[alxian]

two things struck me this week

after having completed spin state by chris moriarty and reading some topics here.


most sci-fi and hollywood movies have it that cloning will create a legion of perfect clones that will make the rest of us aesthetically obsolete.

this will force a division of species for the human race.

i think it will be more like hollywood and its super elite. they typically are not universally aesthetically pleasing, some stars in hoolywood are positivelly hideos, however those features that we covet generally are their claim to fame. perfect white and aligned teeth, perfect complextion, near flowmetal like hair, facial or body quirks that make their faces unmistakable, recognizable in any crowd or laser beam shooting eyes.

i think if anything at first genetic engineering (the new tool evolution) will allow more people to become totally unique, meaning they have near perfect recognition by the masses versus any other star.

thinks about it, what do some stars do most? change their appearance to look like other hot models at the time. either by changing a hair style, getting trimmer, lip breast augmentations. stars do it all the time, and when it comes to the masses the easiest body mod is hair.

what happens when those body mods become so easy that reconstructing your facial bones and muscles is a matter of taking a few days off to visit a body modding clinic. the costs will also go down and recouperation time will become a fraction of the weeks it generally lasts now.


you could see something like jennifer aniston getting a tan and a new hair do. the "rachel" look then requires millions of women to redo themselves. it would be weird to see legions or near perfect clones of jennifer aniston running around i'm sure but since the "rachel" look is so popular now amoung other hairdos and body styles i think it's going to happen, sooner rather than beyond our lifetimes.

[UncleAl]

you could see something like jennifer aniston

Jennifer Aniston began as Jennifer Anistonopoulos. What you see bears little relationship to what genetics wrought. At the very least her nose has been minimized, facial hair removed, skin lightened, hair lightened, plus a rather grisly course of body fat removal.

Beauty is locally defined as an extreme of what the locals can achieve. A planetary Media machine has made beauty a Northern European standard - tall, long-legged, slim, high breasted, wide-hipped, hour-glass shape with substantial neotony - blonde, pale skin, high forehead, wide-set eyes, cheekbones, small nose, full lips, weak chin. From the neck up East Asian women with somewhat narrow faces are then extraordinarily beautiful... until they have Western diets as children. A 6-foot gal with a lantern jaw falls off the charts.

That puts a lot of pressure on South American, African, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and East Indian gals who tend to be swarthy and chunky with hairlines approaching their eyebrows plus dark handlebar mustaches.

Julia Roberts' collagen-inflated lips are disgusting - two exploded raw German sausages. Angelina Jolie and Jessica Alba were remade by artists. Either way, after a freak enhancement becomes commonplace it becomes boring. Pierced ears were once daring. Now both sexes are dragging around a pound of metal bored through every flesh fold. You can shave your head and be a fashionable outlaw, but tattoos won't fade away when the trend disappears.

Folks with nothing better to do with time and resources other than diddle with their appearance are freakish and effete. A society obsessed by cosmesis allows women to join its armed forces. What do you expect a woman looks like - and smells like - after a couple of weeks in the field?

[alxian]

Originally Posted by UncleAl

Jennifer Aniston began as Jennifer Anistonopoulos.

so basically we are all constructs personifying our immediate personalities, which change with every passing fad, but are based mostly upon our most fundamental trainings as children.. parents, school, church.

i find it curious then that when most people's personalities are only their own because you can't immediatly trace all the sources of the borrowed maneurisms that people seem unique.

how many of us trully are unique?

could a child grow into a social well adjusted human without anything more than a synthesized computer voice trainging him through his formative years and into adulthood?


*expresses even more shock by those few simple words

no matter how much actors impress us, few give credit to the writers and directors and producers who mold their personas into what we see. who trains the writers, directors and producers? who determines what they use to mold stars who we then mold the bulk of our personalities on?

Originally Posted by uncle al

You can shave your head and be a fashionable outlaw, but tattoos won't fade away when the trend disappears.

which is funy, my current reading list includes stuff about tats

spinstats, chris moriarty, she envisions smart tats that move around the body, using the skin as a display. could be used for advertising, some smucks sold his forhead as ad space on ebay not too long ago. (not sure if it actually sold)

the silent war, bova, animated pray-on tats powered by body heat. very interesting stuff

Originally Posted by uncle al

A society obsessed by cosmesis allows women to join its armed forces. What do you expect a woman looks like - and smells like - after a couple of weeks in the field?

isn't it odd then that the society that molds the worlds beauty is also the one that does more than most for womens rights? allowing women to do things that classically are the domain of men. even to the point where a woman can run a catholic church?? (hot debate that one).