lmao that goes for both genders. remember, creepy if you are not attractive, confident if you are handsome. that is how women operate. oh and let's not forget about the serial killers that women worship just because they are handsome lmao.
just like when women defend the serial killer just because they are handsome? that is an enormous level of stupidity right there. but hey you cant criticise women because women are special blablabla....
I take the perspective that beauty standards are learned and therefore can and should be unlearned. Force yourself to consume more media from people you don’t find attractive. The more you see other body types the more you can see their beauty. It’s really not that complicated.
Biologically, we are born naturally understanding beauty and identifying it as the indicatives of healthy genes, faces and bodies. Height, traits given by hormonal changes, bone structure.
Loved this discussion! Though to people's recommendations to "get off social media" i would instead say "broaden your social media". Because social media does have many benefits (especially for those of us who physically can't go places due to health issues and lack of people masking). There are so many people to hear their lived experiences from, so many different aesthetics, abilities, skills to enjoy and stories to hear- but focusing on the very narrow eurocentric beauty standard in who you follow will undoubtedly only make people see THAT as the "objective ideal" when there's so many more people out there than just that 😊
I honestly never thought about it that way. When we refer to "social media" we kind of have a monolithic idea of what it looks like, but it really is just people. So finding the wide variety of people that exist out in the world (while keeping in mind a lot of it is idealized) really is a good way to step outside a hegemonic ideal.
i agree, my tiktok fyp in part helped me mantain a more realistic notion of what people look like during the lockdown, but only Because i went through the active effort to seek content i like made by ppl outside of the standards of beauty we get pushed in movies and shows. leaving social media is easy enough, but if you dont get many chances to socialize and the visual media you consume is netflix and kpop mvs, the mainstream beauty standard will continue being pushed onto you
finally someone says it! I've always found the solution of "deleting social media" to be a flat one because like it or not social media helps us keep in touch with what's going on with the world, it lets you see things news broadcasts may have missed, honestly as long as you stay out of the crappy parts social media can help you.
100% social media is the norm now we can’t go back to when we don’t need it bc it’s imbedded in everything culturally I’m all societies. It’s here to stay
I think it is a useful tool, but you dont need social media to do all those things; but you do need the internet for them. I think If you spent more time outside social media it wouldnt seem so essential, i think it only seems that way cause its become so engrained in modern society and culture. If you do want to use social media, just make sure youre using it and it's not using you
i mean makes sense i guess, when you have buttloads of money you don’t have to work to please others bc you’re literally the 1%, thus not only does it stifle the way you interact with others but also stifle the development of empathy and compassion towards others (hence, their shallowness). capitalism really does suck in the fact that being an asshole to your workers is more valuable than being kind for once, and that it’s a system built on inherent human suffering and the dehumanization of the global south (due to its heavy connections to colonialism).
@K.C-2049 I dont think you're meant to take the comment literally. People are a product of their conditioning, their circumstances and the society they are born into. When you're wealthy, its natural that you'll do whats in your best interest, which is in Opposition to the interest of the working class. When you are working class you usually do whats in your best interest. Your socio-economic conditions are largely determined by your birth. If you're born working class, theres an incredibly low chance that you'll become wealthy. What makes the most money is having others to work for you, and creating a Business requires money that most do not have or cannot risk spending. What determines success for a working class person is luck and maybe Talent and exceptions do not make the rule. If hard work made you wealthy, workers would be wealthy and billionaires wouldnt be. But that doesnt make any sense, billionaires dont work half as much as working class people because they can afford not to work, since they have poor people to work for them. Working class people work a lot because their circumstances require them to. I would never call rich people like Jeff Bezos evil (evil is an abstract concept), but that doesnt mean his actions dont have horrible consequences on both the people who work for him and the enviroment. Amazon workers are literally pissing in bottles, and thats not even the worst of it.
I grew up around French Canadians, who talked about "jolie laide". In English it means literally "pretty ugly" but the French phrase refers to a person who isn't conventionally beautiful, but nevertheless is attractive to others. There are some linguistic essays about it online if anyone wants more nuanced definitions.
While I believe beauty and ugliness are subjective, I think there is something to say about inner beauty and ugliness. A person with inner beauty gives off a different vibe than a person who has an ugly inside.
That's not really true there where psychopaths that were handsome and women would go to their court trials to support them and send them letters in prison one example is Jeremy Meeks we got famous because of his mug shot he even got a modeling contract and dated a billionaire daughter despite him being a criminal his looks helped him Change his life for the better
Does this go full circle into making inner beauty an objective metric? Niceness maxing? Capitalism selling things by making you feel bad about your inner self?
"Beauty" has A LOT to do with how much money you have. More money = expensive products and clothes + time to focus on your looks and body. Celebs look "beautiful" because they have more money. There's a reason why popular girls are more often than not rich. Beauty is tied to class.
It can be for some but I've seen beauty across wealth. More often than not, beauty and access to do things in order to be beautiful is an effect, not a cause.
@@sp-cn8pm Homeless people on the street are never considered "beautiful", no matter what their faces look like. The "beautiful person" is a woman spending money on the trendiest makeup looks and hairstyle or the man who spends time and money working out. Beauty is subjective across cultures because it is not something we are born with, it is man-made and costs money to acquire. Human biological attraction/falling in love is not inherently linked to Beauty, even though modern society would love to link them for capitalist reasons.
@kupotenshi I only started wearing makeup in my 30s, and I feel I could surpass most women looks wise from 19. My family was 3rd world and I grew up inner city. There were loads of more attractive people, albeit poor. Sometimes looks are a result of enhancements but it does occur naturally. Cleanliness is accessible to enough people that it should dispel that belief about the homeless. All 'clean' people are not attractive.
@@sp-cn8pmI don’t know usually attractive people can be poor but very rarely I ever seen someone that’s poor and attractive. Usually those people use that to their advantage some unfortunately get SA.
@markigirl2757 it may not be as common/obvious in the US because of the way of life, but overseas, I've seen plenty to know it's not correlated. I think a lot of people here assume poor is a drug addict aesthetic, which is a whole other issue altogether. There is also a group of poor who may not make a lot of money, but they do make due with what they have, which is what I have been. That's not a privilege like people here are making it out to be. I once got a job once because my boss revealed he thought I was poor/ homeless because how I looked waiting on the bus stop after my shift. I was definitely not ugly and know other people who had similar experiences who were not attractive. People really be commenting anything that sounds good without any idea of the realities of the position, which I'm guessing is because they've never been there.
the Syndrome bit really got me I had a girl on Tumblr try to convince me that beauty was based on science, and tried to show "proof" with a picture analysis from some website. That was when I learned to stop trying to argue with people online. lol
people trying to justify their bigotry but use woke language to soothe themselves from the obvious issues of what beauty or ugliness is to them. so much of what beauty standards are is largely comparing white beauty standards with non-white people of the world. justifying who is "beautiful" just leads to racism, ableism, all kinds of bigotry really quickly lol
Regarding a world where beauty doesn't matter: I'm reminded of a comment about Captain Picard made by a reporter, asking why by the 24th century they hadn't found a cure for baldness, and Gene Roddenberry replied that by that time they wouldn't care.
honestly the best way for me to think about beauty is as it just being a feature. ideally instead of taking an everyone is beautiful approach, i feel like thinking of it as just another trait instead of the end all be all is the healthiest for me. being ugly does not mean a person is less entitled to decent respect. so even if i look at myself in the mirror sometimes and struggle to find any beauty there, i know that at the end of the day thats okay. idk hopefully that made sense lol
it's not even that. nowadays you're only beautiful if you have an impossible mix of features that no one ethnicity can have on their own, and that most mixed people won't have either. what kind of eurocentric beauty standard praises full lips, big butts and large hips? It's much worse than that.
