6 ms·

I often read such articles from women, but never from men. After looking deeply at myself and how the world around me acts, I feel that it is really true: Women

by erikb 15y ago

I often read such articles from women, but never from men. After looking deeply at myself and how the world around me acts, I feel that it is really true: Women ARE evaluated mostly by their looks. Women who look good, wear good clothes, have a good makeup, will get what they want much more easily then others. To some degree that is also true for men. It is just how the world IS. So instead of teaching girls about the value of other things, don't we do them a favour, teaching them to care about good looks? Does caring about good looks exclude caring about smartness and education? Is my observation totally wrong?

erikb 15y ago
and... is that the author: http://www.lisabloom.com/ http://www.lisabloom.com/ ? Isn't she pretty?
- _debug_ 15y ago
  Her web site features her looks more than her books. (In case it changes : 80% of the space is occupied by a photo of hers, and 20% by textual content). Do as I say, not as I do.
  - ErrantX 15y ago
    This is not uncommon. Or, rather, whenever I see these self-help/express yourself better/empower yourself authors they all look very attractive and poised. Female and Male. Which annoys me. The advice in this case is good, and it doesn't feel entirely hypocritical because she admits an initial instinct to praise good looks that she has to suppress. But some of her other stuff seems less so (i.e. she is selling herself as "look, I am attractive, smiling, happy! Read my books to find out why" - and then the books are [apparently] about getting over things like beauty..)
    - JonnieCache 15y ago
      "Or, rather, whenever I see these self-help/express yourself better/empower yourself authors they all look very attractive and poised. Female and Male." This is simply a small exposure of society's big secret: ANYONE can look attractive, even stunning, given a professional hair stylist, wardrobe person, makeup artist, and photographed properly under proper lighting, and then photoshopped. All those "beautiful" people on TV? Almost without exception, at home they look just like you or me. BUT DON'T TELL ANYONE! Western capitalism might come crashing down around us ;)
      - true_religion 15y ago
        You can't make someone look differently from what they look like. You can't change their bone structure, or the shape of their nose. You can improve them, and make them look as best as they can be by photoshopping or makeupping flawless skin but that's the most of it. You can make them look evocative with lighting, and setting but that doesn't change their genuine nature. All things being equal, pretty people will only look prettier in photography and still much prettier than normal people given the same treatment.
  - rimantas 15y ago
    We are hardwired to pay attention to faces. It happened looooong time before any book was in sight. And marketing people do know this stuff.
- Tichy 15y ago
  Also next up: the story how she spent an entire evening reading books with an ugly girl.
derrida 15y ago
You are confusing things that are objective facts about the world (described by 'is' statements) with things that are created by norms (indicated by 'should' statements) which can be changed. That women are seemingly only valued for their looks is a norm that should and can change.
- erikb 15y ago
  I see your point. I understand that you don't think it is a natural thing, that people care about good looks. What do you say about these famous experiments that just born babys, not able to speak or walk or listen, are already spending more time looking at pictures of beautiful people then not beautiful people? I don't mean that you are completely wrong, though. Some part of what is actually percieved as beautiful is in fact norm, like which clothes are more beautiful and so on. But there are other things like thin, sporty bodys, healthy skin, the size of certain body parts, which can all be found in animals, too. Anyway I will think about how norms can influence the situation and maybe adapt my opinion accordingly.
ordinary 15y ago
I don't think you'd be doing people a favour by teaching them to accept things that won't make them happy. Do you think that people who don't worry about not being beautiful are less happy than people who do, considering that many (most?) people are not, in fact, beautiful? Do you think the world would be a worse place if more girls wanted to win the Nobel Peace Prize rather than America's Next Top Model?
- erikb 15y ago
  I understand that you argue that worrying about good looks can be hassle instead of an improvement in life condition. I can only agree. Didn't think about that when I wrote my comment! My argument is about another point though. I think if you reach that point of being good looking, with that attribute alone you can have less frustration then other people, because others are more likely to give you what you want and care about you. Think about the last time you saw a fat and ugly person cry and how much you cared about it and then the last time you saw a beautiful woman cry and how much you cared about that. Both arguments are true, though. Thanks for your addition!
- hessenwolf 15y ago
  Looking like a contestant for America's next top model is not really going to get a girl far in her career, though... Both men and women should care, in detail, about their aesthetics when at work. They should be healthy and fit, and, unless they are very sure they have the fashion sense to get away with interesting clothes, be conservatively and neatly dressed. Anything less smacks of imcompetence, poor organisation skills, lack of respect for others (who do have to suffer looking at you), and laziness.
  - Tichy 15y ago
    Unless she wants to have a career as a top model. Then looking like a top model could help a lot.
  - ajuc 15y ago
    "lack of respect for others (who do have to suffer looking at you)" If I suffer when I speak with people that don't agree with my beliefs - is it good enough reason for them to convert to my beliefs? How is it different than requiring people to respect you esthetical sense by complying with it?
antihero 15y ago
Let's put it another way - if you teach a girl that her good looks are super super important, and she's bombarded with adverts telling her ways to improve, and images of people on TV that are portrayed vastly superior to her physically, then she is being set up to feel that no matter what she does, she's never good enough. Whilst us boys can "hit the gym" or "hit the books" and our manliness and success can exude, a girl has to chase beauty products, botox, and boob jobs in order to progress with what she's been born with. Or perhaps become anorexic to be as thin as the models and celebrities that form the vast majority of what women are told to aspire to. This is an awful, awful system. Men are valued on something that is in many respects healthy - physical fitness, ambition, mental progress. Whereas girls are valued on something superficial and damaging - thinness, "beauty". This is what the "beauty" industry does - capitalise on this desire like a shark and not only provide ways for girls to improve their looks, but actively perpetrate the myth that women need to look younger or slimmer or have 100% perfect skin. The beauty industry is a fucking disease.
