I’m going to drill down on Dung Beetle’s comments for a bit. I too, as I get older, find my range of acceptable attractiveness to be widening. As a young person, my range of acceptable ages and body types was more limited. Now I find attractiveness in ages and body types that I would not have considered back then. So, the point is that what one finds attractive can change. In my case, over time.
We are also aware of the affects of alcohol in the system impacting what one finds attractive, yah?
So, I would suggest that being in an environment where (most) everyone is having a good time, with good weather, in a vacation mecca, would tend to put the observer and the subjects in a better mood, and therefore more inclined to view more people as being attractive.
Bottom line, your own attitude contributes to how you see others.
Yes, but you’re still filtering out people who are too broke, too sick, and/or too dysfunctional to be entertaining themselves at Disney world. If you were to see all these people, it would likely change your assessment of attractiveness prevalence.
A straight guy, I usually don’t have an opinion about the physical attractiveness of other males. And I don’t evaluate little girls as ‘attractive’ in the sense I would young women, nor frankly is my eye likely to be attracted to women much over 40. My wife is well over 40 and looks terrific to me, but I don’t find my eye coming to rest very often on other women her age. So I’m paying real attention to the physical attractiveness of much less than 50% of the people I see, wouldn’t necessarily have any opinion even if I did pay attention. And within that slice of younger adult women, I find generally less than 1/2 are positively pleasurable to discreetly look at, which is all I’d ever do. But it varies with venue according to lifestyle, race, class etc stuff that varies with venue. Could be a lot less than 1/2, but conceivably more, depends where.
In summary I don’t care about or even necessarily really notice most people’s appearance. A variable minority of the subset of younger women are pleasurable to look at. A much smaller proportion of people of all kinds are so depressingly unattractive I’d rather not have to see them.
But I guess this is the counter point many posts are making to OP’s observation, what proportion of people is one really looking at?
Any artists here? I took a couple of art classes, one of which focused on drawing portraits, and during that class and ever since, I have considered most people kind of beautiful, although there are many different ways for this to happen. It take a whole lot of ugly for me to call somebody ugly. Although as noted, someone with a toxic personality can start looking ugly to me even if they are objectively not.
I’ve often wondered if attractiveness is best represented by an inverted bell-curve.
Based on my experiences over the last 20 years, there are only a few really average-looking people. There are lots of attractive people and at least as many not-attractive people. It’s out of the ordinary for me to see someone and think, “That person is neither remarkably attractive nor remarkably unattractive.” You’d think it would be the reverse, with lots of people who are neither particularly attractive nor unattractive.
These are all valid points. Also theme parks are going to attract people who are healthy enough to walk for hours in hot summer weather. So you are going to exclude many people with serious health problems.
All those things are going to result in a group that appears more attractive than average.
The flip side of this same phenomenon is Walmart. If Walmart is one’s only exposure to other people, that person will come to some pretty inaccurate conclusions of humanity as a whole.
Its not all bad. Shop at a walmart in a college town if you want to see pretty girls everywhere. Then again anywhere in a college town is full of pretty girls.
Johnny Vegas is funny as hell, though (I mean, have you seen Ideal?) and a lot of women go for that, so it probably explains wife #1.
As for the OP, most people are okay looking. There are far fewer people who are stunning or hideous than average. Actually, correct that: most people are average, a small but sizable minority are really attractive, and an even smaller minority are down-right ugly.
Spice Weasel, I swear i am not following you around but I definitely agree with this. Most people I see tend to be average - neither good nor bad looking.
If we define “attractive” as scoring within two standard deviations of the population’s mean “attractiveness”, then most people you see out in public are going to have some attractiveness to them. The super beautiful (who have an attractive score that’s greater than two standard deviations of the mean) will be disproportionately represented in mass media. The mediocre masses can do a few things to enhance their attractiveness, but it’s not like they will look like a monster if they don’t. The majority of the ugly (the people who have an attractive score that’s less than two deviations of the mean) will likely not be found out in public. Not because they are ashamed/embarrassed, but because they probably suffer from debilitating congenital birth defects or physical disorders that making getting around difficult.
Since the majority of people have or have had significant others, I think it’s safe to assume that most people are “functionally” attractive.