I can confirm this experience. I personally am not attracted to the Eurocentric ideal or standard of beauty, and this is often something that people have trouble even understanding or taking seriously.
as someone who is consistently seen as ugly by society (im fat, physically disabled, mixed with textured hair, trans, ect.) yet my boyfriend is attracted to me for me and ive also had a lot of people tell me they find me beautiful - i am proof that beauty and ugliness is subjective and that objective societal ugliness doesn't take away that people will find your beautiful
In Portuguese, the equivalent saying to "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is "quem feio ama, bonito lhe parece". The literal translation goes something like this: "an ugly person will always be beautiful in the eyes of the ones who love them". The right people will always find you beautiful.
Even in video games I often have trouble making a good looking non-white character. Yeah sure there are non-white options, but it feels like there’s often 5 white faces to 1 black/Hispanic/Asian face
Beauty standards are toxic and I try to ignore them as much as I can but it is very hard. As a black woman you get told that your hair is unnatractive, your nose is too big, your skin is too dark and the list goes on. It doesn't help that this stuff is everywhere on social media and sadly even black men join in to make fun of us despite us having the same features. I doubt that people will stop believing that beauty is objective because like you said it gives them power and they use it to deem non white people especially black people less deserving of empathy and care.
@@susanwjoh0re735who are you to deny her experiences?!!! if you're not black yourself how the hell would you know what it's like?!! learn EMPATHY asap please. you're disgusting.
(Guy here) one of my friends in middle school was like 5'1" or 5'2" and they put him on human growth hormone so he could be taller, basically they gave radical hormone therapy to a cisgender boy with little or no questions asked. Idk how tall he is today but he was still pretty short when we stopped hanging out at like 15. Weird side effect was he had ripped abs despite not playing any sports or doing any real exercise outside of like gym class
Because those hormones reduce abdominal fàt. . I'm sure he'll be thankful later on because short men barely get acknowledged. Height means to men what facial beauty means to women: almost everything in life is determined by that one factor. It sucks but it's 100% true
He was basically forced into a hormone therapy without his consent...like...isn't this bad? Unless it really was needed for whatever medical reason, being short is not the end of the world. His parents/family did this to him and the medical staff just went with it.
I believe in subjective beauty and I honestly don't even think about "below or above average" or average since that's still subjective. I just love seeing and looking for beauty in everything I see. I hope everyone can see this to because it's wonderful.
Cheyenne, I will never understand why don’t have as big a following as a Shanspere or a Contrapoints because you CONSISTENTLY put out bangers one after another. No bad videos whatsoever.
As a trans person, I'm disappointed no one in the survey delved into how beauty standards affect us in a special way (especially if you're not white). One of the first things that dawned upon me as I finally accepted I was trans was how the euphoric life I envisioned for myself wasn't just of a femme, it was of an *attractive* femme. My fantasies didn't so much focus on what I looked like, but moreso on how people treated and perceived me. The sort of romantic and sexual attention I desired (especially as someone who's into men) wasn't a given from merely being perceived as a femme, and that realization truly messed me up. It made me question my transition altogether, as I started to fear my whole transition was fundamentally an indulgence in traditional and unattainable feminine beauty standards. Furthermore, while I initially figured I wasn't going to change certain aspects of myself because they didn't make me particularly uncomfortable one way or the other (especially when it came to body hair), I eventually realized changing them would inevitably help me pass, so I did anyways. While I'm happy with my decisions, I'm still quite aware that, in another world, I could've been just as happy if I hadn't done it. Fundamentally, any disconnect to our bodies is a sole result of gender constructs and beauty standards. We would all be both trans and cis if it weren't for it. Another thing which no one in the survey mentioned is how being mentally ill also HEAVILY hinders your ability to realize yourself when it comes to your presentation, let alone confirming to traditional beauty standards, ESPECIALLY if you're trans. As someone with four diagnoses myself, it's hell.
I think it's interesting that you're talking about you being trans. I've often noticed how sexualized of an aesthetics tenas men and trans women, especially trans women, get while trying to match the body shape of the chased and desired gender. Why is it never exactly talked about?
@@BroJo676 in my opinion what both men and women can learn from that is that you shouldn't have to perform your gender, you just ARE. a woman who considers herself a woman and has manly traits/hobbies/personality etc is no less a woman than any other, and a man who considers himself a man and has feminine traits/hobbies/personality etc is no less a man than any other. but it takes a lot to fully realise this mentally since society (patriarchy) enforces gender roles and stereotypes which cause people a lot of distress, both from themselves wanting external validation/not having enough internal validation, and from outsiders enmeshed in patriarchal beauty standards who treat people differently (insults related to gender, ostracization, ignoring etc) because they are not performing their gender in a certain way to meet effed up expectations
@@en2336 The thing is, most people who tend to indulge in overperformance of gender happen to be trans people. And why is that so? Because they're trying to compensate for their lack of natural physical attributes of the opposite and desired sex. If anything, trans people, their allies, and gender ideologues tend to be the ones indirectly reinforcing gender roles/attributes that Conservatives are often chastised for by Progressives and Liberals. It's the trans camp that tells perfectly psychologically, emotionally, and physically healthy young tomboyish girls that they were born in the wrong bodies because of their interest in traditionally men's activities. The level of psychological warfare and aggression in telling young unsure kids that they're inherently dysfunctional because of their interests is wrong and you should agree that the trans camp shouldn't do it.
@@en2336 I don't really understand what the comment you're replying to was even trying to say, but saying a "man who considers himself a man" is pretty transphobic. While I agree with your comment to a certain degree, it comes off as pretty cisgendered and incomplete in its assessment. In my experience being trans, gender self-affirmation isn't as easy/straight-forward as you're making it seem. More important than the abstract nature of gender is how it's uphold in our daily lives - through traditional/subversive gender performance in relation to how much you pass as one of the two binary genders (considering most people are ignorant about anything outside of that), and the reactions and social conditioning they elicit. Before I started taking certain steps into my transition, whilst still being trans regardless of what anyone thought of me, it didn't really matter how much of "not-a-man" I felt (as someone who doesn't really label themselves), because people STILL saw me as a man and conditioned me as such. And it sucked (and still does). Regardless of your idealistic view of gender as something you can define yourself (which isn't wrong to a certain degree), it's still based on the assumption that people's initial impression of your gender based on your physical traits is correct. When it comes to a lot of trans people, it's not. I'm not "a man with feminine traits/hobbies/personality", I'm a trans femme - and acting as if assuming I'm not a man shouldn't be anyone's first instinct immediately throws me and other trans people under the bus. Of course you could say that, in turn, doing the opposite ends up throwing feminine men/masculine women under the bus, but I don't find that to be true. Not only do I believe the recognition and comfort of trans people should be prioritized (considering how unacknowledged our identities already are on a daily basis), there's also an inherent issue with geting offended for being assumed to be trans. Treating someone with the assumption of being trans doesn't mean you automically think they're not cis, it just means you're choosing not to condition them through a binary lens. Of course you should always ask whichever gender identity one is/isn't when in doubt (and even when not in doubt, especially depending on your environment), but this is often not a timely or convenient thing to do (and I wouldn't blame someone for, as an example, assuming a 70 year-old Silent Gen masc person is a man).
