Discuss: Traps rarely actually look like the opposite sex — rather they are basically taller lolis.

Sphinxter said:
No, I said it was part of my post and references it; you however said it specifically talks about it which isn't true. It's a minor, non-specific part of the post.

I'm not saying that is their actual argument; I'm saying that after analysing their actual argument that is what it comes down to.

Their argument is "It's not gay because it's feminine"; my point is that after analysing the body of these traps one is forced to conclude that there is nothing left of "feminine" than "skirts and dresses"; all the actual biological feminine charactaristics are typically removed and all that remains is clothing so the only thing to save the "not gay" argument would be to admit that one was never attracted to "females" but simply to "female coded clothing" because in most male-to-female traps that is the only thing that makes them "feminine".

And again the "not gay" part was a very small part of the post; the main part is that the idea that traps are either masculine or feminine is misconstrued; they are neotenously androgynous.



Not at all; if you're willing to concede that the typical argument is "It's not gay because it's feminine" then that's all I need to make my argument because I argue that the only "feminine" thing that is left are skirts and dresses and all biological feminine markers have been removed; it's purely female-coded clothing and that is seldom how sexual orientations are construed.

Lunilah said:
It doesn't matter that it's, directly, only a part of your post, as your full OP is a deconstruction of their argument.

If the argument is attraction to femininity, which is not solely defined by biology, the basis of whether or not sexual orientation is something you're born with or develop culturally is irrelevant. If it's derived from birth; the argument is attraction to femininity, if it's derived from culture; the argument is attraction to femininity.

You mention skirts and dresses, and i'll just put that under the umbrella of fashion, but you don't mention cosmetology, voice, behavior etc. Femininity is a socially constructed concept, and it's defined by both social and biological factors. The argument is not talking about strictly biology, that's just your argument that nobody else is making, so it's no wonder you think that the only thing left are the social factors, which is the bulk of the core argument in the first place.

Sphinxter said:
Why would it be? As far as I see it only the first paragraph is. The rest is about the fact that traps are neither masculine nor feminine in practice.

And then "femininity" has nothing to do with gender or sex.

Like I said at this point "femininity" just means "wearing a skirt"; then you should stop saying that you're attracted to females and admit you're just attracted to whatever is in a skirt or dress. That's simply not how these sexual orientations are typically defined.

If you're male but attracted to any sex as long as the subject is wearing a skirt then that's called bisexual.

Then all those heterosexual males that claim they're attracted to females and males should stop saying that because clearly sex has no relevance to their attraction if it works like that; they're clearly attracted to humans — whatever their sex — in a dress and all of the characteristics they're attracted to have absolutely nothing to do with sex characteristics and are purely nurture-based social roles.

Sphinxter said:
Well clearly my post isn't about any of that; my OP talking about puberty, neoteny and sex hormones is clearly not about clothing and haristyles but about actual biological features.

I also feel I've been clear when I said that Astolfo is not feminine and only perceived as such because he's put in female-coded clothing that I'm clearly not talking about clothing and accessories but actually about physical body shapes.

The point of my OP is that male-to-female and female-to-male traps by and large have identical bodies and the only things that differentiate them are A) what the author says they are and B) that male-to-female traps are clad in female-coded clothing and female-to-male traps in male-coded clothing. Long hair and long eyelashes would be an example of female-coded clothing but anyone can put on a wig/grow out hair or put on mascara.

As I said, males get broader shoulders in puberty and females broader hips and breasts; females absolutely have a broader frame at the hips than males post-puberty.

The frame Astolfo shows has neither the shoulders nor the breasts nor the hips; it is a neotenous frame but taller. It is holly absent of both male and female secondary charactaristics.

That various cultures have for some reason socially inverted this does not change what the secondary sex characteristics are which again is a biological term and my OP as well as any follow up post has been amply clear that it's talking about biological characteristics only.

No, I said that people who like traps are attracted to neotenous biological characteristics; I've been super clear from the start that they are neotenously androgynous in the biological sense with all my terminology.

it's purely the clothing they are put in that defines the difference; not their actual body shape and facial structure.

Daemon said:


Okay...? Seems like a weird thing to obsess over. People are attracted to traps because of their feminine features, and if you want to argue that traps do not have pronounced feminine biological features specifically, then go ahead, I guess. Overall, though, people are attracted to traps because of their femininity.

