The Psychology of Beauty
Note: I’m no psychologist, just an arm-chair speculator.
What is beauty? My muddled thoughts and words from my previous entry on body image is forcing me to try to articulate this more clearly. My guess is that in the distant past, when scrabbling for food and genetic survival, standards of beauty were probably strictly tied to health and physical dominance.
I’m sure that research into various different aspects of current day conceptions of beauty, we could find a reason to justify each aspect. I recently read an article about how blond hair came about and how we might presume it came into desireability, instead of being seen as an odd mutation, as well as why light skin was important in the nordic regions (having to do with Vitamin D production). I don’t know why the long necks of the long-necked tribe which I don’t know the name of were valued as beautiful, but I’m sure there were logical reasons behind that as well. I’m sure the underlying initial reason people with glasses are teased because it’s seen as a deformity, a physical problem.
So I don’t dispute that we are genetically and socially conditioned to look for outwardly physical signs of health. It can be a strong indicator in most segments of the population.
However, when someone feels “ugly” or when someone looks upon someone else as “ugly” or “undesireable”, my guess is not that the first and foremost thought is, “Oh my goodness, this person is SO unhealthy.” The person is more likely thinking, “This person doesn’t look good to me.” Period.
I think health is a huge public and personal concern. But I also think that’s NOT what most people are thinking of when they judge each other and themselves on their physical appearance. I firmly believe that many times people wield it as an excuse & weapon to judge someone else to find the judged lacking. Not that everyone does this — no generalization can cover the entire range of the human experience — but my personal interactions and my accumulated second-hand knowledge of the world confirms this to be true (not that I’m not willing to accept evidence to the contrary).
Worse is when people come to conclusions about someone’s lifestyle based on appearance. Looking at someone who is, say, 50 pounds overweight, people feel comfortable making non-health-related value judgments about the person: he/she is lazy, he/she doesn’t care about him/herself, he/she should be ashamed, he/she should stop overeating, etc.
I hate that. How do we know anything about them? Maybe that person has already lost 20 pounds of excess weight and have been steadily exercising and eating better to improve themselves. Maybe they’ve always been super-healthy and had a really bad injury that’s kept them off their feet for a while and they are struggling to find something that works. Maybe they are really feeling good about their progress but strangers’ looks of derision makes them feel like it was all pointless. Or maybe they are trying to work their way out of a lifetime of bad habits and bad self-esteem, learning to love themselves so they can start confidently, happily start making good long-term habits.
I am not saying that’s how it is for everyone. But I don’t know what’s going on with the particular person, do I? I only know that for the last several years, all I did was sit on my ass and watch TV. I was and am lazy. But my appearance didn’t cause people to harshly judge my character despite the actuality that I was/am a lazy sloth. So I got to have an unfair advantage. Not to say that I’m super-skinny or appear uber-fit; I don’t. But I fall firmly in the range of BMI that they say makes a person healthy, despite having no available stats for my blood pressure, cholesterol level, or ability to sustain prolonged activities. I know the BMI is useful as a general guideline because there is a correlation between weight/size and health, but I am merely saying it’s just one indicator, one I could use to pretend I was living a healthy lifestyle.
Anyway, I’m veering sharply into health again, when I’m honestly trying to discuss beauty.
To me, it’s all beautiful. I remember when I was 5 years old, looking at my grandma’s paper-thin, wrinkly skin and her sagging arms and breasts, and mostly her love for me in her eyes and thinking, “She is so beautiful.” My mom has always fluctuated in her weight, from very slim to pretty rotund to slim again and back, and she’s always been beautiful to me. I’ve had exes who were shorter than me and and exes who were pushing 300 lbs. They were all beautiful to me. Yes, the ex who was close to 300 lbs was actually starting to show health problems, and we started to deal with that, but he never stopped being beautiful to me. Neither did the ex who most women would have dismissed as being too short (at 5’2″ he was definitely a shorty).
So many things are not considered beautiful. But honestly, can we all only be/date/marry/procreate with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie? Is everyone else ugly?
