin, tall, northern European-featured, etc..

Check out this website

http://www.about-face.org/

The media does put unrealistic expectations on us which are false expectations, but the socially accepted standard of love the person for who they are, not what they look like which is also a false expectation. People are simply not attracted to everybody they meet (and it's just as well!)

QuietKnight is quite right when he talks about the research that has been done in attraction. While the mind and spirit of a person definitely plays a role men and women subconsciously (or consciously) look for a partner that is fit, healthy and produce the best off-spring, just like all the animals in the kingdom do.

What I find interesting is the role reversal that is found between humans versus the rest of the kingdom. In the vast majority of other species it is the males role to attract the female. Look at the extravagant displays of fighting, winning territory, mating dances and physical beauty that species have evolved to attract the females! And all the females get to pick and choose whoever they like. Watch any nature program... it's almost always the males trying to win the females. It is truly remarkable how the roles have reversed to now where is it the female humans that get dressed up, put on make up and are the ones dancing on the dance floor to attract men. Girls... we've got it all wrong!

The standard model body idealized today does not have sufficient percentage body fat to be fertile.

So of course physical attraction is a piece of attraction - but we have gone over the top in our ability to separate it and place unrealistic expectations on people that cause them much suffering.

Take a break from modern media and check out Renaissance paintings of the goddess Venus.

This is so not me, I have always been attracted to the odd guys, "nerds" anybody who is different. I dont have no clue why, but Im considered very attractive by many people, and I have had the all American blonde haired blue eyed guys falling for me many times, but wasnt attracted to them at all. I like what I like, my husband is a redhead with an awkward smile, but I love it. Im attracted to people who are different. My suggestion, is to accept your body the way it is and love it anyways because I see people all the time who are with people whose bodies are different in many ways, some seem like odd couples to others, but to me, hey they like each other. Maybe your going for a certain type too, certain types of guys hence, the ones who think they are so attractive, can be more arrogant, exspecially somebody who is going to tell you that you need to go on a soup diet or anything else of the sort, let it go, you dont need that kind of abuse and the only thing you are losing is someone who could be emotionally and verbally abusive. If you want to tone and shape up those parts of your body, great, if you dont, somebody is going to love you anyways. I know this sounds cliche, but its true.

I agree with soulsearcher on this one. I never seek or know the "type" of girl I'm going to dig. I have just left it up to fate and it's worked like that for me, they'll come into my life and it'll be someone special, probably not what the average shallow population would go for, but it fulfills me and it's all that matters. It's about love in the end. It's what matters. Cause as long as you love someone, they will be beautiful to you no matter what.

Honestly, I've always cared about looks.

It's not the ONLY thing that matters, but by human nature, it really does matter to me to some extent.

I mean, if I found an ugly person who had a lot in common with me and had an amazing personality, I may consider...

but all in all I like both personality and looks. I mean, who says that you can't have both, eh?

I've also had this problem when I can't date people who don't find me to be attractive. It just makes it awkward. Physical intimacy's a biggie for me.

Looks aren't everything...but they do matter to some extent. It's all about balance, really.

Absolutely, but again that's all relative. You may think someone is gorgeous, and someone else may think they are below average. Plus when you're into someone for who they are, they should be attractive to you, and if not than it's not the person for you. Would you agree?

Yes, I do agree. Beauty is the eye of the beholder.

And yes, at times the people you adore do tend to grow on you...

unless they are absolutely hideous enough for no one to think that they are attractive, of course. But those are a rare breed.

Those are the ones that come into your life when you aren't searching for them. The soul mates.

I don't really believe in soulmates lol.

You don't have to