You say Astolfo is "not feminine," but he clearly is because he has feminine features which I described earlier. Even if those features aren't biological, they are still feminine.

And again, his body shape is fairly feminine as far as anime characters go. The only thing he's lacking are tits, but then you could say flat female characters are androgynous too, which makes no sense.

I feel like you could make this same argument about any anime character who isn't muscle-bound or a MILF, then, which makes your entire post pointless. For example, if you put the average harem protagonist (just using a generic male character as an example) into female clothing and gave him a wig and put makeup on him, then yeah, he could pass as a girl. But that's because of the medium itself; you can't go into the level of detail you are talking about with drawings.

I'd suggest you look at other official art of Astolfo, then, because he does have a feminine figure when compared to other male characters.

"For some reason"? Lmao. Why does it irk you so much that long eyelashes and long hair is seen as feminine?

And if you really are only talking about biological characteristics and have no interest in a character's perception, then I feel like your argument has no value whatsoever even if it is correct.

If you're only talking about biological characteristics, then maybe... However, that also assumes that people who like traps only like traps and not other female characters who do have those "secondary female characteristics."

Not sure how you can make such fine distinctions between drawn characters. Traps look like girls regardless of what you're saying about your secondary female characteristics, so yes, people who like traps are attracted to feminine features, even if those features aren't biological.

Sphinxter said:
One of the common arguments of the "[male] traps are not gay" camp is that traps are feminine and that the [male] viewer is attracted to their femininity and that therefore liking them is not "gay". I find this argument flawed because male traps are rarely feminine and female traps are rarely masculine. In fact they mostly apart from the genitals tend to look indistinct. Nagisa Siota's genitals are never shown but the viewer is informed of his being male. Nevertheless he could be a "trap" in either direction and it mostly just depends on the clothing he wears and that's a common thing for most traps.

Rather traps in either direction ore androgynous in a neotenous way. They typically share that they don't just look androgynous but also young — typically bereft of secondary sex characteristics though they clearly look older than lolis.

Pretty much all traps seem to dive into this niche; it's very rare for traps to actually have the secondary sex characteristics of the opposite sex as much as that they lack the secondary sex charactaristics of their own sex.

Most viewers perceive this as inhærently cute; neoteny is generally perceived as cute by humans and this I feel is the true appeal of traps; they are almost without fail præsented as cute characters and their being of "the other sex" is used to explain their underdeveloped sex characteristics which makes them cute. Male traps will pretty much never feature curvaceous breasts (not even with padding) or wide hips; female traps will never have a deep voice nor broad shoulders; none of those things are in general perceived as cute.

Traps in general are valued for their cute neotenous androgyny, not their "femininity" or "masculinity" which they generally lack both of, discuss.

Vhailor said:
Well, they wouldn't be much of traps if they actually had secondary sexual characters. They would be transsexuals.

The whole joke about traps is that they're dudes with really effeminate features

and mannerisms. Anime traps are more like transvestites (who simply like to cross dress)

Vorpality said:
Astolfo genuinely looks like a girl but seems to be completely oblivious to the fact that he even is a trap, so.

NthDegree said:
I mean that just really depends on the trap. In general, it seems like 'trap' is just a catch-all term ranging from plain androgynous (for example Kino from Kino's Journey) to transgender (for example Lily from Zombieland Saga).

In the end, it's just the issue of what they identify as, and thus it would be more useful to observe their behavior rather than their looks. I find the part about them lacking secondary sex characteristics is BS, since it's not like cis people always prominently feature them either. For example, having small breasts doesn't make a cis woman any less of a woman, so idk why a lack of them would make a transgender woman any less of a woman either.

I actually really like androgynous characters, so perhaps that's why it somehow seems really obvious to me. I cannot see transgender characters like Lily or Ruka (Steins;Gate) the same way I see androgynous characters like Kino and Nagisa (Ansatsu Kyoushitsu).

Sphinxter said:
Those saying "It doesn't make you less of an <gendered identity term>" are just not using the term dispassionately and descriptively but rather think there is supreme pride to be had in being more of <gender> and that is why they are hesitant to say that. _Of course_ having reduced female sex characteristics makes one less of a female — I don't think there is anything wrong with that and præfer it and the only possible way to deny that is simply because one finds it insulting because society has brainwashed one into taking supreme pride in random gender identities to the point of redefining terms left and right to have no obvious meaning any more but just to keep people happy.

