posted
I have been thinking about the notion of leagues of attractiveness, as in the well known phrase, “she’s well out of your league mate”. The reason for this is that in a moment of idleness, I googled to find a picture of The One That Got Away (woke up next to nekkid save for black velvet choker bloke). I always saw him as being in a league above me, and actually didn’t fancy him initially, as a) he was so good looking it was almost ridiculously cliched and b) I was sure he’d be way out of my league. I am curious as to whether others have also mentally dismissed someone as being too far above them in terms of looks.
Obviously, attractiveness is a subjective and personal thing, and the Premier League of the UK couldn’t play against the top divisions of Japan, Africa, S America etc, as their criteria are doubtless very different. However, I do believe that there are enough universal parameters of attractiveness within a defined culture for people to rate themselves and others. As an observer of couples, I sometimes see ones where, in my opinion, there is an imbalance of attractiveness (sometimes matched by personality, sometimes not). I always find these interesting to watch. I also found it intriguing to read people’s responses to Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston’s break-up, as people seemed to think, “aw, they made such a lovely couple”, seemingly on the basis of the fact that they are both considered attractive and looked pretty together.
I realise it can sound callous to categorise people in such a way, but the more I plough through my Evolutionary Biology textbook brick, the more I believe that humans, although possessing nice big brains and dexterous fingers, aren’t really as far above the vigorous cacophony of pheramones, mating displays and seasonal rutting of our animal friends as we would like to think. Yes of course personality is important blah blah blah, but I don’t think we can deny the sensation of seeing someone, and having that instantaneous ME & YOU = FUCKY FUCKY urge, where our genes are growling to be mixed with the tasty new ones on display. I think there is often a secondary subconscious reflex, whereby the attractiveness of the person who has caught your eye is calculated in relation to your own perceived rating.
Do you believe in leagues of attractiveness?
Have you ever dated someone you felt to be clearly in a different league, and did it affect the relationship?
For reference: Not very good pic of The One That Got Away (Premier League):
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posted
I was talking about something similar to this just t'other day. A friend was saying how one of her friends (a fairly decent looking chap) was married to a munter. She is super fat, I mean ENORMOUS - needs a walking stick to move about kind of thing, and is apparently really annoying, whiney and arrogant as well. So the old personality thing doesn’t hold up either. Excellent!
Apparently the chap was all broken and had massive issues, and he met her on the internet (of course!). She is American and wanted to come over here, and he was so amazed that anyone wanted to be with him at all that he went for it. Now he is has put himself together a bit and is less damaged, only to realise that he has a horrible wife. Unlucky.
So levels of confidence and self respect can definitely play a part. And thinking about one of the actual questions, yes I have dated someone who I now consider to be not very attractive, and he was annoyingly clingy too. But guess what? I was really unhappy at the time (prior to the relationship), coincidence??!
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scrawny
One Mojito, two Gin and Tonics, Three Bacardi Lime Sodas, and a couple of pints of Stella please.
posted
I dated someone a male model (with Boss agency, fact fans) once. He was unbelievably good-looking, and I couldn't quite understand why he would want to go out with me. He also had a first in philosophy, some nice mates and was extremely generous, so there didn't seem to be any other clues as to why a United like himself would be deigning to kick about with a Tranmere Rovers like me. However, a couple of dates later the penny dropped - he was the most boring man in the world. IN THE WORLD. This was made worse by the fact that he used to call incessantly with nothing to say and get really needy when i ended our non-conversation to get on with other, more important aspects of my life such as flicking aimlessly through the TV guide. his friends were indeed a lovely bunch - so lovely in fact they were positively charitable with him, despite his endless whining. Just goes to show that, like united, you can have all the players and everything ostensibly going for you, but still finish the season with no silverware. (*end of laboured footballing metaphor*)
So do I believe in leagues? I'd like not to, because...well...it's not a very nice idea is it? However, most horrible ideas are rooted in some kind of social reality, so i guess leagues do exist, perpetuated by the alll-pervasive lack of self-esteem from which everyone seems to suffer these days.
