
Originally Posted by
Lauront
We don't really need to concern ourselves about "every single culture", because we're discussing a game primarily played in the West and Japan - the "classic" here is with reference to Greco-roman statues, something familiar to both of those broader cultural groups.
Theodric just means he prefers males with more typically masculine features, like a strong jaw and a sharp nose. So rather than engaging in pointless linguistic deconstructions, let's just say that's what he's referring to and move on, yes?
If we take only the west and japanese that would still be a huge difference..and even between western countries it would change. (Googled handsome japanese men and they are quite different from us western ones)
There are some things that are the same. Seemingly we like symmetrical looking faces and find them more attractive. (They talk about liking the average: As in the average of the faces that a certain population has.) But next to the face being symmetric we also have all our indiviual preferences on top of that. So there are pointers but it still comes down to the person itself. (I for example dont find Pattinson attractive)
In the article: Facial attractiveness: evolutionary based research:
Despite some findings showing a preference for more masculine and dominant faces, several studies have shown that feminine characteristics and faces of low dominance are of increased attractiveness [...].Perrett et al. [83] presented both Japanese and Caucasian faces in their country of origin. For the male face stimuli, the shape selected by Caucasians as most attractive was significantly feminized for both the Caucasian male face and the Japanese male face continua. Similarly, Japanese participants also selected significantly feminized versions of the male stimuli for both the Japanese and Caucasian male face continua. Thus, in both cultures it was found that participants showed a preference for feminized male faces. Since then, several studies have also documented preferences for femininity [62,90, 92,93], but some similar computer graphic studies have also reported preferences for masculinity [94, 95]. Although some of this variation may be attributed to other characteristics of the faces that varied between sets of stimuli [96], this does not explain the variability in preferences.
So even in those researches there is no full conclusion on this. There some things that we all have in common (symmetric faces) but they were surprised that unlike with females, where feminine features where seemingly always considered more attractive, this was quite unclear with the male faces.
So yes its probably better to make it clear what exactly you mean and not use such a term because its just too broad. (Just like the pictures one can find, especially if you use different languages)
In the end faces do play a big role in attractivness so to make the most of us happy maybe they just need to decide to create a bigger range of faces. From a more feminine one to a Mike Vogel one to a maybe older version.
And if the body itself is more in the average range and not in range of both extremes it should make the most happy. (Of course it would be the best to have them at all)
[I also only used the source to back up my claim. Not wanting to just say stuff without saying where I got that]