I think "beautiful" is more subjective, and has far more meanings, than "smart" or "tall" or even "talented," though.

A very good friend of mine is really, truthfully, pretty homely. She doesn't have the features that are considered traditionally attractive. But when she grins? When she's laughing, and happy, and really lit up? She's beautiful then, because it has more to do with how looking at her at that moment makes me feel than what she looks like.

That said, I agree with Strega that the focus on attaining beauty has become absurd. I do appreciate the campaigns from companies like Dove, though, that are stressing "real beauty" or "natural beauty" and feature women with little makeup, no implants or cosmetic surgery, and normal people hair. What makes them lovely in the ads (aside from the soap they're purportedly using, or the moisturizer) is that they appear happy, and confident, and at ease.

Well, for most of history almost everywhere the most valuable thing about a woman was her looks (well, and her virginity). Nobody cares about the king's smart daughter or his really nice daughter or the really funny daughter.

Humanity is probably better off than we've ever been in this regard.

Saturday Night Live was dismally unfunny tonight, just as I'd feared it would be. Though they did buy my approval by putting Matthew Fox in a midriff-baring costume at the end.

Not to pick on you, because this is more something I've been mulling over for a while... but I'd rather we just stop making the idea of beauty so powerful.

You know what? You're totally right, and I'm glad you called me on it.

I guess I was thinking more along the lines of "there are many ways to be beautiful," which still allows for the fact that not all of us are. But what I said, and what I was thinking, came out more like, "beauty is everything so we'd better all pretend to have it," and that's not something I believe. So thanks.

I was remarking to a friend the other day that I sometimes felt like no one was beautiful, that it was all manufactured in one way or another. Comes from absorbing too much media about models or cheerleaders or makeovers or celebrities without makeup oh noes.

I don't really know why beauty became such currency. Maybe because women didn't have access to other types of currency or power in times past?

Wasn't beauty more currency for the privileged? I'd imagine, for men whose wives had to do stuff for everyone to get by, indicators of their practicality would be better currency--what is then attractive is what suits them best for the task. Childbearing hips, perhaps, or strong hands for working in the fields.

All else being equal, pick the pretty one. But how often is all else equal, especially when your sustenance is on the line?

ita says something similar to what I was thinking. At least in the last few centuries, beauty was completely worhtless next to the possibility of increasing wealth. A woman's value was the wealth of her family far more than her looks. Before that it may well have been fertility or strength. Beauty has only been a career in maybe the last few decades.

Similarly, in some less modern cultures, obesity in men is considered a sign of good fortune & prosperity...

In modern culture, of course, the rich & famous have eating disorders and/or personal trainers.

I've seen stuff on TV, where they try to test for things like how people unconsciously react to the appearance of others. They usually use babies. They react better to pretty people than to less-than-pretty people. Ergo, according to the TV people, humans are pre-disposed to be attracted to beauty.

I don't know if that really means anything.

So what, then, is progress? A woman's currency is...anything? Dependent on her and the man? Variable in the same way a man's may be (and it can't be denied that his currency can often be his actualy currency)?

Unrelatedly, traumatic gag link. Traumatic in the NSFW way.

ita, goddammit! I totally thought she was kidding, she is not.