A cultural consensus on what's Seductive?

thedevguy · 2011-07-03T12:55:32+00:00

Is there an international consensus on what's attractive in a female or does it differ?

Yes to both questions.

Our instincts form the basis for what we find attractive. In every generation, there is natural variation in those instincts, but the ones that produce the most and healthiest offspring are more likely to survive. Thus, what we find attractive is primarily what produces healthy offspring that survive to have their own children.

What men find attractive in women mostly comes down to signals of youth and long-term health. Things like skin, eyes, breasts, and hair change as women age. Thus, men are attracted to those things and that naturally filters out older women. To use hair as an example, long shiny hair can only be grown by a woman who has had proper nutrition for a long time. A woman with long hair is advertising the fact that she has had access to food in the past - which suggests that she'll have access to food in the future, when she's pregnant. Hair also changes with age. It gets thinner, more easily tangled (most older women just cut if off, thinking it's not worth the effort) and blonde hair in particular changes color, getting darker with age. A woman with long blonde hair is advertising the fact that she's young.

We can perform this analysis with any physical characteristic you like - and many behaviors as well, particularly in men where behavior is more important to attractiveness than appearance.

The bottom line is that there is indeed a base, entirely naturally evolved, instinctively implemented standard for what is attractive. As a thin layer on top of that, there are slight variations resulting from local environmental conditions, or cultural idiosyncrasies. I'll give examples of cultural and environmental perturbations from the norm if you like, but I just want to make it clear that they are perturbation. Some people think that culture explains nearly all of attraction. That's ridiculous.

approached

It's true that there are also cultural behavioral norms. That explains part of why you are or are not being approached. That's different than what is attractive. A guy from a very reserved culture may find you insanely attractive, but choose not to approach you.

since I came back to my home here in Hong Kong, not so much.

There is also a well-documented tendency to prefer mates from different tribes. Jane Goodall even observed this in chimpanzees, where two groups would often have violent clashes, but if a male and female had a chance meeting alone, they would usually mate - even though the male might not be of high status. Thus, we often find foreigners inexplicably attractive. And when you travel to another country, you get hit on more. We say that white guys have a fetish for asians. Well, asian guys love the white girls too.

Heuristics · 2011-07-03T11:59:27+00:00

Do men in Hong Kong do cold approaches?

ThrowawayPUA · 2011-07-03T15:57:00+00:00

Many people are attracted to cultural and racial differences. I suspect your appeal in North America is that you're an Asian and thus seem exotic. In your home country, you're just like everyone else and don't stand out at all.

Now oddly enough, there are downsides to this. In Japan, there is a cultural issue called "kikokushijo," meaning "children returned from living outside Japan." They are presumed to have been "contaminated" by foreign influences and unable to participate in a monocultural society like Japan. Many of them are shunned socially. Perhaps in your case, HK is a little more multicultural and you could use your own multicultural background to help set yourself above others and be perceived as more attractive and higher value.

TofuTofu · 2011-07-03T16:49:49+00:00

It varies highly. What Japanese men tend to find attractive is quite different from what African-Americans find attractive.

Title	A cultural consensus on what's Seductive?
Author	notformoney
Upvotes	2
Comments	10
Date	July 3, 2011 10:39 AM UTC (15 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/seduction
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/seduction/comments/ifkz5/a_cultural_consensus_on_whats_seductive/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/seduction/a-cultural-consensus-on-whats-seductive.1319892 https://theredarchive.com/post/1319892

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