What women/men want

Dove, etc. are doing nothing to change the direction of the culture -- statistically speaking. It/they are a drop in the ocean. Others have tried to 'change' this trend -- unsuccessfully. Ugly Betty. The movie Shallow Hal. Jennifer Lopez. Queen Latifah. The new Fox show -- "More to Love" Spain. Nature.

Creates a CONTRARIAN mini-buzz... a wag the dog... then... it all gets quickly paved over and everything snaps right back to where it was before.

The term, I think, is homeostasis.

What men want -- to find out the kind of body shapes men in a society WANT to look at (yes, men do objectify women -- it's the visual thing -- cannot be changed/stopped), just look at the free marketplace of sexual attraction... ****. You'll find an extremely tall bell curve. The vaaaast majority 'going for' a particular body shape... with very little variation. I assure you, it's not the pron that is dictating the results -- it is the **** RESPONDING to the 'needs' of a society/culture. And, again, that particular, popular body shape bears no resemblance to what the 'average' body shape is. It (the culture) pays no heed to what is normal, average, natural, realisitc, etc. It wants what it wants as its current 'ideal.'

Also, there's always a fringe sector that goes for 'the opposite' that one can trot out as 'proof' of the contrarian. But it is statistically zero. Yes, there are guys who PREFER overweight women -- there are also guys who prefer amputees. All these groups have their clubs, sub-cultures, websites, etc. But they are not changing anything, in the scheme of things. They are tiny blips on the radar screen everyone just ignores.

As for the world-changers you listed (Jesus, etc.), one COULD argue that it was NOT they who changed culture/society -- but rather it was culture/society to CREATED them! Brought them into prominence + power because of a societal NEED, etc.

There's no way of knowing.

Would the boy band craze have 'taken hold' if society/culture had not wanted/needed it at that moment? There's no way of knowing.

What if those same "extremely clever" promoters had pushed an all-LEMUR band -- would that have worked too?

Can one have the goal of changing society in a PARTICULAR direction, then sit down and create that change on purpose?

One can only look at the things that did indeed accomplish that, and then dub them (in HINDSIGHT), as successful -- not taking into account that there may have been 100,000 UNsuccessful attempts by other to change society in ANOTHER direction. No conclusions can really be drawn.