Do you think the media you consumed growing up affected your preferences?

Question we've touched on in various ways across different threads but wanted to outright ask if you think the media you consumed growing up affected your preferences. I think to a certain degree it did, Disney princesses (though actually my biggest cartoon crushes as a kid were Jasmine and Pocahontas which didn't become my preference later in life.) Wrestling like seeing women like Torrie Wilson definitely affected me as well as watching shows like VIP, the Andy Sidaris films and the sort all sort of contributed to my ideal woman I'm sure. Not to mention with my library card I often rented old movies from the 40s, 50s and 60s and was introduced to women like Grace Kelly, Jayne Mansfield, Rhonda Fleming, Audrey Hepburn and Kim Novak, among others.

I definitely think it permeated into my preferences and what I found to be the ideal beauty, but curious as to others experience if they were exposed to things like that and if it affected them throughout in their opinion. Or was it a bit more organic due to environment or a few interactions early on in life. Up until I hit puberty I had crushes on many black women and non-white women and that slowly eroded overtime as I got older and older and started to prefer Eurocentric features, to be totally honest.

 

For me, not exactly. Like yourself, I also had crushed on many famous Black women as teenager that are still beautiful to me now and I've always though that physical beauty transended race. With that being said, the older I get the more my preference seem to be for WW, for a number reasons that I'll explain on another day.

 

Not sure if it was really an influence, maybe more of an affirmation of what I was naturally attracted to. Looking back, like you, was a big WWE guy and I remember the divas I found most attractive were WW. Same for other shows/cartoons I watched at the time.

 

Some of my first major WW crushes growing up were Chloe form Smallville, Pamela Anderson and Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jenna Von Oy the PAWG from the The Parkers just to name a few. This was before I even got deep into BM/WW IR porn, which is whole discussion within itself.

 

Yeah for me it always felt like a confirmation for who I always was, especially once I reached my teenage years, like I tried to FORCE myself to be attracted to black women en masse, and it just never felt right, I always found myself floating towards white women. Took a long time to not feel like a race traitor but I also really loved seeing the beautiful white women of media and the arts. To me it always felt like a gorgeous aesthetic.

 

I think it has always been difficult to figure out how much of desire is free will and how much is shaped by larger societal forces. I think it will require more psychoanalysis than I am personally capable of performing, lol. It is beyond doubt that constant bombardment of imagery plays some sort of role, but I am unwilling to say that my desires are totally directed by external forces. So much of my desire and tastes is driven by things other than pure aesthetics that I don't feel as dictated to in that sense. Nevertheless, I am sure that the sensual/sexual tastes are perhaps more externally controlled, as they are so much more visual than things like who I get along with most easily, etc.