| Beautiful and Ugly |
[May. 21st, 2009|03:54 pm] |
I'm getting greatly annoyed by how little attention span I have recently. Nothing seems to capture my eyes for long enough. Last night was a great night though. Ah mah came over and we were having a discussion about girls - especially girls that I'm interested in and those who are interested in me. I think I have exceptionally high standards and she confirmed this. Why is it that everyone always tells me to lower the bar? Seriously, I'm sorry to say this, but when I went through pictures of all the ex girlfriends I came to a shocking conclusion, none of them actually hit 9 in my books. Before you people start flaming me, yes, they were all 10 character wise... *redemption*. But then again, if thats the case, it would also mean that my bar is not very high what, 8.5 is enough.
Trying to intellectualize this concern of mine, I went back to Darwin and Sartre to try and figure out how to synthesize the idea of aesthetics, particularly female beauty in the eyes of men, and how men actually view their own social and personal selfs. Its interesting how little synthesis there is of Evolutionary theories into modern day philosophy. Obviously, as extremely cautious and critical philosophers tend to be, we tend to only try to find faults in theories most of the time other than those that we like or hold dear to our hearts. Yet, I think there might be a little insight provided by evolution towards a male attempting to find a mate.
Physical attraction, whether subjectively governed by the golden ratio or the size of a female's bust, appears to be the first thing that matters to males. I am over generalizing here, so if any brothers of the same sex wish to disagree, pls leave a comment. However, it strikes me that men are not only extremely visual animals but they are also extremely picky. Everyone seems to have their own idea of a perfection of beauty(in a woman's physical form). Yet, Hume's contested idea of a standard of taste seems to be largely accurate here.
Female beauty, seems to be a part of aesthetics where most men seem to agree; that most other men are as exacting a connoisseur as they are. Its hard to find someone to disagree with you on which female is hot other than maybe the commonly heard response: "She's beautiful... but not my type". This respond confounds me, both philosophically and personally. How is it possible that I might find one girl of equal beauty as another but would be able to tell, only on superficial looks, that one is more 'my type' than the other?
On the other hand, it is never difficult to come to a similar conclusion as your friend when an ugly girl walks into the bar and everyone starts cracking 'ugly' jokes? There never seem to be a similar consensus that goes something akin to "she's ugly, but not my kind of ugly"? Why the disparity? If beauty is the opposite of ugliness and vice versa, shouldn't we be able to polarize both ends into a gradual step of grades?
Worst of all are the "run-of-the-mill" girls. These species of the opposite sex tend to post the most difficult problems when it comes to having a consensus amongst our own kind. A girl on anywhere from a scale of 5-8 in my books would easily end up as a 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or even 9 in someone else's. How is this possible? Assuming that every male is an exacting connoisseur of female beauty, why the disparity?
Hoping to answer these questions with evolution tends to give a better insight. When we see physical specimens of the opposite sex, we straightaway attempt to grade that person; for whatever sexual reproductive or lineage concerns both genetically and culturally influenced, we might have. Now, it isn't difficult for people to agree on both ends of the scale because certain physiological factors almost immediately give the game away, proportion, size and other cultural factors like dressing and gait.
To answer the problem we face when dealing with the beautiful; I propose we consider what is a subjective response. That there involves a certain rating that is what many aestheticians would call too little aesthetic distance. As our primal instincts start to kick in, with adrenaline rushing through the body, we are then forced physiologically into a mode of wanting to "own" the item. In turn, we not only start to objectively evaluate a woman's beauty but subjectively attempt to figure them out, not unlike something like a compatibility chart-list.
This is the reason why some might find a beautiful girl "my type" or "not my type" IMO.
Dealing with the ugly, seems to bring about an over-distancing problem. Where the human male eye intentionally avoids contact for too long in an attempt to shun away from the aesthetically un-pleasing. Thus, the brain over distances itself from the subject of contemplation and we guys are not able to come up with something like, "She's not my type of ugly". Hence, any morphological or physical attributes are not clearly defined as to why a member of the opposite sex appears to be ugly in any certain way.
Coming to the middle tier of girls; we see the ability of all men to be exacting connoisseurs of the female sex and the beauty they possess. It is typically a scenario whereby we, of the male variety, are in a mode that is in the proper aesthetic distance. We no longer are really driven by banal instincts to want to possess the subject being evaluated nor are we intentionally shunning the prospect of critiquing the ugly. We can pick out parts and details as to what pleases the eye and what do not. In this case, there comes an increase in the diversity of answers to the question of "How pretty is this girl on your scale".
To summarize, this is an exceptionally male viewed way of interpreting the subject of female beauty. I in no way attempt to claim to know any subjective opinion on how females view female beauty and I do not intend to speak for every individual male homosapien. These are largely generalized observations with an intention to shed light on how we males actually view females.
*tongue not so in cheek* |
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