I find my friends to be beautiful: those who think their cheekbones are weird, those who think they are too fat/skinny, those who wish their boobs were smaller/bigger, those who have long torsos, those who have short torsos, those with practically no eyelashes, those who think their foreheads are too big, those who think their heads are too small/round/big/whatever, etc. Guess which ones apply to me. 😀
People all want what they don’t have. I dearly want my friends’ beautiful lush lashes and bigger boobs. Maybe my friends want my straight hair or relative slimness. I feel paranoid about my weird forehead and wish I had a neat widow’s peak. Maybe no one else sees it and wishes they had my relative inability to sunburn under most conditions. I wish I looked more my age, maybe someone else my age wishes they looked younger like me. I really wish that I had dimples (one of the cutest traits anyone can have, in my opinion), but maybe someone else would trade my lack of freckles for that.
I wish for all those things, but only in passing. I am who I am.
It’s about really, honestly knowing your good traits and bad traits and appreciating your good traits and working on the bad traits that can be changed. It’s not about kicking yourself over everything and anything you are not or things you can never change. It’s about loving yourself so that you can give yourself the confidence to know you can be better (in all ways, not just physical) and remembering all the positives so that you don’t drown in a pool of despair when you face a new hurdle. I’m not saying we should wave our hands around and make all the bad disappear, but we can gather our strengths around us to provide momentum to tackle the next big task. Ignoring the good in you is just as bad as ignoring the bad in you. I recommend neither.
Being human, I admit that a part of why I started to work out was that I started to feel unattractive. I even lied to myself and told myself it had to do with health — and honestly, it was an issue because gaining something like 10 pounds in 2 months is quite alarming for anyone — but mostly, it was vanity. It really was. I wasn’t thinking, “What does this mean for my health?” but rather, “I am starting to feel paranoid about how I look.” I know it’s stupid, but we all do this to ourselves. Even as I look upon my friends and family and see only beauty, even with all my self-confidence, I am my harshest critic. To myself that is. I often portray an impenetrably confident persona because I think that’s how I *should* be, so I try to be that way. Also, I felt that my friends would, no, *should* poo-poo it if I admitted my efforts were primarily to look better, so I pretended looking better was merely a side benefit. Ha!
Looking better *does* boost the confidence to try harder to be more healthy, at least for me. For me, it confirms that confidence in yourself helps to make more positive changes. Derision and scorn do nothing but make people feel isolated and unliked. I save derision and scorn for things like criminal acts, not people’s appearances.
ETA: After reading the comments, it appears I save some derision for really attractive celebrities wearing ugly clothes. But it feels like good-natured laughter and not actual derision. But I am leaving myself space to see if I’m just wrong.
Wow, I didn’t even see this post when I commented on the other one.
[goes back to reading the new post]
I know what you are saying.
I think the main difference to me lies in that people Go Fug Yourself makes fun of usually have to do with attractive people unexpectedly wearing really bizarre/ugly clothes. They also poke fun of the absurdity of going SO far in trying to fit into the standardized notion of beauty that they get bizarre plastic surgery.
It makes light of beauty. I know it really seems hypocritical, but I feel like it’s two sides of the same coin. Beauty isn’t so strict. “Beautiful” people fug themselves up too, just like the rest of us.
It’s the quality of the satire at the website brings me back again and again.
But perhaps if I delve deeper, I will find some glee in attractive people being taken down a notch? Does my enjoyment come from a sense of meanness, or sour grades, or resenting people who the world perceives as better than me? I don’t know. I honestly don’t think so. I do think it has to do with “Why, if you are already stunning, would you put on a yellow tissue box? You silly nut!”
But it is something I can and should definitely spend some time ruminating on, and can’t dismiss immediately from my mind.
“You” being A_B. (Hadn’t seen Chad’s post between the two.)
I’m trying to sort of feel around the issue, so stay with me on this. 😀
I think the big difference in how I feel about beauty and still being able to enjoy a website like “Go Fug Yourself” is that there is a difference between poking fun at a person’s looks versus a person’s actions.
That sort of vaguely feels more right, but still not on the head yet.
Like the difference between, “You have an ugly hooked nose, ugly head!” and “Your plastic surgery makes you look like an alien! What were you thinking?”
