(no subject)

[slammerkinbabe]

So this poll only took me ten years to do up. Holy shit, y'all. I thought no one was going to respond. I thought I was going to have to pad it out heavily with pictures of my own choosing. Yow.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM MAKING THIS POLL

• No one seems to know exactly what "conventionally attractive" and "unconventionally attractive" mean.
  
• A lot of you seem to think that if you find someone attractive, they're probably conventionally attractive to some extent. I think this demonstrates that you underestimate yourselves.
  
• Guys have an easier time of it than girls do when it comes to conventional attractiveness, I think. Not that we didn't already know this. But it strikes me that while all the guys whose pictures were submitted are fascinating-looking and generally very hot, a lot of them do have a smaller-than-Brad-Pitt's-but-still-relatively-sizeable fan base that recognizes their attractiveness. That wasn't as common among the girls, particularly the older women. It seems like irregular or unusual features in a guy are often considered unique and appealing, whereas on a girl they're more likely to be considered ugly. This only really seems to break down for guys who are "wimpy" or "dorky" looking. Or fat. Oddly, I don't think that slender/fine-boned guys quite get classed as wimpy or dorky solely on account of their slenderness or fine bones, even though you'd expect those features to be identified as effeminate, and I think this is because of the Adonis archetype. Also, I'm making all of this up, but it's fun. Also also, not being a straight girl or a gay guy, I guess I can't really speak as authoritatively as one would like about what the conventional standards for guys are. So feel free to tell me if I'm totally wrong.
  
• It's hard to find good-quality high-res photos of people who are not conventionally attractive on the Internet.
  
• So I really really wish the version of Photoshop that I have at work had a Smart Sharpen feature.
  
• This poll was neat to make because it actually did sort of refresh my mental palate and help me to fall into an alternate universe where fat and wrinkles and asymmetrical features &c. aren't hideous. Like, the first time I looked at the picture of that fat guy from Lost, I went "ew". Not admirable, but it was a visceral, unconsidered reaction. After looking at him for awhile, and then looking at the rest of the pictures for awhile, and then looking back at him? He's kinda sexy. Neat.
  
• Alfre Woodard is OMFG SO FUCKING HOT. OMGDROOL. The hair put me over the top.
  
• Opinions diverge wildly on what "conventionally attractive" means. I totally thought Alan Rickman was conventionally attractive, but at least one of you didn't, and seriously, I am so not the supreme arbiter of cultural standards of beauty. I would have done a separate question asking "which of these people, if any, do you think is conventionally attractive?" if it wouldn't have meant making a poll that contained 120 images omg.
  
• Writers are hot.

I'm sure I learned other things of interest, but I can't think what they are now. To the poll!

[Poll #747968]

(Btw, my apologies to a couple of you - once again, I decided to keep the poll humans-only. I think kristenb615 was looking for nominations for a poll awhile back that was meant to be pictures of anything sexy, not just people...)

ETA: Yes, I did vote for damn near everybody in that poll. THEY'RE HOT.
ETA2: Btw, sorry about the weird appearance of that second-to-last guy. My computer was having some difficulty reading the grayscale info in the picture and it was very hard to distinguish him from the background, so I quickly upped the contrast between his head and the background - but I did it pretty sloppily. He doesn't really have those odd angles at the back of his skull, I promise.

Comments

[shaysdays.livejournal.com]

BEEEEAAAA!

I wanted to vote just for her, because Bea rocks my socks.

(And I am sad there was no Miss Piggy. She's partly human- she's half hand...)

[shaysdays.livejournal.com]

Oh- but this test- I knew who some people were and didn't know others- and probably didn't rate them as 'attractive' because I knew nothing about their personalities- something almost entirely impossible to divorce from attraction, you know?

[jpallan.livejournal.com]

Did you see that study on face blindness? It was written up in today's Globe . . .

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

I didn't, no. I really ought to cancel my subscription to Newsweek and put the money towards a Globe subscription. ::goes to check boston.com::

[tornyourdress.livejournal.com]

After looking at him for awhile, and then looking at the rest of the pictures for awhile, and then looking back at him? He's kinda sexy. Neat.

Hee. But familiarity has SO much to do about whether we find people attractive or not. Because, y'know, they've done studies et al, but you only realise how true it is when you're going through a list like this and genuinely finding the people you've seen several times before more attractive than the unfamiliar faces.

