From: aen@cs.brown.edu (Ann Nicholson)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Reactions to beautiful people (Was Re: Lipstick)
Date: 14 Sep 92 14:44:29 GMT
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

In article <191a89INN3cc@agate.berkeley.edu> fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster) writes:
>In an engaging and well-written posting, Robert Coleman says:
>>	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?
>

> [Summary: Fiona doesnt have a bias against wealthy men - they often
> need drive and charm to succeed and seem be as varied in character as
> poor men. However she finds she is actively turned off by "Model-perfect"
> men. Possible reasons (a) assuming that it couldnt be natural and
> wouldnt want to know someone who puts that much effort into conforming
> to social beauty standards (b) if it were natural, and the guy was
> also interesting and intelligent, he would try to down play his looks.

Other possibilities for not being attracted to mega-good-looking people:
(these are just suggestions)

- People seem to end up with someone who has a fairly similar position
on some sort of "sexual attractiveness scale". Most people who are of
average looks assume that the mega-good-looking ones will not be interested 
in them cos they could do "better". Maybe we condition ourselves not to
want what we cant get.

- Good looking people tend to get better reactions from people when
they first meet them. This probably starts with very small children - ie the
cute ones get cooed over more. If you are accustomed to getting a positive
reaction from people (initially and superficially granted) I would
think that you are more likely to be outgoing and friendly, more likely to 
expect to be liked, and that initially you would come across as more likeable.
But this is the opposite to the negative reaction noted above. My theory
is that people who get a positive reaction just because of their looks,
dont learn how to show real interest in others, how to develop interesting
topics of conversation, etc etc, (ie the character flaws mentioned above)
because they havent *had* to. Enough people want to be friends with them 
(at least on a superficial level) cos they are "beautiful people". 

- Maybe we just dont want to believe that perfect people exist, and if
someone seems to score well on the looks scale, we factor in a balance
of lower intelligence (bimbo) and/or lack of character (beautiful bitch).

Do any of these seem plausible? What would the differences be for applying to
men and women? If the major criteria for success for men is money rather
than looks, then maybe people wont react as strongly or as often to
males looks and the effect wont show as much. This could be the reason for
the much greater prevelance of the "bitch/bimbo" beauty stereotypes for
women as opposed to "tough bastard" men with money.

Ann Nicholson



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