Chapter 3: Physical Appearance And Atiractiveness

An 11-year-old boy from Switzerland writes that the ideal woman must be pretty and like trucks. On the threshold of adolescence, he seems to cling to childish interests at the same time that his drawing of the ideal woman features distinct breasts. A 14-year-old boy from the United States opines that the ideal woman has “got to look sexy and good” while a 14-year-old girl writes that the ideal man “is showing me his muscles and his good looks.”

A focus on the appearance of the ideal person is far from universal, however. There is great difference of opinion among young adolescents. A 14-year-old Guatemalan girl specifically disavows the importance of appearance in the ideal woman, “she ought to be supporting her husband through good times and bad and she ought not to be beautiful, nor very intelligent, nor have money, nor be sexy, nor have a good job.” A second Guatemalan girl, who is not only the same age but attends the same school, writes that the ideal man ought to “be caring, have a car, be a little taller than I am, be not too white but a little brown skinned, be not too thin but a little more filled out.”