Even though Bebe is always going to be hot. :D

[deliriums-fish.livejournal.com]

1. PRUFROCK!
2. Yes, dude, Bebe will always be hot.
3. DID I MENTION J ALFRED PRUFROCK?!

[rolypolypony.livejournal.com]

YAY! I'm glad someone submitted Stephen Frye, as I forgot to!


How can I vote 6000000 times for Hugh Laurie??

[lietya.livejournal.com]

I know! I was amused - I voted like 90% women, but then there's that ONE Hugh Laurie who rocked my socks more than any of them. :)

(....I blame you for the fact that I just said "rocked my socks.")

[halfacricket.livejournal.com]

::weeps because Kylie forgot her girlfriend's submission::

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

ACK!!! I put in all of them EXCEPT America Ferrera, but the picture was kind of blurry and pixelated so I was trying to touch it up and then I must have saved it to the wrong folder or something and I DON'T KNOW WHAT I DID OMG.

[andrewducker]

Not only do you have Hugh Laurie in twice, but the Fry and Laurie images are misnamed as the other one...

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

I had no idea which was who, the original image was of the both of them and was just called "Fry and Laurie". I went left to right. :) I didn't know one of them was Hugh Laurie, either!

[lunakitten.livejournal.com]

Ok, so I voted for a bunch myself- but I wanted to put extra on Margret Cho. Even as slender as she is now (I met her in Pasadena, and she's tiny!) she's still so beautiful!

[pisica.livejournal.com]

Wait, can you do a poll with more than 15 options?!

What I'd love, when you have another million hours free, is a poll of non-famous people only Becayse when they're all famous people, you (or I, anyway) don't think 'oh, there's a cute guy', you think 'oh, there's Stephen Fry'.

But he's cute, so....

[halfacricket.livejournal.com]

I agree. Maybe K can have everyone submit pictures of themselves, their partners, their friends, etc, and then screen the submissions so only K knows who is who. I would like that...

[givesmevoice.livejournal.com]

I voted for a lot of people without even knowing who they are. they're all really sexy though!

also, who's that completely bald chick two down from Patti? she's GORGEOUS!

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

That's some Star Trek girl. I don't know who she is, but yeah.

What is your icon from?

[claris.livejournal.com]

Thank you for putting in J. Garafalo in her pre-blond era. 'cause as one girl to another, J., honey? I'm straight & a bit of a gym rat, and even I know that the blond thing was a bad bad idea.

Also - ooh, Hugh Laurie. I don't care if he may technically be old enough to be my dad, he's hot. ;)

[kokopellinelli]

Wait, pre-blond? Janeane Garafalo is BLOND now?

WHAT?

*cries* Nooooooo.

[ems.livejournal.com]

I am officially annoyed that Hugh Laurie as Hugh Laurie has only 5 votes whereas Hugh Laurie as House has 14. STUPID PEOPLE. HE'S NOT HOTTER JUST BECAUSE HE HAS AN AMERICAN ACCENT AND AN ATTITUDE PROBLEM. HE IS JUST HOT.

Ahem.

Unless half the people didn't realise they were the same chap. Also you are really missing out not knowing who Stephen Fry is. You would like him. :)

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

I had *no idea* they were both him, and even looking at them together I'm having difficulty figuring out that they're the same. He just looks really different to me with those glasses. I voted for both though!

[july4th.livejournal.com]

Number 27 is Bob Dylan. I only mention this because I've been going through and looking at the file names of the images for the people I don't know and noticed that one was labeled as Guy1. So, yeah. Bob Dylan.

And I second the comment about pre-blonde Janeane Garofalo.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

Aha! I had a Guy 1, Girl 1, and Guy from Lost in there. And a mislabeled Fry-and-Laurie team.

[theholyinnocent.livejournal.com]

Wow, man, no love for Richard Simmons!

[luvs-chicago.livejournal.com]

I voted for him just cause he's a nice guy. I met him. We frolicked together on the Today Show. That was right after I met Katie Couric.


My life was fun a few weeks ago. =D

[luvs-chicago.livejournal.com]

I want to make a bunch of fake LJs and vote for hot Asian man from SVU about 84542394872 times. =D Cause he's hot.

[charliesmum.livejournal.com]

I adore Julie Walters. And you put Hugh Laurie twice, which is cool by me. Although many people seem to think he is Teh Sexors nowadays, which just proves your point about men and conventionally handsomeness.

