So, the average woman should care about what you and I think for what reason again?
What should the 80% who are “just attractive” do to increase their beauty ranking? More makeup? More expensive clothes? Nose jobs? Botox?
One of the many reasons I didn’t answer the poll is that I don’t keep a running tally of attractive and non-attractive women I see. Obviously I’m in the minority.
Basically, why should anyone - man or woman - give a crap about what random people on the street think about their looks. Unless their paycheck depends on it, of course. And since all our ideas about beauty differ, isn’t it saner for someone, man or woman - to care about the likes of someone they care about, not some clown on the corner? Or in a message board?
The idea is that due to body shaming and body image issues only a very few women think they are beautiful. This thread shows that actually many more are beautiful.
According to men, not according to themselves. Why should the male opinion override her own self assessment?
Remember the Kirk speech about how we humans are killers, but we can choose not to kill today? My Voyager speech is that we men are beauty raters, but we can choose not to rate today - outside of our heads.
Much better to want that than to say that we men can’t help, therefore women should hide themselves so that we won’t be tempted, as pieces of several religions do.
This is not to say that opinions about beauty shouldn’t guide our choice of mates. But 99.9% of our ratings of women have nothing to do with this.
We can do better.
So who fucking cares?
Look, there are hot cars and not so hot cars. Are you the kind of person who pays $30K more for a car so that your average shmo on the Freeway thinks you have a hot car? I don’t. I don’t give a shit if 5% of people thought my car was hot or 30% of people did.
My self image doesn’t depend on how hot my car is, or how I would rank on a handsomeness poll. Is there anything wrong with women feeling the same way?
So by your logic, women should discount their own feelings and intuition and defer to the opinions of random men?
You’re going to have to do better than that.
“Who fucking cares?” applies to virtually every poll on the Dope.
mmm
They should rethink , and consider if their feelings are real or something forced down their throats by fashion industry propaganda.
And- all the experts- the sociologists, the psychologists, etc- all agree that in America, most womans concept of beauty is shaped by those who are doing body shamong. That their internal image is a false one, due to negative propaganda.
Don’t rethink due to this feeble poll, rethink based upon hundreds if not thousands of experts. See the cites I posted earlier.
Experts do. Sociologists care. Mental health experts care. They have pointed out that the negative body image pushed by the fashion industry and Hollywood is damaging American women’s mental and physical health.
So, yes, there is something wrong, as it is damaging their mental and physical health.
But you’re Ok with that, it seems.
Although the original question is interesting, it is also kind of meaningless. I’m skeptical of the Dove poll, and think (and also think women would think) the number far exceeds four percent. I think almost every woman has at least one beautiful quality and most women have many. To me, beauty is not just mere physical attractiveness but also embodies many internal qualities and attitudes. Consider that some women may be average looking but could be fun, fashionable, intelligent, supportive, have a mature outlook and be very sexy (which is very different from beauty). This might make them very beautiful indeed.
It’s hardly a secret that there are a certain number of outright creeps on the board, men whose attitudes toward women are really disgusting.
When a thread like this comes along, shouldn’t it be an obvious red flag to other people that these posters are some of the more enthusiastic participants?
I have the privilege of tutoring some really wonderful girls, and have watched them grow from little girls to high school students. Intelligent, witty, and funny and now starting to struggle with society’s messages that none of that matters.
I don’t care about the poll itself, but what was behind the poll. My comment would be the same if the poll had been properly designed and constructed with enough responses to have the results be statistically significant.
Which no poll here is, for sure.
I have no criticism of the 4% survey thread. I did make a snarky comment in it, but that is a useful and important topic for discussion.
I accept that this poll was started for positive reasons. But it shows the underlying problem of judgement. Which is why the poll doesn’t help. Is the real problem that is obvious from the 4% study going to assuaged by men saying they think even 50% of women are beautiful? Or is the fact that men think that their opinions are what is important here?
I’m going to make internal judgements, since that is how we are wired. But I’m not going to state my judgement unless I’m asked - by the person I’m evaluating.
Look, is it better if Donald Trump randomly calls a woman beautiful than if he calls a random woman he doesn’t like ugly? The problem is his inappropriate calling out, not which side of the beauty divide he words fall on.
Men: We’re going to rate women to show them they’re actually more beautiful than they think!
Women: Stop. It’s not helping, it’s hurting.
Men: You just don’t understand - your self-perception is incorrect, and we can help you with it!
Women: You’re not listening. This just misses the point and makes it worse.
Men: If you would just let me explain this in greater detail, you’d understand that your self-perception AND your understanding of that self-perception are invalid!
Woman: <walks away>
While I appreciate the idea that men judge a greater percentage of women as beautiful than women do , there may reason for that that I haven’t seen mentioned.
Women who aren’t sexually desirable to men tend to become invisible to them. They are missing from the denominator.
Let’s take a step back because reading through this thread I think many don’t get what a statement like “All women are beautiful” is trying to get at.
It’s just about self-esteem, and men respecting women, and could be worded more fully as “All women are beautiful in their own way”. It’s not trying to say all women are gorgeous (that’s why the sister thread “What % of men are drop-dead gorgeous…” is so fuckdumb – obviously a superlative like that is only applied to a small fraction of the population).
However, there’s a grain of truth to it, even if we’re just talking physical attractiveness.
The kind of woman that that kind of message is targeting: a woman who thinks that her body must be awful because she’s heavier than a catwalk model, that uses excessive makeup and hair dye and obsesses about some body part like her big ears…is often a young women.
And the average 25-year old woman, unless she’s morbidly obese or has some kind of unfortunate disfigurement, is likely to be attractive to some degree to most men.
Yup.
Also, men tend to talk as if beauty is some intrinsic aspect of a woman, and not something the woman often has a lot of control over. When I was 20, I had the capability to be physically beautiful – as do most healthy young women. I actively avoided doing so. I wore baggy clothes, no makeup, etc., because I wanted to be seen as a human being first, and not as something to look at.
Years ago, a lesbian friend invited me to a theatrical performance put on by a group of lesbians. The story line was that a beautiful princess was trapped in the land of patriarchy, doomed to marry the prince. She was rescued by a plucky band of lesbians, and lived happily ever after with them. The most striking part of the performance was that she WAS beautiful when she lived in the patriarchy, and then transformed into a very plain woman when she triumphantly joined the lesbians. She tied up her hair, removed her make-up, and changed her clothes, I think.
Anyway, think about the moral of that story, and the premise of this thread. And maybe you will guess why many women find it offensive.
Seriously. I usually hate the term but this is like the most choice, distilled, terminal example of mansplaining I’ve ever seen in my life.
In general, people are much better as a whole in evaluating positive attributes about others than they are about themselves.
My main problem with the thread is just limiting it to men. There’s no reason women’s opinions about beauty shouldn’t matter, too. It carries the idea that men are the ones who really know.
Now, if it covered everyone but split them up, that would be different. It might be interesting to see if the numbers are different among different genders (or sexual preferences), and to discuss the implications of that.
It might also be informative to ask people about themselves, separated by gender. Better yet, have them answer what they think other people would say about them, and compare that with what they actually say.
What isn’t useful is “Hey, women! Look! Men find you more beautiful than you think!” Though I do get the intention, it needed a little more thought.
For the love of god, THIS. There could be a really interesting discussion about the nature of beauty, underneath all the rating and judging, but this ain’t it.