Physical beauty - does it have any worth?

[honest intellectual]

I have always worshipped physical beauty in all its forms, the highest form being the beauty of people, especially women.

But I don't know if this is right because physical beauty is dished out to people randomly, by accident of birth. Nobody can do anything to earn beauty. It is not in any way related to moral virtue. So if if has any worth it must be intrinsic, axiomatic, gratuitous i.e. beauty is a virtue in itself. (Wow, I'm sounding really pretentious here ;))
What do you think? Basically my question is this: Am I a shallow bastard?

[Ian]

You cannot totally dismiss the importance physical appearance and physical attraction, but If it's all you look for you are a shallow bastard ;)

[canikickit]

But I don't know if this is right because physical beauty is dished out to people randomly, by accident of birth.

So what? If something is good, it's good, it doesn't matter if it came about through a random stroke of luck.

Yeah, I think what Ian said applies best.

But it isn't important. It is a quality that some people have.

I don't dislike people who have lack a talent for golf and I don't particularily like them (for that sole reason) it's the same thing (in my highly logical mind at least).

[Fires of History]

Beauty is subjective, therefore it is impossible to place objective value to it. Eye of the beholder and all that jazz.

And I would hope that everyone would follow their own sense of beauty, instead of Vogue's.

Because I know a bit about all the smoke and mirrors, computer enhancement, and photo tricks that go into the Hollywood/Magazine version of beauty, that kind of beauty is now nothing but ugly to me.

Real character, real personality, now that can truly make anyone amazingly beautiful.

And what Ian Rocks said.

[synthesis]

I like Jimi Hendrix. He was born with a talent for guitar - he is one of the greatest ever.

He could not read music - his illustrious guitar segments were created solely in his head.

He made beautiful music through a gift given to him by God.

Am I shallow for liking it?

No! I am appreciating amazing art.

I do, however, feel that there is a difference between this sort of visual beauty:

http://www.poster.net/da-vinci-leonardo/da-vinci-leonardo-mona-lisa-2400670.jpg

And this:

http://www.poster.net/anderson-lee-pamela/anderson-lee-pamela-photo-pamela-anderson-6200055.jpg

[Beccie]

No one has control over what they look like. What we do have control over is what kind of person we are and that should be valued more highly then anything.

Women have been presented with the “ideal figure” they are brainwashed into thinking if they are heavier then a size 10 then they are not loveable. I know to many women, who have wonderful personalities that starve themselves to be beautiful. I have watched so many girl’s lives and self-esteem slowly disintegrate so that they can appeal to men. This is wrong. If you hold the opinion that beauty is all that matters to you then you are superficial and destructive.

[Fires of History]

Thank you DyerMaker, I was waiting for that to make another point.

Why do you find the bikini bimbo hot?

Social conditioning. And literally because big business has decided that thin is in.

When in reality, our biology desires a larger woman. And it has for the entirety of our evolution. In a study of female pheromones, males chose the scent of larger women 5 times as much as thinner women- because our biology knows for a fact that the greatest chance for survival will be with a larger woman. It is also a fact that larger women have smoother pregnancies and births, requiring less C-sections (which of course would kill the skinny women without all this current medical hoopla).

This is also why the goddesses that ancient cultures worshipped were always large, with big bellies and huge hips, and sagging breasts. They knew that life did not come from thin women. In fact, thin women were almost always considered sick in some way.

In short, who's going to survive a winter? Certainly not that Calista Flockhart *****.

But there is too much money to be made if you convince the population that they are ugly and that the supermodel types- which are actually the super small minority- are the beautiful ones. If you can get the majority population of women wanting to be like the minority population of women, you are going to make a lot of money my friend.

Keep in mind I'm not talking about obese, I'm talking about REALISTIC. Nobody you see in any magazine looks that way naturally, they have devoted their ENTIRE life to looking that way. So of course they look great and are "hotter" than you. If you did the same, you'd look as fake too.

And the effect this has on young women is self explanatory I hope.

All I'm saying is that you think the bikini bimbo is hot because you've been told that's what is hot since birth. Had you been born prior to recent history, where mate selection actually mattered (and will matter again one day), you would naturally want the biggest woman you could wrestle away from the other men.

This whole thin fetish is actually a very recent development.

What does this have to do with Honest Intellectual's question? I don't know. Just had to get that off my chest. And, DyerMaker, this had nothing to do with anything you said, just what the pic of the bimbo made me think of.