Edit: in fact I challenge any man that claims that these things do not make people "less of <gender>" to come forward with what exactly does make them less of <gender>; and I'm præ-emptively going to say that his answer will either be "nothing at all" or something completely unrelated like "kindness and compassion".

NthDegree said:

Uhh... so if we use cis women as example you are saying that not having been born with genes that result in large boobs makes someone a less of a woman?

Like no offense but there are plenty of women who have small breasts that are very feminine

while I'm personally quite masculine despite being on the larger side. So personally I think secondary sex characteristics tell nothing about someone's femininity or masculinity.

What you should be looking at is how people act, not what their outwards appearance is.

I'm not a man, but it's your identity that makes you the gender you are. Sex and gender mean different things after all.

NthDegree said:
@Sphinxter Does it matter that identity is intangible? You seem to be looking for a very black-and-white type of definition but those rarely exist IRL.

Even if we were to look at physical characteristics things get very questionable. For example, according to you women in certain ethnic groups would be less feminine than others

just because big boobs are more common in certain places. In general, I think your idea of a gender seems to be very self-centered around your personal perspective on what a certain gender is supposed to look like. However, things like that change depending on the culture

so I would say it is just as intangible as the concept of identity is. For example, a lot of Eastern countries still consider white skin to be 'feminine'...

but that doesn't really matter in Western countries. So according to you this would cause someone's femininity to change as they travel, even if the person stays exactly the same. If anything, your definition is more intangible to me. A person's gender should not be defined by anyone else but the person themselves.

Sphinxter said:
One of the common arguments of the "[male] traps are not gay" camp is that traps are feminine and that the [male] viewer is attracted to their femininity and that therefore liking them is not "gay". I find this argument flawed because male traps are rarely feminine and female traps are rarely masculine. In fact they mostly apart from the genitals tend to look indistinct. Nagisa Siota's genitals are never shown but the viewer is informed of his being male. Nevertheless he could be a "trap" in either direction and it mostly just depends on the clothing he wears and that's a common thing for most traps.

Rather traps in either direction ore androgynous in a neotenous way. They typically share that they don't just look androgynous but also young — typically bereft of secondary sex characteristics though they clearly look older than lolis.

Pretty much all traps seem to dive into this niche; it's very rare for traps to actually have the secondary sex characteristics of the opposite sex as much as that they lack the secondary sex charactaristics of their own sex.

Most viewers perceive this as inhærently cute; neoteny is generally perceived as cute by humans and this I feel is the true appeal of traps; they are almost without fail præsented as cute characters and their being of "the other sex" is used to explain their underdeveloped sex characteristics which makes them cute. Male traps will pretty much never feature curvaceous breasts (not even with padding) or wide hips; female traps will never have a deep voice nor broad shoulders; none of those things are in general perceived as cute.

Traps in general are valued for their cute neotenous androgyny, not their "femininity" or "masculinity" which they generally lack both of, discuss.

nightcrawlercyp said:
While I am in the traps are gay camp I have do disagree . Some traps have implants or at least pump up bras. Rather I think the idea comes from ancient Greece where some considered that as long as you are always the active partner you are not gay.

nightcrawlercyp said:
We can debate this if you want the point was that only the receptive one was shamed.

Sphinxter said:
And I'm saying they aren't or else there wouldn't be a consistent pattern of traps being neotenous with many not even being in female-coded clothing. They're attracted to their neoteny.

If they have no other female secondary charactaristics then yes. Astolfo does more than lacking braests; he also lacks wide hips and thighs.

This is pretty clear: Goku has broad shoulders and Titi has clear mammaries and wide hips and thighs whereon Goku's hands are resting.

The difference between these two's shoulders is very evident as well as the lowness of their voice. One is just a standard male character that would be hard to sell as female when put into a dress; the other has the prototypical trap body type that was frequently used to pass as the opposite sex when going undercover. The contrast is very obvious.

I find it concerning that you brought it up in this discussion and apparently have a hard time drawing a difference between biological sex characteristics and arbitrary socially learned behavior. I find all socially learned behavior to be a matter of concern and I pity the fool that would actually do such arbitrary things for no other reason than "I have always been taught that that is what I must do simply because I'm of this particular sex even though it's completely arbitrary" — it speaks to the inability of men to make their own decisions critically.

