There’s the argument that unattractive people ought not to force us to look at their unattractiveness by appearing in their birthday suit in front of our eyes. This is ridiculous for aforementioned reasons, but also because the very notion of what’s “attractive” is so historically and personally subjective that advocating such a restriction is preposterous at best, and nefarious at worst. Images of attractiveness change with just about every generation, are different in just about every culture, and vary from person to person. Ridiculing a TV character’s appearance is not only small-minded and unnecessarily cruel to the subject, but also ignorant and unkind toward anyone who happens to appreciate how the person may look.
It really comes down to taste, and how strongly people want to impose their own taste on others. Having one unattainable look be universally regarded as desirable is good for selling products, but not really how people live their lives, and so someone’s stated taste may not even align with their taste in practice.
There’s also the implicit insistence that a woman’s beauty can only be found in her physical qualities, or that the physical is somehow a manifestation of the internal, in a way that is completely dissonant in relation to assessments of men’s attractiveness. Broadening the definition of what’s beautiful or attractive or doable is as good as any other impulse toward inclusion and open-mindedness.
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Published: Jan 16, 2014 10:25 am