Very cool, if true

Oh, you did not just compare ugliness to disability.

You are defining beauty and lack thereof as objective - they're just not. This isn't an arguable point; it's a demonstrable fact. I could post a picture of anyone - of anyone - on my journal, with a poll, and I guarantee you that there would be no firm consensus on whether or not that person was beautiful.

They could probably make a judgment on whether that person was 'conventionally physically attractive' completely separately from their own personal opinion - but that's a set of factors laid out by society, rules for us to follow, not a definition that anyone actually adheres to, whether they say they do or not.

Why do you think people have 'embarrassing crushes' or 'guilty secret fantasies' involving people who are considered by mainstream media to be unattractive? It's because those people are attractive to them. Andrew Lloyd Webber found someone who wanted to shag him just like anyone else, even if you and I consider him a disgusting little homunculus.

These people are beautiful (no matter what you say, words can't bring me down etc etc). But seriously, are you telling me that you buy into mainstream society's message that there's really such a thing as objectively 'pug ugly'? Really?

And yes, of course some people appeal to a narrower band of admirers than others - of course biological factors play a part in attraction and if you have asymmetry/a non childbearing figure/what-the-hell-ever then yes, the pool of people who consider you beautiful narrows, bit by bit. But the ability to successfully apply biological absolutes to the concept of beauty does not make 'beauty' itself an objective concept, anymore than Mozart having a wider appeal than Shostakovich due to being catchier and more accessible makes 'good music' an objective concept.

"You're not beautiful, but that's okay - some people are just ugly" is the wrong answer. Oh my God, Joachim. How could you say that? Think about it for a minute. How could you?

The right answer is, "So not everyone finds you beautiful. But some people will, and do, and so should you."

We're not telling people to go try out for America's Next Top Model here. We're telling them that what society tells them is beauty is fine for some, and not for others. And as those others, we need to find what makes us beautiful, and get right on celebrating it.

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> But the ability to successfully apply biological absolutes to the concept of beauty does not make 'beauty' itself an objective concept, anymore than Mozart having a wider appeal than Shostakovich due to being catchier and more accessible makes 'good music' an objective concept.

You're kind of making my point for me... to that I say, why not? Obviously it's naive and very limiting to constrict the whole range of qualities of a piece of music to a single metric of good/bad. It's a huge complex multidimensional thing, same as how we find people attractive. But somehow, some stuff is at the bottom of the heap and some at the top.

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andrewducker

But it's not. There's very little (and possibly nothing) that some people out there don't actively prefer. There is no objective standard for beauty, just lots of subjective people making separate judgements.

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But something common bubbles up out of it.

Or let's take the music thing from another angle: some people will write a song that lives in the hearts of others for years, whether it's Greensleeves or Let it Be.

Some people will write a song that nobody but their mum likes.

Some people will never even write a song.

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...and thus to me 'You're all beautiful' is like saying 'You'll all write wonderful songs' in a world where songwriting is obsessed over and excessively used to judge people's worth.

Better to change the perception and see that while not everyone has it, it's only one of many things that make people who they are.

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But everyone does have it. You do not love a person that you do not find beautiful. You do not look at a face that you consider to be ugly and love that face's mouth and want to kiss it, love that face's eyes and want to stare into them forever. You find beautiful the things you love.

Let's say we are trying to define beauty here. Why would you want to define it in this way? Why would you want to take one of the tenants of our society, one of the pillars on which it stands, and rather than pull everyone up on their own pedestal, with their own admirers and their own view, you would dig holes for them and tell them to get used to it, and remember that they have loads of other things going for them and that they don't actually need that view? What purpose does that serve? Why does that need to happen?

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andrewducker

Again you've got a single point of measurement there. And music is actually a great example. People are told that their music is shit because it's not bland pop music that will be bought by 12-year-old-girls. But not everyone likes bland pop music. Some people like rap. Some people like heavy metal. Some people like psychedelic jazz. The only way to find out whether a song you've written is music is liked by people is to get it out there and have people listen to it - and then it doesn't matter if 99% of people hate it with a fiery passion, if you can find a tiny audience.