- erikb 15y ago
  I can only agree. The beauty industry makes a sick thing out of the basic idea. And if the main article we comment about here means fighting that, then I totally agree. We shouldn't teach our daughters to follow in the foot steps of models and super stars. That would also be lying about what is good for them. In the same way I think it is lying if we tell them that looks don't matter and she should value herself according to other things more. She will be very surprised if she gets out into the real world and sees that most people actually don't care about her, because she doesn't care about her looks at all. Too little and too much both is wrong, I think. I hope I could show you that my argument is not the opposite of yours.
- kamaal 15y ago
  C'mmon. I am thin, I can't call myself super good looking either. I am not very extrovert and not too much into sports. But I can't use this as a reason to be bad at other things. Present ability, hygiene , looking good, neat and clean matter to both the genders. But if a person is not very attractive by natural look, that is no reason to not perform well in life by personal choice. That is not a reason, not to work hard, not to try, not to give your full. Blaming things apart from oneself only goes so far. And doesn't help anybody. Just because I sucked at sports, I can't use the same reason to be bad at programming.
antihero 15y ago
Let's put it another way - if you teach a girl that her good looks are super super important, and she's bombarded with adverts telling her ways to improve, and images of people on TV that are portrayed vastly superior to her physically, then she is being set up to feel that no matter what she does, she's never good enough. Whilst us boys can "hit the gym" or "hit the books" and our manliness and success can exude, a girl has to chase beauty products, botox, and boob jobs in order to progress with what she's been born with. This is an awful, awful system.
5hoom 15y ago
I think the issue is not that being attractive is bad, it's just that often that's the _only_ message that is consistently heard by young girls. Girls might hear positive messages about being smart, creative, independent, etc. from all sorts of well intentioned sources, but there isn't the same sort of powerful, all pervasive weight attached to them as the message that being attractive is important. Appearance is the 'common standard' of value for a female in many societies. I think that is the real problem.
- erikb 15y ago
  The question is, does that come from society or would it be the same without society? I think there are also a lot of natural factors involved that drive this way of thinking. My thesis is, that to a bigger part society mimics the natural desire for beauty and attractiveness of women, not the other way around. What society creates by mimicing is absurd. No question about that. But that doesn't mean, most men would value a smart woman over a beautiful woman if there would be no society.
thaway3422574 15y ago
The way you praise a child can have an effect on their definition of success and their goals. For example, something as subtle as praising a child for his intelligence vs praising him for his hard work can make him too focused on the number of points he gets vs actually understanding and learning. That means that when offered a choice between problems that allow them to get a lot of right answers vs a challenging problem, kids that were praised on their intelligence chose the easy problems (so they wouldn't look dumb) and kids praised on their hard work picked a problem where they would actually learn something and have to work hard. Also the ones praised for their intelligence interpreted failure to mean they weren't smart. The ones that were praised for hard work thought they didn't work hard enough and tried harder. So maybe we wouldn't be doing them such a favor by teaching them to care about good looks instead of hard work, because when they fail they will think that they are too ugly and have bad self esteem. Praising them for something they have control over and can actually change (such as their education, interests or hard work) would be much better. (you can read the article I skimmed for this answer "Intelligence praise can undermine motivation and performance" https://www.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/system/files/Intelligence%20Praise%20Can%20Undermine%20Motivation%20and%20Performance.pdf https://www.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/sys... )
jcnnghm 15y ago
I find these articles boorish. When I was a little boy I distinctly recall every stranger I met telling me how handsome I was because it's a superficial complement that can be delivered without great insight. Aunt's used to tell me that I'd "break some ladies hearts" because they didn't know me, and had no idea if I was intelligent or not. How intelligent can a five year old be, anyway? I didn't see little Maya pick any boogers at dinner, she is destined to be a civil engineer, at least. Even with all the complements, I don't recall developing an eating disorder or wearing makeup at an early age. Men only earn 43% of bachelor's degrees. Isn't the real issue that men are not valuing education as much as women? Smart women have a huge advantage at this point, especially in the tech industry. If they start a company, the press can't stop talking about it. Women are more comfortable dealing with women, and men are more interested in talking to women. If four people with equal intelligence and experience apply for a job, an attractive man, and attractive woman, an average man, and an average woman, the attractive woman is hired first and the average man last. Women are far more socially mobile than men, women are being better educated than men, and many people are still crusading against some perceived injustice.
- tmvphil 15y ago
  > I don't recall developing an eating disorder or wearing makeup at an early age Shouldn't you take this as evidence that there is something different in the way girls and boys are treated? In case you're not aware, eating disorders are horrifyingly prevalent among college-age women. [this statistic](http://www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/ http://www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/e...) reports 25% engage in purging, and in my anecdotal experience, that number could be an underestimate. It would stretch my imagination to think of purging as being a biologically rooted phenomenon, so I'd say it has to have societal roots. Saying that women are statistically more likely to go to college, and therefore can't complain about a society that profoundly fucks with their psychology is analogous to saying that blacks are statistically over-represented in sports, so they can't complain about a society that holds them back in so many other ways.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago

by erikb 15y ago

erikb 15y ago

and... is that the author: http://www.lisabloom.com/ http://www.lisabloom.com/ ? Isn't she pretty?

_debug_ 15y ago
Her web site features her looks more than her books. (In case it changes : 80% of the space is occupied by a photo of hers, and 20% by textual content). Do as I say, not as I do.
- ErrantX 15y ago
  This is not uncommon. Or, rather, whenever I see these self-help/express yourself better/empower yourself authors they all look very attractive and poised. Female and Male. Which annoys me. The advice in this case is good, and it doesn't feel entirely hypocritical because she admits an initial instinct to praise good looks that she has to suppress. But some of her other stuff seems less so (i.e. she is selling herself as "look, I am attractive, smiling, happy! Read my books to find out why" - and then the books are [apparently] about getting over things like beauty..)
  - JonnieCache 15y ago
    "Or, rather, whenever I see these self-help/express yourself better/empower yourself authors they all look very attractive and poised. Female and Male." This is simply a small exposure of society's big secret: ANYONE can look attractive, even stunning, given a professional hair stylist, wardrobe person, makeup artist, and photographed properly under proper lighting, and then photoshopped. All those "beautiful" people on TV? Almost without exception, at home they look just like you or me. BUT DON'T TELL ANYONE! Western capitalism might come crashing down around us ;)
    - true_religion 15y ago
      You can't make someone look differently from what they look like. You can't change their bone structure, or the shape of their nose. You can improve them, and make them look as best as they can be by photoshopping or makeupping flawless skin but that's the most of it. You can make them look evocative with lighting, and setting but that doesn't change their genuine nature. All things being equal, pretty people will only look prettier in photography and still much prettier than normal people given the same treatment.
- rimantas 15y ago
  We are hardwired to pay attention to faces. It happened looooong time before any book was in sight. And marketing people do know this stuff.
Tichy 15y ago
Also next up: the story how she spent an entire evening reading books with an ugly girl.

