The beautiful average
There’s a fuss being made about this Dove video, in which women are asked to choose whether to walk through a door labeled “beautiful” or one labeled “average”:
The idea, of course, is that too many women think of themselves as un-beautiful, and that beauty is a choice, a state of mind of which we all can partake. I suppose there’s a certain truth in that, if we’re talking about inner beauty, beauty of spirit, or even just the fact that, as in the old song, “everybody’s beautiful in their own way.”
But actually, “beautiful” and “average” are words with meanings. “Beautiful” as applied to a woman usually has to do with extraordinary rather than average looks, as in “movie-star beautiful.” And “average” is a mathematical concept more or less equivalent to the mean, a middle point around which most people will fall closer rather than further away. It has no good or bad value attached to it except that it is “more ordinary” as opposed to “extraordinary.”
The video misses the fact that, if everyone is beautiful, then “beautiful” becomes “average.”
Something that’s missing is a door marked “below average.” Such people have to be around, right? Or do they hide inside their homes? But their existence, and the fact that quite a few people must fall into that category, can’t be acknowledged. Other missing doors are “plain” or “unattractive.” That’s because the entire thing is about self-esteem, so those doors can’t even exist in people’s minds. A healthy amount of self-esteem is good. But a realistic appraisal of who and what one is—one’s actual attributes, good, bad, indifferent, or average—is a pretty healthy thing to have, too.
The odd thing about women and self-esteem these days is that, at least as far as I can see, it seems to come in two extremes. “Everyone is beautiful”—and I see women all the time with such great self-esteem that they wear (for example) extreme low-rise jeans from which huge guts protrude (men, i.e. plumbers, have been doing the same for a long, long time). It’s their right to do so, but wouldn’t it be nice to get in line with some sort of reality and dress to enhance our attractiveness rather than hinder it? On the other side of the spectrum, I see women who are lovely as well as slim who fixate on an ounce of fat that no one but they themselves can even perceive, and diet to within an inch (literally) of their lives to lose it. Not the least bit healthy, either.
So how about a celebration of “average”? When Garrison Keillor closes his radio show with this quote, it used to be a joke:
Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
Whoever thought the concept would catch on for real?
““Beautiful” as applied to a woman usually has to do with extraordinary rather than average looks, as in “movie-star beautiful.” ”
Yup. Angelica Huston. Edith Piaf. Case Closed.
The most age defying beauty in a woman?
Carriage.
Great carriage defeats height, weight, facial features, body type and age.
Carriage is the most attractive quality a woman can have. That’s why ballet dancers go on and on and on….
An absurd exercise which allows the vainglorious scapegrace the freedom to publicly plumb new depths of shallow behavior while the fabricators stand aside and observe with glee as their self loathing is pushed back a notch because they are not quite so conceited as the “beautiful” door selectors.
Whoooeeee! I said that so well. You ought to have a premier comment section for those of us that are so clearly superior!
Ah, life in the age of
“Hope and Change”“Despair and More of the Same Old BS”.And try on for estimable size, a door marked ‘whip smart’, another ‘bell curve apex’, and a third ‘red brick stupid’.
But don’t stop there. ‘Lady’, ‘Wench’.
Wait, there’s more. Pigeon hole the sisters. ‘Feminist’, ‘great broad’.
It’s Lake Wobegon where everybody is above average and all the women are beautiful.
In refer to your “About Me”–
I always voted democrat (and even called myself a liberal) until the George HW Bush/Clinton contest when I walked away from the light of eternal bliss.
Now some 27 years later, I am poised to jump again, fleeing from much of the same pathetic pandering partisanship and vile self enriching policies that made me flee before.
I am on the brink but from here, there are no other landing spots! Do you suppose that while “we” are encouraging torrents of illegal aliens, that it might be possible to expand our thirst for new aliens to include those from beyond our atmosphere. Somehow, I think our societies might run better if stripped of the all powerful attributes of vanity, greed, lust, hatred, power, … Then again, what do you suppose the Neptunian word for human eater is?
Your comment that if everyone is beautiful; beautiful becomes average reminds me of a theory of mine. For much of human history being somewhat plump was considered attractive; now it’s the other way around. I have to wonder if it has to do with the average weight going up. Thin is seen as beautiful because it’s becoming rarer, while in the days past it was rarer to be overweight. That’s just my theory though.
As for this episode, it’s probably best if you don’t congratulate yourself on being beautiful. Don’t fill ashamed if your not. There are more important things in life. (For the record, I’ve knew known ugly people who were vain about what they believed where their good looks. I’ve seen beautiful people look in the mirror in disgust too.)