There is almost nobody out there whose face is so unusual that nobody will look at it and think "Gosh, they're gorgeous". There are plenty of people that aren't "mainstream", but telling people that they're ugly and will therefore never find anyone because they're not mainstream is what causes all of the body issues.

"Sorry, nobody likes breasts that shape. This year, noses are 3mm shorter than that. You have freckles - everyone hates freckles." - this leads to people who loathe their bodies, when actually there are plenty of people out there who don't care that your breasts are slightly uneven, your nose is above average and love freckles.

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There may be no objective (in the sense of would convince a ghost of perfect emptiness) beauty. Nevertheless there are facts about what sort of thing most people within a culture like, plus maybe some things that most humans like. Similarly, there are facts about what people don't like (and in fact, I'd say there are more likely to be cross-cultural facts about that).

These facts do serve the same sort of role as an objective standard in a lot of the cases of interest. I don't see why everyone is getting so excited about that fact.

Edited Date: 2010-06-22 10:06 pm (UTC)

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Because the fact that these subjective factors serve as an objective standard - for whatever reason that is - is one that makes an awful lot of people desperately unhappy. Deeply, suicidally unhappy in some cases. It means that an awful lot of people don't get what they want in life. They don't get the jobs they deserve. They don't get the friends they could have in school. They don't get the lovers they might have, had they had confidence in their own appearance, their own beauty. Society tells them they're ugly, and they believe it.

Can you tell me what purpose that serves?

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I didn't say it served a purpose, I said there were such facts about our preferences.

In some cases, they are probably facts because they do serve some sort of purpose (maybe an evolutionary one, for example), but not necessarily a moral purpose.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't seek to change these facts (after all, I agree are contingent) or to put them in a proper context (that is, to say that someone's worth is not defined by their beauty) where they cause harm to people, but neither do I see the value in denying that they currently exist.

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Who's denying that they exist?

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I don't think people on this thread have overtly denied it, I think there's a tacit denial implicit in the claim that everyone likes something different: of course they do, but our likes and dislikes cluster around some common standards. I think those standards are what

momentsmusicaux is talking about.

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And I'm saying that those standards are not objective, and calling into question what purpose there could possibly be in framing them as being so.

We could absolutely decide to have a semantic argument about whether beauty is (a) in the eye of the beholder or (b) the number of dots above the line you draw in an arbitrary place on the chart of 'common standards', but I don't think that serves much of a purpose either.

Let me rephrase my previous question: What harm does it do to tell people that they should love their faces and bodies and find beauty in them? What harm can it possibly do to tell people that they are beautiful?

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I agree that those standards aren't objective (but that's not news: I'm not convinced there are objective standards in many fields), although they're pretty pervasive. In common with morality, I think it makes sense for

momentsmusicaux to use ordinary language about those standards.

I don't think it does any harm to tell people that they should love their own faces and bodies.

If people were kept in blissful isolation before releasing them into the cruel world, I think it might do some harm to give them unrealistic expectations about how other the world would rate them aesthetically. But in fact that hardly ever happens: most people are only too aware of where they stand: it cannot do them harm to tell them they are beautiful by the standards of their society, but it probably doesn't do much good either.

OTOH there's telling someone they're beautiful as an expression of your personal preference or affection for them, which I think does do them some good (assuming they care about what you think).

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andrewducker

The whole point is that cultural judgements of beauty are affected by the common cultural notions. If we tell people enough times that being "Ginger" makes you ugly, and nobody want you, then it becomes true, despite the French (for instance) thinking that redheads are gorgeous.

Telling people they _are_ ugly, rather than that _less people fancy your type on average_ gives them something much harder to deal with (as well as being untrue).

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By that logic you should be okay with the concept that Andrew Lloyd Webber is a better composer than Maurice Duruflé - somehow, ALW has floated to the top and Duruflé is pretty obscure unless you're a classical buff... that makes him better, right?

Well, of course it doesn't. You have to put in a bit of effort with Duruflé. Duruflé isn't initially easy to like - something can jar about what he does with harmony, you've got to really explore him, let him grow on you. Some people - most people - will never like Duruflé. He's kind of an acquired taste.

I guess that means he's a bit shit?

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