derrida 15y ago

You are confusing things that are objective facts about the world (described by 'is' statements) with things that are created by norms (indicated by 'should' statements) which can be changed. That women are seemingly only valued for their looks is a norm that should and can change.

erikb 15y ago
I see your point. I understand that you don't think it is a natural thing, that people care about good looks. What do you say about these famous experiments that just born babys, not able to speak or walk or listen, are already spending more time looking at pictures of beautiful people then not beautiful people? I don't mean that you are completely wrong, though. Some part of what is actually percieved as beautiful is in fact norm, like which clothes are more beautiful and so on. But there are other things like thin, sporty bodys, healthy skin, the size of certain body parts, which can all be found in animals, too. Anyway I will think about how norms can influence the situation and maybe adapt my opinion accordingly.

ordinary 15y ago

I don't think you'd be doing people a favour by teaching them to accept things that won't make them happy. Do you think that people who don't worry about not being beautiful are less happy than people who do, considering that many (most?) people are not, in fact, beautiful? Do you think the world would be a worse place if more girls wanted to win the Nobel Peace Prize rather than America's Next Top Model?

erikb 15y ago
I understand that you argue that worrying about good looks can be hassle instead of an improvement in life condition. I can only agree. Didn't think about that when I wrote my comment! My argument is about another point though. I think if you reach that point of being good looking, with that attribute alone you can have less frustration then other people, because others are more likely to give you what you want and care about you. Think about the last time you saw a fat and ugly person cry and how much you cared about it and then the last time you saw a beautiful woman cry and how much you cared about that. Both arguments are true, though. Thanks for your addition!
hessenwolf 15y ago
Looking like a contestant for America's next top model is not really going to get a girl far in her career, though... Both men and women should care, in detail, about their aesthetics when at work. They should be healthy and fit, and, unless they are very sure they have the fashion sense to get away with interesting clothes, be conservatively and neatly dressed. Anything less smacks of imcompetence, poor organisation skills, lack of respect for others (who do have to suffer looking at you), and laziness.
- Tichy 15y ago
  Unless she wants to have a career as a top model. Then looking like a top model could help a lot.
- ajuc 15y ago
  "lack of respect for others (who do have to suffer looking at you)" If I suffer when I speak with people that don't agree with my beliefs - is it good enough reason for them to convert to my beliefs? How is it different than requiring people to respect you esthetical sense by complying with it?

antihero 15y ago

Let's put it another way - if you teach a girl that her good looks are super super important, and she's bombarded with adverts telling her ways to improve, and images of people on TV that are portrayed vastly superior to her physically, then she is being set up to feel that no matter what she does, she's never good enough. Whilst us boys can "hit the gym" or "hit the books" and our manliness and success can exude, a girl has to chase beauty products, botox, and boob jobs in order to progress with what she's been born with. Or perhaps become anorexic to be as thin as the models and celebrities that form the vast majority of what women are told to aspire to. This is an awful, awful system. Men are valued on something that is in many respects healthy - physical fitness, ambition, mental progress. Whereas girls are valued on something superficial and damaging - thinness, "beauty". This is what the "beauty" industry does - capitalise on this desire like a shark and not only provide ways for girls to improve their looks, but actively perpetrate the myth that women need to look younger or slimmer or have 100% perfect skin. The beauty industry is a fucking disease.