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quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: I realise it can sound callous to categorise people in such a way, but the more I plough through my Evolutionary Biology textbook brick, the more I believe that humans, although possessing nice big brains and dexterous fingers, aren’t really as far above the vigorous cacophony of pheramones, mating displays and seasonal rutting of our animal friends as we would like to think.
With a shudder I recall the group-recoil by Jayne Middlemiss, Isabella Hervey and Rebecca Loos as a boozily self-pitying Paul Danan stumbled towards them and explained/bawled his drooling, tit-groping lechery thus: "Oi awnly do it caws yaw aww sao FIT - ass ee AWNLY reason woy."
If anything, I think the prickly issue of the beauty gradient (where we sit on it, whether we pitch at partners 'above', 'below' or 'at our level') reveals the limits of trying to apply evolutionary biology to everyday life: if relative physical attractiveness is so key to evolutionary success, why is the median level of attractiveness so damn poor in - say - the UK? Walk down an average high street in any British town and ask yourself: is this place full of pretty people getting prettier? Expressed even more offensively, why haven't all the uglies died out?
There's a problem with using 'macro' apparatus to examine 'micro'-level data, which is why, I think, scientsts come unstuck when they try to reach a general audience by making absurd statements about how your genes determine whether you're a tit man or an ass man.
Perhaps 'attractiveness' is psychic construct - maybe a set of assumptions, hardened into a habit - that exist only in the subject's mind but which are shared in common with many others existing in similar circumstances. Of all the criteria feeding into this construct (peer group expectations, racial prejudice, love/resentment of parents) the objective physical appearance of the person they're looking at (desiring?) is maybe going to be the least important.
Reading your post, Vogon, it strikes me that the issue raised is not so much the appearance of nearly-man (who, to this baffled poster, looks utterly average: an Aussie-barman-in-London Adonis), as the hierarchical framework into which you've slotted him and yourself. Some people on the forum might even protest you're under-selling yourself.
quote:Originally posted by scrawny: there didn't seem to be any other clues as to why a United like himself would be deigning to kick about with a Tranmere Rovers like me. However, a couple of dates later the penny dropped - he was the most boring man in the world. IN THE WORLD.
Bagsy: early spot on inevitable "B-but Scrawny your wal lush." backlash.
There was a great example of the pretty=pretty-fucking-awful thing the other night on BB6 launch: for about a millisecond of her intro-clip Sam came across as breathtakingly attractive. Within about three milliseconds she'd confirmed herself as being one of those people you'd cross a busy road to beat to bloody, screaming death with four baseball bats - wielded General Grievance-style - each coated with razorblades, barbed wire and dogshit.
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quote:Originally posted by ben: why haven't all the uglies died out?
Perhaps this will be discussed in a later chapter of my textbook, but I would imagine that it's because the selection pressure on looks is not strong enough to be making a difference, ie if you're a fugly you still get plenty of chances to pass your fugly genes on. The best example is Freshers Week, where all the munters get to shag other munters via the means of dim lighting, ludicrously cheap drinks and I'm Away From Home And Nobody Knows Me wild abandon. As Abby says, Internet Dating must also be contributing to keeping a lot of scummy genes clogging up the gene pool.
I'm afraid your reality TV show references have been lost on me. Whilst watching Equilibrium at the weekend, I thought fondly of a state-funded operation whereby men in long black coats burst into the homes of culture-crime deviants (furtively watching Big Brother in secret Priest's Hole compartments) and cleansed them with a spray of machine gun and kung fu.
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I think the largely subjective nature of physical attractiveness is fairly well exemplified by a pair of gorgeous' like Scrawny and VP not regarding themselves as such.
