What is beauty: personal opinion vs society's standards

Hello everyone. Time for me to answer a funny question. Well, I don't think the topic is that funny to be honest but the fact that the person asking it is actually embarrassed - well, I find that funny because I am more than happy to talk about this as I am so open minded and have a clear opinion on the issue. So, here is Choaniki's "burning question":

choaniki14 April 2016 at 16:26

LIFT, there is a burning question i always wondered to myself. Whenever a female friend or colleague ask my opinions on a guy's looks i always tell them that as a heterosexual guy myself i have no comment on their looks. I'm simply not interested firstly and then again i don't feel i'm qualified to appraise their looks as i don't know what constitutes attractive features for guys. As a homosexual i know you are very qualified to appraise a guys looks but do you think you can give an honest appraisal on females looks as well considering you are not attracted to them? Feel free to not answer this if you feel it is too controversial.

The beautiful ladies from K-pop group T-ara: I adore T-ara!

I don't think this is controversial at all. I think for the record, I must clarify that in the past, I have gone out with women before, but that felt like a long time ago especially now that I've turned 40 and these days I am mostly attracted to men. I do feel that Choaniki is afraid of being accused of being gay should he even have an opinion on male beauty - I know him, he's a married heterosexual man, so I don't think he should default to this 'no comment' stance. I suppose it is his prerogative to say that he doesn't feel qualified enough to appraise their looks - but how do I appraise female beauty then, as a gay man who is not attracted to the female form then?

Well you guys do know that I have done plenty of acting as well as some modeling over the years - I have spent years in an industry which clearly favours good looking people. In fact as an Asian guy in the West, I have been able to get a lot of work based on the fact that many casting directors are looking to create a multi-ethnic, diverse look for their marketing/advertising campaigns and I have far less competition than say a white, female, blonde model in her early 20s trying to make it in the industry. I have actually worked alongside many extremely beautiful female models over the years - that is probably the kind of position that most straight men would be quite jealous of. So as a result of my extensive experience in this industry, I have a pretty good idea of what kind of female models make it in the industry and what kind of female models have far less of a chance of getting paid work. It is a rather brutal industry indeed. 

I understand how the modeling industry works.

Thus my opinion of what constitutes as female beauty is pretty much shaped by what is in demand by the media industry - I suppose it it hard of differentiate what is my personal opinion and what is the industry's opinion as the two have become so intertwined that I can't even begin to pick the two apart. But let me give you an example that shows you how my opinion is shaped by how the industry works: I love my coffee and I have a very deep understanding of what makes a good cup of coffee. Indeed, you can walk into a big supermarket and realize that there's a lot of different kinds of coffees out there - from the budget range to the expensive, luxury range. I could write for ages as to why some coffees are super cheap whilst you pay a ludicrous amount of coffee for say, Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. But when enough people subscribe to the same standards of taste and quality, then it means that certain kinds of coffee will fetch a much higher price on the market than others. My criteria for selecting the kind of coffee I drink and enjoy pretty much conforms with the industry standards. I'm not reinventing the wheel here, I am merely following the same rules as everyone else about what makes a good cup of coffee.

The same can be said about any consumer product out there in the market: from mobile phones to chocolates to fashion to cars to shoes to televisions. The free market shapes a sense of consensus that determines what we like and are willing to pay more for and thus placing more value on some things than others. In the world of modeling and acting, that is very much the case as it is one industry which unashamedly judges people by their looks and are quite happy to place numerical value on a man or a woman's looks. But you may turn around and say to me, "Alex, if you're talking about models doing photo shoots for fashion magazines or advertisement campaigns, then fair enough - but what about ordinary folks who have no intention to get paid for their looks or earn money that way. Are you subjecting them to the same standards as supermodels and famous actors? Come on, is that really fair?" Well the answer is yes I am subjecting them to the same standards because there isn't really another set of rules or standards for me to use.

Let me give you a story I'm sure you can relate to: last year, I was invited to dinner at my friend Jeff's house and his wife cooked an amazing dinner. I commented that the awesome food was restaurant quality and she could be a restaurant chef. She blushed at the compliment and said something like, "oh no, I am a simple housewife, I just cook for my family." You see, it doesn't matter whether or not she was trying to get paid for her skills as a chef, I measured the quality of her cooking against what I would expect of a very fine restaurant in London and felt that it was of similarly high quality. I used a benchmark that was commercial, one that enabled people to put a numerical value on it - how much is this meal worth? What would you pay for a meal like that? Is it what you would expect of a Michelin-star restaurant or a simple meal at a greasy spoon cafe? Again, I was subjecting her to commercial standards to evaluate her cooking because I really didn't have any other standards to evaluate the quality of her fine cooking.

So when it comes to me evaluating the looks of a woman - I am not basing it on whether or not I am physically attracted to this woman or not, but rather, simply defaulting to industry standards of what is considered beautiful by the media. I know what you're going to say - everyone's taste in beauty varies, it is hard to agree on what is 'beauty' per se as it may vary from country to country, culture to culture. Whilst that may be true, we live in the age of advertising, where we are bombarded by images of beautiful people endorsing everything from perfumes to cars to mobile phones to airlines. Our perceptions of what is attractive, trendy, desirable and highly valued is very much shaped by these sleek advertising campaigns. The advertising industry is worth billions - big brand names are willing to pour millions into each advertising campaign, using beautiful celebrities because they have the power to persuade us to use their product and not their rivals'. Thus in this context, we have to accept that yes, there is an 'industry standard' as to what is considered beautiful and attractive, even if we still do have the capacity to express our individual preferences.

