Objectification, Visual Aspects of Sexuality, and the "What % of Women Beautiful" Thread

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Shodan

Thanks for your response, and for reading the thread.

The purpose of the poll was in response to the Dove survey where only 4% of women thought they were beautiful. I make no pretense that my poll has any scientific value. It did, however, reflect something that I have experienced.

At the risk of being an irritating jerk, I’ma cross-post something from the first thread on the topic:

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

I’m having trouble finding a link for the 2014 study, but Here’s the 2004 study Dove commissioned. The finding about whether women identify as beautiful appears to be based on this methodology:

Study data reveal that “beautiful” is not a word women willingly associate with themselves. In the study, women were given a list consisting only of positive or neutral adjectives to describe their looks (including; “natural,” “average,” “b eautiful,” “sexy” and “gorgeous”) and asked to choose the one they felt most comfortable with.

By an overwhelming majority, women around the world are most comfortable using the words natural (31%) or average (29%) to describe their looks.

Only 2% of women around the world choose beautiful to describe their looks, fewer even than choose “attractive” (9%), “feminine” (8%), “good-looking” (7%) or “cute” (7%).

Analysis reveals that this lack of identification with “beautiful” holds across all age groups, with only 4% of 18-29 year-olds choosing “beautiful” as a word to describe their looks.

(Note that 60% is an “overwhelming majority”).

They go on to say that 40% of women “strongly agree” with feeling discomfort at describing themselves as beautiful, and that the “vast majority” of women consider themselves of average attractiveness, with 13% considering themselves less attractive than average and 16% considering themselves more attractive than average.

So basically, given a list of words, “beautiful” isn’t most womens’ go-to word to describe their appearance. Some women feel uncomfortable describing themselves with that word. And they turn that into “only 4% of women think they are beautiful.”

It’s kind of astonishing that a multinational corporation trying to sell beauty products would distort the results of their research, but there you go.

This isn’t to say that there’s no social pressure on women both to be beautiful and to consider themselves ugly. There is. But Dove is monetizing those concerns in a way I find pretty dishonest.

As for whether folks should value being beautiful–I’ve mixed feelings about that. The social pressure women face to be considered beautiful, coupled with the social messages women get about how ugly they are, is pretty fucked up. Solving it by having men tell women that they’re beautiful doesn’t seem like a good solution.

That doesn’t mean a het man can’t tell his partner that she’s beautiful. I just don’t like the idea that that’s a solution to whatever problem there is.