[ 31.05.2005, 08:20: Message edited by: Boy Racer ]
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quote:Originally posted by ben: There was a great example of the pretty=pretty-fucking-awful thing the other night on BB6 launch: for about a millisecond of her intro-clip Sam came across as breathtakingly attractive. Within about three milliseconds she'd confirmed herself as...
I agree. She is remarkably hott with the sound off.
It's a shame that God saw fit to fill a head so beautiful with such ropey matter.
posted
I'm not sure about the idea that 'uglies' necessarily spawn 'uglies' or vice versa, surely physical attractiveness can be more accurately attributed to a combination of genetic lottery, fashion, and personal taste.
[ 31.05.2005, 08:28: Message edited by: Boy Racer ]
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posted
Good thread VP! I do believe in "leagues of attractiveness", yes. I think people rate themselves and then view others on either side of their own "rating". The other day I was talking to my sister about the gorgeousness of some of her past boyfriends and although we don't fancy the same "type" of boy I could certainly appreciate their aesthetic beauty. I said that I would have been scared to even approach them let alone date them based on their prettiness. I didn't think they were "out of her league" though.
My ex(as of 3 hours ago!)-husband is considered to be very attractive by most who meet him. I had to laugh one time recently when we went out for drinks and the barmaid was totally checking him out as she served him. She looked over and caught my eye and we just both laughed and he was like, what are you laughing at? And I was like I just caught the barmaid totally checking you out! It was just the blantantness with which she was doing it. That's happened a few times with him actually. I don't think I elicit the same response in strangers, but I didn't think he was out of my league.
What I like are the boys who don't realise quite how hot they are, they're the best! You get these absolute stunners and their looks are only enhanced by the fact that they don't quite know it. They know they're "ok" but they don't know that they're drooled over by quite as many people as they are. My boyfriend's like this: he's Hottie McTottie but doesn't quite realise the extent of this, which is thigh rubbingly hott!
When it comes to dating out of your league though I think I more often see women who "date down" rather than guys. A super-hott boy will always be with a super-hott girl, but you will more often see a super-hott girl with a not so hot boy than you will vice versa.
Interestingly I had my own levels of attractiveness tested the other month with this guy I went on a date with from the dating site I used to use. We'd been emailing each other for about 3 weeks every day and we got on so well in email, we seemed to have so much in common. Usually if I was dating a guy off my dating site I wouldn't email for as long as 3 weeks before meeting, usually about a week so you don't get too emotionally involved before you find out if it will work in real-life or not. But due to work and holiday circumstances we couldn't meet up any sooner which was so frustrating.
He had a photo on his profile and he looked nice. In the photo he was leaning forward and not looking straight at the camera but as if he was reaching for something out of shot. The other two pictures on his profile were blurred, one with his chin raised and one a half-profile shot. He wasn't super-hott but he didn't seem to be a complete minger either, just a normal looking guy. The very first email he ever sent me said "You're gorgeous... absolutely out of my league, but gorgeous! I just thought I'd let you know while passing."
So I checked out his profile and thought, hello, you're not too bad yourself and so emailing began. We talked about loads of stuff, he was a clever and witty correspondant and I enjoyed his emails.
One of the things we talked about was this date that he went on with another girl from the same dating site which had been arranged from before we started emailing. He said told me that they had a nice evening but that her photos were a "little bit misleading" and had he not been emailing me and excited about meeting me he would have been disappointed and felt misled by her.
I thought that he was implying that he thought *my* pictures could be misleading so I sent him a couple more which had just been taken and stuff and then asked him to send me some more of him. Every photo of him was blurred or slightly out of shot, basically not showing a full and accurate picture. Usually I'm excellent at reading the photos on dating profiles, I seem to have an uncanny knack for this. His photos gave me some slight misgivings so I got a few other opinions from trusted ladyfriends and they all came back with "Nah, he's cute, don't worry about it."
