zwi

I have read this thread with fascination.

I wonder who trebbie is? This seems to be someone well known to the regular posters, but is a mystery to me Can anyone tell me?

And a little point , some one said

I think there is pretty good medical evidence that the age of menarche is correlated to body mass

I have met some foraging girls, (San) and they were certainly slight of build. American girls are galumphs in comparison

Zwi

Doubting Didymus

Totalitarianist is trebaxian vir, trebaxian au quoq for a while, lady anoteros for another while and is known to most as 'trebaxian' no batter what, just because of habit.

zwi

Odd

Vir is Latin for a man, tu quoque means youre another in English schoolboy slang Latin and lady anoteros i dunno

Zwi is the Hebrew form of my first name if anyone wonders

To each his own

Zwi

Oolon Colluphid

Accepted, of course. My point was a simpler one: Once menarch is well under way, a female is biologically capable of bearing children. (They may not be at their ideal age for it, but neither is a woman of, say, 35.) This presumably means that the other signals of adulthood -- breasts, wider hips etc -- are likely also on display. (Development of secondary sexual characteristics being linked to the same hormonal changes that initiate periods.)

Therefore, thanks to modern nutrition, a 13-year-old, say, may show all the signs of being reproductive, and hence seductive. In short, once they're old enough, they're old enough, because they'll look old enough. Their actual average age has simply shifted earlier, thanks to nutrition.

This does not of course explain attraction to those who still look like children. I wonder if that is cultural? If / when fashion says that emaciated waifs are attractive -- if the child-like are attractive -- it would be no surprise if to some, children themselves are.

Anyone know if there was much pederasty in the days of Rubens?

(Don't mention the Greeks -- that was homoerotic, and anyway the erastes - eromenos thing was as much about social education as anything... and the sex was intercrural. Botty sex was an insult, being treated like a woman. (Sez the former Classics graduate, who's probably wrong cos he's forgotten so much about it .)

Cheers, DT