Some people simply will never grow up, and I don’t think anyone, except the Almighty One, is able to change that. It is much easier simply to acknowledge that most people are shallow, and will either judge a woman based on how she looks, or even worse, on how the media says she should look.

That issue aside, I applaud you for your insight into seeing the hidden problems that some actions can cause, as well as all the responses, for their elaborate study of this matter.

If it were strictly a cultural construct, then there’s the possibility of cultures that could overcome this behavior and treat women on an equal footing with the way men are treated. Would that seem weird (to either males or females)? How about a play or movie that has that as a central theme? Does anyone know of this issue being treated in the arts in this way? (I don’t, but it would be interested to watch and see what the emotional effect would be…)

OTOH, if it’s an emergent behavior caused by an innate biological imperative, then can it/should it be overcome? What forms might the agent of change take? (I’m reminded of “chemical castration” as a pharmaceutical attempt to reprogram the urges of men who are repeat sex offenders.) Social programming at an early age is another means… but effective? Either way, what would be the side effects of attempts to repress such natural tendencies? Would there be the risk of some sort of collateral undesirable social behavior?

And given that there seems to be just as much a focus (albeit different) in the case of women judging women by their looks, would women, too, need to be “reprogrammed” to alter their behavior?

Looked at another way, if this behavior is just a simple outcome of the natural (innocent) fascination with sexual attractiveness, then are we judging something inherently “good” (for the species) on the basis of social political correctness? Or have we not evolved to the point where we can reconcile our physical reality with the need for increasingly sophisticated social structure and associated cultural expressions that support it in this modern world? (I.e., are we “growing up too fast”? There are probably a lot of parallels between where we are socially and the typical adolescent…)

I suspect we need to learn to live with this phenomenon (‘How?’ is a good question), but it would also be prudent to reign in our media and its excesses (good luck!). Declaring it entirely a cultural construct is to deny biology and declare that everything has a political solution… but declaring it strictly biology and that we must submit to our urges on these things is to be equally foolish.

We care what women look like because we’re driven by that. But how we *choose* to react to that and how we treat women is an issue of our self-control — which the media seek to exploit. Maybe the question should be, “What if the media weren’t preying upon and tempting our basic instincts and instead supported a more socially mature attitude towards women?” (at a cost of profits) Can we treat each other with respect and dignity without resorting to desexualizing ourselves in the process?

I like to play a little game and whenever I see anything in the press or media involving a woman or girl, I see if they mention her looks first or something else. It’s the most fun (or…depressing?) when I read the backs of DVDs and movies. For example, I think Disney’s “Princess and the Frog” was the first one I’d seen where Tiana’s beauty was mentioned only SECOND to her hard work and intelligence. All the other ones, beauty comes first. This happens a lot in the media too, depending on what source you’re reading from (Fox news will probably start with her looks).

Nowhere do I mention that beauty has no value whatsoever, especially with regard to romantic or sexual relationships. What bothers me is that women are judged primarily by their beauty in many arenas that should primarily be about other things (athletic ability, intelligence, eloquence, analytic thinking).

What also bothers me is promoting in the media a narrow set of beauty instead of showing that there is diverse set of what can be considered beautiful (even if we’re just talking physical beauty and not “inner beauty”).

How can it be true that A) gays can’t help how they feel, but B) people who aren’t attracted to you, can? You can’t have it both ways.

I’m not asking anyone to be attracted to me. I don’t understand where you’re pulling this straw man out of. When did I say you should decide to be attracted to someone you’re not attracted to?

I really hate to be an aggressive comment moderator, but really—from now on if you post a comment that doesn’t directly address the content of my blog post, I’m just deleting it. This is starting to get ridiculous.

As the poster Ted said, it’s only natural to experience attraction.

As the poster Jerry said, if you don’t like it, work on yourself with God.

“Yes, we do need to redefine beauty.”

To borrow from a Pixar review of yours, there is external conflict and there is internal conflict. You seem to want to make this an external conflict (how people judge you, how to perhaps “educate” them to stop), but it is an internal one (how you judge yourself and others).

Adding the whole “gay” thing into this is what really killed the argument. The P.C. mantra about gays is that “they can’t help how they feel”, which I’m betting you’d swear allegiance to. Why trot out that gelded horse as a sideshow, expecting prim applause, in the middle of decrying what people find attractive? How can it be true that A) gays can’t help how they feel, but B) people who aren’t attracted to you, can? You can’t have it both ways.