So the day of the date finally arrives and I'm nervous as fuck because if this works out then it would be AMAZING but if it doesn't then its going to be awful. I walk into the bar, spot him straight away and my heart flips. Downwards. He was a serious candidate for breaching of the trade descriptions act. Disappointment aside that he wasn't my Orlando Bloom we say hello and the date begins. He was really funny and witty and clever and we talked and talked and laughed and drank but there was absolutely no spark there for me. I really liked him personality-wise but I just didn't fancy him.
However as the evening wore on and we were getting increasingly soused I had to start dodging kisses and his fondling fumbling hands. We ended our date and I spent the next day in a conundrum: I really liked this guy as a person but I really didn't fancy him at all. Was that snobbish of me? Was I dismissing something with potential because this guy wasn't particularly attractive? Should I give it a go? In the end I sent him an email saying that I liked him alot as a person but there "wasn't enough sparks" for me - to use dating lingo. I said the awful "Do you want to be friends, but I realise that can be quite cold so I will understand if you don't want to." He didn't want to. He'd told me that if I didn't want to see him again he didn't want me to tell him face to face over the phone he would prefer an email or text so I wasn't being massively callous by not doing it in person.
He said he was "gutted but had to respect my opinion" but what I wonder about is why did he deliberately not send me photos of what he really looked like? He said from the start that he thought I was "out of his league" so why not save us both some time and emotional effort and be honest with me? I dunno, part of me feels harsh for saying that but so much of attraction is to do with the initial moments of seeing each other and getting the FUCKY FUCKY rush that VP was talking about - "sparks" as they all talk about on dating sites. Does the Cyrano de Bergerac scenario ever happen in real-life?
All that aside though, a couple of weeks later I hooked up with my Hottie McTottie boyfriend and it's all sugar. When Mikee and I meet up after we haven't seen each other for a bit our pupils dilate and constrict with pleasure at catching sight of each other again. You can't manufacture that shit, it's biological.
quote:Originally posted by Boy Racer: I'm not sure about the idea that 'uglies' necessarily spawn 'uglies' or vice versa, surely physical attractiveness can be more accurately attributed to a combination of genetic lottery, fashion, and personal taste.
I would say that for me, fashion is never an issue. Possibly because I'm not into designer stuff anyway, but clothes never leap out at me in the way that cheekbones, height, physique or eyes do. Probably some clothes add some information about status, but the basic primal searchlight is looking for a specimen with a physique that suggests health and reproductive fitness.
It's a good point about the inheritance levels of ugliness, though. Thorn noted the other day that Liv Tyler's mother must be astoundingly good looking, for someone with Steve Tyler's genetic contribution to come up trumps like that. Perhaps in a couple of years time somebody will fund me to do a PhD investigating such trends!
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posted
By fashion I meant in terms of the sorts of faces and physical shapes that are fashionable within a culture at a time, rather than clothing.
To me many people generally excepted as very, very attractive these days (and I suspect always) appear staggeringly close to freakish. Consider how little adjustment of their features it would take to throw them out the other side of good looking again.
[ 31.05.2005, 08:57: Message edited by: Boy Racer ]
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posted
Got any examples of that, BR? I'm struggling to think how any adjustment of features belonging to the likes of Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Lauren Bacall, Vivan Leigh etc could make them non-beautiful. Unless you mean the addition of some photoshopped spazzing goggle eyes or something.
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quote:Originally posted by Uber Trick: He said he was "gutted but had to respect my opinion" but what I wonder about is why did he deliberately not send me photos of what he really looked like? He said from the start that he thought I was "out of his league" so why not save us both some time and emotional effort and be honest with me?
In fairness, most pictures that get posted "to show you what I look like" as opposed to group shots of meats/events etc tend to be a little jazzed-up, to say the least. Now people have the luxury of selecting the best of fifty or so shots from a digital camera there's no way they're going to go for the passport-looking one that gives a reasonably accurate representation of what they look like.