Too many "universality" and "objectivity" studies don't actually demonstrate universality or objectivity --- they demonstrate a statistically significant (for some definition of significance) average. When they report variance, etc. at all, the data is usually pushed into a distribution that seems to support the assumption that the average is the result of an underlying objective single cause which is then subjected to variations, without addressing any of the (myriad) alternative hypotheses for causative or contributory factors. It's the same thing as bad "evolutionary psychology" has been doing for ages -- show that the sample population has preferences that aren't completely random, and then assume that if you can give an evolutionary or neurological explanation for that tendency, that you've demonstrated an inherent, universal, biological preference. I'm sure (/s) it's coincidental that declaring a single objective beauty norm makes it easier to socially enforce that norm as universal (and deviations from that norm by individuals or cultures/communities as "incorrect"). Excuse for enforcement disguised as description.
"Beauty is not good capital. It compounds the oppression of gender. It constrains those who identify as women against their will. It costs money and demands money. It colonizes. It hurts. It is painful. It can never be fully satisfied. It is not useful for human flourishing. Beauty is, like all capital, merely valuable." -Tressie McMillan Cottom
One common trend I see among Gen Z is their want to correct generational trauma and current societal problems for a better life, this is truly heartwarming to see. That being said, I believe that this energy should also be channeled into correcting the vanity and superficial standards that are so prevalent in our society. Social media has played a big role in pushing these standards and it feels like nothing is being done. While Gen Z is working to correct the past mistakes of past generations, they are overlooking their own very prevalent one. The younger generations are obsessed with beauty and very superficial qualities, and they should work toward shifting this attitude toward looking inside. It sounds cliche but "beauty comes from within." This is the message that they should advocate for instead of contributing to the obsession with beauty, anti-aging, and vanity. Gen Z's obsession is leading to a plethora of problems and an unhappiness and anxiety that is hard to pinpoint and get past.
I don't know where I belong in this but I've always seen every single person that had seen my eyes as art, I felt no need to see anyone be put in a box of what people place them in. Like any creation even with flaws, I've always seen everyone as art rather than "beautiful" or "ugly" in standard. It's funny since I've been born what society insist on what beautiful is and what ugly is automatically imprinted in my mind, which had harm me and everyone till this day, but I've escaped from it and everytime I look at a person I've always seen them as an art form, from how one stand, walk, laugh, brows scrutinized, gaze, and even the little imperfections that they and society feels are flaws I see as art.
The weaponization of beauty and how that plays into patriarchal views is especially fascinating to me. You mentioned this in how men tend to see beauty as objective, because they can then exert power over women in deeming them „objectively“ unattractive, taking away their singular value as beings in a patriarchal worldview. While simultaneously finding comfort in theoretically being able to achieve objective beauty themselves, because it isn‘t their one singular value in a patriarchy, more like a nice asset. Even if you‘re Margot Robbie, you cannot be „objectively“ beautiful in the eyes of men who seek to exert power over you, even if they themselves look and smell like a walking dumpster. In practice, I find this especially sickening when women are told from birth that beauty is their only asset, yet they‘re a shallow bitch if they‘re actually putting effort into their looks, being confident about their looks and have preferences for how their partner should look. We’re told to lower our standards if we even so much as mention that we’d prefer someone a little taller. Actually, we don’t even have to mention our preferences. I‘ve been told on numerous occasions to lower my standards by people who‘m I‘ve given no indication about said standards. Meanwhile, men can give zero fucks about their appearance and personal hygiene and can still call any woman shallow for rejecting them.
That's why beauty has no actual power, beauty doesn't end wars or world hunger , for women who posses beauty their reward is to be deemed worthy of consuption, as crumbs given up by men and women who uphold those oppressive structures . But at its core beauty is allienating If it's not used for the subject's own pleasure, beautiful people have been bestowed with the advantage that their existence is used as an excuse to oppress and mistreat other people. If You are fat and ugly you are more likely to be poor because we have conditioned ourselves to dehumanise those who we at that moment in history consider aestheticaly undeserving. That oppression is real and it's not just in people's heads , it disproportionately affects women, it could be your mother , your sister , your daughter that could one day be subjected to the fleeting beauty standards police. I too have done everything in my power to benefit from as much pretty privilege as I can , I am aware my company probably would not have hired me If i did not look presentable enough for them , the only power my beauty gives me is the one people are willing to bestow upon me until my beauty expires in their eyes , but that is power that is not given to other women and that's not fair, everyone of us will one day be deemed not beautiful and young enough and that has real life consequences. My luck is that I also value beauty for my own sake , it keeps me sane to see beauty around me , what other people find beautiful is usually driven by insanity though.
@@madalinaanton3253 Not equating beauty standards to racism, but this actually reminds me of the Model Minority myth imposed on Asians, I find it has a similar effect. The label was slapped on to Asians meant as a "good thing" that other minorities should aspire to be. But the label isn't power given to us. It's used as a tool to exert control ON Asians, where Asians try to meet the stereotype by being subservient to white people while also not wanting to be associated with the 'lower' minorities. In turn the other minorities who were told "look at the Asians if they can do it why not you" also come to resent the "model minority" and that distraction keeps them from rebelling against the true oppressors. I feel like the 'beautiful people' are the "model minority" (because let's face it, beauty standards these days favour increasingly unrealistic and rare traits) and men in power who set those standards point to these beautiful people and say to everyone else, "these people are the worthy ones". The ones who don't fit the standards resent the beautiful people and try to defy their position to become 'worthy', while the beautiful people themselves are forced to remain conforming to the standards and due to their privilege they do not rebel against the men who set them.
I think I’ve found that commodified beauty is the co-opting of features of an attractive person, and implying that the features are intrinsic to attractive traits of the identity as a whole. If a white woman has features of a black woman, and is just so alluring to the white male gaze, the outcome will be that her identity and features are tied to her, and not any interracial homogenization of beauty standards. The baddy era (check out Tee Noir’s video) also conflated physiological traits to aspects of identity. It is never enough to simply appear, one must also act in accordance with the standards that a person or group of people have set for said physical traits. This eventually leads to many people feeling a toil in appealing to the standards that were placed on THEIR OWN BODY! Also, very important, these traits do not need to be based on any objectivity. Racialized traits and their connection to beauty should be an example of such. Blackness is often seen as ugly, due to hateful institutions propagating the narrative. This symbology of the body is what capitalism preys upon, but the extended caveat is that they want to separate the meaning of the symbol from the symbol. In doing so, they can claim it as an objective statement. This line is what separates free will from determinism. If you prevent a person from knowing the science or cause behind any phenomenon, you can claim that extent of knowledge as the objective truth. We see it most commonly now as there being “2 genders”… or as black people being lazy (with the intention of removing diversity initiatives)
Also... I've noticed that, the general public has a harder time accepting, WOC beauty, being equal to a full blooded 🤍 woman's beauty, it seems as if most people were taught from a young age, that only ⚪women can be beautiful. So even us women of color get the short-end of euro-centric beauty standards stick, if we're TOO pretty. This is the reason why we keep seeing photos of Angelina Jolie, Monica Belluci, and Megan Fox being pushed everywhere, but barely any 10/10 (Black, Mixed, Asian, Indigenous) being uplifted as much as them. And if those same WOC are----then they just get pushed into the "white" box. People on the internet act, as if it's a mortal sin to ever consider a person of color, beautiful or attractive.
