#but i understood the post as being about cultural myopia and the ability to comprehend the humanity of the foreign

[whetstonefires]

I take the point about historically accurate beauty norms maybe casting light on how arbitrary beauty norms are, but it rubs me the wrong way to refer to these things as grotesque/disgusting, particularly when harmless-except-for-the-societal-pressure things like egg whites and ochre are included. I care immensely about women being pressured to wear makeup and do harmful beauty routines, and yet I have an urge to my finger up at any future person looking back and going "didn't they look ~grossss" also.

hm i see that, but i read the point of that post as being about how such assessments are fundamentally hollow and flawed and shouldn't be made

like legitimately the focus of the argument wasn't even what women are pressured to do in the current society, that's merely the source of the fucked-up paradigm at issue, but the harm that we do to our ability to perceive other cultures and judge them reasonably by imposing these very specific arbitrary beauty standards into places where we are otherwise trying to visually represent some other place and time

it's not the makeup trends and norms themselves that are the Thing, it's the insidious normalization of your own cultural standards and the pretense that this thing, that is in fact very culturally contingent and mildly absurd, is inherent to humanity

'excruciatingly modern makeup in period costume' is just a nasty visible flag of the Thing

#ask #hoc est meum #obviously i cannot read the mind of the op #but i understood the post as being about cultural myopia and the ability to comprehend the humanity of the foreign #so like the future people doing the judging are being assholes as are the present people unwilling to confront historical beauty norms #that is the whole point?? #a nonny mouse #does op have asks closed or something #yenefer's glow-up in the witcher knocked me out of the story so bad #because they turned the modernity of her styling up to 11 when other characters were at 4 #with the intent being that the audience would perceive her as deeply sexy #but she looked so out of place i believed it was going to be a scene where she humiliated herself by looking like a lunatic #with no taste #because these things are so context sensitive