Stretching in conclusion: with Ted’s view as thesis and Jerry’s view as antithesis, the synthesis is that life is like a box of chocolates but you don’t have to eat them.

what i see here is that you are speaking your mind and your heart.

the reason why men and even women dictate beauty by outward appearances is because we have something called “the flesh”. This is the part of us that seeks self gratification. it is also called ego.
our flesh dictates and processes information by the knowledge of good and evil as a cause of the fall of Adam and Eve.

unless we stop eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil we as humans will NEVER be able to control our soul(mind, will and emotions) to stop false judgement, self gratification, lust, hypocrisy, backbiting, slander, etc.

The only way to live a life of complete freedom is by eating from the Tree of Life(Jesus) through knowing and believing God’s Love for us, not what we can do for God.

The root of all mental bondage is sin. The strength of sin is the law. By the law we have the knowledge of good and evil. so the only way to separate from bondage is living under God’s true love.

“For a long time it has been assumed that the criteria for beauty are largely cultural, and therefore learned rather than innate. More recent studies by University of Texas at Austin psychologist Judith Langlois have totally overturned this conventional wisdom. Langlois first had adults rank pictures of both white and black females for attractiveness. Then the pictures were shown in pairs (one more attractive than the other) to infants in two age groups — two to three months and six to eight months old. Infants in both age groups were found to gaze longer at the faces ranked more attractive. Similarly, one-year-old infants were found to play for a significantly longer time with facially attractive dolls.

“Other studies tested for changes in taste across cultures. Psychologist Michael Cunningham found an incredible consensus in the judgement of facial attractiveness of women of different races by men of different races. The agreement persisted even when different degrees of exposure to Western mass media were considered. Studies that were performed across geographical and ethnic boundaries (e.g., with Chinese, Indian, South African, and North American men) produced very similar results. Taken together, all of these studies seem to indicate that there do exist some universal criteria for beauty, and that attractive faces enjoy a far-extending appeal that emerges very early in life and is consistent across cultures. The beauty detectors may not quite be innate, but the human mind may have innate basic rules from which templates of beauty are constructed.

“Even the area in the brain that responds to beauty has been identified. Researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the activity in men’s brains when they were shown pictures of particularly attractive women. They found that beauty triggers the same area in the brain that is triggered by food (when a person is hungry) or by other subjects of addiction (e.g., when a compulsive gambler sees a roulette wheel).”

So we can take our pick as to what we wish to believe on this subject: ‘conventional wisdom’, social philosophy, political correctness, or controlled scientific experiments.

I’ll continue to side with the science, cold and unromantic as it may be: ‘Beauty’ is not socially constructed; it’s mostly innate — and is therefore not subject to “being corrected”. The idea of a world where people are (surgically?) stripped of their natural tendency to perceive (and therefore judge) the beauty around them –including that of the human form– is not one I would wish to live in.

People need to get their politics in line with their nature, not try to twist nature to align with their politics. Beauty may not be what it’s all about, but our biology constrains us such that “attention must be paid”. And our societies and cultures (which *are* constructed) need to amicably take that into account rather than denigrate it as something ‘politically incorrect’. To make it ‘wrong’ is simply fruitless.

I am defining attractiveness as a subjective phenomenon requiring both a subject and an object. The object’s attractiveness is arbitrarily determined by the subject’s personal preference.

On the other hand, I am defining beauty as a supposed objective measure by which the attractiveness of any person can be determined. In such a system, such a trait as “symmetrical” might be classified as “beautiful” (and therefore universally or almost universally attractive), whereas “not symmetrical” would be classified as “ugly” (and therefore universally or almost universally unattractive).

I never argued that attractiveness was socially constructed, but that beauty was. Essentially, I contend that the “standards of beauty” ARE “beauty”—that without standards of beauty, there is no beauty, but that attractiveness remains.

You, however, appear to be using “attractiveness” and “beauty” interchangeably. So, if I were to reframe my argument using such language, I would put it like so: “Standards of attractiveness are entirely socially constructed, and those traits marked as ‘universally attractive’ tend to be those which are generally specific to privileged groups. Attractiveness itself, however, is not necessarily socially constructed.” I get the impression that we agree on this.

Still, I take issue with two other insinuations you make.

First of all, I assert that it is impossible to find a human “who has not been ‘programmed’ by social constructs and similar influences,” that even a toddler has been significantly socialized and cannot be represented as a creature of pure instinct.

Next, you attempt to refute my suggestion that what I refer to as “beauty” is entirely socially constructed by “[calling] into question the existence of any science to back that up.” However, I take issue with the privileging of empiricism as a way of knowing here, and I assert that the topic at hand here is not one that can be debated empirically (what sort of experiment could tell us anything meaningful about the nature of beauty?). I maintain that beauty (by which, again, I mean “standards of beauty” or “standards of attractiveness”) is entirely socially constructed.