One of my favorite characters of all time is "remedios the beauty," from One 100 Years of Solitude. She's the most beautiful woman in the world, and doesn't care. In the end, she gets tired of being harassed and literally vanishes into the sky. A man legit dies for her, and she thinks he's an idiot. I like that.
I have a proposal regarding the idea of health and beauty. There are many correlational relationships which can be observed between things that our society sees as being "ugly" and an increased risk of health issues, typically associated with heart disease. This trend can be found not just between an individual's storage of fat and heart disease, but also baldness and other perceived "ugly" traits. When we have all of these correlates, usually the message we (should) hear from a statistics standpoint would be to investigate for some third extraneous variable that is being measured here. I believe that variable is stress. You can have fun looking up the damage stress does to one's body, but I truly believe being a person born into a society where genetic features outside of your control make people think you are ugly, unhealthy, lazy, etc. is perhaps one of the most stress inducing experiences a person can have. That is an exposure to trauma every day and one which perpetuates itself every time this person looks in the mirror, sees other people, watches a beauty add, goes to the doctor... you see what I mean. Sorry for the long comment but I'd love to have a discussion on this topic because I think it really matters.
@@transsexual_computer_faery Sorry I think I rambled in the comment. The proposal being that health and beauty are in a perpetual cycle created by society, with the stress created by being seen as "ugly" leading to the issues of health.
This still favors able-bodied and "physically fit" individuals though. Personally I wouldn't support it. Baldness for example is a very common punchline but it can't be helped by some people (see: Alopecia). I think neutrality to general physical traits and expressions of personal tastes would be fairer, because that's individual.
@@archangelvalentine Sorry I think I used a term that is perhaps inappropriate for the discussion. When I say this is my proposal, I don't mean that this is something I want to have happen, I mean that it is my explanation and description of what we are currently seeing. I don't know that I am fully educated enough on the subject matter to prescribe a solution, but I do think that looking at the problem deeper helps educate people and empower them.
@@patrickcoursey7288its kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. Because people that are conventionally unattractive get treated worse, they become more conventionally unattractive. But i think we cant say that the other way around (attractive people getting more attractive) would be true, cause there is so much variable and stress that attractive people also endure. the common denominator is that rich people are often less stressed, because they can just spend money on everything they need to be done. I would say that genetically blessed people arent really less stressed overall, but it can lead to more wealth accumulation, because of the favoritism, and the other way being already rich, you can just pay to enhance your looks and reduce stress.
Yeah I don't get the obsession with having a fair complexion. Im from India and I have essentially become numb towards being ridiculed for my darker skin complexion, like that's basically a part of my daily life. If people think Raj from TBBT had it tough for being the indian character in an American show. I'll let you know that people here are way more shallow-minded than that.
As a queer nonbinary person I think about beauty standards a lot, specifically how to defy them. I've found that that can be a dangerous rabbit hole in itself, but I've gotten to a healthier place by telling myself "It's ok if my body and face don't look exactly how I or others think they should. It gets me from place to place and at the end of the day, it's just a vessel for my true self: my soul." Which I guess is a fancy way of saying that what's inside is what matters. Of course knowing that personally won't change everyone's perceptions and biases, but I can advocate for that way of thinking in my day-to-day life. When my friends tell me that they think they're ugly, I remind them that they are more than their appearance. That they are whole people outside of patriarchal capitalist beauty standards.
That’s my thoughts too I have opt out of it completely only caring about in skin care and I will say it got easier once I came out non-binary myself but I lean to masc then fem but I feel for the fems bc the beauty starts are forced on them when many are so beautiful already to me. All I can do is treat everyone well regardless how they feel about themselves or look and not take part of this societal standard to uplift only “conveniently attractive” people.
2:27 I want to be clear that I agree with the thesis that beauty and ugliness are subjective, and certainly, noone should be antagonizing others by calling anyone ugly, but I disagree that "trying to get at someone by calling them ugly reinforces objectivity." If beauty were objective, we couldn't attribute moral value to attractiveness, because it would be something entirely outside of your control. Therefore, beauty and ugliness would be facts, rather than subjective valuations of others. As I'm typing this, I think it's clearly still problematic, but it's problematic because of the way that it conflates the value of an individual with the attractiveness of the individual, which I hope we can all agree is the root of the problem; everyone holds intrinsic value for who they are, regardless of whether anyone finds them attractive or repellent, and there's absolutely no correlation between worthiness of love and physical "beauty." Again, I think (though I am only starting the video) that I am going to agree with all of your conclusions, but I want to voice this counter perspective while it's on my mind. Edit: ok, so, I reached the end of the video, and I have a lot of things to think about, still... On the one hand, I am struggling with the impulse to assert a case for objective beauty. This is a perspective I found popping up in my mind periodically, and it totally surprised me because I am definitely not a beauty objectivist, but apparently I still have some internalized beliefs or impulses that occasionally surface. I do have a system that I think more or less most everyone could agree with - BUT, each metric is still subjective and highly dependent upon individual experiences.
So grateful for you for speaking on things/experiences that so often get overlooked ♡ I found your channel years ago when i was looking for more critical perspectives on American Girl Dolls (as a former doll-kid), but we seem to have a lot in common when it comes to experiences as neurodivergent femmes of color growing up in yt spaces. Whether it's about dolls, PBS kids, bullying, Bluey, or politics; you ALWAYS say the things my inner child needed to hear. So glad I stuck around; can't thank you enough ♡
being ugly sucks, true ugly's like me are the ones who suffer, but people are so obsessed with beauty that they fail to see that the beautiful people in the world are standing right next to them.
It’s literally both subjective and objective. Some aspects of physical beauty do have some scientific objectivity. Proportions and health probably relate to physical attraction. But there are also a lot of physical beauty standards that ARE subjective and based on culture/trends. There’s a lot of European beauty standards for example that are not based in science but prejudice.
@@anju8376Oh yeah, just because it says in the video it's true 🤓☝️ Say that to a 2 year old baby crying because it saw an ugly person and then gets mesmerized by a good looking one
Wow! There’s so many great points in this video that I want to respond and reflect on, but I’ll try and keep it as brief as I can. One big point I’d like to add to this conversation is the idea of beauty standards arising mainly from white patriarchal ideas of attractiveness. I think that I would add that there are many beauty ideals that are a result of wealth and class signifiers too. For example, for much of human history pale skin was seen as a marker of refined feminine beauty, due to a bias to whiteness, yes, but also to the luxury of getting to stay indoors instead of working in fields all day. During the industrial revolution the majority of lower class employment moved into indoor factory work, rendering paleness as a sign of leisure time no longer. Then, around the 1920’s the rise of steamship travel to the tropics and train trips to Florida became financially available to the wealthy, so women with the means to do so could escape to someplace warm and return home with a fresh tan. The desirability of a warm golden tan, a sign of money and ample leisure time, still persists to this day. This historical reversal, where a long established beauty standard becomes switched up when social changes make the previous beauty ideal too available to the lower classes, is also seen in perceptions of weight. In many places and times throughout history extra weight was a sign you were rich enough to afford plenty of food, but now in an era of easily accessible junk food, weight is viewed as a sign of laziness and low class status. I imagine that there are aspects of beauty standards affected by class status that I’m not aware of, but I do think that class signifiers in beauty are worth including in the discussion of this topic.
