Why Are Babies Cute?

[Buffy]

"I like an avatar which shows a blonde blue-eyed Arayan maiden! It is so encouraging" A.H

 

Right! Note that it was a racist white guy saying that.

 

Now me, I think that Jay-Z is totally hawt (something that would definitly piss-off A.H.), and he's way cuter that Jonah Hill.

 

Who do you prefer? Beyonce or Lindsay Lohan?

 

 

Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder, :phones:

Buffy

[CraigD]

 

Which of these three babies is the 'cutest'?

My initial reaction was that (f) is the cutest, and (d) seems vague wrong.

 

Suppose Deepwater's post #7 had shown babies of 3 different ethnic groups? What would the response have been?

I think this question distracts from the point these 3 images are intended to illustrate.

 

The 3 images are of the same child, with the lower part of the face of (f) compressed (I think – it’s possible that (d)’s has been expanded) so that the eyes are about 1/2 a pupil width lower than (d). This compression makes the child (who I’d guess to be about 6 months old) more closely resemble a newborn’s, where the face (the region from the eyes down) occupy a smaller fraction of the total height of the head. So this “which look cuter” exercise illustrates that, as a general rule, “more like an infant” = “cuter”.

 

Seems off-topic but, also seems like there’s a link between the questions in this thread and neoteny.

:thumbs_up

I think this is very on-topic, and likely key in understanding how “cuteness” applies across juvenile/adult and species boundaries. I strongly suspect neoteny – which is more pronounced in humans than in other great ape species – also plays a key role in the evolutionary path that’s make us so unlike the close genetic relatives of ours.

 

According to me Its true that baby are cute and i think it's because they have not done bad deeds like us. You are also cute when you small. Because you are innocent. It's a nature.

I see some problems with you assertion, King Author

 

Innocence is an abstract concept, not a trait that can be perceived. Images of babies (human and other species), dolls, cartoon pictures and the like, are commonly described as “cute”, but are not people, so are not capable of doing good of bad deeds. Many animals, such as cats, are commonly described as “cute”, even adult individuals that have done many “bad deeds” of the kind cats often do – fouling and ruining structures and furniture, catching, torturing, and killing small animals, etc.

 

Also, as most people who have raised children from infancy will attest, babies rapidly accrue a history of “bad deeds”, mostly persistent crying, mess-making, and devouring or destroying whatever small things they can lay hands on (most housecats in my experience seem to instinctively keep well away from babies and toddlers). For some months human babies have no language, limited memory, perception, and cognition, and nothing like a sense of good and bad – they’re well described as “little need machines”.

 

This is not to say that, in general, we humans don’t, as you are, associate child-like appearance with innocence. This association is an convention and cliché in some illustration, especially manga and anime (Japanese cartoon art), where eye, nose, and mouth relative to total head size have a fairly formulaic relationship to character traits like goodness, malignancy, naivety and worldliness, with “big eyes – small mouth” indicating goodness and naivety, “small eyes – big mouth” indicating malignancy and worldliness.

[Guest MacPhee]

Craig's post as always, is full of facts, and insights.

 

However, I'd like to ask again this question:

 

Suppose we saw 3 pictures of babies:

 

Picture 1: black African

Picture 2: yellow Chinese

Picture 3: white American

 

Which picture would really and truly, look the most attractive, aesthetic, and most human?

[Buffy]

However, I'd like to ask again this question:

 

Suppose we saw 3 pictures of babies:

 

Picture 1: black African

Picture 2: yellow Chinese

Picture 3: white American

 

Which picture would really and truly, look the most attractive, aesthetic, and most human?

 

According to whom? You've answered neither Craig's nor my objections.

 

I actually gave my answer. Why don't you tell us how you'd answer your own question?

 

 

I believe that whoever tries to think things through honestly will soon recognize how unworthy and even fatal is the traditional bias against Negroes. What can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice? He must have the courage to set an example by words and deed, and must watch lest his children become influenced by racial bias, :phones:

Buffy

[Aethelwulf]

babies... cute? You mean those ugly gremlin faces? Yeah, totally amazingly beautiful creatures lol... now if you mean it in the sense of... life is cute, life is a miracle, but babies ain't cute, until they start laughing and smiling and then making huge holes in your wallet! lol