As a German I can say that this is absolutely not true
When German cops do police brutality they burn you to death in your cell
Explanation: https://www.youtube.com/embed/IB2PxDyGvqw
Some protesters against the Stuttgart21 project would probably disagree, as well as German courts.
Not to mention all the excessive violence against the anti genocide protests.
Is this an ad? Because everyone in that photo is unreasonably attractive.
I actually have had a theory since my teens (as an autistic kid with idiots for parents, disgusting school and so on, so some need to escape that), that German music and German visual design feel so clean and attractive in a very vanilla way, because that’s what was the prestigious kind of culture for the British Empire in its prime and till WWI, and that survived by inertia even a couple decades past Germans having their teeth kicked in during WWII.
What we feel to be most classical is German music, German philosophy, German perception of military history, German ideological approaches to politics (today’s left-wing movements are still mostly that or at least track their lineage to that, and today’s right-wing movements may have kinda diverged, but still like to fuzzily hint at one Austrian painter), and German visual design (what’s considered “neutral” today, fonts like Helvetica, the way accents are made, etc).
What I’m coming at - common perception of human beauty in the West may be kinda affected by typical German appearance, that specifically, more than by typical French or typical British or typical Italian appearance.
That’s dense and clearly something you’ve thought about deeply. Still wrong tho:
German cultural and intellectual influence is super significant, esp during the 18th/19th centuries (think Goethe, Beethoven, Kant), but the perception of beauty and aesthetics in the West has way broader roots. Western beauty standards largely come from antiquity—Greek and Roman ideals (symmetry, proportion, harmony). This gets revived during the Renaissance, primarily by Italian and French artists, not German ones.
German musos, philosopers, and designs, their prominence peaked in different eras (e.g., Enlightenment, Romanticism, Bauhaus) but didn’t shape Western standards of beauty or culture. Visual design like Helvetica became iconic due to functionality and simplicity, not just cos they were German…
Re physical beauty, Germanic traits might contribute to regional preferences, but broader Western standards remain influenced by Mediterranean archetypes.
That’s dense and clearly something you’ve thought about deeply.
Rather repeatedly with very big intervals. Deeply - nah.
Western beauty standards largely come from antiquity—Greek and Roman ideals (symmetry, proportion, harmony). This gets revived during the Renaissance, primarily by Italian and French artists, not German ones.
Standards of beauty are not very general.
Anyway, I meant human beauty in this particular case. Which is, first, different from many other things, second, basically some set of familiar appearances, plus health and physique conditions defined by culture of the specific society (say, when child mortality was high and hunger still common in Europe, almost overweight women were considered attractive ; BTW, demographics of developer countries can be a consequence of evolution mechanisms intended to avoid Malthusian traps, say, if there’s enough food for everyone for a short period of time, the population should grow as fast as possible, but if it is so for a long period of time, then you’d better stop, - seems counterintuitive, but in nature longer good times often precede longer bad times).
German musos, philosopers, and designs, their prominence peaked in different eras (e.g., Enlightenment, Romanticism, Bauhaus) but didn’t shape Western standards of beauty or culture.
I didn’t mean prominence really, I meant associations, and I meant specific kinds in specific contexts, not wildcard. Also by “shape” it depends which kind of influence makes the threshold. Most of the “pompous and official” European music of late XIX century seems to have been influenced quite heavily.
Also about music - well, it’s not nice to refer to authority, especially anonymous authority since I don’t remember where I’ve read it, but apparently Ralph Vaughan-Williams would disagree with you, and would consider typical European music of his youth very heavily German-influenced.
Visual design like Helvetica became iconic due to functionality and simplicity, not just cos they were German…
Obviously true, but my point was the other way around, that there’s a climate in which various approaches to aesthetic are born, and if some aesthetic becomes popular, some things general for the climate it comes from might become more accepted everywhere. A fuzzy thought really, but the closest I’ve come to rephrasing my original comment in this one.
I find a much higher percentage of people outside the US as being more attractive. I think it has a lot to do with just being healthier and eating better. Every time I visit someplace, it’s the first thing I always notice. That and how much cleaner they keep places.
Being healthy, of course, does contribute to one’s attractiveness.
But human beauty is really too subjective.
We may dislike people seeming familiar. We may like people seeming familiar more.
We may like people similar to us in appearance. We may particularly dislike people similar to us in appearance.
Also clothes affect people’s appearance quite a lot. If people in the area you do shopping for clothes are in average less like you in appearance and weight and everything, and people in some other area more, you might find them more attractive simply because the choice of clothes is a bit better, and the habit of wearing better fitting clothes.
And another very important component is what you expect to see. I mean, “how much cleaner they keep places” … which countries have you visited?
Canada, New Zealand, and Japan. I’m sure plenty don’t apply to the cleaner statement, but these places were really nice.
The weirdness on the left side of his face is actually somebody standing just behind him
Reminds me of this one:
