From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Lipstick
Date: 14 Sep 1992 06:08:09 GMT
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

In an engaging and well-written posting, Robert Coleman says:
>	Beauty is extremely superficial, and when the only way you can know a
>person, such as a pinup, is superficially, it suffices.  But when we meet a
>real woman, the "china doll" look that works in pictures serves instead to 
>hide the real indications of personality, the "character" lines.  In reality,
>the most overpowering characteristic is personality, not beauty, and we
>experience cognitive dissonance when the face doesn't match the personality.
[...]
>	In reality, the more "model perfect" a woman is, the *less* likely I
>am to want to get to know her.  She may be wonderful to observe from a
>distance; she might be great for a one-night stand.  If all I want is a 
>superficial relationship, beauty, and makeup, are wonderful.  But I have a 
>long-standing bias that a model-perfect woman and a wealthy man probably have
>enormous character flaws.  I'm curious: am I alone in this?

I grew up in Houston, Texas, where many wealthy men are of the
"self-made millionaire" type--who often have interesting personalities
because of how much drive and charm it took for them to make their
fortune--so I don't have a bias against wealthy men.  They seem, to
me at least, as varied in their characters as poor men.

But I do agree about model-perfect people.  As it happens, my husband
and I were just now talking about this topic, during a long drive,
returning from a weekend excursion.  I'd been telling him about the
the intriguing category of people who call themselves "FA's"--for
Fat Admirers--and we each started asking ourselves, "What sort of
people are we sexually attracted to?"  We've been married for 14
years, and we're both rather out of the habit of being sexually
attracted to other people, so we had to do some thinking.  My
husband said, "I'm an omnivore--I like all types of women."  I found
myself saying the same thing about men, except...something I didn't
want to say at the time because it seemed so arbitrary and irrational...
I'm actively turned *off* by men who are "conventionally handsome."

Robert Coleman's comment about having a bias against model-perfect 
women makes me look again at this prejudice.  Why am I disgusted by
model-perfect men?  It's not really that I think they're less intelli-
gent, or necessarily self-centered.  So what is it?  I think I assume,
perhaps irrationally, that in order for a person--male or female--to
be model-perfect, they have to work at it.  And anyone who would put
that much effort into conforming to that narrow window of societal
standards for beauty, strikes me as someone who has their values in
the wrong place.

Another possibility is this: when I imagine a hypothetical man who
has stunningly handsome facial features, and a body to match--and
yet is also intelligent and interesting--I think, "But he would
do something to foil his beauty, if he were *really* interesting."
And this, in fact, is true of several very handsome men I've had
as friends: they purposely wear their hair or whiskers in a weird,
off-putting manner, or dress in a dull or slovenly style, to mask
their attractiveness.  A *savvy* model-perfect person, in other
words, would be hip to the fact that looking model-perfect is a
turn-off to the kind of people they're interested in--because of
the very "he must be a bimbo" bias we're talking about.  A savvy
beauty knows that conventional beauty can look too bland, too
much like just another pretty picture, and so they make efforts
to make themselves look more unique.  Also: gorgeous people get
stared at a lot; and sensitive individuals may find this an invasion
of their privacy, and so might go out of their way to be less conspicuous.

I'm concluding that beauty foiled is more mysterious--takes longer
to discover--and is thus more attractive to me.

As for Robert's comment about "she might be great for a one-night
stand," I feel compelled to add, "Yuk!"  :-(  The only thing I
find appealing for a one-night stand, is a suspenseful novel.  :-)

						--Fiona Webster


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