February 09, 2007

• Aw geez. Another opinion piece claiming that the multibillion-dollar culture industries have less of an impact on our social interactions and inner monologues than do so-called biological imperatives. I wish I had time to go through and debunk this whole thing, but suffice to say that the now-un-beautiful Venus of Willendorf and ancient Chinese custom of foot binding are obviously social fictions which dictate beauty norms. There may be infinitesimal suggestions that biology plays a part, but I'm still waiting for someone to acknowledge that we can't possibly know how much is nature and how much is nurture. Meantime, the author says: "Whether the beauty we detect arises from nature or artifice doesn’t change that visceral reflex." In other words, everything she says elsewhere in the piece might be bunk -- but because we react strongly to whatever it is, the point is valid. It's not.
• The consumption of the rituals or "signs" of beauty are themselves a form of the seductive capitalist play of objects, creating alienation of the parts of the body from the "I"! Beauty is nothing but a third order of simulacra, wherein the "beautiful" replaces the "actual" human being! The "face" no longer exists - it is merely the site of a "vaccuum" left by the hyperreality of lipstick! This comment itself is a simulacrum - a negative space that grounds the non-existence of Baudrillard!
• I do agree (I think I'm agreeing) that evolutionary factors, while relevant, aren't the whole story. We're told that women with small jaws are considered beautiful because that's the effect of plentiful estrogen, which in turn implies fertility. You just know that if lantern-jawed women were considered beautiful we'd be told it's because of their superior ability to chew meat, a survival skill for Neolithic mothers. Moreover, do small-jawed women, as a matter of fact, have more estrogen? Does more estrogen make you more fertile? Are small-jawed women more fertile, on the whole. I don't know, but I sort of doubt all these assertions. But in fact, myself I'd go further and say that even evolutionary and social factors together do not by any means exhaust the concept of beauty. In and of itself it is a whole nother thing belonging to neither domain; one which your scientists wot not of, and philosophers apprehend but dimly. However, I think the author's main point is merely that not all of us are beautiful, which I am in a position to confirm is likely true; but don't stop those presses, now.
• Oh, and Monkeyfilter:a simulacrum - a negative space that grounds the non-existence of Baudrillard!
• It seems to me like the author is conflating various shades of meaning of the word "beauty" with each other. "Beauty" doesn't mean the same thing in every context.
• Could you adumbrate more extensively, there? I'd like to hear the seven, or the thirty-two, or the six million meanings of beauty.
• I must join the pile-on. I'd be prepared to accept something along the lines of general healthiness, or proportion tending to elicit a positive response, but even that could be encultured away. If you read descriptions of beauty in early modern Chinese novels, the kind of round face and the rest that appealed then would seem very odd to modern Chinese eyes I'd think, let alone others.
• Your brain will find beauty where it doesn't exist, even if your options are very limited.
• "Whether you prefer Nicole Kidman to Angelina Jolie... may be a matter of taste, but rare is the beholder who would declare Holly Hunter or Whoopi Goldberg—neither of whom is homely—more beautiful than any of these women." Ah- so you can think someone is beautiful, and be WRONG. And the way to correctly identify Absolute Beauty is by mass consensus: if MOST people agree that Angelina Jolie is better looking than Holly Hunter, it must be because she IS. And you can apply the same principle to all the arts- if most people agree that a song or a painting is beautiful, that's because it IS, and people who disagree are just mistaken. Their taste is wrong. Heaven forbid we should just let people have their own opinions...
• I don't think that's what that passage said at all, StB. Those who think Holly Hunter is more beautiful that Angelina Jolie aren't wrong, they're just rare. And the fact that they are rare is evidence that Jolie has some intrinsic quality that Hunter doesn't have - and we are labelling that quality as beauty.
• Couldn't they just have people experience whatever they consider beauty, measure which part of the brain is active and then use activity of that part of the brain as a definition of beauty? Like they did with religious experience. I'm getting pretty tired of people going this is beauty, no this is beauty. We need something more scientific.
• I think in that case there's also a difference between what you might describe as "beautiful" and what you find appealing. I'd rather look at Lyle Lovett than Brad Pitt any day, but I'd never say Lyle's the better looking of the two -- his face is much more interesting and therefore attractive to me, but beautiful it ain't.
• On preview, I meant to respond to Rocket88/Stan the Bat, not [MR]Chip.
• my husband has such a hot spot for Holly Hunter. can't say I've ever heard him mention Angelina Jolie (can't say the same for myself!) but then again he is a classic example of someone with "quirky" or unusual beauty appreciation. it's one of the things I really love about him, he sees attractiveness in interesting places, seemingly very much not dictated by all of this brainwashing poo the rest of us are sucked in by.... that said, oh please, beauty is in the eye...it's an ineffable, indefinable quality that vastly transcends the pretty face paradigm. so there!
