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

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXbe said to have an objectivelyesthetic basis. This esthetichuman ideal is variously modified in different countries,and even in the same country at different periods, by atendency, prompted by a sexual impulse which is notnecessarily in harmony with esthetic canons, to emphasizeor to repress one or other of the prominent secondarysexual characters.Another tendency which is apt to an even greater extentto limit the cultivation o the purely esthetic ideal ofbeauty is the influence of national or racial type.To therace the woman who most com-the mostaverage man of everypletely embodies the type of his race is usuallybeautiful, and even mutilations and deformations oftenhave their origin in the effort to accentuate the racialand con-type. Eastern women possess by nature largespicuous eyes, and this characteristic they seek still furtherto heighten byart. The Ainu are the hairiest of races,and there is nothing which they consider so beautiful ashair.It is difficult to be sexually attracted to persons whoare fundamentally unlike ourselves in racial constitution.Thus it frequently happens that this admiration for ourown racial characteristics leads to the idealization of featureswhich are far removed from esthetic beauty. Thefirm and rounded breast is certainly a feature of beauty,but among many of the black peoples of Africa the breastsfall at an early age, and here we sometimes find that thehanging breast is admired as beautiful.To make the analysis of sexual beauty fairly completemust be added at least one other factor: the influence ofindividual taste. Every individual, at all events in civilization,within certain narrow limits builds up a feminineideal of his own, in part on the basis of his special organizationand its demands, in part on the actual accidental