On being “physically attractive.”
I recently I got into a very stupid argument about being physically attractive. The person that I was talking to didn’t understand what I was saying, and decided that I’m “basic” and should be dragged because I’m “ignorant, illiterate and entitled.” I said, “I don’t really worry about how attractive a person is. My standard of beauty is broad, I don’t think being ‘physically attractive’ is a thing. Everyone is beautiful to someone.” He took that to mean that I believe that physical attraction is not real, but that is not what I meant. (Having physical attraction for someone is not the same thing as being physically attractive yourself.) In a factual sense, one person cannot be more or less physically attractive than another. It is entirely possible to more attractive to a particular person or in a particular culture, but that is completely subjective. It would be difficult to prove in any real way that one person is more beautiful as a matter of fact. There will always be some that find beauty in what others would call “ugliness.”
I probably could have worded my initial comment differently, but I am a human being, so I am not always as concise as I would like to be. My point is thus: “Since, beauty is a perception depending on the person observing it, it is rather a subjective perception. This ensures there's no standard value for beauty and no measuring tool, making measurement of beauty impossible.” For that reason, I prefer not to call strangers “ugly” because I don’t believe my personal standard of beauty to be the only “true” standard. This is a choice, no doubt, but I like to think that it is a good one. (I do also truly believe that everyone holds beauty and is of value. That beauty can get lost or become dulled by a person’s attitude and choices, but I believe it is something that we all have intrinsically.)
There are of course, real social/cultural and sometimes economic perks that come with being considered attractive, as well as terrible things that come when you are “ugly.” My entire blog revolves around the idea that we can create our own standards of beauty, and through those, potentially affect the stifling societal standard that so many of us struggle to fit into. There is hope and healing to be found in allowing yourself to feel beautiful without worrying about how physically attractive you may or may not be to others.
I’m not trying to suggest that my opinion is infallible, evolution aesthetics is a thing. There are plenty of interesting studies about beauty and how humans are wired, but despite all of this, there is no real consensus. Why? Because beauty is subjective and enigmatic.
The other hugely problematic part of this entire discussion is that studies about attraction are almost always hetero-normative. We discuss human biology with the implication that all humans are hard wired to be attracted to the opposite sex and there is no other option. How can we possibly discover “human truths” while excluding a large section of humanity?
I believe that beauty can certainly be a state of being. You can be beautiful with tear stained cheeks, or all covered in mud, or when you feel like a swamp demon. Beauty is more than just the physical state of a person. The word physical in physically attractive suggests that it only applies to one state of being, a physical state. Inner beauty is a thing, inner physical attractiveness is not. So maybe I should have said that I don’t think that being beautiful and being physically attractive are the same thing? Or that being physically attractive should matter? I think ultimately, though, this is about more than syntax and colloquialisms. (”Not a thing” may very well be a somewhat regional way to describe something that you don’t believe in?) The lesson here is that if a person is truly interested in you, they won’t try to make you feel stupid because they don’t like the way you’ve worded something.
Beauty, Biology and Discrimination - Here’s a really interesting blog post by Dr Zuleyka Zevallo with lots of great links and further discussion.