Attraction is subjective as individual people have personal preference. But it’s disingenuous to deny that societies have mainstream standards of beauty and ugliness, and your quality of life is impacted by how well you are able to objectively fit into your society’s beauty standards. Plenty of people are able to be physically attracted to people who aren’t objectively extremely beautiful by the mainstream beauty standards. But life isn’t just about individual interactions and experiences. Beauty bias/lookism isn’t just about your dating and sex life, or individual personal interactions. It’s a wider systemic impact that affects everything and everyone. As you pointed out, beauty standards are closely connected to racism, ableism, fatphobia, classism, etc.
Wow, this video is probably the best I've seen yet tackling this subject. You were very succinct and informed, expressed things in a clear manner. I learned things in this video that I did not know already. I'm so happy I watched this! I used to be extremely insecure about my looks and was bitter about it. But honestly, working on myself has been very beneficial. I'm more creative, less neurotic, I can interact with people much easier than I did when I felt as if I was a hopeless case. What's the worst that could happen? If they decide to not talk to me because I'm ugly, I dodged a bullet. I wouldn't want someone who would deny me mutual respect because they don't like the way I look, life is too short that shallowness. It took a lot to get me to this point in my life, but I am happy I took the plunge. My personal two cents on this topic is that beauty has, and always will be subjective. If beauty were objective, then I wouldn't find more than half of the people I find attractive to be attractive, and I certainly also would not be receiving any compliments on my looks. I still enjoy wearing makeup, but makeup for me has never been about hiding insecurities or wanting to look better. The main reason I got into makeup is because I've always been artistic and wanted to experiment with color and glitter lol. That being said, I dislike how the beauty industry markets its products. It still very much plays on insecurities, and a truthfully empowering makeup campaign would focus on artistry and self-expression rather than sculpting out whatever shape of cheekbone is most popular.
I personally hold the opinion that beauty is both objective and subjective. I definitely find beauty to be more subjective than it is objective but there are people who are objectively by all metrics attractive. There are people whose beauty is not acknowledged because they happen to fall outside a specific society's beauty standards.
Honneslty I've always found who people find "objectively attractive" borring to ugly. I have always prefered seeing new traits in people and found novelty prettier then all the people around me
"there are people whose beauty is not acknowledged because they happen to fall outside a specific society's beauty standards". I remember when my good sis Halle Bailey was dragged in East Asia because they don't find people like her attractive. I still remember the disgusting things they were saying about her and it's pretty crazy because they find women like Anya Taylor Joy, (a woman who looks like Halle but is white) attractive. This is why I don't agree that beauty can ever be objective because of our biases and prejudices.
Some parts of beauty standards are objective others are not. We are biologically programmed to avoid disease, so a swollen face or signs of infection isn’t beautiful. Our own understanding of health and ability is what creates subjective beauty. Spending time with people who deviate from our beauty standards allows us to unconsciously learn that an ‘indicator’ of ‘unhealthiness’ is a false positive, which means we will start to ignore that. An incorrect perception of reality can also create subjective beauty standards, like only seeing women who wear makeup in public, then a woman who doesn’t wear makeup becomes a deviation. That can create the false idea that women don’t normally look tired, stressed etc. so the perception of it is amplified and assumed to be a sign of unhealthiness. Our perception of normalcy is constantly being manipulated with, so therefore our perception of beauty is too.
Really enjoying this so far. I think societally we have a conceptual slip between neurology and 'naturalness' that is unfounded. We seem to forget that brains are hugely plastic, pattern seeking and social response organs that form within a culture. Rather we see attempts to abstract emotional response, beliefs about gender and sex, and sexuality out of the culture back into 'natural' via the brain, in a way I can only see as ideological (not to mention often quite poor science. The number of times I have seen evolutionary psychologists leap from 'college students prefer' to 'therefore prehistoric society must have been organised as an individualist patriarchy in which people encountered a random distribution of complete strangers out in the wild while being manly hunter men' is honestly absurd). I think this feeds back into a common desire to find a way to game other people, in order for a minority of people (whether that be managers, scientists or philosophers) to feel like they have some how elevated themselves above everyone else by piercing through to the 'truth of things'. Ideas that 'neurological equals natural' stops us actually needing to engage with the practicality of the habituses and ideologies that form our gaze, the biomechanics that move our eye, and the very material, practical question of 'why am I looking at this person, in this way, now?'. That way we can abdicate our responsibility for those actions, or avoid questioning how our life experience might have constructed us, by clinging onto thought terminating cliches like the idea of 'instinct' or pseudo-Larmarckian notions of attraction. I get very suspicious whenever I see studies of attraction that happen to find that things we find attractive today are 'natural', or 'hardwired', or 'adaptative' (just putting aside the fact that so few things are actual direct adaptations anyway). It always raises that question of 'Isn't it incredibly convenient that all of these elements happen to have survived unchanged into modern culture?' or 'Why should we assume that groups that disagreed with us were confounded by their culture, but ours is completely not effecting us, when we are so very aware of all the effects capitalism and media have on us? Surely we should be further away from any 'pre-civilisation' biological state?' And why should we even think any of that relevant anyway? I didn't intend this comment to be this long. I have a bit of bee in my bonnet about the concept of 'natural' when applied to anything, but I think aesthetics and meaning exemplify it very well. At the end of the day things like attraction are value systems. Why should we assume that any value system that isn't directly engaged in material practice, even has a material grounding to it? Looking for a neurology of beauty is a bit like looking for a neurology of French. You're going to find stuff, that stuff will be interesting, useful and possibly consistent. But if you then try to project that back to other spaces and times you haven't observed, you're making a category error that only looks reasonable because of profound cultural myths we have in place about human nature, personhood, social organisation and so on, and neurologists often aren't critically engaged enough with these questions of ideology, archaelogy, mythology and so on to be particularly convincing in these matters. They just end up accidentally regurgitating the end of history narrative at us (that there has to be an objective truth and that we are coincidentally already there, while previous societies and other cultures are all wrong).
I don't like assigning values like "ugly" and "beautiful" to people, really. For me, those labels just lack nuance and complexity. Even when I see a person for the first time, I focus more on peculiar features and what those make me feel, rather than on whether they are "ugly" or "beautiful".
I have a question: if beauty is subjective, (i.e. in the eye of the beholder) how does that empower the individual being perceived? It seems more like it's empowering perceivers to call whoever they want beautiful, but it still leaves the perceived being objectified. This is why I've always preferred the "inner beauty" angle. I feel what we should prioritize as a society is a person's character, not their outward appearance.
Lol, I paused the video to leave my above comment LITTERALLY in the gap between part 3 and 4.... 🙄 I'm leaving it anyway for engagement, love you Cheyenne!
@@abhishekverma4029 Except it's not? Men still get paid more than women for the same jobs. Men are less likely to be r worded and kidnapped at night when they're alone. Men are more likely to commit more violent crimes. Come back when you experience real sexism. Come back when your opinion isn't taken seriously because of your gender, or when you're paid less than women (assuming you're a man). What counts as misandry is the fact that men can't show emotions without being labeled.