• Ah crap. Another piece how important it is to be superficial.
• don't worry GramMa, I don't hate you because you are beautiful ;)
• I agree with TUM; to explain, the article seems to be lumping facial appearance with other forms, and pushing facial aspects above others. It did not make reference to studies that show that certain waist/hip ratios tend to be preferred, which would have been useful. It does not address the idea of non-bodily beauty, or the different forms of modification used by modern and 'pre-modern' societies as a form of beautification. The author brings up medieval paintings and TALKS ABOUT THE FACES ignoring that the preferred shape of the abdomen and breasts have gone through serious changes from then to now. (My favorite example of this is a painting called 'Witch Casting a Love Spell,' which is either German or Dutch and I can't google ATM.)
• >>And the fact that they are rare is evidence that Jolie has some intrinsic quality that Hunter doesn't have - and we are labelling that quality as beauty. What you mean 'we', kemosabe? Some people agree about Angelina, and some don't. You can't make absolute pronouncements about aesthetics (you absolutely can't!... hmm...). Personally, I think Angelina Jolie is as skinny as a stick, has a way-too-small nose, and has done something weird with her lips. The list of contemporary beauties who do nothing for me (Britney Spears, for chrissakes?!) is long. So either my beauty detectors aren't calibrated right, or it's a matter of taste for which there's no accounting.
• here it is colbalt9
• ahh! Monkeyfilter: it's a matter of taste for which there's no accounting.
• Is anyone here denying that a significant amount of our "visceral reflex" is conditioned by our biology?
• Biology tells you to eat food. What tells you whether your favorite food is cheeseburgers or Thai curries or Circus Peanuts or whatever the hell it happens to be?
• When you see a face or body for the first time, your brain determines within milliseconds whether you think it is "beautiful" (and by this I mean mate-worthy). And guess what? the part of your brain that does this is incredibly superficial and politically incorrect. It doesn't see "inner beauty" at all. StB: I'm the same as far as celebrities that others find "hot". Some I agree with and some I don't find attractive at all. This, to me, is further evidence that my idea of beauty is intrinsic, and not forced upon me by big bad 'media'.
• my husband has such a hot spot for Holly Hunter. It's the accent. But then beautiful is not sexy, because they two different words. Mm-hmm. Yup.
• beautiful is not sexy good point pete! and I'll go with sexy everytime. one could argue the case that Benecio del Toro is ugly but MANNNNNN is he sexah!!
• STB: Biology tells you to eat food. What tells you whether your favorite food is cheeseburgers or Thai curries or Circus Peanuts or whatever the hell it happens to be? Nicely put - let me rephrase my question then: Is anyone here denying that the facial stimuli to which we experience a "visceral reflex" is significantly conditioned by our genes?
• Specifically genes? Hmmm. Dunno. Pass.
• Well when I say genes, I refer to the neural configurations which owe their arrangement to natural selection and epigenesis rather than to cultural aesthetic standards. So, imagine an experiment where you raised humans on a deserted island, without any contact with media, advertising, etc, and then tested their preferences at an adult age. If you did this on multiple islands, and regularities emerged with respect to those preferences, then you could infer that those preferences fit "this category". My question is whether people are denying that this category exists.
• Ah. I would not deny that evidence such as babies-smile-at-anything-face-shaped, and facial-recognition-in-natural-phenomena strongly suggests such a category. It's existence, however, must remain theoretical. At least until your check clears.
• The hypothetical island experiment isn't just geared to showing that people respond to faces in general, but to certain faces more than others. And as for the check clearing, I believe there's some pretty strong evidence about babies preferring certain types of faces - not just faces in general (this is about as close to an island experiment as you're gonna get).
• Another way of asking the question is this: Take the most unattractive set of faces (the set would be generated by cross cultural evaluation studies) and on these islands, portray them as aesthetic ideals. Do the reverse for the most attractive set of faces, and portray them as belonging on the negative end of the aesthetic spectrum. (think truman show style manipulation) Do this for a couple decades, and then see whether humans raised on this island respond in a reversed fashion relative to those raised in "normal" society. If their responses are not symmetrically opposite, then this would show a natural bias. The question is: is anyone here denying this natural bias?
• Is something only considered beautiful if it produces that visceral reflex? I would apply the word "beautiful" to a person whose face I found interesting, even if it didn't have the effect of making me want to mate with its owner. The face of a loved one is beautiful, even it it didn't automatically draw me to him the first time we met.