Thin is seen as beautiful because it’s becoming rarer, while in the days past it was rarer to be overweight. That’s just my theory though.
Insightful. It’s a valid point, certainly.
Rarity and exoticism, has indeed drawn more than its fair share of genetic attractions.
vanderleun:
What movie was Edith Piaf in? I never heard of her as a movie star.
And Angelica Huston was in movies, but she was no movie star.
Matthew Ilseman
How about the discordance between the assignment of negroes to the fringes, singled ouy by their dark skin color and the obsession of many (at times possibly most) white Americans to acquire a great tan?
Dink…
I can’t say as I even follow you…
BUT.
Having a tanned body became a White man’s romantic boon immediately after WWII for the following reason:
Such tans were flat give-aways that the man had seen action — at the front — and in the tropics, in particular.
This had a profound impact in Europe — the land of the ultra-white. ALL of the Europeans that fought in North Africa came back with either horrific sun burn or ‘healthy’ tans.
As for Americans, those that fought in southern Europe, Africa and the Pacific all came back with tans.
So a tanned body became quite the sexual signal.
It was also a sexual signal that could be easily faked… In short order American beaches, southern France, became packed with guys chasing that all important tanned body.
This tanned look was a MALES only thing at that time. The gals were still expected to be white as the driven snow. Later, tanned gals gained status — as such tans evidenced that they had the time and money to visit southern beaches.
The (Hollywood famous) Palm Springs tan also comes to mind. It was THE signal that you’d ‘arrived’ in Hollywood.
&&&&&
As for female beauty: the most beautiful women are those whose attributes are extra-ordinarily average. They stand at the absolute center of female statistics:
height
weight
face dimensions
torso
hips
etc.
They also have the magic ratio — the Golden Ratio — riven throughout their bodies.
http://www.intmath.com/numbers/math-of-beauty.php
The golden ratio is actually physical evidence that the individual has had an IDEAL growth environment. ( Especially with respect to illness and nutrition.)
&&&&&&
In primitive societies a beautiful man HAD to be scarred… particularly with hunting and battle wounds.
This reached such a point that men would deliberately scarify themselves — even fake duelling scars.
But, that’s just a man ‘thing.’
The ideal woman is fought over — not fought with.
As an older man, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ugly woman (with the exceptions of Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and Rosa DeLauro).
Beauty is both physical and metaphysical. A person’s outward appearance can be enhanced or degraded by their personality.
Beauty is a quality created by a perception of both physical and metaphysical attributes. Ergo, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
Would things have been different if they had labeled one door HANDSOME and the other door AVERAGE and watched which door the men chose?
All the men would head for the handsome door, even the ones
who look like Elton John !
Molly NH Says:
“All the men would head for the handsome door…”
This entire discussion is based on feminist stereotypes. Male privilege makes females a protected victim group (and justifies their rage) just like white privilege makes everyone with skin pigment (except Asians) a protected victim group who merit special treatment. Molly is probably correct if you limit the discussion to the alpha male studs which heterosexual feminists like to keep around to use when they feel the urge.
Molly, Dennis:
I disagree with the idea that all the men would head for the “handsome” door.
Women tend to think of the word “beautiful” as describing a desirable, laudable state. But men (at least in my experience) don’t feel the same way about “handsome.” There’s something mildly effeminate, or at least not-so-admirable about it for men (at least, there used to be; I may be out of date here). It’s not that men don’t want to be attractive to the opposite sex; they do. But “handsome” is a little too much, suggesting a male model or something that doesn’t denote action and strength, someone who preens and spends too much time combing his hair. It’s not really looked up to.
On the other hand, men do tend to overestimate their body attractiveness and have much better body images than women. But that’s not quite the same as designating oneself with the word “handsome.”
You guys (neo, dennis) are too introspective
All the guys I ve run across in my life experience
go straight for the handsome door.
How else can you explain Seal with Heidi Klum ?
Molly, no one can argue with your life experiences. Insecure guys probably gave up long before they met you. Life can be challenging for shy guys.
You and Neo might be correct insofar as men often attribute their personal insecurities to things other than personal appearance. Because society worships beautiful women and splashes their images everywhere, undoubtedly other women feel pressured to match them in appearance. Men are also pressured but the pressure is often in other areas so their insecurity probably manifests differently.
It is a well known fact that men often don’t cope well. The state of the modern males is not good. The ultimate failure in dealing with life’s problems is suicide which is much more frequent among males than women. Also, despite the alleged male privilege and white privilege it is white males who are much more likely to commit suicide than black or Hispanic males.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/rates02.html
The way that I understand it, beauty is extraordinary.