I feel it does and various posters in this thread agree that the observation has merit in that it's something they agree with but only now realized that there are two things that are often overlooked: A) almost all traps in either direction are neotenous and put into cute outfits and B) male and female traps essentially look interchangeable apart from their clothing.

It goes to show that because they constantly repeat this that the audience that likes traps likes them for their neoteny and cuteness, not for their gender characteristics.

I think there is a very high correlation between liking traps and liking neotenous characters in general, yes. The same audience that like traps also seems to favor lolis and delicious flat chests and in general the same audience that likes male-to-female traps also likes female-to-male traps because they as said look very similar most of the time.

A lot of popular traps are only occasionally in such clothing and still liked regardless.

Daemon said:

Most traps I see are in feminine clothing. But I still disagree with you that they don't look like females even in male clothing, though.

I'd disagree with that. This is official art:

I agree, but Goku isn't a typical male character. Like I said, muscle-bound characters like him or like Jotaro Kujo, who I brought up earlier, have very exaggerated male traits that make them much different from the norm.

I agree with you that the red-haired guy does have broader shoulders, which is already something I brought up. Women don't have broad shoulders, which is why that blue-haired guy is feminine in that regard.

I don't know if I would say that we all (except you I guess) learned that long eyelashes and long hair are feminine from society. As straight males, they are just qualities that are attractive to us on women regardless. Our bodies didn't initially think, "Long hair and long eyelashes? Ew!" and then we changed our view because society told us to. That's not how this works.

Perhaps you might be the weird one if something that is obvious and natural to everyone else does not come easily to you? Just a thought.

All I can say here is that I have mistaken quite a few traps for girls when I first saw them.

Then that seems to indicate to me that those types of traps do have feminine secondary characteristics or whatever you were going on about. Mostly I do see them in feminine clothes, though...

Sphinxter said:
Well I don't deny that Astolfo clearly has very wide hips in that particular picture but it seems like an uncharacteristic one where they just drew it like that because they could.

These are also official arts where those same hips and thighs are suddenly gone:

https://typemoon.fandom.com/wiki/File:Astolfo_Extella.png
https://typemoon.fandom.com/wiki/File:Fate_Extella_Link_DLC_Character_Costume_31.png

Let's chalk it up to that maybe the artists were somewhat inconsistent in that department.

Apart from the body Goku's face remains neotenous and Goku's voice certainly is; Goku has a very high pitched voice for an adult male.

No, it's neotenous; you seem to dive into the logic that everything that is not masculine must thus be feminine ignoring the excluded middle of neotenous.

By your logic an 7 year old child that has yet to develop signs of puberty is both masculine and feminine at the same time because he lacks both broad shoulders and wide hips. Feminine secondary sex characteristics are those that are developed during puberty that præpubescents didn't have.

Oh I know society thinks that; I'm just saying that it's not a biological sex characteristic and a completely arbitrary cultural whim that will phase out as quickly as it was phased in. My point being that long hair and eyelashes do not fall under timeless biological things inhærent to the human system but under "clothing, hair and makeup"; things that are artificially applied, socially constructed and will phase out as trends come and go."

I don't see how that goes against my point — they a traps and designed to trick you.

My point is merely that the invariably do so without having biological sex characteristics of the opposite sex; they merely lack the characteristics of their own.

Not at all; you thought Nagisa was female that lacks them and is not dressed in female-coded attire when first introduced.

Daemon said:


No, it's actually that your images are uncharacteristic. You're cherry-picking from one spinoff game which has a particular art style, while I am using images from FGO, Fate's extremely popular mobile game which makes millions of dollars, and Fate/Apocrypha, Astolfo's first and only anime appearance. Both my examples are much more prolific than yours and most people were introduced to Astolfo through FGO or Apocrypha.

But you were just going on about features of the body, so you can't suddenly count those out now.

We're not talking about prepubescents. Narrow shoulders in post-puberty humans is a feminine trait.

It seems like it has held true throughout most of history that long hair and long eyelashes is feminine

and you see girls drawn that way going all the way back to medieval times too. Not sure why you're acting like it's some sort of recent trend that will pass soon.

And you missed the point of my quote anyway. Straight males did not have "long hair/eyelashes = attractive" drilled into them by society. It just comes naturally.

If you don't find those features attractive, again, perhaps it is you who is different and you may be more homosexual/bisexual than you think (not meant as an insult by the way).

So then how do they trick people, then? Solely through their clothing?