Good video. I feel like for me at least personality plays into how attractive someone is big time. We've got someone on our work crew who's literally supermodel level, but I have absolutely zero attraction to them, cause they have such an immature personality
I do understand this. Beauty should not be objective. I have never considered anyone I have seen beautiful or ugly. I know I am beautiful based on this "objective" standard and my husband is told he is lucky and how he got me, etc. because he isnt considered "handsome". I do not find my husband ugly in any way and the personality of someone is much more important anyway. To me, beauty is all that is seen. My husband likes my personality. I am a complete hippie and I dont wear makeup. I refuse to make myself look better for any reason. I wear what I want, I hate makeup, etc. I dont pursue being beautiful. I dont have control how I look and I do feel bad because others around me feel bad. I dont want them to. I have told them that they are beautiful as far as I am concerned. No one needs to feel bad about their appearance. I know I will probably get some kind of hate from people in the comment section because it's "easy for me to say" because of how I look. But I promise you that there are people who think I am not pretty. I dont doubt that for a second. The idea that attractive people are dumb is definitely thing. Many have thought I have to be stupid, shallow, etc. It isnt true. I made straight As my entire life, went to college, and Im Buddhist. I absolutely love philosophy. Just remember, beauty is in fact subjective and beauty standards do change over time. I could be the ugliest person ever next year. I dont know. Who knows what the beauty standard will be.
I've always found the people that others call ugly or weird to be more beautiful and attractive, they look human and interesting. It's almost like "I've seen what you people cheer for, your boos mean nothing."
As someone who's been judged their entire life based on their physical appearance by straight people and other gay people, I'm glad I'm at a point in my life where I no longer care to be beautiful anymore. The constant need for validation outside yourself is going to destroy you mentally.
I'm not gonna say that beauty standards are formed by white beauty but whitening products in Asia are not usually used to be more "white". Pale skin was and somewhere still is connected with social status as when people used to work outside in sunlight their skin was darker than the ruling class that protected their skin by staying inside or in any other way
I do appreciate you went into this deep dive about this since i do feel insecure or didn't feel mattered or welcomed by how i grew up or even choose not to follow trend. Well it's nice i was told by my dad or parents i looked like snow white as a kid but it doesn't help as i grew up with puberty and change my mom constantly tells me as a teen and young adult i wasn't have enough weight or i don't have right "boobs" like my older sister or wasn't tall enough and compared it to my other family members and it doesn't help. It doesn't make it better of how i was pressed in highschool or it's a competition because all teen girls wear makeup as acceptable sexy teen women. And give me weird looks because i was wearing braces because of buck teeth ans huge bushy eyebrows and i wasn't stright or tall. As i went to college and grew up being an adult some guys only compliment on how pretty I look because i look like a 12 or 17 yr old and that's acceptable. It's very creepy if that's only acceptable beauty to how they see me. I did find out by my friend he only said this he wants to bang me rather understand me as a person since i have a mild optimism and a learning disability. I don't bother following quote on quote trends since to me it's too exhausting and it makes me even more miserable. I was lucky i have friends to say otherwise and it's more about being kind to others and to be kind to yourself and accept yourself little by little and it's not easy. People being kind and encouraging to be kind to others and yourself makes a big impactful difference.
Oh my,I was there,I run from my abusive home teo years ago,I'm trying to build a life since them,thanks for your comment your last words make feel somehow better.❤
I like a lot of this vid and appreciate the content but I think sometimes the phrasing about "eurocentric thin etc." beauty standards ironically perpetuates them. I think these standards have many factors and there is always context that should be covered. Hollywood media is very white-focused but I wouldn't say this is always about beauty, it's about white dominance. Beautiful POC are not always / rarely always allowed the limelight and a big part of white supremacy is the threat of POC beauty/power. This is an important thing and distinguishment to note. So it's not always so much that whiteness is seen as more beautiful, it's that POC beauty is not allowed to feature or win many times. POC-ness is othered, tokenised. I think many speakers on this topic operate from personal experience that is 10-20 years ago and dated. It was more relevant back then but doesn't always apply today. The rise of tech/social media and media production has broken barriers and allows more POC exposure and featuring. A conventionally beautiful, thin, fit etc. POC will get better limelight and treatment in ways than a not as goodlooking, not as thin/fit etc. white person too. Class/wealth/education /social status are all relevant too. Ironically I think many POC/speakers really perpetuate eurocentric, skinny etc. beauty standards by the way they speak on it. Talking in too much black/white and really general terms doesn't acknowledge more and discuss further. In reality, many people with thinness but some thickness and curves can be seen as better and more desirable than actual stick thin people. It's mainly media and red carpet/runway and very particular social circles where thinness is pedestaled. That media is definitely not the overall social norm. A medium tanned, mixed featured, "exotic" and racially ambigious looking, thin but athletic with certain curves/muscle and boosted by plastic surgery look is becoming a top beauty standard for models/celebs and this is an important pointed direction to cover I feel.
I would like to share, that I consider myself pretty, I usually recive compliments about my looks, and I put effort into my appearence, and things like the halo effect makes me feel bad, because puts my selfworth in doubt, am I really good at *insert activitity, achievement or things in that sytle* or its just that I'm kinda pretty and proffesors and other authority figures think of my work and achievements as "better or smarter" because am pretty and white
About men enforcing objective beauty standards, I think that part of this has to do with the role mimetic desire plays for men. There’s this idea that if an unattractive man has a very attractive girlfriend, he must be extremely wealthy or successful or otherwise remarkable.
Envying people we see in seemingly-happy committed relationships is the most common pastime of lonely people of all genders. With men in particular, since the onus is mostly *on us* to make the first move, it also feels like the onus to actually *be attractive* is also mainly on us, and when we're not successful at it, we would like to know why, so we can improve. Unfortunately, there are only ever two answers to this question if you are a WLM: The unwoke answer is that women are a shallow, materialistic monolith, whose attraction can be mapped on a chart directly proportional to adherence to tradtional physical, emotional, and social norms, and the ones who say otherwise have been brainwashed by feminism. The woke answer is that there is no answer, because the nature of individual subjectivity is such that there is nothing you can do that is guaranteed to attract most people because everyone is too different. The most you can do is just vague self-improvement in the direction of other things in your life that you value and hope to meet and attract people through that. The former is outmoded, unhealthy advice that hurts men and makes them worse, often worsens their chances with women, sometimes *ruins existing relationships with women,* and just generally makes dating seem more cold and transactional than anyone would like it to be. The latter is vague and unactionable at best, and at worst predicated on the idea that a person should invest time and effort into X in order to produce Y outcome, which is very counterintuitive. You wouldn't tell someone who wants cake to bake a casserole and hope that it morphs into a cake, but the most common leftist advice I see about finding a partner is "try making friends and then hoping someone catches feelings for you, but also don't go into a friendship with this goal in mind because that's dishonest and manipulative."
For me I find comfort in the fact that the truth is in the middle. Beauty will always be subjective because it's a concept and everyone defines it for themselves, it always changes and it's different in different places even at any one given time, but we can't deny that there're general tendencies that transcend race and culture that are imbedded in the human psyche. Our first reaction to something ugly or beautiful is an instinct, but we can choose how we proceed with it.