[TheFriendlyBolshevik]

wow good point. makes me think of a problem i though of a while ago:
If breasts are just clumps of fat (until the milk glands start working) then why are males so attracted to larger breasts (more fat) but attracted to skinnier figures (less fat).

your post seems to answer that for me. thanks.

[redstar2000]

An interesting thread.

Actually, I don't think honest intellectual is "a shallow bastard" for his appreciation of female beauty...though "worship" is a bit much. :cheesy:

And although the capitalist media tries very hard to convince us that certain "types" are more "beautiful" than others...I'm not convinced that they're all that successful EXCEPT in attacking the self-esteem of most women and thereby creating a "demand" for their mostly useless products.

In "real life", the "bimbo" WOULD be more attractive to me than the somewhat over-fed Mona Lisa...because the media portrayal of the "bimbo" has little to do with what the young woman REALLY looks like. What strikes me most forcifully about the media portrayal of "women" is that they don't look "REAL"...they are almost comic-book figures or something generated by a very sophisticated computer program. I know that many men find these baroque curiousities to be erotically attractive--and this at least in part due to media conditioning--but I find it difficult to comprehend.

It's like when you go to a restaurant and they have these elaborate pictures of the food on the menu...you couldn't actually eat that stuff, it's not food at all. It's a bunch of modeling clay, plaster, plastic, etc. made up to look like food. I think something of the same kind applies to the portrayal of women in the capitalist media.

:cool:

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

Quote: from TheFriendlyBolshevik on 1:55 pm on Jan. 13, 2003
wow good point. makes me think of a problem i though of a while ago:
If breasts are just clumps of fat (until the milk glands start working) then why are males so attracted to larger breasts (more fat) but attracted to skinnier figures (less fat).

your post seems to answer that for me. thanks.


It's all about the offspring. A skinner figure shows her fitness and her breasts shows that she has a good milk supply. And hips show if there fits a baby through.

Everything "sexy" on a women's body has a function.

[Dhul Fiqar]

On a related note, there appears to be a genetic advantage to having offspring with people who are "beautiful". By that I mean faces that are proportional, it has been shown that most people are attracted primarily to people who have symmetrical faces. This somehow indicates a lack of genetic mutation or something like that.

I got this from a documentary on Discovery or National Geographic, so it's obviously simplified, but an interesting theory nonetheless.

--- G.

[firstpunklasthippie]

I agree with what commie01 said.
The media idea of women is a truly destructive thing. Not only do they airbrush (makes models look thinner, bigger boobs) but most sample sizes in fashion shoots are a size 4 thats TINY in fact its not a natural size. I know "beautiful" girls who are conviced they are fat and ugly.
And another thing we are constantly judged by apperance, the world is a better place to those who are better looking. And mostly those who are better looking by media standerds.
Shit I could rant & rave more random pointless bullshit.

[CubaVictoria1983]

Sadly enough, I do think that more media-attractive indiduals in the US get more opportunities than people like me, who are way on the other side of the spectrum compared to that really hot "bimbo". It would be nice if those days where girls that weren't a size 4 were prefered, but I'll probably be dead due to starvation by the time that comes around. I'm glad there are more people aside of myself who think that whole media blitz is disturbing.....
:)

[mentalbunny]

There was a test and people decided you they thought was the most beautiful out of a range of photos, and its the people with "average" faces that are the most beautiful, you know average eye size, average nose size, etc.

I disagree, I like striking. I think it perfectly acceptable to enjoy physical beauty, male, female, in nature (flowers, landscapes). Where would we be without beauty?! But i hate society's attitude to it.my friend has a vogue book full of diets, "lose 3 kg in 2 days" and stuff like that. Poison in my opinion.

The most irritating thing is that guys like big tits and tigh arses, whereas I seem to have the opposite. Also gorgeous, thin girls are obsessed with getting thinner. In a boarding house with 55 other girls I see a lot of it but there's nothing you can do.

I hate airbrushing, it is the most destructive thing in the world, it gives guys higher expectations and girls lower self-esteem. Poison.

I want to be beautiful, when I look at other people I constantly see beauty, almost anyone i see (except thsoe with horrible personalities, they could be brad pitt or pamela anderson -bad examples ok but you knwo what i mean, but i'd still think they were ugly if they had a bad arttitude), yet no one else seems to see this beauty and it saddens me.