I have problems with the first statement but much less so with the second.
Of course, it hasn’t escaped me that celebrities are also human beings and have insecurities that may have led to such plastic surgeries. Clearly, they are the victims of the image that they project to society, perhaps the biggest victims of all.
I don’t think less of them, but I also don’t know them to think high or less of them. I only know if I like their acting or appearance, and for some, if I like their politics. And if I like what they chose to wear that day. 😀
And maybe that does mean I am a hypocrite, so I need to modify my theory then, because I don’t think it’s cool to be like, “I’m a hypocrite! So what?” I need to either make my actions match my words or vice versa. It’s a process.
“Of course, it hasn’t escaped me that celebrities are also human beings and have insecurities that may have led to such plastic surgeries. Clearly, they are the victims of the image that they project to society, perhaps the biggest victims of all.”
Add to that, “Perhaps I am exacerbating the problem with my enjoyment of their silliness.” :-/
But I think Go Fug Yourself, to borrow a phrase, is “part of the problem” you are addressing in these recent posts.
The entire notion of attacking people and making value judgments based on their appearance seems to be the crux of the issue.
And there, Go Fug Yourself (“GFY”) is wallowing in it.
Indeed, it seems that GFY is entirely complicit and functions by attacking people for their failure to achieve the proper look of the moment. It creates an insecurity in this failure and therefore reestablishes and reinforces the alleged validity of an exceedingly arbitrary and transitory standard.
In addition, it further reinforces the notion that there _are_ proper physical forms and ways of adorning those forms that have nothing to do with anything other than the fashion of the moment.
And their standards are based on what exactly? What looks good to them?
Admittedly, they can turn a clever phrase, but the entire endeavor seems antithetical to “non-judgementalism”.
I also just remembered that I fervently insisted at some point on TGF a that all of the following people were unattractive to me:
– Richard Gere
– Pierce Brosnan
– Lucy Liu
– Jennifer Garner
I have no excuse for those.
Time to re-eval!
Maybe my biggest hypocrisy lies in not wanting to pass judgment on anyone I love/care about but anyone I don’t know being fair game.
Well, that doesn’t sound quite right either. I don’t think it’s all fair game.
“Like the difference between, “You have an ugly hooked nose, ugly head!” and “Your plastic surgery makes you look like an alien! What were you thinking?””
But one could easily use this line of thinking to argue that overweight people are simply not taking care of themselves. “You ate that donut! What were you thinking?”
Everybody makes choices. It seems arbitrary to me to say, “it’s OK to make fun of somebody who feels so insecure that they decided to get plastic surgery” but it’s not OK to make comments about an overweight person.
I think both are bad.
Additionally, I think it’s inconsistent and unresolvable. Either one does or does not advocate mocking people for their appearance.
Both situations involve people wrestling with “body” issues. Indeed, the plastic surgery person may be even _more_ than an overweight person with a strong self-image.
I think one could argue that the magnifying glass that many celebrities deal with on a day to day basis is more difficult than what your typical person deals with, and, consequently, they are more vulnerable to additional abuse.
Either one does or does not advocate mocking people for their appearance.
That is definitely true, and there is nothing I can fault with that line of reasoning.
I do not want to advocate mocking people for their appearances. As such, I will think about dropping the link.
This raises a further question for me. What does it mean for me to weigh in on contests of various types?
If someone puts themselves in a talent- or skill-based contest, I have no problems judging the thing they’re competing in, because that’s what they put themselves on the line for. How about celebrity? Does the mere fact that they are in the celebrity arena, and therefore implicitly competing in the realm of being charismatic in some fashion allow me to judge if they are charismatic and/or attractive to me? Since that is what they are competing in? Or does it just lead to the cult of judgment? Or both?
Most likely, both.
But does reconciling that with myself mean I want to entirely give up my ideas of what is particularly attractive to me? That seems odd, so that doesn’t seem like what I’m striving for.
Maybe what I’m striving for is that people can be attractive in many many different ways. Maybe it’s as simple as the old saying Andre quoted in the other entry, “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.”