• Good point underpants - indeed, our capacity for appreciation allows for a much richer, complex, and dynamic cognitive interaction with the world than the (relatively) simple and superficial visceral reflex. The language we assign these various facets of cognitive interaction is, of course, not an absolute affair, and can often be abused by diminishing the significance of these other complexities. That said, this visceral reflex is of considerable importance in our lives as mating mammals. To deny or ignore this aspect of our experience is just as false as ignoring these other (and arguably more interesting) richer aspects. (not saying that you're ignoring them underpants).
• In my opinion, regardless of my natural, biological response, everything, and everyone is beautiful. The slug,rose, cockroach, tree, Whoopi Goldberg, Brad Pitt, everything is beautiful because of all the factors, differences, and similartieis going into it. The sheer power of evolution and all these differing factors is amazing. I'm quite shocked by the beauty of everything around me.
• I'm reminded of something Paul Ekman once said about the stone age tribe he was studying (he was studying facial expressions). Besides the very few anthropologists who came to their remote village, they had never seen caucasians before. They were shown many different pictures of both male and female caucasians with different facial expressions. They had no trouble in identifying the expressions, but they couldn't tell if the picture was of a man or a woman. What does that say for the innate sensing of beauty? What is learned and what is innate? I don't have any real answers but it is an interesting avenue.
• The thing is, I'm not sure the Dove ads are trying to say that this effect doesn't exist. It seems to me like their message is "Even if you don't have this thing that the genetically attractive of the world have, you are still aesthetically pleasing in another way. Even if you can't achieve that particular kind of attration, you have no reason to feel 'ugly.'" That's what I meant by the author conflating types of beauty. Dove never uses the term "more attractive to potential mates," although I guess it could be argued that many people will infer this.
• This whole issue intersects nicely with a balance between stoicism and self deception. Here's what I mean. Being able to achieve inner peace/psychological well being without deceiving yourself is arguably a virtue. Indeed, this is my understanding of what underlies some of the Buddha's teaching: ultimately, if you can be at peace with the idea of your own death, without the anaesthesia (to borrow Sam Harris' term) of an afterlife, then this brings a deeper sense of joy and well being. This ties in nicely with the ideals of stoicism - basically accepting the things you cannot change. On the other hand, let's put ourselves in the mind of an extremely unattractive heterosexual female. Here are some givens: 1) you are going to be treated with prejudice 2) you are going to have great difficulty finding sexual, let alone romantic, partners. 3) The only partners with whom you'll be able to form these relationships will be males who are likely very unattractive themselves. Thus, both you and your partners are going to have to really see beneath the surface - indeed, this may be an advantage - you may develop a healthier relationship - one that is based on sustainable attractions and joys. You may even be able to channel these deeper and richer qualities in a sexual manner, so that you can experience these visceral reactions with each other. However... with respect to self deception vs. stoicism, does it make sense to deceive yourself into thinking you are a sexually attractive person? Is self deception healthy here? Perhaps there is a balance to be found, where you only deceive yourself slightly? Alternatively, you can take the stoic path, and just be honest with yourself, and accept the facts and their implications. I believe that people who are severely disfigured, or handicapped, have to do this all the time in more extreme ways. I'm sure there is a wealth of research which examines coping strategies for disfigured or handicapped humans - why not apply these same strategies if you're sexually unattractive?
• Beauty truly is in the Eye of the Beholder. I don't think it's all that healthy for these perfect images of what symbolizes beauty should be rammed down our throats everywhere we turn. But do we even need to seek what is universally beautiful? I judge beauty by what provokes a visceral feeling inside. Something has to explain the crazed lust I have always had for Iggy Pop.
• Suddenly, the lyrics to Lust for Life have been replaced with Lust for Pop.
• Man Iggy Pop just sheesh I dunno... the man is BEAUTIFUL. Every nook and cranny in his face excites me. Tommy Lee Jones is another in whose face I find much beauty. And Johnny Depp ...phworrrrrrrr.... I've enjoyed watching te face of Mr Gomichild age a bit. It has so much more character now! Perhaps I find beauty in experience. And the lines experience etches on the face.
• FFS gomichild. You're picking on famously good looking men. Makes your stomach tighten, you throb or tingle in no-no places? Jesus, I thought you had heard of evolution. Eye of the beholder my arse.
• MonkeyFilter: Makes your stomach tighten, you throb or tingle in no-no places?
• You're picking on famously good looking men You do know who Iggy Pop is, right?
• 
• Wrong thread?
• Oh, Snap! *high fives Pete
• Eye of the Beholder
• *casts Anti-Magic Shell, cowers behind Paladin*