Who is the white haired lady? (the 20th picture)

And Angela Lansbury is awesome too.

I voted for a lot of people.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

The white-haired lady is Fionnula Flanagan, and goody2shoes519 nominated her. I feel like I've seen her in something, but I can't place her.

[thenorthernline.livejournal.com]

Annie bloody Lennox? Someone's having a giggle there.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

I actually would have found her a lot sexier if she hadn't been covered in baby powder.

[banshea.livejournal.com]

A lot of "conventional attractiveness" is hardwired, really... Standards of beauty for women correlate with physical cues of health and fertility. Standards of beauty for men correlate with physical cues of strength and the ability to provide.

Then you get the cultural bits mucking around with the biological. Specifically, beauty for both genders is related to wealth. Once upon a time being kinda chunky was attractive because only the wealthy could afford to eat that much. Nowadays the cheap food is high in fat and sugar, and only the wealthy people can afford the time to work out enough to stay thin.

And I may have had more to say, but Mom called in the middle of that.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

I think you're absolutely right about beauty being related to wealth, and that as the cues for wealth change so do the standards of beauty. I'm not sure that our cultural conditioning hasn't largely overridden our hardwiring, though. Right now in America the standard of beauty for women is skeletally thin, which is definitely not correlated with reproductive capability and health (in fact, you stop menstruating after you hit a certain weight). And I think the standards of beauty for guys are much less dependent on physical appearance and more dependent on cues regarding his social status - which does have to do with the ability to provide, but it's gotten kinda warped over the years.

Hrm.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

He is awfully, awfully pretty, when he's not choking on the woodenness of his line deliveries in SVU. (I have no great love for Huang.) I think people were defining "unconventionally attractive" in a wide variety of ways - I think some people (aided by my very broad guidelines at the beginning) were defining non-Caucasian as non-conventionally attractive. It does depend on what conventions you're looking at.

[whitmanschild.livejournal.com]

I guess it's my own fault for not submitting a picture, but I was really disappointed that there wasn't a single beard in that poll. There was a little bit of stubble, a goatee and a sorta-goatee, but no full beards and nothing at all approaching burly. And only really one bigger guy, too. It's not really that I straight-up find all fat people attractive, just bulky people--be it muscley bulk or moderate flab. So, I guess I'd better submit a picture next time, eh?

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

Hee. Yeah, it would have been nice to see more variety in the guys - I was disappointed that there were no butch girls, too. But I couldn't be arsed to find one. So next time we should both contribute. :)

[going-not-gone.livejournal.com]

I find that I am attracted to faces that (to me at least) show some intelligence and humor in the expression. There may be people here who would, in a different photo, not interest me at all. I went for the ones that I thought "I could have an interesting conversation with him/her."

To some extent, I think it may have been influenced by what I already know about these people. It would be interesting, as another commenter noted, to do a similar poll with photos of people who are not famous.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think you're definitely right about that. So much of attraction is based on personality, especially when you take cultural standards of attractiveness out of the equation... it's really hard to figure out how to control for a thing like that in a picture poll.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

I find it hard to separate what I know about the actor or a character they've played from my perception of their looks; people I don't know get a purer appearance test, though they're also very contingent on their expression and pose in that particular photo.

[chavvah.livejournal.com]

Hee! 10 people said my boy "does it for them".

[kokopellinelli]

It's entirely possible and even probable that I wouldn't find D'onofrio as attractive as I find him if I wasn't totally in love with his character in Criminal Intent. I guess it's the smart, quirky, trivia-laden guys who do it for me.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Oh, it is a shame they're well-known. (Though like you said, Internet, images, yeah.) Cause, for example, B.D. Wong looks absolutely smokin' in that picture, but when I looked at it I thought "That's B.D. Wong! I know he's really short! I find men who are shorter than me a huge turn-off!"

If we're monosexual, are we supposed to vote for who we think is attractive on both sexes anyway? Because I suspect that most monosexuals would vote who they were viscerally attracted to for the one sex, and 'conventionally attractive' for the other.

[greenovalfruit.livejournal.com]

I was about to harp on about how cheaty you are, putting Hugh Laurie in twce and then I realised... half of the people voted for House HL but only 20% voted for .. well, I'm not going to pretend I know what that picture is from ... Nerdy HL.

YOU STUPID INCONSISTANT...!! BAH!

P.S. Yay Bebe!