Casting mis-steps

[zanooda2]

--- In HPFGU-Movie at yahoogroups.com, "Miles" <d2dmiles at ...> wrote:

> But back to beauty: Physical attractiveness is very much a 
> question of statistics. That means, in a given country 
> people will think of a person as handsome or beautiful, 
> if the person matches the statistical average.


zanooda:

That may be true, I don't really know :-). But I was not talking about different beauty types, actually. I don't think that Russian beauty canon is very different from American canon. I just can see that in Russia, to be called beautiful, you must be more beautiful than in America, if it makes any sense to you :-). 

What they here consider plain, we call ugly, what they call nice-looking, we see as plain, what they see as pretty, we call OK, and what they call beautiful, we consider pretty :-). It's probably because there are so many pretty young women in Russia, you just need more to stand out there :-).

Still, cultural differences exist, IMO. For example, in Russia (I'm talking about the time I was young, some 30 years ago) a woman's legs were very important. There was no way a bow-legged girl was considered beautiful, it was a big no-no :-). I don't know how to explain this, it's just the way it was, you couldn't be beautiful without straight legs :-). 

Here in America, luckily for women, the shape of legs doesn't matter at all. Sometimes I watch shows like "America's next top model", and I see that bow-legged girls, girls with knobbly, crooked legs are called gorgeous. That would be impossible in Russia, at least in Russia like I remember her :-). Don't misunderstand me, I think it's great, just noting the difference here :-).



> Miles wrote:

> So, what people will think of being a handsome young man will 
> be different in the UK and in France, and again different in 
> Russia, the USA or Germany.


zanooda:

I don't know, it seems to me there won't be much difference in perception of beauty among Europeans (and Americans). Many beautiful people are considered beautiful everywhere :-).


> Miles wrote:
 
> For example, when I first saw Robert Pattinson as Cedric in 
> the GoF film, I thought he was not the right man for the job, 
> because I didn't (and don't) think of him as being outstanding 
> handsome. 


zanooda;

Well, to be honest, I don't find him outstandingly handsome either (although I think he has a very interesting face), but I think it has nothing to do with cultural differences, just personal taste :-). And it appears that in this case you and I are in minority ... :-).