Sphinxter said:
I disagree — If I image search him most of the pictures do not have the thighs and hips but some do.

this is probably the most iconic and frequently used promotional image that doesn't have them.

I'm unsure of this context; what am I counting out?

The original discussion was about your claim that drawn characters in general look androgynous with my using Goku and Ti-Ti as an example of that not being necessarily true. My admission that Goku's face but not his body is androgynous is a concession in this case.

Females also have a defined jawline opposed to lolis and other neotenous characters but defined in a different way. A perfectly round jawline looks young and neotenous whereas males have sharper regions near the ears and females near the chin.

Ehh, we are talking about præpubescents? This entire discussion is about the claim that traps in practice neither look masculine nor feminine but rather præpubescent.

Again, by your logic these traps with præpubescent-type bodies are both masculine and feminine because they lack the secondary sex characteristics of both.

Do you know how recent Mascara is? And no — long hair was absolutely not always considered "feminine"; surely you are aware of the many societies where simply put everyone had long hair? The quintessential historical depictions of the Kelts, Vikings, Samurai and what-not is accurate in that the males had long hair; there was nothing "feminine" about it at the time.

Europeans largely switched their males too short hair during the time of the industrial revolution because long hair was a super big hazard in a construction plant.

There's a reason Isaac Newton is never portrayed without long hair; because that was the standard for a male at the time in England, nothing "feminine" about it.

Ehh, where exactly? Because Mascara did not exist back then.

Many famous paintings of beautiful women, for example, like John Singer Sargent’s 1884 work Portrait of Madame X and several of Picasso’s paintings of his lover, the Surrealist artist Dora Maar, emphasize their subjects’ lashes. In 1843, the English poet Thomas Hood described the blinding beauty of the Biblical Ruth by noting her “long lashes veiled a light that had else been all too bright,” and countless other authors and lyricists in the time since have mentioned eyelashes in their descriptions of beautiful women: the batting of them, the morning-light waking flutter of them, their dewiness when implicated in the supposedly feminine act of crying.

Of course it's social... surely you do not believe this is some natural biological thing if males are in fact the sex which biologically speaking have longer and fuller eyelashes than females? Of course this is drilled in by society.

I am "bisexual" but that's not the issue; it has nothing to do with what I find attractive; I find long eyelashes attractive on both males and females; it's that their being considered "feminine" is a temporary cultural thing. Mascara is a very recent invention.

Yes, and one more important thing: as I said they look androgynous.

It wouldn't work if they actually looked either masculine or feminine in their actual physical body but traps are typically designed to look androgynous enough to be able to pass as either sex; which happens in real life but is rare.

Lunilah said:
@Daemon, he's not interested in a back and forth type of dialogue, it's a one sided self-fulfilling dialogue if that wasn't apparent enough. Not sure if you read him and i's conversation, but i've been reading yours and it's the same thing of essentially him not budging no matter how right or wrong he is on something.

Daemon said:

No, variants of the image I linked to you in my last post is like the first five images that come up when you google him.

So, to be clear, you are agreeing with my point that Goku is outside of the norm when it comes to drawn male characters? My point was that most male characters (and I used the standard male harem protagonist as an example) don't look that distinguishable from female characters. It's not that they are both androgynous, but rather that it is hard to distinguish unless you draw the character with exaggerated male/female traits like Goku's muscles and body shape.

You are going into too much detail that doesn't actually exist in drawn characters outside of maybe a few cherry-picked examples.

No we're not. Astolfo and most other traps are not prepubescents.

Having narrow shoulders is a characteristic of both males and females like you said, but that is only before puberty. If you still have narrow shoulders after puberty, that is a feminine trait because only females have narrow shoulders after puberty.

Again you are cherry-picking examples of the few societies where everyone had long hair. Look to the Romans, the Greeks, medieval societies, etc. and see that women had long hair while men had short hair. My examples are once again much more prolific and widespread than your few exceptions.

He doesn't have long hair, lmao. That was a fucking wig and people wore wigs back then because they were elaborate and expensive, not because men wanted long hair.

Quote detailing the prominence of long eyelashes in females from olden times:



https://www.thecut.com/2018/04/the-psychology-behind-why-we-like-long-dark-eyelashes.html

Still, these theories explain little about why long or full eyelashes are considered feminine. The earliest documented efforts to emphasize the eyelashes date back to as early as 4,000 B.C.; if you’ve ever watched any movie or TV show set in ancient Egypt, you’ll know all too well that in certain regions, eye makeup was worn on the lids, brows, and lashes of wealthy and royal men, women, and children.

