Casting mis-steps

[Miles]

zanooda2 wrote:
> 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 :-).

Miles:
Sure, it does. One could make experiments about that (with photographs rated
by both a big number of people, and a computer programme), and it would be
really interesting to have those experiments in different countries to
compare.

zanooda:
> 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 :-).

Miles:
You are the one living in the USA, not me ;). Maybe it's another attempt to
be "positive" towards people in order to work on their self-confidence?

>> 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:
If the "mechanisms of beauty" I wrote about in my first mail in this thread
do exist in the way I described, then it's not so much suprising to have
smaller differences in countries with a majority of "white Europeans". It
would be interesting to see if a beauty from Japan or Ghana would be
considered beautiful in Russia or the USA.

>> 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 ... :-).

Miles:
I have no problems of being part of a minority ;).

>> Miles
>> Wictionary identifys "gard" as a slavic word for town or city.

> zanooda:
> No, this is a mistake :-). There is no "gard" in Slavic languages, but
> there
> is "grad" - this is an abbreviated form of the word "gorod", which in fact
> means "town" or "city". It is often used in the names of the towns -
> Volgograd, Stalingrad, Leningrad etc. :-).

Miles
My quote was incorrect - it's said to be a word from the proto-slavic
language, the ancient (and lost) ancestor of the modern slavic languages.
I'm neither a linguist nor do I know any slavic language, but it seems to be
possible for a tiny "r" to wander from the right to the left of the vowel
"a" ;).

Miles, whose knowledge of Russian does not exceed ras, dwa or tri words :)