For atleast 17 of my 27 years i've had several conversations with diverse groups of people on the subject of attractiveness. What makes someone attractive?Do attractive people get better jobs/boys/girls/money etc.. . Since I'm a woman I have to admit I end up dissecting another woman's claim to good looks far more than I would a man's. Stuff like "she's ok...nice skin ...good hair...but needs to knock off ten pounds" we all do it. All the time. As im becoming more a "grown up" than i've ever been it really affects me ...this issue of attractiveness and what it supposedly does or doesn't do for you.
I am considered attractive ( ascertained by a highly unscientific poll of men I know:)). As a fairly intelligent woman it upsets me greatly that I care if people think I look good. A friend of mine(Blinky) pointed out, highly amused, that I'd much rather have people think I'm and idiot than have people think i'm ugly. True.
I spent an entire day after that conversation wondering how I could be so shallow. Did I really value my attractiveness over my intelligence? The answer is I don't. I'm more likely to contest a woman's claim to intelligence because thats what I value more about myself.
Thats when it struck me....to women good looks is power. In a sick twisted way it's currency. The prettier you are the easier your life is is the perception amongst most people. Women will view another woman who may be more attractive with suspiscion ...much the same way a rich powerful man views a richer more powerful man. It doesn't seem to matter that as women we've worked so hard for so long to be viewed as so much more than pretty young things.... we still seem to subscribe to the age old stereotype that beauty is to be valued. Highly.
My uber feminist friends tell me that we value beauty so much because men constantly judge us on what we look like. At the risk of seriously pissing some of my friends off, I don't think thats fair to men at all. I know several men that have graciously patted bimbettes that have come their way on the head (ok....mostly on the ass) and opted for women that have some serious IQ's. I refuse to believe that men are the root cause of this one!
Which brings me back to the beauty=power theory. See, I think beautiful women learn very early on how to manipulate the world into giving them whatever they want without much effort. That's just it. It's not like you can't work...earn money and THEN buy whatever it is your heart desires...hell millions of men do exactly that! It's just that pretty women quickly figure "screw that...i'll just let my abundant cuteness do the work instead. The world owes me coz im just so darn pretty".
The crappy thing is it works. Look at models! Who the hell gets paid millions just 'coz they happen to have great DNA!
Blinky, i'd like to change my answer. I'd rather the world think Im ugly than have them think i'm and idiot.
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4 comments:
nice one :-)
although attraction is too complex an equation, much complex to get to than the famous relativity one.
lets c,
attraction is proportional to beauty, power, bak-bak factor etc etc.
rest is balanced by a constant whch largely comprises of one's perception of it.
I dont know anything about it, although the concluding sentence is really somethng to ponder upon
Hmmm...interesting point you have there desh....subject of a whole new post:)...the laws of attraction!
What laws do you want me to add to that one?haha
subject of new research maybe :-)
u can add many laws the list certainly not exhaustive
although I go with the law proposed in one of my fav movie anand,
"Har body main ek receiver aur ek transmitter hota hai, kisi ne signal Transmit kiya to doosra Receive karta hai"
- Anand to Bhaskar while going to Victoria Terminus after he meets the second Murarilal
waiting for the next one then :)
Good analysis but a bit incomplete.
Looks, particularly in a woman, does not just come into play because of power.
Something deeper in us, drives us to be 'desirable'
For women, this ends up usually because of looks. Yes, this isn't true for some men but from what I've observed over the last 29 years of my life, this is true for most men. Yes, looks may not be the 'only' criteria for a large subset of men but for a good 95%, it is a very important one.
Men on the other hand, again, from what I have seen, are judged much more on their intelligence. I've seen women (several in my own life) who don't even seem to notice how a guy looks, once something else has caught their attention. Hence, men, even if they look like gorillas in pink panties, can often still be 'desirable'
You might want to argue that you really don't care what men think of you or how desirable you are to them but it's been fairly clearly proven time and again that the need to be desired, especially at these ages, is built into our genetic structure.
Think about it. Twenty thousand years ago, when our race was still evolving, infant mortality used to be at ludicrous levels. So the chances of someone's gene's propogating would have been directly proportional to how many children they had, AND, more importantly for a woman, if they had a man with them to protect her and her children.
Men, not exactly being the epitome of loyalty, would often stick with a woman only if she was attractive to him. Hence, the genes that got propogated were of women who were a.) loyal to one man, since those were the ones that a man would typically tend to take care off, versus a woman that wouldn't be loyal to him; and b.) women who kept themselves physically desirable to them
Now, that is something that has been undoing itself for the last hundred or so years. Compared to 20 thousand? I think it'll be a while before most women would be able to say "I'd rather be considered ugly than an idiot" easily. :)
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