Anime left my standards for men way too high, I also prefer that feminine and soft look that is often looked down upon in western culture as it is seen as "emasculating" or unappealing to women who like the near shaved head, muscular Chad stereotype.
Pretty, beautiful, boys are always gonna be my preference when it comes to men. However, lots of men see that sort of aesthetic as a weakness, and don't want to embrace femininity. I was unlucky that I don't like traditional "masculine" traits at all, muscles and facial hair and such are a turn off for me. However, most of my abusers were traditionally masculine looking guys, so this could have subconsciously influenced my tastes..
I think it's quite difficult to like this sorta stuff in the west. It is seen as really cringe to like anime, street fashion, kpop, and so on. For example, I wear mostly wear Japanese and Korean street fashion, think harajuku, gothic lolita, etc and while sometimes people think it's fascinating or cool others will point and laugh at you like a zoo animal on the street or ostracise you for being weird. It took a lot of not giving a fuck to dress how I wanted and not care what all of the tracksuit wearing clones thought about my sense of style.
I think the whole "being stylish if you have penis bad and gay mkay" that we boys get indoctrinated with is
a result of society's need to create practical manpower (men that take care of the infrastructure as opposed to men that
paint their nails and sing songs, which isn't very productive).
I don't want to sound misogynistic, but believe me if all men disappeared over night you women
wouldn't be dying your hair blonde anymore, since you would be too busy working (jobs that
are hard to do and require you to have a practical appearance).
Maybe some women would still paint their nails in this man-less world, but
most women would need to fill the void created by the disappearance of men
and give up their vanity.
Beauty in the animal kingdom has absolutely nothing to do with weakness. Power/superiority is all about size and numbers,
it doesn't care about whether your face has an ugly beard on it or not. You can't possibly believe
that a midget with a beard would beat a polar bear just because he's uglier than the polar bear.
I strongly disagree that beauty is a soft feminine quality, it's only culturally a feminine quality.
Beauty (in the human world) is not practical. It's artificial and time consuming.
It's something that doesn't have a function, other than self indulgence
and symbolism.
By symbolism I mean us humans have decided that pretty (long hair and painted eyes) means you're a girl, the same way
we decided that the sounds "hello" are supposed to mean something.
And to some other culture those articulated sounds mean something completely different.
To them when you say hello it means "fuck you! in their collective belief/language.
You can see how this is all arbitrary.
Maybe if humans were also born pretty we would have a different opinion on what being pretty means.
Of course that's different for animals since they're born that way. Beauty in the animal world IS practical.
They don't need to do anything to look pleasing to the eye. It's how evolution made them look.
Think how colorful lions,tigers, zebras, killer whales, polar bears etc. are, literally no human being would win in a fight with them.
It's only due to our intelligence that we dominate these beasts. Even the most masculine and sturdy man is actually
pretty weak compared to these majestic looking animals, that have the same hair and eyes
that his wife has.
Most things you women do to beautify yourselves are simulations of what already existed in nature long
before human civilization begin. Eyeliner? Blonde hair? Pretty feminine and submissive right? But you copied it from
feline animals, some of them being strong and aggressive predators. Just an example of how humans
like to corrupt the meaning of beauty and make it a symbol of submissiveness, in spite of the fact that since the beginning of time
in nature it was a quality that both prey and predators had.
