How is this an opinion? [beauty]

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m not sure where this should be posted so I apologize about that.

When Joe Eszterhas was writing Basic Instinct he wrote that a beautiful and seductive woman should be one of the lead roles. The whole point of the story is that the leading woman uses her physical beauty and seduction to sway decisions about her and to get what she wants.

To accomplish this script into a feature movie how isn’t it a FACT that the casting department has to hire a beautiful and seductive woman to accomplish the role that was written?

People love to say to say that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and that physical beauty is an OPINION.

This couldn’t be farther from the truth. An obese woman simply would never be hired to be the leading female role in Basic Instinct.

The woman hired HAS to be physically attractive and seductive as a FACT.

Or else it will not accomplish the role that was written and the movie would not function properly and not be as successful.
I understand what facts are but how could one argue with this? It’s in plain sight.

2

What is “beautiful” is indeed an opinion - but you’re correct that some women will be considered overwhelmingly more attractive, by an overwhelmingly greater majority of society, than others.

So a fat or disfigured woman might be considered “beautiful” by only 1% of the populace. Someone like Milayna Vayntrub might be considered “beautiful” by 90% of the populace.
At a certain point, opinion *is *fact. Like a thread that someone posted years ago - if 99% of people in the world think that a blanket is “soft,” that ought to be fact, even if 1% of people, for some reason, think it’s hard as rocks.

3

Moderator Action

This might turn into a debate, but for now let’s give IMHO a try.

Moving thread from GQ to IMHO.

Also, thread title edited to more clearly indicate the topic.

4

Well, to take an extreme example, there are men, (and women) who find obese women beautiful, seductive, physically attractive. If you filmed the movie with an obese woman in the role, then it would work powerfully for those people, and not for a more “mainstream” audience.

More generally, I would say that for a statement to be a fact, all of its terms have to be concrete and clear, not subjective.

“The casting department has to hire a beautiful and seductive woman to accomplish the role that was written.”

Here, I’d say that “the casting department” can be interpreted very concretely, but “beautiful”, “seductive”, and “the role that was written” are inherently subjective enough to push that statement into the realm of opinion.

I’m also not sure if “accomplish” is a concrete term in this context.

Can you provide any other examples of what you think are facts?

5

Here is a basic fact: the number of boners that popped when people first saw the movie in the theater. (This isn’t a fact that is readily available. No one knows the exact number. But it’s still a fact.) It is also presumably a fact that the studio heads wanted this number, call it the Boner Index, to be as large as possible in order to sell movie tickets. Had different women been cast in the role, the Boner Index would have been different for those different women. That’s a fact, too.

It is extremely likely to be a fact that, given our current cultural/biological make-up, a zaftig woman would have had a lower Boner Index and therefore been a less desirable choice for the role as written.

And none of the facts or potential facts above negates the fact that beauty is subjective and ultimately in the eye of the beholder.

Can you imagine living in a world where the vast majority of men get sprung by a zaftig femme? Is there something about contemporary standards of physical attractiveness and seductiveness that mean a certain body-type MUST NECESSARILY BE chosen as the standard across all possible worlds? Suppose a species of pigs had evolved intelligence, instead of apes. If those pigs started watching motion pictures, would they have chosen as a seductive lead a pig that looked as much like Sharon Stone as possible? Or would they have chosen a pig that was attractive and seductive relative to their own standards of such things?

Even ignoring other-dimensional smart pigs and focusing exclusively on real-world human beings, there are plenty of men who get sprung from a lady with a little somethin-somethin in the trunk. That is a FACT. The Boner Index from such a woman would not be zero. Lower than Sharon Stone, almost certainly, but not even close to zero. Some of these same men would be – and actually were – bored by Sharon Stone in the role. That is also a FACT.

That the Boner Index is different across women (and VERY different across species) does not mean that physical attractiveness is some inherent factual part of the universe. The Boner Index can be a fact in a certain time and place, and simultaneously, beauty can still be in the eye of the beholder.

