Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXideal masculine beauty. It is mainly because the anestheticcharacter of a woman's sexual region is almost imperceptiblein any ordinary and normal positionof the nudebody that the feminine form is generally considered amore esthetically beautiful object of contemplation thanthe masculine. Apart from this character we are bound,from a strictly esthetic point of view, to regard the maleform as at least equally beautiful. The female form, moreover,often over-passes swiftly the climax of its beauty.With the growth of culture the very methods whichhad been adopted to call attention to the sexual organswere retained by a further development for the purposeof concealing them. Even from the first the secondarysexual characters have been a far more widespread methodof sexual allurement than the primary sexual characters,and in the most civilized countries today theystill constitutethe most attractive of such methods to the majorityof the population.It is the main secondary sexual characterswhich usually present themselves as beautiful inwell-developed persons.Among these secondarysexual characters most of theindigenous peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa regardthe large hips and buttocks of women as an importantfeature of beauty. This character represents the most decidedstructural deviation of the feminine type from themasculine, a deviation demanded by the reproductivefunction of women, and in the admiration it arousessexual selection is thus working in a line with naturalselection, though, except in a moderate degree, it has notusually been regarded as at the same time in a linewith the claims of purely esthetic beauty. But apart fromthese high claims, nearly everywhere large hips and buttocksare regarded as a mark of beauty, and the averageman is of this opinion even in the most esthetic countries.[68]