I'm not sure where you live (was it HK?) but that sounds crazy. That's not the norm here at all!
I agree that there are bad pics and that judging someone after one photo is not fair, but at the same time you can't know for sure if that's their worst photo without make-up or their best... I might be too quick to form an opinion on someone's look based on just one photo, but if that's all there is I can't help it. So it is what it is.
Really? I couldn't disagree more. Seriously, just look at those girls at the other end of that link that I provided. The difference is MASSIVE when it comes to some of them. Sure, taste plays a part, but still.
For the (2) part, that's just mostly about your taste, so I can't comment, but here it wouldn't be like that at all as far as my taste is concerned. But then again, I don't live in Asia, so who knows what I'd think if I did.
I don't know what your "here" is, sure HK is pretty representative of what I'm talking about. It applies to CJK (at least the big cities like Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul). Couple years ago I visited Seoul for the first time, I was particularly hmm... amused... by the number of beauty salons all over the city offering procedures (not sure how "deep" it gets, but certainly needles and knives are involved, we are not just talking about moisturizing face masks). Think about it, I pay attention to certain types of shops (camera, books, hobby) because of my interest, but beauty salons and cosmetic clinics outnumber those shops (combined!) by a huge margin. You might think Koreans have more plastic surgery than they read.
And then, the other places I'm familiar with, New York, Washington, California, some places breast implants are the default norm (the infamous 16th birthday gift from the parents is breast implants). In Manhattan, you notice anyone who look minimally successful, you have to assume they "had something done", probably semi-regularly. Europe, perhaps more humanist and naturalist in many places, but for the top cities, London, Paris, Milan... again my default belief is plastic surgeries etc is common and open secret.
About your "disagreeing", I never said there's no difference between the before- and after- photos. I only said yes there's
MASSIVE difference, BUT it's perfectly within expectation. My wife (like all housewives) is a bit into celeb gossips, so she's always showing me celeb pix including unflattering pics. As an amateur photographer myself, it's part of my interest/hobby to take something or someone ordinary and make an impressive photo(set) of it/him/her. So I know, at least it's a common practice (not saying I do process all the skills) to make a
MASSIVE better pic of a girl than a few selectively unflattering pic of the same girl. It takes 30-60 minutes of make-up and maybe more time for hair, a decent wardrobe and fashion sense, as little as $100 worth of lighting equipment and at least a couple hours (less for skillful photographer) of shooting.
And then "taste", well I will come out and accuse otakus of being otakus (I do hesitate to accuse you of being one). If most of you interaction with women are 2D (social media, AV, TV, J-/K-pop, mags, internet, or worse: anime/manga/game) then duhhh, your taste is distorted.
I'm old enough and "real" enough that I encounter many many women (especially young-to-mid-age women age 19-40) who use different amount of make up (some of them are never without make-up in public) so I ave a sense of what decent/attractive is, in REAL space, or in 3D, in a way. And then, in 2D (most important for this forum: AV) there's a different standard, a
MASSIVELY higher standard. Most otakus don't understand there's a MASSIVE difference between 2D and 3D.
Did she forgot to apply her makeup here ? :-
Seems that she appear to be a bit older than her usual self with the deeper eyebags and cheek folds.
So it's perfect example of what "beautiful" is different between 2D (gravue and AV) and 3D (private life). And sometimes social media falls in between. Twitters and Instagram (such as these 2 pix and one earlier also of Shoko) are slight more contrived than a "real" 3D situation, but it's norm to get away with "forgotten" make-up.
I always knew Shoko wasn't beautiful (let's say for this conversation, we define "beautiful" as the top 5% most attractive people in a population) (or even 1%, because... really take randomly 20 women, let's even limit to 20 random women age 19-26, and pick the prettiest one, what's the chance that I would be totally charmed and awed? Pretty low. Top 1% means one out of 100, yeah... I guess take 100 random girls, the prettiest one should impress me as
beautiful with fairly good probability) . Yes with make-up and lighting etc she's pretty enough to be gravue model, but success in gravue/AV is at least part hardwork and "skills". So I am perfectly content to say both she's my fav AV idol AND she (her "real" self) isn't a particularly beautiful woman. Because the first part (fav AV idol) is in 2D, while the second part (real self) is about 3D.
OTOH, if you look at those "unflattering" shots with "real world" eyes, not think of them as celeb/glamour pix, but 3D private real world life. Well com'on, she's not beautiful (I already said that) but certainly she is pretty enough! And for what purpose? Are you looking at her as object of desire, as (imaginary/potential) hook-up, girlfriend or wife? For those purpose, if you look at those pix and say, ugly! old!? Really? Com'on, I rather doubt your current and ex-girlfriends are better looking in a similar situation ("forgotten" make-up, semi-casual fashion)
And just for the record, I'd bet a dollar she did put on some make-up already when those pix were taken. Seems to me Shoko is the type who never allow her photo to be taken sans make-up.
