I haven't read about SCT, but in the wikipedia article about social constructionism I read: "When we say that something is socially constructed, we are focusing on its dependence on contingent variables of our social selves rather than any inherent quality that it possesses in itself." You said: "on top of those there is a whole conflicting mess of different desirable appearances which depend upon the period, culture, and person, driven by all the complexities of interacting human beings." At first I thought are "the period, culture, and person" not "contingent variables of our social selves"? But you went on to say "those factors can be boiled down to some fairly simple drives which have all emerged for one reason: to maximise reproductive success." In other words, you're saying those factors can be boiled down to something that is an inherent quality that we possess in ourselves, which is we maximise reproductive success.

Does this make sense? I dislike SCT too now but I wasn't trying to imply the perfect image society creates is socially constructed when I said "personifying what society has deemed as the perfect image." I meant regardless of whether society is socially constructed or not, this system that I'm referring to as "society" creates an ideal image of what a human being should look like. If society is not socially constructed, and is in fact defined by our biology, then that would mean this ideal image also originates from our biology. Regardless of all this, there is a perfect image we strive for.

I feel like we're on the same page, and I totally relate to your view that, and I'm going to paraphrase you: "it is in our nature to be highly responsive to our nurture." Our nurture is not an individual entity from the system, our nurture is grounded by our biology.