—
On a related note, I have been watching America’s Next Top Model with great fascination. With absolutely no sarcasm, I’ve been finding it incredibly interesting the stuff models are supposed to do in their jobs (aside from the silly challenges that I don’t imagine real models do for any reason). I had always assumed they were like pretty dolls that the photographer just posed in various ways and took pics of. Turns out that’s not it at all. Hmm.
This show is explicitly about judging portrayals of beauty. I am enjoying it. It’s a fluffy show, but it generally focuses on “Did you look intense enough in that picture? Was your pose energetic and engaged?” rather than, “Are you ugly?” But undenably, these are not ugly people. They are taller than average, rail-thin, and have striking features.
So how does my facination with this show gel with how I feel about the narrowness of societally reinforced notions of beauty?
Not well, I suppose, but it feels more like to me, yes, I see that is beautiful. But because I also see other things as beautiful, it doesn’t bother *me* per se.
But every new viewer (well, Nielsen viewer) and every magazine purchaser helps to reinforce the same image problems I rail against.
Conflict.
At the same time, I do make a distinction between “real life” and “not real life”. I can be non-judgmental in real life and advocate for non-judgment, meanwhile poking fun at things that don’t fall into the realm of “real life” for me, such a celeb-dom.
Could there be an analogy drawn between separation of reality & non-reality per disussions on violence versus video game violence and the separation of reality & non-reality per notions of real-life beauty versus what’s on screen? I think there is a slight point to compare, but it’s not a really apt analogy to milk, since in the realm of beauty, public perception/admiration of the on-screen notions of beauty directly impacts most people’s everyday notions of beauty.
Way for me to bring something up and kill it in one breath. Haha.
Seriously, I don’t know if I’m trying to hit a specific conclusion. I’m mostly feeling about in the dark to come up with something consistent.
Hmm. Going back to GFY, I still wonder.
I mean, I want to reserve the right to be snarky over things people say and do. Can’t I tease?
I don’t want to be mean, not really. I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, not really.
But I find it entertaining to find snark in things smart, attractive people do.
Maybe I’m just anti-bully. It feels wrong to make fun of the underdog, but kind of in good humor to poke fun at someone who is either similar to me or significantly “better” (in whatever way). I’ll make fun of Einstein’s crazy hair! But because I think it’s cute and he was so intelligent that I can’t even grasp it, not to knock him down.
If I make fun of Brad Pitt and his weird similar hairdoes with women he dates, it feels ok because everyone in the world knows he’s good looking and my feeling is that he’s self-confident about it.
But I should and will stop making fun of plastic surgery weirdness, because it is pretty sad to think of.
I tease my friends, but never about something I know they are actually insecure about, if I know about it. I tease them mercilessly. And they tease me mercilessly. And I enjoy it.
Am I trying to justify hanging on the GFY? Yes! Haha, shaddup. But is the justification valid? Is it honestly good-natured fun or is it bullying and tormeting and hurtful?
And moreover, ask A_B pointed out, does it add to the problem? Doesn’t it?
I want to be clear though that I’m advocating what I see as ideal. I’m not perfect. I’m as guilty as the next person, probably more guilty, in hating on outfits worn by the bridge and tunnel crowd infesting Manhattan these days.
These people are destroyers of worlds … I mean neighborhoods. Drunk 24/7. Loud, obnoxious clods.
I obviously don’t like these people, and, consequently, I dislike people who wear the same “uniform.”
Also, I will make judgment calls about people I consider “slaves to the latest fashion.” I will judge and condemn. Not merely snark. I will in fact think, “that guy/gal is a fucking idiot” if I see person wearing a goofy knock-off of a GQ/Vogue fashion spread.
It’s all internal and I don’t discuss it (other than now, clearly), but I am exceedingly judgmental of these types of decisions.
So perhaps that’s why I dislike GFY because it is a source of these artificial standards for appearance. I can’t stand complicity in this “system” and, ironically, will judge people on their degree of complicity based on their appearance.
… *ponders*
I suppose it’s a semiotic chain in here somewhere that needs untangling.
If I were to try, I think I dislike the signified to such an extent that I come to dislike the signifier in and of itself. I see the signifier and assume it signfies something which I really don’t know.