Being “pretty” is not. I have always thought of “pretty” as a backhanded compliment, a sort of euphemism for what used to be “common” – it is almost as if any woman with a modicum of an aesthetic appeal got called “pretty” by default.
“Beautiful” is different, it denotes a rare quality, a *declination* from the norm. The two seem to be mutually exclusive, a pretty woman by definition cannot be beautiful and vice-versa.
We may disagree on the standard, or say that the standard is ultimately subjective, but I think most people use the words this way: what they call “pretty” is common-appealing (so, “average” fits here too), what they call “beautiful” is rare-appealing.
“Handsome” seems to be the male version of “pretty”, not of “beautiful”. I am not sure what is the male version of “beautiful”, but – if I may rase a controversial point, hoping not to offend any male interlocutors – I am not sure we have sufficient vocabulary for that precisely because this is a quality that seems to be associated with the feminine figure. Even most *women* I know claim that when they instinctively think of “beautiful”, they think of *other women*, not of men. The difference is that, unlike men, we are not sexually attracted to beautiful (or pretty, or any) women. As a result we get to derive a pure, undiluted artistic joy from a sight of a beautiful woman, without our experience being “sexually contaminated”, so to speak.
(Which is also a part of my theory that women – not men, as a stereotype would have it – are more often the true aesthetes, their experience of beauty of a human form being “pure”, not contaminated by an involontary sexual component to it. A (male) friend with whom I talk about art has a theory that, while true aesthetes of either sex are always few, men need to *overcome* something in their nature to join the club, while women of the club are naturals. Where our theories differ is that he still claims there are more men in the club and that does not resonate with my experience.)
The male equivalent of “attractive” seems to be something that imposes itself on the physical structure, rather than emanates from it. BECAUSE women are such aesthetes as will not be romantically or sexually attracted to beauty even if male beauty existed, men need to “intervene” to attract women. We seem to attract them by our presence alone, and while that presence may certainly be improved, even dramatically so (and here enter things such as carriage, diction, manners, make-up etc.), the sort of “intervention” men do seems more intense, and *necessary*.
When I think of the man I love, I would not say he is “handsome”; a better explanation would be that my appreciation of his physical features is a sort of an afterthought arising from appreciation of other qualities, bringing about a harmonious appreciation of the whole. With him, it may be that he had a sort of a reverse process that started with the physical stratum and built FROM there, not TO there.
Dennis:
The problem with suicide, as I understand it, is that paradoxically more women *attempt* it, but more men *complete* it.
As a result of these TWO disparities, TWO generalizing conclusions can be drawn:
1) Because men are more likely to *do it successfully*, life must be harder FOR THEM in ways we do not sufficiently appreciate yet.
2) Because far more women are *drawn to the point of attempting it*, and a proportion of their failure can be imputed to using less fatal methods, life must be actually worse FOR THEM: far more of them are at that extreme point, but end up saved by luck or by their inferior ability in executing their plans. So the fact they are less able and more lucky masks the fact that the initial disproportion reflects on the greater relative hardship for women (as subjectively experienced – enough to end up there in the first place).
Same numbers, same disparities, but because the disparities are TWO, the interpretation will depend on which disparity you privilege.
(My personal experience here is atypical. The two completed suicides of people close enough for it to have an impact on me were both of women. The attempted suicides I know of are split evenly, and I ruin the statistics because I feared the consequences of survival too much to give it a try, otherwise there would be more women in that group too.
But as I said, my experience is at odds with statistics.)
I believe that if the women who fail at suicide really intended to kill themselves in the majority of cases they probably would have succeeded. Admittedly, my experience caring for suicidal individuals is limited, however, when I was in training we were taught that many people who attempt suicide but fail do not really want to kill themselves. Instead their attempted suicide is a dramatic plea to get the help he/she needs.
Incidentally, I agree with your statement above about beauty in women vs. handsomeness in men. In our society beauty in the male physique is not emphasized. It is a rare man who has the aesthetic appeal of a beautiful female. Most men know that that type of aesthetic appeal is impossible and don’t even try to go there. The ancient Greeks and Romans seemed to appreciate the male form more but our society is so strongly oriented towards the feminine that men don’t usually rise above average or above average but never rise to beautiful.
Dennis:
Women who attempt suicide tend to use less violent methods such as pills, whereas men tend to used more violent methods such as guns:
Suicide is sometimes an impulse act, and people tend to use what’s around and what they’re familiar with. The use of pills doesn’t mean a person isn’t serious, but it’s harder to gauge how much to take so it tends to be more survivable, plus (as the article says) there’s more time for discovery.