These are not mutually exclusive ideas.

6

Some people - and I don’t mean anyone in this thread thus far - like to use a grain-of-sand-pile-continuum fallacy:

“This (7) woman and (8) woman are roughly equally attractive, therefore there’s no difference between a (1) and a (9) either.”

7

Oh yay, another thread objectifying women. Boner index! Are you fucking kidding me?

8

Well when making a movie you appeal to the masses, lest your movie may become an arthouse flop. So the decision on casting a beautiful and seductive lead actress would be what do the masses perceive as beautiful and seductive. While some people will have differing opinions, their usually is a consensus or majority opinion that will prevail.

9

Yes, for any time and place there could be a general consensus opinion of what ‘beauty’ consists of or who is ‘beautiful’. That’s a fact. Is there some point to all this?

10

My wife trained as a concert pianist. She used to teach music at NYU. She decided to switch from music to finance (!) and got not only a full tuition waiver but also a stipend to attend a good business school for an MBA. She went from there to studying finance for a PhD.

And yet there are certain contexts in which my conversation with her focuses more on body parts than it does her remarkably diverse interests, her amazing curiosity, and her extensive life accomplishments. We are feminist. But we also have bodies, and enjoy having bodies. You are free to believe that I am “objectifying” her during those private conversations. But I’m not so sure you’ll find many reasonable people who agree with you. We human beings are much more than just physical objects, and all of us deserve the dignity of being treated as more than objects. But we are also physical objects. In case you are not aware, there are certain contexts in which it is appropriate not only to acknowledge that fact, but also to enjoy and even celebrate it.

This is earth. Welcome.

We have on this planet a technology that allows us to project images on a screen in rapid succession. We use this technology (among many other purposes) for telling stories. You should be aware that when we watch stories projected onto a screen, we often tend to enjoy watching people who seem beautiful to us.

That is, actually, what the OP of this thread is about. That OP provides the initial context for this thread. You can scroll up if you missed it the first time.

It would be wildly inappropriate to ask a person who was hired to, say, program computers that they were subsequently also required to dress evocatively to suit the erotic preferences of their coworkers and supervisors. That is horrific objectification. It is reducing a person to their physical appearance, while ignoring all other relevant aspects of their humanity, most particularly heinous in a context when their actual role is and should remain entirely unrelated to what they look like. No one should give a good god fuck what Angela Merkel looks like, or Sonia Sotomayor, or Hillary Clinton, or – much more important because so much more numerous than the previous examples – any given wage slave just trying to do the damn job that they were actually hired for. That shit is fucked up, yo.

However.

The image projection technology, referred to above, is in some ways and at some times a separate category from the above. It’s in the same context of certain very private conversations with my wife. Many of us watch these projected stories on the screen (again, among many other reasons) in order to see beautiful people. When my wife, for instance, saw the new THOR trailer, she lamented that they cut his hair. She wants not a buzz cut, but the Hemsworth arms along with that long luxurious wig that he wore for the previous flicks. I, personally, wanted to see more Natalie Portman. We are both somewhat disappointed in what the new THOR moving picture seems to be offering us.

Sometimes we like looking at pretty people and then talking about what we see. There is a time and a place for this. Regular office work: no. Projected images: sometimes yes. I enjoy looking at Natalie Portman. I also enjoy getting erections. More than once, I have enjoyed getting a boner looking at Natalie Portman projected onto a screen. I am hardly the only one. And that’s okay! It’s a wonderful part of being human, from my own perspective, and I want to enjoy it and also talk about enjoying it in the appropriate contexts. Dinner party with Portman in person? No. Around the Keurig machine in the office? No. Internet discussion of eroticism in film? Not only yes, but hell yes.