[Conghaileach]

We had to study attraction as part of our Psychology, and we discussed in class how people are socially conidtioned into believing what is beautiful and sexy and atttractive.

As FoH has pointed out, the idea of what a beautoful woman is typically a larger woman. It was not until the dawn of magazines and Television etc. that this trend changed into the lollypop stick figure.

On a similar note, Hitler tried to prevent women from slimming. There was a lot of propaganda in Nazi Germany that showed women with some fat as being the most desirable. We know he wanted this because these women are better childbearers.


And Dyer, another odd thing about Jimi Hendrix was that he apparently had an unusually large thumb that let him play as few others could.

[Felicia]

Quote: from CiaranB on 1:39 pm on Jan. 14, 2003
As FoH has pointed out, the idea of what a beautoful woman is typically a larger woman. It was not until the dawn of magazines and Television etc. that this trend changed into the lollypop stick figure.

On a similar note, Hitler tried to prevent women from slimming. There was a lot of propaganda in Nazi Germany that showed women with some fat as being the most desirable. We know he wanted this because these women are better childbearers.
Yeah, fuller women were considered more desirable in ancient rome because it showed that they were well fed and healthy, and wealthier (or something like that)

I know that in Cameroon, women with bigger butts are thought of as being more fertile, and therefore more sought after because families are expected to be big. I guess women there stuff pillows down their pants to make their butts bigger when they go out to social gatherings (or something like that)

[Guardia Bolivariano]

Well of course beauty is important isn't Felicia ;) ...You know what I mean:cool:

[Felicia]

Quote: from Guardia Bolivariano on 7:57 pm on Jan. 14, 2003
Well of course beauty is important isn't Felicia ;) ...You know what I mean:cool:
No, I don't think that beauty is important at all. And I don't know what you mean, unless you're talking about my butt :confused: Yeah, I think that I'm confused, just a little.....lol :)

[Guardia Bolivariano]

[/quote]
No, I don't think that beauty is important at all. And I don't know what you mean, unless you're talking about my butt :confused: Yeah, I think that I'm confused, just a little.....lol :)[/quote]

Well you'll get It soon enough;)

On a more serious note I think beauty is always necesary because everyone sees something beautyfull In their onw way beauty is just a word because in real life everything can be ulgy and beautyfull at the same time It just depends on the person's point of view.

[mentalbunny]

I had something really good to say but I forgot it :sad:

Well this is something:

Why is everyone else so beautiful?!!! it's so frustrating as I don't stand a chance with anyone and I want to appreciate this beauty fully, not just form a distance. Oh well.

I think it is truly bizarre how the criteria of beauty have changed so much.

[Anonymous]

physical beauty is relative, nowdays skinnygirls= hot chicks, yet not longbefore a hot chick was a somewhat faty girl.... its all relative, beautifull at my eyes, ugly at yours, but jus let me say that some ofthe "hotest"girlsi know would be the last ones i would make out with..
because, inner beuty counts.... A LOT!


(ok so i may say this because i am ugly.... but thats factualism!!!! :biggrin: )

[synthesis]

And Dyer, another odd thing about Jimi Hendrix was that he apparently had an unusually large thumb that let him play as few others could.

He had other unusually large apparati as well ;)

And, DyerMaker, this had nothing to do with anything you said, just what the pic of the bimbo made me think of.

It's cool, just don't do it again.

... kidding ;)

[Felicia]

Quote: from Guardia Bolivariano on 8:35 pm on Jan. 14, 2003


No, I don't think that beauty is important at all. And I don't know what you mean, unless you're talking about my butt :confused: Yeah, I think that I'm confused, just a little.....lol :)

Well you'll get It soon enough;)

On a more serious note I think beauty is always necesary because everyone sees something beautyfull In their onw way beauty is just a word because in real life everything can be ulgy and beautyfull at the same time It just depends on the person's point of view.

Ok, maybe I misunderstood you just a bit. :P (but I still don't get it)
But I agree with you, beauty is in the eye of the beholder......and not the media, lol :P Besides, I think people here are talking about the portrayal of women in the "western-capitalist" media. In different cultures "beautiful" means completely different things........like who has the biggest disk in their lip ;)

[Anonymous]

"like who has the biggest disk in their lip "

actually i think tahts the male beauty model... but imnot sure....

god bless national geogrphy for all this information....