This is interesting. I know that beauty is subjective and can't be objective but these comments are truly interesting. I've never been able to bring 10-15 people together and have us all agree on what beauty is and I've tried in 40 different countries. People like what they like and it doesn't matter what you look like there is someone who think you are amazing the way you are.
beauty is only subjetctive between people who are already beautiful, than obviously you'll think its subjective but its not, its just that there is different types of beauty, but when a person is ugly they are trully ugly and theres no subjective beauty about them, nobodys gonna find them beautiful. beauty being subjective is just an excuse people created so everyone could feel good even being ugly, but its just not truth.
Beauty is both objective and subjective. Thats the only right answers. There are traits on attractive people which change by time and by society, a couple years ago or in certain places in Africa it is more attractive to be a little heavier because it indicates status and resources. However there are also objectively attractive or unattractive trait that our bodies learn recognize as signs of better genes and reproductive capabilities.
Damn this video was everything ive been thinking about but actually articulated and thoughtout. Thank you for this!!! I wonder how different your poll and answers to your poll would have been had your audience been a different demographic. I think that social media creates an echo chamber for users where of course youtube recommended this video to me but isnt the point of these types of videos to reach those who might benefit from these essays? And yet I feel like it won't and if it does it'll bring a ton of heat like viral political/polarizing/feminist videos have in the past. Its like I want these types of videos to reach people (men and women who think theyll benefit from capitalist ideals, but never will) and yet I'm also fear the thought of it. I'm not sure what I'm trying to convery, I clearly struggle with being articulate lol. More of why i enjoyed watching this video. Regardless, you did an amazing job!!!!
I don't agree on everything stated in this video but very much respect your opinions. I hope I am allowed to disagree on some points without offending anyone and can only offer my apologies if I did. .
I think both beauty and ugliness have objective criteria based on region and culture and harmony. But we as INDIVIDUALS take a subjective approach to beauty, since our personal standards and beliefs will change our relationship with that "objective" beauty model. TL;DR My eyes will not see the same as somebody else's, but if we're from the same place, we could probably agree on what kind of person would be hired to be a model.
I think the word you're looking for there isn't objective but shared or 'intersubjective' because objective means independent of the human mind and experiences. And i think beauty already can't be (because attraction is by definition something you as a peson experiende) but it *definitely* can't refer to a cultural idea. That is, more than anything, connected to experience. Intersubjective means people collectively agreeing on a concept or experiencing it the same way. For example, there's no cold hard objective reason the world "blue" should refer to the color blue and not green or orange. Language is made up. There's nothing written in the laws of nature that says that color *needs* to be called blue, andnin many languahes it isn't! And yet, when I say blue, you know what I mean anyway. We have a shared understanding of the word and color blue. Just like beauty standards are a shared understanding of the concept of beauty.
Can you make a video about Rihanna's racial harassment of Karrueche Tran? It was based on K foolishly deciding to get involved with Chris Brown after what he did, but Rihanna subjected her to Asian hate for it.
This video is a huge oversimplification of a complex subject. "Beauty" is used to describe a whole range of things. Physical attractiveness (subjective), Health based beauty standards (objective), moral or ideological beauty (subjective), aesthetic beautys (both objective in terms of mathematical proportion and subject in terms of taste such as color, volume, texture, etc.). All of these and more interplay to determine what an individual finds desirable, be it in a human partner or in the beauty of a flower or song. So many people think of beauty as something that is or isn't, that must be objective or must be subjective, when like most social constructs it is far more complex than that. Within our biological imperatives there is room for diversity. The answer is neither subjective nor objective, it is both.
But what about men with great character and personality who are constantly rejected just because of their looks and height?
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You can be attracted to someone who isn't 'beautiful'. People tie those two things together. There are other things that make people attractive. And if it was only about looks then 90% of people would be single.
I like to say something much deeper. I’m mixed and I learned beauty is a big issue. But when we talk about the rich people and models. We forget something. Beauty all of the world wants white or lighter skin. For Asia it started with china bringing it to Asia. That why everyone in Asia wants to look lighter skin than brown skin. Or tan. Then Europe had many beauty products like everyone else did. So beauty standards started when we became people that wanted the right person to like us. Women have the issue too. I never believed that because women dating women means you don’t deal with beauty. Now the reason is beauty is our eyes. I dated different people and learned what it personality which makes you call someone ugly or attractive. Look is only the thought. Now you make me think about a video. But I could talk about beauty. The reason rich man makes the beauty is because women buy into it. Us guys we buy into having six packs. Because we believe that help us get girls before personality.
Being racist to the point of denying Zendaya's conventional attractiveness and sexist to deny Margot Robbie's is WILD! Logic and reason have nothing to do with this!
This was a very thoughtful, well-researched video and I don’t want to minimize the work you put in…and…it killed me when “unless it these people” came up.
@@aleks-wy6uf Matter of opinion There is mine and there are many different ones, and none of them exist to compromise any other And, say what you will, but the study on beauty and ugliness that addresses the topics of capitalism, consumerism, patriarchy, misogyny and objectivisation of women is anything but shallow
I dislike the term "pretty privilege" because societal beauty standards are based on having features that are associated with other privileged identities. For someone who is white, thin, abled, cis, etc. to claim pretty privilege is redundant and it reinforces the idea that those privileged identities make someone objectively more desirable. I also don't think it's necessarily good for people to make these types of judgements about their own appearance, but using the language of privilege makes it seem like there's a moral responsibility to do so, otherwise you aren't "checking your privilege" and I worry about what that mindset would do to people who already have self-image issues (I'm no therapist, but I imagine feeling guilt over having poor self-image isn't going to help anyone).
As a man that used beard, I used to be "ugly" in the sense of not shaving and not being well groomed. Somehow, somewhere between 2012 and 2014 I didn't change a thing, and I became beautiful with my beard. Well, the reverse might as well happen, I think.
I've always hated the "health" argument with regards to defending western beauty standards. My dad was a body builder throughout his 30s and everyone always told him how good he looked. Nobody ever thought he "looked unhealthy." Why would they? They only saw pecs, biceps, and a tan that was borderline blackface. They didn't see him dehydrate himself to cut water weight. They didn't see him binge eat the night after a show because he finally felt free from a diet only he was enforcing on himself. They didn't see the feds come to the door and ask him if he knew anything about his friend from the forums getting busted for trading HGH. They didn't see him rip his shoulder muscle off the bone deadlifting 500 lbs and realizing he had a problem. Now I'm 30 myself, staring my own belly in the mirror, wondering if there will *ever* be some third option between "torturing myself into an IG model" and "be fine as an utterly unremarkable human being that no stranger would ever validate as desireable"
Regarding Plato and excerpt from the book "the once and future sex": Plato understood women as fallen men and naturally inferior to men as a result. Correspondingly, he contended that society should organize itself in such a way that that men would be able to control women. What I hate is how Plato and his lot are always presented as these mathematical, objective, almost scientific thinkers when in reality they were misogynistic dudes that created any narrative to support their beliefs. Just saying. I get the urge to throw up when I hear his name.
Generally I love to analyze this topic and these kinds of videos, but this one just has too much "men are evil, it's all their fault" rhetoric for my taste. Too much victim mentallity, if you will.
People with body dysmorphia and the internet are more obsessed with this than people in real life. I think todays generation is going to be really depressed when they become older and loose their youthful looks. No anti aging can stop that from happening. But I did notice some weird men or women that reject people because they prefer “hotter” people. You don’t want people like this…they might end up divorcing or cheating. I have seen it a lot. People that only care about appearance are miserable. And those people that judge actually hate themselves or something about their life. So just ignore miserable sad people. Just be yourself. And follow your goals. And people that rate 1-10 on looks are creeps. I don’t understand why parents now a days are too lazy to parent and give their kids iPads…I mean the internet is obsessed with this beauty standard stuff. Look at the kids trying to do anti aging. Poor kids. I have a lot of thoughts on this.