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She has good hair. Shall I get my hair like that? Im not sure I could bring myself to turn up to a hairdressers clutching a picture of a BB contestatnt though. Hmm...maybe the hairdresser wont watch BB and so wont realise who she is. No that is pretty unlikely....maybe I could black out her face....
quote:Originally posted by ben: In fairness, most pictures that get posted "to show you what I look like" as opposed to group shots of meats/events etc tend to be a little jazzed-up, to say the least. Now people have the luxury of selecting the best of fifty or so shots from a digital camera there's no way they're going to go for the passport-looking one that gives a reasonably accurate representation of what they look like.
No, I imagine your man's been burned before by that kind of honesty.
I wouldn't mind if he had done a jazzed up picture, but his weren't jazzed up to improve they were blurred and distorted to hide.
Abby: I said exactly the same thing about Sam's hair. She has got good colour on it too!
posted
I'd say Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt (and his forthcoming co-star/rebound shag Angelina Jolie), and Liv Tyler are pretty good examples of that actually (I'd add any number of contemporary models to that list, or US soap stars for that matter), and although I'm not sure I'd count either Bacall or Leigh as contemporary I'm not certain the same doesn't wouldn't apply to them also.
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quote:Originally posted by Boy Racer: To me many people generally excepted as very, very attractive these days (and I suspect always) appear staggeringly close to freakish. Consider how little adjustment of their features it would take to throw them out the other side of good looking again.
I can only assume that judging by the use of "excepted" (accepted?) you are quite confused.
Please can you explain how Brad Pitt is "staggeringly close to freakish".
Also, what does it mean that a little adjustment would render them ugly. It's like saying that with a little adjustment Jade Goody would be witty and entertaining. It's meaningless, these people are not going to disappear the other side of good looking.
I get the impression you're trying to make some point about modern standards of attractiveness, but I'm really not getting it.
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quote:Originally posted by Uber Trick: I wouldn't mind if he had done a jazzed up picture, but his weren't jazzed up to improve they were blurred and distorted to hide.
There's a porous line between the one and the other: a lot of pics posted on tmo have been "improved" by the subject upping the contrast levels or overexposing the pic to the point where their features reach that creamy, idealised look of animé characters. Are these distortions - or maybe the subject's attempts to reinject that element of their own charisma that the camera maybe hasn't picked up? At any rate, it would sometimes be difficult to single out that person in a crowded bar on the basis of what they'd posted online.
There are a lot of people here who don't photograph half so well as they ought to - their allure only really comes across when you encounter them in the flesh. I think it's understandable that this guy would want to at least have the chance to make an impression face to face, and a bit shallow that you should demand a clinically-accurate shot upon which to make a lump-him-or-dump-him remote assessment.
I'm not sure all that many of us would survive such a weeding process.
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quote:Originally posted by ben: a lot of pics posted on tmo have been "improved" by the subject upping the contrast levels or overexposing the pic to the point where their features reach that creamy, idealised look of animé characters
Do you really mean a lot or did you have someone in mind?
posted
I appreciate it is shallow which is why in my original post I had hope to get across that I felt uncomfortable about realising this about myself. However a few points need to be made for clarification.
Pictures posted on TMO are different from pictures on an internet dating site. In fact internet dating is like nothing else on earth. You become both shallow and cynical flicking through profiles to see who you want to pick, selecting or rejecting on the flimsiest of critieria.
The whole concept of browsing profiles and looking at photos to pick your date is based on how attractive you find that person on their look and how they come across on the screen. When you first start internet dating you are much more open and willing to interact with most people, you browse the profiles and spend time chosing which ones you add to your favourites or send a message too.
After a few unsucessful dates you start to review your criteria and some people widen and some people tighten their selections. The profile of the man in question I had actually seen a few weeks earlier and rejected because I was going through a phase of rejecting any profiles which said they wouldn't date anyone who already had children. And I don't even have children.
Different rules apply to online dating and it is all about that shallow selection process of a photo or two and the words on the screen. Until you meet in the flesh you have nothing else to go on. And lets face it, if you're going to be selective you might as well try for the whole package.