Need I state the obvious? People who lack the good looks are not going to be make a living this way - only those who have the kind of looks that have a wide enough appeal can do so. Are your looks so special and amazing that people are willing to pay you good money just to your looks and not your brains? Indeed, people who are that beautiful are extremely lucky for they can make a lot of money very easily - I am so jealous of people like that. Of course, not every beautiful woman is interested in going down this route of course: my good friend Melinda is extremely beautiful in my opinion and yes she could be a model or actress if she wants to. But she is also highly intelligent and prefers to use her brains to make a living instead - my opinion that Melinda is beautiful is not based on a personal desire to have sex with her, rather, I am making a commercial evaluation of her physical appearance and trying to decide if she can use her looks to make a living such as by being a model, actress or even an escort.

However, being beautiful does go further than just being able to work as a model or an escort. Life does reward people who are beautiful whilst sometimes penalizing people who are, well, ugly. Sorry I have to be blunt. I remember some years back, when I was working in this company - there were two women in the same department: let's call them Amy and Betty. Amy was tall and very attractive, whilst Betty was short, fat and wore glasses. Amy could get away with all kinds of mistakes at work that Betty could never - it wasn't obvious that the boss was trying to flirt with Amy, but he was prepared to be more lenient with her. Amy was always invited out for social occasions whilst it was assumed that Betty had to rush home "to feed her cats" - I have a feeling that Betty invented that as a convenient excuse because it was highly unlikely that the other colleagues would have asked her out. So it was a double edged sword: beautiful people like Amy are rewarded for simply looking fine, whilst unattractive people like Betty are 'punished' for simply not conforming to society's narrowly defined notion of beauty. I've seen this happen a lot in sales where you need personality and charm to close a sales and I can see why some people do better in face-to-face sales than others. 

Being attractive makes a difference in the world of business.

So in the case of Amy and Betty, I don't need to be physically attracted (or repulsed) by either of them in order to have an opinion about whether or not they are beautiful or not. Indeed, even if I didn't have a strong opinion either way, I would be able to default to the general consensus of the colleagues in the office who would be able to tell me that Amy was indeed beautiful and Betty was unattractive. I am very interested to find out how the way they are perceived by others affects the way they are treated by others. In turn, I then ask the questions: so how am I perceived by others then? What do they think about me? How do their perceptions of me affect the way they treat me? What are their notions of beauty and charm and how do I score in terms of their standards? What can I do to improve the way I am being treated in this group? Sure there are people who remain painfully oblivious to the way others perceive them, but you'll be a fool to ignore that in life. You can learn a lot by observing the way others treat each other. 

So can a straight man make a similar evaluation on the looks of another man in the same way? Well yes he can, as long as he has a good enough understanding of what others around him in society perceive as beautiful and what they value in terms of male beauty. After all, don't straight men want to appear attractive to others (at least to the women in their lives)? So here comes to punchline (drum roll please): if you understand what society values in terms of what makes a man attractive, then you will be able to apply that to yourself. At times like these, society's opinions and standards matter far more than yours.  If you simply 'bo-chup' how you are being perceived, then chances are, you are making little or no effort to look good for others and you will end up like Betty. That is hardly an enviable position to be in. After all, we live and work in a community, we're not living in isolation: everyday, we interact with friends and colleagues and we send out messages about ourselves to them all the time, particularly in the age of social media. What kind of message do you want to send out to them? And do you actually care what they think about you?

Does your opinion matter more than society's  standards?

Therefore Choaniki, the next time someone asks you for your opinion on whether or not a man is attractive - don't panic and scream, "I am not gay! I don't look at men! I don't have an opinion!" Relax, simply treat it as a hypothetical question about whether this man is good looking enough to become a model or an actor. If this guy had been in your class at school, would he be the one who would get many dates or would he be the geek who is the social outcast? If he was your colleague at work, would he be more like Amy or Betty? You see, it is very easy to answer the question this way by placing this man in question in the wider social context. After all, that insight into society's perception of beauty is probably far more interesting than your personal opinion. Likewise, my buddy Tom brought some homemade brownies to the gym the other day - they were incredibly good. If I simply said, "I love your brownies!" That's me offering a personal opinion. If I said something like, "if you opened up a shop a sold these brownies, everybody would want to buy your brownies as these are so much better than the ones available at the local supermarket." That goes way beyond offering a personal opinion - I was setting it in the local context, offering insight into the current situation.

So there you go, that's my take on this issue. I think it is important to be humble when asked our opinion on any topic - perhaps the other party may benefit more from an overview of the social context and background information about the topic rather than our personal opinion per se. That's what I try to do in my blog: I try not to pontificate on the issues, rather I try to explain the issue to my readers by piecing together different aspects of the issues into a coherent argument. What do you think? Do you like my approach to explaining the issue? Have you any other suggestions? What does beauty mean to you? Please let me know what you think, leave a comment below. Thanks for reading.