What I'm saying here is that men are attracted to longer hair and long eyelashes on women. We were not initially repulsed or indifferent to those traits and then suddenly learned from society that we should actually like them. Yes, society did play a role in enhancing those features, but the reason why they were even enhanced in the first place is because men found those features attractive on women already. If they didn't, there would be no reason for society to seek to enhance them.

People don't think androgynous people look like girls, though.

Sphinxter said:
One of the common arguments of the "[male] traps are not gay" camp is that traps are feminine and that the [male] viewer is attracted to their femininity and that therefore liking them is not "gay". I find this argument flawed because male traps are rarely feminine and female traps are rarely masculine. In fact they mostly apart from the genitals tend to look indistinct. Nagisa Siota's genitals are never shown but the viewer is informed of his being male. Nevertheless he could be a "trap" in either direction and it mostly just depends on the clothing he wears and that's a common thing for most traps.

Rather traps in either direction ore androgynous in a neotenous way. They typically share that they don't just look androgynous but also young — typically bereft of secondary sex characteristics though they clearly look older than lolis.

Pretty much all traps seem to dive into this niche; it's very rare for traps to actually have the secondary sex characteristics of the opposite sex as much as that they lack the secondary sex charactaristics of their own sex.

Most viewers perceive this as inhærently cute; neoteny is generally perceived as cute by humans and this I feel is the true appeal of traps; they are almost without fail præsented as cute characters and their being of "the other sex" is used to explain their underdeveloped sex characteristics which makes them cute. Male traps will pretty much never feature curvaceous breasts (not even with padding) or wide hips; female traps will never have a deep voice nor broad shoulders; none of those things are in general perceived as cute.

Traps in general are valued for their cute neotenous androgyny, not their "femininity" or "masculinity" which they generally lack both of, discuss.

HaXXspetten said:
At least in manga, artists usually just draw a female character and then voila, they claim that they're actually male instead. It's not quite how things work in reality since there are numerous other differences between male and female bodies structure-wise but in fiction they're always drawn in a more extreme and "perfected" way

Sphinxter said:
Am I missing something?: https://i.imgur.com/ixgOJDU.jpg it's the first result and a very iconic picture that pops up everywhere.

I don't think the "harem protagonist" is standard; the Harem protagonist is almost always by design featureless and looks like nothing and has no defined personality as well yes; this is because harem shows are a power phantasy for the viewer and that is best achieved by making the lead character featureless so the viewer can put himself into the lead's shoes.

I very much disagree; characters are absolutely drawn to reflect this. This is how comic book artists draw male and female characters.

I very much disagree. There are plenty of long-haired male characters drawn where by seeing the face alone it's clear they are male because they draw these facial features.

Yes they applied mascara here and trimmed the eyebrows as a matter of cosmetics but the real focus is the cheek and chin area where the difference is noticeable and that's what's being utilized in cartoons all the time. One can look at pretty much any major series including Dragon Ball and observe that these are the general rules they follow.

Did you even read the OP? It doesn't matter whether they technically are præpubescent or not the point the OP is making is that traps of either sex have charactaristic features of præpubescents.

That makes no sense in the context of this discussion in discussing whether traps actually have the characteristics of the opposite sex or are neotenous simply because by your definition every neotenous trait is simply a characteristic of the opposite sex; that's just redefining the word so that "neotenous" no longer exists.

Ehh. what? The Romans only; Greek males famously had long hair and the only reason Romans transitioned to short hair was because it was inconvenient at wartime (Greeks tied it back); and have you ever seen a painting of mediaeval European males? They were almost always depicted with long hair.

Yeah the females wore wigs too because lice; that doesn't change that long hair was fashionable; if he wanted he could've gotten a shorter wig. Long hair was simply the stylish option for both sexes. Of course in the 1950s short hair was extremely popular in large parts of the west for females — an image wherein Audrey Hepburn is immortalized.

Your own link points out that historically in many cultures it was a unisex thing and it only became female-only in the west quite recently for which it has no explanation:

If it worked like that then ideals of beauty would never change nor be different around the word.

This is the feminine ideal of beauty in parts of "tribal Africa". If you grew up in that culture that would be what you found beautiful too. Your theory is not unifiable with the idea that ideals of beauty are different around the globe in time and space.