The thing that was particularly annoying about this guy was that he had spent a long time talking about how he was "misled" by this other girl. As I mentioned previously I thought he was implying that he thought I might have been doing the same to him but it turned out when we met up it was because he knew he was doing the same thing to me. He told me he deliberately didn't point me to the direction of some other photos online because he thought they were a more accurate representation of what he looked like.
He can't be annoyed with someone for misleading him when he was doing the exact same thing, surely?
But yes, it's shallow, but it's honest. Bear in mind this is to do with dating specifically, you apply different standards to your romantic partners than you might do to friends and the wider world of relationships.
If you haven't "dated" in the past couple of years then you will probably find things very different from when you used to "go out" with someone or "see" them. And internet dating is a whole other realm on top of that.
posted
I take an awful photo. Mind, that said I'm also pretty low on a rating scale anyway if I was responsible for making the ratings.
Maybe that's the problem with this question, for what some see as a 10 is for someone else only a 5 or less, we all have things we individually find attractive and thats the only way we can scale anything - to our own perspective.
I don't think the dude in VP's picture is in anyway out of her league but she does I wonder why that is ?
All it took was a few extra pounds and some bad teeth to turn this:
Into this:
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posted
Surely the concept of attractiveness being down to genetics has been disproved for ages now?
My understandaing is that a bone structure can help towards an attractive face, but personality has more to do with it than that which does not meet the eye. A persons' personality comes through on their face, before they've even openined it, as the face is shaped by years of expressions. hence why happy, energetic people look a lot more attractive than people who spend their lives being angry.
Of course, the problem is when you're as attractive as I am, and you find it almost impossible to find anyone to be intimate with, because everyone assumes you have such high standards that you'd never even think about sleeping with someone who thinks they're below your level of attractiveness. Which is rubbish really.
But then it's easy to criticise the other way - look at VP for instance, who is accused of haivng unreasonably high standards, but what would be the alternative - to sleep with people she didn't find attractive, just for the sake of having sex? There's no accounting for taste, and there's no way of really criticising something so personal, about which the person has no real choice anyway.
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quote:Originally posted by Ringo: hence why happy, energetic people look a lot more attractive than people who spend their lives being angry.
Oh no!
Interesting that you think personality comes out in facial features. I've never really thought about that, although I associate brown eyes with being warmer and somehow friendlier than blue.
I like Darryn's point about Charlize Theron being munted up in Monster, see also: Cameron Diaz in Being John Malkovitch. I wonder how many Hollywood starlets would consent to being frumpified for their Art?
I also wonder how much people's expectations are changed by the recent practice of airbrushing, meaning that pretty much anyone can look at least half decent in a glossy photo shoot. This seems to be balanced by a sort of deliriously gleeful pouncing on exciting KATE WINSLETT GOES TO THE SHOPS IN A TRACKSUIT WITH NO MAKE UP ON! stories. And people being shocked at Britney being a non-natural blonde, and a little bit skanky in non-celeb mode. It's like we can't decide whether we want our glossy demi-gods to be always perfect, or a little bit real.
Edit: still waiting for an explanation as to how Brad Pitt can be described as one skin cell away from being a grotesque circus exhibit.
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posted
Brad is at the cutting edge of bone structure and skin tautness..
He is getting very thin around the cheeks and could possible start to look a little skeleton like. He also has a very low body fat mass which are both trait shared with heroin junkies.
Its the very fine line there s to be walked between looking cool and looking like a dickhead/beautiful/ugly.
Mr Depp always astounds me though he's always looked good even when trying to look bad.
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Interesting that you think personality comes out in facial features. I've never really thought about that, although I associate brown eyes with being warmer and somehow friendlier than blue.
I wonder if that has more to do with the colour of your own yes, and how you project your own perceptions of your personality onto other people.
I wouldn't say you were really genuinely miserable or angry. I've always thought of you as being quite 'fun' and I would say your face and personality match quite well in that respect.
