redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
Redbird ([personal profile] redbird) wrote2005-07-22 08:45 pm

On being real

Real women--and real men, but maybe not real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri--have pores in our skin. We come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and all of us, in all those shapes, have pores.

By this--not by weight, shape, or age--may you tell the real woman from the airbrushed model.

For some reason this post brings to mind...

[identity profile] copperwise.livejournal.com 2005-07-23 01:04 am (UTC)(link)
Once upon a time I went to a cheap strip bar with the ex-evil. He and the truckers were quite disconcerted when I and the large busted naked redhead writhing on the bar carried on a perfectly normal conversation, even more so when we started discussing fake vs. real breasts. She was happily telling me about her boob job and I was complimenting her on the lack of scars, she laid flat and told the guys, "see, they stick up straight, real breasts don't do that"...all while dancing and picking up dollar bills with her butt cheeks.

It was quite the surreal experience.
brooksmoses: (Default)

[personal profile] brooksmoses 2005-07-23 01:16 am (UTC)(link)
I find this post amusingly ironic, given that this month seems to be the one in which I am annually reminded that many of the pores in my hands do not work. The results are somewhat itchy and unpleasant.

(Meanwhile, I would think that if the small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri are indeed furry, they'd have to have pores for the fur to come out.)

[identity profile] xiphias.livejournal.com 2005-07-23 02:05 am (UTC)(link)
That would depend on precisely what the structure of the fur was. While "fur" is one of Dr. Jack Cohen's "four univeral F's" -- the four things that have derived independently multiple times over Earth evolution, and thus might reasonably be expected to show up in extraterrestrial life -- the "fur" structures are very different in mammals, tarantulas, honeybees, pussywillows, and kiwis. Now most of those do involve some sort of pore, on Earth, but I could imagine a fur being a direct outgrowth of skin or exoskeleton, rather than poking through.

Irrelevant, but I'm curious

[identity profile] almeda.livejournal.com 2005-07-23 04:54 am (UTC)(link)
What are the other three?

Re: Irrelevant, but I'm curious

[identity profile] xiphias.livejournal.com 2005-07-23 11:42 am (UTC)(link)
The "four F's" are "flight, fur, photosynthesis, and mating".

("Mating", here, is defined fairly loosely as "a process in which portions of the genetic code of two or more individuals are mingled to create new individuals.")

fur and pores

[identity profile] lynnal.livejournal.com 2005-07-23 06:15 pm (UTC)(link)
I could imagine a fur being a direct outgrowth of skin or exoskeleton, rather than poking through

Quite right. I'm not sure about the fluff on pussywillows, but the normal "hairs" on leaves are direct extensions of epidermal cells (called trichomes). Plants have pores on their leaves, but they are entirely separate structures from the hairs.

[identity profile] pantryslut.livejournal.com 2005-07-23 02:31 am (UTC)(link)
I have pores, but not so you could tell in most photos.

[identity profile] almeda.livejournal.com 2005-07-23 04:53 am (UTC)(link)
Hee hee hee. Also, *giggle*

I can tell you, spending too much prepubescent time with my dad's Playboys led me to believe I would have tiny little boy-like areolae, and MAN did that not happen.

[identity profile] roadnotes.livejournal.com 2005-07-23 03:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah. I grew up with Playboy always available to read, and my conclusion was that the women in it were cartoons; I'd seen my mother, and my older sister (who is eleven years older than I am, I think) naked, and they had pores andhair and wrinkles, so I assumed that that's what real women looked like, therefore the ones in magazines weren't real.

[identity profile] almeda.livejournal.com 2005-07-24 12:12 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, I'd seen my mother naked; I just assumed she was ugly. *sigh*

My grandma's nipple-areas were nowhere near as big; my mom's covered like the WHOLE FRONT of her boob (as, of course, do mine now).

Luckily my now-husband has helped me get over most of my body disphoria.