I'm not trying to argue about the sanitary or practical reasons for shaving, obviously there are many. Quite honestly, it doesn't matter to me what reasons *men* shave their face. What I'm more interested in is why *women* find the lack of facial hair *on men* generally more attractive than beards. And I don't buy the whole "it's cleaner" crap, because beards are not dirty, not in an age of a bath-a-day (unlike the 19th century, where bathes were less frequent).
At any rate, the whole beard/no beard thing is not the crux of my proposition, there are plenty of other factors that I discussed. Don't get me wrong though, I think you're right, there are reasons from the male point of view to shave. But that doesn't address the issue of attraction from women to shaved men, unless they're attracted to practicalness. And of course, bearded men have no problem picking up women, so it's certainly not a requirement to be shaved to be attractive.
Women could be attracted to clean-shaven men for so many reasons, though, other than that it makes them look younger (which is even debatable).
As for your other factors, supermodels (and this really only happens with supermodels) need to be thin-- that is the only criteria for supermodels. The small breasts and small buttocks are just side effects of their being so fatless, as those two regions are essentially fat reservoirs. It's because they're anorexic, not because America wants underage sex (most Americans never see supermodels anyway-- they're reserved for fashion magazines). Also, their bodies aren't even completely child-like. One trait looked for in models is long legs, which is decidedly an adult female characteristic.
The existence of "barely legal" porn also does not prove widespread pedophilia. First off, many people who look at barely legal porn may do so because "barely legal" girls are actually their peer group, which aids with the sexual fantasy. Underage boys, and men ages 18-22 might prefer that age group of women. Don't bring up Japan's obsession with school girls-- the country has a messed up sexual culture, and we're talking about America.
As for the teacher sex-- do you realize how many schools there are in the United States? Even if there were a new case every day, that would be 365 incidents, which is hardly endemic. And trust me, if a teacher is having sex with a student, eeeeeveryone's going to know (unless the child is REALLY young, like less than 12 years old, which is extraordinarily rare). If you can't go around high school without everyone knowing that whatsherface went down on the whole basketball team, you better believe something as big as a teacher having sex with a minor is going to get out. As for why teachers might have sex with their students, this is complicated psychology but I'm confident it has nothing to do with American society as a whole being sexually attracted to children. One possibility is that teaching is the sort of job that would attract people who are pedophiles, so the sample is already biased. Also, being around kids all day and developing a sort of love for them leaves some teachers confused about how to react to these feelings, especially if the teacher is crazy.
It's well documented that men are attracted to youth, but this is young as in late teens, early twenties (prime breeding age) and not young as in low teens or preteen. It is rare that older men are attracted to people that young. I've seen some evolutionary speculation that males developed a tendency to inseminate as many breeding-capable females as they could. Females, on the other hand, developed a tendency to lock a male down to help her while she's pregnant, etc. I don't know how large the age disparity was between your friends and their sexual partners, but I'm guessing it wasn't more than five or six years, which to me is quite inappropriate, but to others is borderline. I'm also guessing the underage girls involved were 16- or 17-years-old and not 13- or 14-years-old.
I just really don't get how you concluded that Americans all want underage sex.
I didn't conclude anything, I said it was my hypothesis/theory. On top of that, the theory isn't that adults want underage sex (I'll admit my title was misleading, but it got a hell of a lot of people to click on it), simply that they're
attracted to attributes that, until the recent past (that being the last few thousand years), would have been only found in children, which may indicate some kind of
hidden evolutionary urge to have sex with people who are well under the age of 18. I'll be the first to admit that the points in my OP were circumstantial at best, but to simply wipe away said evidence is to turn a complete blind eye to the entire sexual culture in America.
FWIW, I think you're wrong about long legs being an attribute of adult females: it's actually young females who have disproportionately long legs compared to adults (due to narrower hips).
Also, I picked up a copy of Barely Legal (the magazine) a while back, and trust me, the target market of that magazine was NOT young males. It was the creepiest text in any porno mag I've ever seen, clearly aimed at old men. From
Wikipedia:
These profiles tend to pander to the readers' fantasies by portraying the models as somewhat naive and sexually inexperienced, but curious and eager to start satisfying their sexual appetites, especially with the older men who make up the main demographic of the magazine, now that they have reached the age of consent.
I mean seriously, the magazine I read actually had (fictional) stories about implied-underage girls losing their virginity to old men. Maybe that's just that one particular magazine, but no way in hell was that magazine meant for 18-22 year olds.
As for the teacher-student thing: I disagree. If you look how long these relationships go on, and how they're discovered, it's really hard to make the claim that these things get out every time they happen. I'll agree with you: it's certainly not common. But I do think it might be a symptom of a larger issue.
Anyway this whole issue comes down to opinion, and one things for certain is that it's extremely unlikely that I'm 100% correct. However, to me, when I combine all of the little details, life stories and experiences, etc, into one overall picture of human sexuality, it appears (once again: to me) that some of the many details we analyze when determining if someone is attractive are traits found only in children. Certainly not all: large breasts, strong upper bodies (in men) and so on. But, the parts that are child-like cause me to wonder if we're wired to start being attracted to the opposite sex even when they're at a young age. I mean, when you were 12 you probably had sexual thoughts about your classmates and whatnot. So what's changed? You were attracted to 11 year olds then, so did you're brain cleans itself between then and now? I don't think it does.