Different contexts have different standards. Every person deserves to be treated with dignity as a full person, and simultaneously, we should all have the opportunity in appropriate contexts to appreciate, and to celebrate, and to make whimsical references to that part of ourselves which is quite unavoidably a physical object of beauty and even arousal. Boners can be hella fun. One such opportunity to discuss this physical side of us, including sexual arousal, is in a thread whose explicit purpose is to discuss beauty and seduction in film.

For example, this thread, as the OP makes clear.

I understand that there are many other threads that are not about this topic at all, where nevertheless a clueless putz will step in and say “pix plz, derpy derp”. That is understandably annoying, and it was a great day when the Dope moderators started dropping a hammer on such off-topic, objectifying comments. But simultaneously, there should also be a place where I can talk about Natalie Portman giving me a boner. A quick glance at the OP should inform you of which thread we’re talking about.

So yes. Boner Index. It’s a bit of whimsy injected into a discussion of subjectivity vs objectivity, fact vs opinion.

On preview, I see that this response is much more than your kneejerk comment actually deserved. But there is some small hope that you will engage this discussion on its own terms by actually reading it more carefully, or failing that, there’s a chance that other posters might understand and appreciate the point that I’m trying to make, or even if they disagree, to disagree with a genuine reasoned argument rather than an empty complaint, which is all that you have managed so far. So: “submit reply”.

11

That fewer people may find the obese woman attractive than 90s era Sharon Stone and thus Stone is a more suitable actress in a role designed to convince the audience that she’s “attractive and seductive” doesn’t mean that the other people are wrong. It just means that they have a minority opinion.

It’s also not an either/or proposition. You can find both the obese woman and Stone attractive though Stone has a larger piece of the overall Venn diagram.

12

The Eye of the Beholder
:wink:

13

Rubens’ wife or the other two models were evidently never found attractive by any men.

14

You’re talking about a movie that was all intents and purposes a softcore porno film. Objectifying women was the whole point.

15

Of course, beauty is an opinion. It’s not exactly a secret that standards of beauty change from one era to another, and from one place to another. Sharon Stone would have had zero success in the 16th century. There’s a well known problem in Mauritania of teenagers being fattened so that they will find a husband. If you intended your movie to appeal to this population, you’d need to hire an obese actor.

So, even though 90% of the population will find Sharon Stone attractive, currently, in the the western world it’s heavily culture-dependent, hence an opinion. And of course, there are significant variations even within a given culture. There still will be a minority who will find an obese woman more appealing. And there’s a much larger minority who will find shapely women more attractive. Opinions, opinions. And even if you’re roughly in the majority, you might not like much big breasts. Or your main criteria will be a beautiful face. Or a beautiful ass. Or beautiful legs. Opinions. Opinions.

There are seemingly some features that seem to be rather universal, like a symmetrical face or youth. But that doesn’t make beauty, on the overall, not an opinion.

I would answer this in pretty much the same way I would answer this poster in GQ who wanted to guilt-trip us about eating meat : my ancestors evolved to have a sexual interest in females of their own species. So, I’ll keep eating eating meat, and I’ll also keep having boners when I see women I find attractive, thank you very much.

16

Unfortunately the script did not call for Michael Douglas’s character to have a nice butt.

17

I don’t know if this will add anything to the discussion but, at the time, Sharon Stone didn’t do much for me. I concede she was (and still is) attractive and fit the physical criteria the role required but, for some reason, I was rather “meh” about. (On the other hand, her co-star, Jeanne Tripplehorn …)

18

There are both facts and opinions at work in the scenario the OP offers.

When it came to casting the role mentioned by the OP it’s a fact that the casting people endeavored to, and in fact did, choose an actress who was very physically attractive in the opinion of the majority of people.

19

When considering whether it’s factual or not I would instead say something slightly different.

The woman hired HAS to be considered physically attractive and seductive by most film-goers is a FACT.

20

Years ago, I saw a documentary in which Ally Sheedy summed it up with the word Fuckability. It cracked me up then and still does.

Nice post.