Indeed, one could say that my diachronic analysis functions on the order of “myth” and without a historical contingency.
That “one” saying that would sound like _such_ a jackass. 😉
This thinking out loud stuff is contagious.
I think it is when one uses “one” as the subject of sentences in one’s casual conversation that one is a jackass.
😀
Now who am I mocking?!?!!
—
Trendsetting and/or being a slave to said set-trend is something that I think I share a similar disdain for. However, I’ve come around a lot in recent years because I do see how certain accepted “fashionable” things do really look great on certain body types.
One could argue that I’ve just been brainwashed to believe the wearers of fashionable items look good because they are fashionable.
But see, it doesn’t matter because I’m clearly a jack-ass. [See sentence one.]
As long as you don’t mock my looks!
I wish I could, but I can’t see anything beyond the bag over your head.
Honestly though, I think if you hang around GFY enough, you’ll enjoy it. *snort*
The following anecdote seems somewhat relevant in this context.
For reasons that are irrelevant, I ended up having to spend a lot of time with this one guy. He was _hysterical_.
But he was hysterical like a high school wise-ass. Everything was based on insulting/mocking/criticising. It was very juvenile. But it was funny as hell. I’m sure he’d love GFY.
After a while, I engaged in the dialogue with him. It truly felt like high school, but I enjoyed it anyway.
A while later, I didn’t like who I had reverted into. I couldn’t stand how _everything_ I joked about, and I joked a lot, was at someone else’s expense. Believe me, I can come up with so many ways to essentially call somebody a dumb motherfucker, it’d curl your hair. And I can do it over just about anything.
I eventually started extricating myself from the “situation” because I was falling into bad habits of constantly mocking and insulting people (not to their face; just for our group’s amusement).
The guy eventually noted that I wasn’t around as much and seemed to be avoiding him. Since he was also a pushy jerk that wouldn’t leave me alone, I had to tell him off.
We were on the subway and when he asked for the umpteenth time what my “deal was”, I told him, “I can’t hang out with you. Hanging out with you makes me a worse person.”
He said, “that’s like the worst thing anyone has ever said to me.”
I still remember the exchange vividly.
But even though he looked shaken after I said it, I knew I was right and it was the only answer he’d ever listen to.
The point being, I’ve “been there and done that” when it comes to the attitude of GFY. After actively stopping myself from being a high school dick again, I went back into an old pattern. I knew I was being an obnoxious shit, but I couldn’t help myself.
But I _did_ realize that, as tempting as it was to be a person that likes GFY, they just simply have a shitty attitude about life. I think that attitude is pretty indefensible. Arguments that “hey it’s just harmless fun” don’t hold water with me. Everything they do is bad.
But like everything you might enjoy, but know is bad for you, it was _work_ to say, “fuck it, I’m not going to put people down all day.”
You leave my GFY alone, you who introduced me to Overheard in New York, Mr. Mocking Bridge and Tunnel People! 😀
Oakland == bridge & tunnel of the Bay Area. :p I know, I know, shaddap.
I don’t think I introduced you to Overheard in New York. I think it’s the other way around.
I don’t believe a word of those exchanges, for the record.
I do hate B&T assholes.
Amazing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_and_Tunnel
Hmm, I swear it was you… Now I need to search around my archives.
The last time I searched around my archives, I was so smug about being right, but I was SO WRONG. It was embarrassing because I was all, “Here, let me prove you never said that. I’ve got my [IM] logs right here. You’ll see… er… that I’m… uh… totally wrong… Shi-it.”
For the record, I don’t read Overheard in New York. I’ve read it maybe twice in the year since you posted about it.
They can’t be real. Just can’t.
You keep one-upping me and I’m gonna have to beat you up, you know.
/ironic bullying
Oh, who am I kidding? You are in better shape than me. I’ll be the one that gets beat up.
…
Which wil make you look like a bully.
😀
I think my biggest problem is that I tend to think too *many* people are hawt!
I’m sure my fiance would endorse that above statement 😀
Sort of tying into what I said in comments on your earlier post, how do square the sentiments of this and the prior post with your providing a link to “go fug yourself” in your “other” category?