The interesting thing about the idea of pitching above ones station is this: I generally don't find the uber attractive celebrities attractive in any way.Part of me would like to believe that it's because they're not really terribly great people, too used to having their own way, and thinking too mcuh of themselves although I have a feeling that it's also partly because I resent their self assuredness and their incredible looks, through which they are able to achieve great things without seeming to make any kind of effort.
posted
Glamour is a facade. The average joe can look beautiful or tough, or a little rough and ready and sexy and phwoar. There are many steps to making this possible. When the wall is broken down and people see that Matthew Broderick steps in shit or Natalie Portmans nipples are browner than first imagined the public love it. They want to be shown that their objek de zeer are just like everybody else.
The last photoshoot my band had was about 60 shots and we used 2 of them. Just to contradict, I was absoloutely stoked with all of them, but we picked the ones that looked like band shots, whereas the other ones just looked like some idiots sat about on the floor. The guitarist, Felix has the ability to look like some kind of NME darling in every photo because he has been through the same routine over and over again. The technique doesn't work unless everyone is playing the same game though. So hamming up for a holiday snap makes you look like Imelda Quirke.
As for the 'Madonna in defecates like normal folk shocker', it conjures fantasies for the ming. That they too could be a screen star or a rock god if only they could escape their existence of work drudgery and spend more time preening and posing.
posted
what about the attractive witty couples that have met via internet related scenerios?
i'm sure we can all think of a few examples just from this site
as far as the limpy fat american that agreed to marry the depressed english guy - sounds like a fair deal to me
i suppose i don't think in terms of leagues and levels of attraction. i prefer to hold onto the thought of mutual attraction as some spontanious magical zzzzippp.
(edit: and i wasn't implying mart and myself - though we are pretty great )
quote:Originally posted by Grianagh: what about the attractive witty couples that have met via internet related scenerios?
i'm sure we can all think of a few examples just from this site
What do you mean here though, Gree? I wasn't saying that everyone who meets on the net mings or that internet dating sites are for losers otherwise I would be a minging loser! O. Wait.
We all want to think in terms of a magical zzpp and that is surely what happens when two people meet who are attracted to each other instantly but I think everyone must see that people have different qualities which people "rate" differently - that is just a "league (or level) of attractiveness" but under a different guise.
We do it with ourselves all the time. We know when we look great and when we ming and when we fall somewhere in the middle of our scale of attractiveness for ourselves. So if we do it to ourselves, why wouldn't we do it to other people? I think the problem might be when you then start to make judgments based purely on one facet of someone such as their looks.
posted
Oh for fucks sake. Whats wrong with judging people on looks? Its as valid as intelligence, humour or money. Anyone who thinks it's shallow is probably a minger.
'I chose Geoffrey because he's so funny and witty' 'Sven has a huge penis' 'My bird is totally fit' 'Yeah, she's a doctor' 'He treats me right. We have three cars and a patio' 'She might be a munt but she's a lovely personality'
All as shallow, or as deep, as each other. Get over yerselves.
Oh yeah - and when did 'personality' become so important ? The word has been devalued so much its currency equivalent is 'celebrity' which means, anything you want it to. I reckon its a salve used to defend a decision rather than the basis of one.
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i didn't feel as if you were implying internet people all ming Ubs - i was just (badly) expressing that anyone anywhere can be attracted to another person with or without a conscious league scale - any many of us don't have one
it's true that i find various people attractive due to appearance and personality yet i've never thought someone was too sexy, good, smart or funny to be partnered with me nor have i felt too good-blah-blah for someone else based upon my appearance
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That's what I was meaning about being aware that there may be some kind of "scale" but not using it to judge people by.
I suppose to relate it back to my work you can have a scale but it can be a scale of "ability" rather than "dis-ability". As VOP said it can be a valid criteria but I don't think it should be the only one, with people we should always look at all the facets.
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