erikb 15y ago
I can only agree. The beauty industry makes a sick thing out of the basic idea. And if the main article we comment about here means fighting that, then I totally agree. We shouldn't teach our daughters to follow in the foot steps of models and super stars. That would also be lying about what is good for them. In the same way I think it is lying if we tell them that looks don't matter and she should value herself according to other things more. She will be very surprised if she gets out into the real world and sees that most people actually don't care about her, because she doesn't care about her looks at all. Too little and too much both is wrong, I think. I hope I could show you that my argument is not the opposite of yours.
kamaal 15y ago
C'mmon. I am thin, I can't call myself super good looking either. I am not very extrovert and not too much into sports. But I can't use this as a reason to be bad at other things. Present ability, hygiene , looking good, neat and clean matter to both the genders. But if a person is not very attractive by natural look, that is no reason to not perform well in life by personal choice. That is not a reason, not to work hard, not to try, not to give your full. Blaming things apart from oneself only goes so far. And doesn't help anybody. Just because I sucked at sports, I can't use the same reason to be bad at programming.

antihero 15y ago

5hoom 15y ago

I think the issue is not that being attractive is bad, it's just that often that's the _only_ message that is consistently heard by young girls. Girls might hear positive messages about being smart, creative, independent, etc. from all sorts of well intentioned sources, but there isn't the same sort of powerful, all pervasive weight attached to them as the message that being attractive is important. Appearance is the 'common standard' of value for a female in many societies. I think that is the real problem.

erikb 15y ago
The question is, does that come from society or would it be the same without society? I think there are also a lot of natural factors involved that drive this way of thinking. My thesis is, that to a bigger part society mimics the natural desire for beauty and attractiveness of women, not the other way around. What society creates by mimicing is absurd. No question about that. But that doesn't mean, most men would value a smart woman over a beautiful woman if there would be no society.

thaway3422574 15y ago

The way you praise a child can have an effect on their definition of success and their goals. For example, something as subtle as praising a child for his intelligence vs praising him for his hard work can make him too focused on the number of points he gets vs actually understanding and learning. That means that when offered a choice between problems that allow them to get a lot of right answers vs a challenging problem, kids that were praised on their intelligence chose the easy problems (so they wouldn't look dumb) and kids praised on their hard work picked a problem where they would actually learn something and have to work hard. Also the ones praised for their intelligence interpreted failure to mean they weren't smart. The ones that were praised for hard work thought they didn't work hard enough and tried harder. So maybe we wouldn't be doing them such a favor by teaching them to care about good looks instead of hard work, because when they fail they will think that they are too ugly and have bad self esteem. Praising them for something they have control over and can actually change (such as their education, interests or hard work) would be much better. (you can read the article I skimmed for this answer "Intelligence praise can undermine motivation and performance" https://www.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/system/files/Intelligence%20Praise%20Can%20Undermine%20Motivation%20and%20Performance.pdf https://www.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/sys... )

jcnnghm 15y ago

I find these articles boorish. When I was a little boy I distinctly recall every stranger I met telling me how handsome I was because it's a superficial complement that can be delivered without great insight. Aunt's used to tell me that I'd "break some ladies hearts" because they didn't know me, and had no idea if I was intelligent or not. How intelligent can a five year old be, anyway? I didn't see little Maya pick any boogers at dinner, she is destined to be a civil engineer, at least. Even with all the complements, I don't recall developing an eating disorder or wearing makeup at an early age. Men only earn 43% of bachelor's degrees. Isn't the real issue that men are not valuing education as much as women? Smart women have a huge advantage at this point, especially in the tech industry. If they start a company, the press can't stop talking about it. Women are more comfortable dealing with women, and men are more interested in talking to women. If four people with equal intelligence and experience apply for a job, an attractive man, and attractive woman, an average man, and an average woman, the attractive woman is hired first and the average man last. Women are far more socially mobile than men, women are being better educated than men, and many people are still crusading against some perceived injustice.

tmvphil 15y ago
> I don't recall developing an eating disorder or wearing makeup at an early age Shouldn't you take this as evidence that there is something different in the way girls and boys are treated? In case you're not aware, eating disorders are horrifyingly prevalent among college-age women. [this statistic](http://www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/ http://www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/e...) reports 25% engage in purging, and in my anecdotal experience, that number could be an underestimate. It would stretch my imagination to think of purging as being a biologically rooted phenomenon, so I'd say it has to have societal roots. Saying that women are statistically more likely to go to college, and therefore can't complain about a society that profoundly fucks with their psychology is analogous to saying that blacks are statistically over-represented in sports, so they can't complain about a society that holds them back in so many other ways.
- burgerbrain 15y ago