As a spin off of this thread, where a Dove survey found that 4% of women think they are beautiful. I thought it would be interesting to see if that differs from the perception of men.
Define “beautiful” any way you like. Define “men” and “women” any way you like. I deliberately did not include an “Other” option - feel free (of course) to post “None of the above” if you choose, and I make no pretensions about how accurate the poll will turn out.
If you would like to include your gender identification, if any, in your response, feel free.
Physical considerations: what percentage makes my brain go “wow, nice!”
My mental calculus will only consider US population, because that is what I see every day.
As a younger man, the vast majority of women over the age of 50 are not going to make the cut. Don’t take it personally. I am sure there are some out there, but vanishingly small (to me). Also, the kids are are out (sorry kids!). So there goes about 50% of the population.
Also, about 40% of the US population is obese. I personally don’t find obesity to be physically beautiful.
So if I am only considering non-obese 18-50 year olds, then we are down to ~20% of the population of women. Due to an assortment of personal physical preferences I would describe less than one in four as “beautiful”.
So the answer is less than 5% for physical.
Emotional/spiritual considerations: Based on my experiences with people… I am going to have to go about 15%.
Now if you want to combine them: 5% of the people that are beautiful on the exterior and only 15% of those are beautiful on the interior… Well, the numbers are looking pretty bad.
Good thing I have already found my wife! And she hasn’t left me yet!
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It depends a whole lot on age if you are going strictly by looks. Tons of college girls are beautiful. Not many women over 40 are. My criteria for beautiful in older women is someone like Lynda Carter, Sophia Loren or or Sophia Vergara. You don’t see that many older women that look that beautiful in the wild. It also depends on the country. American women (and men) tend to gain lots of weight and let themselves go in middle age. There are many more older beautifies in countries like Spain and France. Asian women tend to age well as well.
I voted 6 to 10%. To me beautiful is a specific type of attractiveness. There are other forms of attractiveness that are equal but different. Just my own personal way of categorizing things.
I’ll qualify that. Fewer than 1% have whiplash-inducingly stunning appearance. I don’t even consider them human–they are in the same category as a sunset, deeply colored glass, or mesmerizingly intricate drawings. Could stare for hours just taking in the perfection and that’s all I’d want. So, after eliminating those freakish outliers, there are roughly 31-40% that I’d categorize as “acceptable”. And that’s not about looks. It’s roughly the same ratio of humanity that I do not find completely reprehensible. At this point in my life, I don’t have two damns to rub together about what a woman looks like (apart from the aforementioned freaks). All I care about is whether or not she’s a vicious pig like the majority of the species.
It’s so relative as to be meaningless. To me beauty is transcendent. It’s Botticelli’s Pallas and the Centaur or Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring or Bryce Canyon or a loon on a rippleless Canadian Shield Lake. It forces you to contemplate reality in a different way and your place in relation to it. Unsurprisingly, I find very few humans to be beautiful.
I think you a lot of you are confusing ‘what percentage of women are beautiful’ with ‘what percentage of women do I find personally attractive’. You are completely entitled to your views on the latter, but I’m not sure this then answers the former.
It’s funny but now that I think about it beautiful is not a way I categorize women. I’ve thought many women looked beautiful due to a variety of circumstances but never just labeled a women as beautiful and moved on.
I’d say most women (60%) are 5’s and under. (Ew to Meh) A hallmark of a 5 is you can walk right by them and not have any reaction one way or another. Just blank. You have to be truly hideous before it gets any worse than that, where I actively avert my eyes. 6 and 7s (cute) will get an appreciative glance, a bit of eye contact and a smile. We’ll say that’s 30%. Sweet spot for dating imho. You get into the 8-9 territory (beautiful) and that’s when you might turn around to get a better look. Those are probably 10% if that. 10s, utter perfection in every way (drop dead gorgeous), where your jaw drops are probaly 1%, they are very rare.
So I’m gonna say 10% are truly beautiful, granted I don’t need and likely don’t want a beautiful woman. They get more male attention than I’d care for.
I would agree. Beautiful to me is something that objectifies the holder of such. When the thing isn’t an object, but a subject, it mucks with aesthetic. Again, beauty to me is transcendent. I can look at say an image of Audrey Hepburn in her role as Natasha Rostova and say, “Yes, this is beautiful.” When though she becomes a ‘person’ rather than ‘an image’ the transcendence that was imparted by the image is necessarily broken. The image is beautiful because it exists independently of the subject. When the object becomes subject, the aesthetic is wholly dependent upon the subject and by nature of its dependency it ceases to be transcendent.