These gender differences in method were also true way back when I was in college. I remember learning about it in a course.
In addition, many people who do finally kill themselves have made attempts; a failed attempt does not mean a non-serious attempt. Here are some statistics:
Neo:
I was once told the same thing re: “handsome” and effeminacy by a man. He was of the opinion that “cute” and “sweet” were worse, though.
He also claimed what I alluded to in my previous point, but unlike me he was sure convinced about it, claimed it in no uncertain terms. He said that men are “beautiful” (or “pretty”, or “handsome”, or what have you) only insofar as they possess more of the qualities that are *proper to women* (i.e. that the degree of that which we call “beauty” in a man is directly proportional to that which they call effeminacy).
I am still not sure what to make of it, on the one hand it is so… “un-egalitarian”? to even entertain the idea that the realm of the sort of physical exceptionality we call beauty may be as nearly exclusive to women as the realm of superior physical strength is to men; on the other hand, I sure cannot deny my own experience, I saw beautiful men but a few times in my life (but *when* I saw them, I am not sure they were of the effeminate sort, so there I disagree with my friend: while far more women may be beautiful, the few men who have an analogous quality have it in a way that is distinct).
I think, however, that some exceptional female beauty also has a certain androgynous touch to it – a female form so sharp in its quality that it ceases to be fully female, some feature of it breaches out. I was never quite sure how to explain it and for all the art history I have studied nobody has been able to put it into words coherently, although many have agreed on the general point (“beauty”, as one extreme end of aesthetic experience, having an androgynous quality to it).
Anyhow I ramble, I am sorry for the length of my posts, it is just a topic that has fascinated me for years.
OK then, the New England Patriots Quarterback;
Tom Brady = a beautiful man
In fact to my taste I find him more beautiful than his wife the supermodel Giselle Bundchen, she is attractive yes but I find her
decidedly masculine looking.
I prefer his type of beauty.
Neo said:
“Women who attempt suicide tend to use less violent methods such as pills, whereas men tend to used more violent methods such as guns”
That can be interpreted in different ways. Obviously, if someone was making a dramatic gesture without the intent to actually die, they will use less violent methods such as pills. Someone who really wants to kill themselves with chemicals could use something more fatal like a fatal dose of insecticide rather than an overdose of prescription pills.
“In addition, many people who do finally kill themselves have made attempts; a failed attempt does not mean a non-serious attempt.”
Agreed. I have never heard that a failed suicide attempt is a non-serious event. Some of them are genuine attempts to commit suicide while some are dramatic gestures for help. Either way, anyone who is desperate enough to attempt suicide must be taken seriously. If their failed attempted suicide does not bring them the needed help they might complete the suicide next time.
Dennis:
I am not sure what mental clarity one has in such moments to be able to distinguish that his action is fully a product of impulse A (the definite desire to die) rather than mingled with impulse B (a desire to be helped) or maybe even with a distinct hope to be saved that one may not consciously recognize.
In hindsight, I am also not sure how many people are capable of mentally “reconstructing” the state of mind they had at psychologically extreme points in their lives. I have zero professional expertise in any of this so maybe I talk nonsense, but my experience is that I cannot “reconstruct”, ad hoc, previous mental states with nearly the same intensity. I cannot “think myself” happy or distressed – I can evoke a sort of emotional memory of such states, but cannot really “relive” them at will. As a result, by definition I cannot tell what was the dominating impulse at a point at which I considered suicide, since I cannot recreate all of the emotional and cognitive reality in which to distinguish what drives what in the first place.
If this is a shared experience, the explanation of “they did not REALLY intend to do X” may be problematic, EVEN if it comes from the very same individuals. I may in retrospect mislabel the aspects to emotionally extreme past dynamics because I cannot evoke them at will.
Ann, I doubt that people who commit suicide and fail begin by thinking, now I’m going to do a failed suicide as a grand gesture. A suicide attempt is always a highly risky endeavor even if one uses a reversible agent for the suicide such as prescription medicine so at some level the person performing the gesture has come to terms with the possibility that their gesture might be lethal. Any attempted suicide has to be real at some level and psychologically convincing for everyone involved even if the person who commits the failed suicide has made provisions to make his/her own survival possible.
Incidentally, speaking of the differences between beautiful women and handsome men, I just ran across an interesting article in the Guardian by Barbara Ellen which makes the same point we have been making. Here’s the money quote for me:
“Where sexual objectification is concerned, fame is a game-changer for men, while merely amplifying normality for women. To suggest otherwise seems misguided at least.”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/12/men-women-sex-objects