Question:
Given a choice between looking at a nude, smooth skinned, gracefully proportioned young person glowing with good health and looking at a sagging, stretched marked, pasty white skinned, varicosed veined old person, my eye is going to be drawn to the younger person. My only feeling towards the older person would be one of irritation that they didn't have the good sense to leave the things that belong to youth to the young. Everything in this life has a season, including beauty. As for myself, I am of reasonable weight, I excerise and groom mysef appropriately...but I am still 40 yrs old and with the bad genes that endowed me with varicose veins and stretch marks from 3 pregnancies. It's not my "fault" that this occured, but neither is it the fault of men that their eyes would prefer looking at Cindy Crawford nude than myself.

Answer: -As for me, I am slim and groom myself (but I don't eat the nits). After 5 pregnancies, 3 full term, I don't have varicose veins or stretch marks... but I am still over 50 years old. "It's not my 'fault' that this occured." Seemingly the powers that be have been much kinder to me than you. I must have good, excellent genes, especially since I don't exercise as appropriately as I should... but I'll be getting the mountain bike and hiking boots out again soon (as well as my bubble wand). And when my daughter with her 20 year young body arrives on Monday, we will don our swim suits, go off to the beach, have fun and feel good about ourselves. If you want to wear "a good beach robe" that is your prerogative but to do so because you are ashamed of your body is a pity. Instead I suggest you get some help to improve your self-esteem as it relates to your body image, a rubber duckie (fun does not belong to youth, to the young) and some education. Obvioulsy, you did not seem to grasp that the ideal 'womanly standard' today is different than the past and will likely be different in the future. Variations in 'ideal body' types can be found throughout eras of history, and across a wide variety of cultures. And, seemingly you have no understanding that what is viewed as a "beautiful woman" in our culture is ugly in another. -Have you ever looked at a National Geographic Magazine? pictures portraying what is considered to be "beauty" in other countries ... if people here, for e.g., embedded discs in their lower lip they'd not be considered beautiful, they'd likely be put in the bin! or at least, not get a date! As you put it, "in the arena of reproductive function", they'd definitely not be considered! varicose veins or no varicose veins! And some practices in other cultures are illegal in ours, such as female circumcision, clititordectomy, infibulation. Tho' there are reasons for this custom other than a "beauty standard", non-mutilated female genitals in other cultures are considered to be "ugly". Well I guess some non-mutilated female genitals are considered ugly in our culture since some women are now having their genitals surgically altered to make them more attractive. What about Chinese footbinding? and so on. Have you considered that you might be ethnocentric?