I think the truth is somewhere in between. Beauty is a very vague term, but it is obviously subjective. The thing is that the beauty standards exist for a number of reasons: biology, where you see healthy genes as beautiful, society we grow up in being taught those standarts and then reinforcing them. But as subjective as beauty gets there are still people and things which most of the population will find beautiful. Not all of them, but most of them. As a solution for beauty subjectiveness we have a fetish culture which came with the internet. And I am not talking only about sexual fetishes, but about beauty fetishes as a whole (Rule34 is the greatest example still). So now almost any your imagination of beauty can be found on the internet. And that's cool, though many people find fetish culture sick and disgusting, which is sad.
I think an important part of what we perceive to be beautiful is what is or is not attainable for the average person in society. Think about it. During the Renaissance, the beauty standards were very similar to those of Ancient Greece: red hair, pale skin, plump stomach and thighs, small breasts. These were all signs of a wealthy young woman who was most likely a virgin, since full breasts were seen as a sign of motherhood. Pale skin would have been unattainable for your average working woman, since they would be in the sun more often, and a plump stomach meant you had enough to eat. Now look at the beauty standards popular in the past twenty years. Thin, or slim/thick, with tan/racially ambiguous skin tone. For your average woman working a nine to five job, or a twelve hour shift at a factory, these standards are difficult to achieve. She doesn’t have the time or money to go to the gym and exercise for two hours a day, and she most likely doesn’t go outside enough to get a proper tan -forget those of us with Scots-Irish blood who burn like paper in flame and can’t go out long even if we wanted to. All this to say, beauty standards are influenced by ableism, racism, and misogyny, but also by classism and the fundamental human truth that we will always desire what we do not have.
Let me put it in much simpler words (in my opinion): Beauty is objective, attractiveness is subjective. We can all agree that someone is pretty or handsome or like "objectivelly attractive", that does not mean that you find them personally attractive. Like someone could say "yeah, Angelina Jolie surelly is a stunning woman, but i dont personally find her hot, for me". Do I make sense?
Outer beauty, depending on preference, will attract people to your domain. But, if your soul is ugly, i.e., you are a horrible person, when people find out about that, they will never disassociate you from it. A prime example in fiction is Griffith.
I oftentimes see beauty as a facet of what makes up a person. Because beauty standards so often change over time, in addition to youth being fleeting, it's better to go with what makes you happy. With cultural diversity and a plethora of subjective ways in which someone can be deemed beautiful, there really is no one 'right' look. Someone could be described as having a sharp look with angular features and gaunt proportion, while another can appear sweet looking with doe eyes and a plump appearance. There's many subcultures, aesthetic trends and a variety of looks to choose from that shows how you don't have to follow the mainstream media of Eurocentric beauty standards.
Still watching but to comment early I no longer takes part of the beauty industry. Only skin care is what I focus on but I’m lucky bc I’m still youthful despite being in my 30s. I had pretty privilege for most of my teenage to college years so it’s much easier to let go bc it got boring after awhile. However, I do feel sorry for those that never will. That’s why I try my best to treat everyone equally and not base it on looks bc I see how shitty people become to those who are not “conventionally attractive”. I refuse to ever treat people like shit jsut bc they aren’t attractive and it’s sick people do that to others smh. Unfortunately ableism is the root cause along with classism/racism/xenophobia combined! It’s no wonder our generation (especially gen z) are miserable…
I support your ideas in this video! but something that has always bothered me is, what if the other side has a point? things that are "objectively" not beautiful like, having many acne scars/pits , large moles, crooked nose or crooked jaw, other obvious asymmetries, -these don't have to do with cultural differences or different types of facial features, they are just things that are objectively not pleasing to the eye. if someone could provide a counterargument to this I'd be grateful
some body features just are less mathemically attractive. it's impossible to deny this. this doesn't preclude that beauty ideals are toxic, but it means that we need to be aware of different layers to beauty, some of which are toxic, some of which are neutral, etc.
some things are just neutral. like not everything has to be beautiful. sometimes things just exist on normal human bodies 🤷♀️ i have severe acne scars but i’ve never had an issue finding people who are attracted to me
objectively true doesn't mean it's the same all the time. it is objectively true in our time that there are beauty standards that most people feel that skinny pretty white bodies are real, and other people's are not, and people will not change anytime soon.
"Respecting only women you're attracted to is not respecting women." - Anonymous
lmao that goes for both genders. remember, creepy if you are not attractive, confident if you are handsome. that is how women operate. oh and let's not forget about the serial killers that women worship just because they are handsome lmao.
just like when women defend the serial killer just because they are handsome? that is an enormous level of stupidity right there. but hey you cant criticise women because women are special blablabla....
This is not respect, it's just objetification, because how you said "attracted", this is temporary and will over when they "got" what they want
I take the perspective that beauty standards are learned and therefore can and should be unlearned. Force yourself to consume more media from people you don’t find attractive. The more you see other body types the more you can see their beauty. It’s really not that complicated.
I agree with that
Well said
Biologically, we are born naturally understanding beauty and identifying it as the indicatives of healthy genes, faces and bodies. Height, traits given by hormonal changes, bone structure.
And it works!
@@VNuxionthen why are we all indoctrinated into finding whiteness more desirable? ar w. people the most "healthy" pp in the world???
🙄
Loved this discussion! Though to people's recommendations to "get off social media" i would instead say "broaden your social media". Because social media does have many benefits (especially for those of us who physically can't go places due to health issues and lack of people masking). There are so many people to hear their lived experiences from, so many different aesthetics, abilities, skills to enjoy and stories to hear- but focusing on the very narrow eurocentric beauty standard in who you follow will undoubtedly only make people see THAT as the "objective ideal" when there's so many more people out there than just that 😊
I honestly never thought about it that way. When we refer to "social media" we kind of have a monolithic idea of what it looks like, but it really is just people. So finding the wide variety of people that exist out in the world (while keeping in mind a lot of it is idealized) really is a good way to step outside a hegemonic ideal.
i agree, my tiktok fyp in part helped me mantain a more realistic notion of what people look like during the lockdown, but only Because i went through the active effort to seek content i like made by ppl outside of the standards of beauty we get pushed in movies and shows. leaving social media is easy enough, but if you dont get many chances to socialize and the visual media you consume is netflix and kpop mvs, the mainstream beauty standard will continue being pushed onto you
finally someone says it! I've always found the solution of "deleting social media" to be a flat one because like it or not social media helps us keep in touch with what's going on with the world, it lets you see things news broadcasts may have missed, honestly as long as you stay out of the crappy parts social media can help you.
100% social media is the norm now we can’t go back to when we don’t need it bc it’s imbedded in everything culturally I’m all societies. It’s here to stay
I think it is a useful tool, but you dont need social media to do all those things; but you do need the internet for them. I think If you spent more time outside social media it wouldnt seem so essential, i think it only seems that way cause its become so engrained in modern society and culture. If you do want to use social media, just make sure youre using it and it's not using you
“Real people aren’t cartoon characters”. Tell that to all the rich people in the world. They seem cartoonishly evil.
that bezos laugh haunts me
@@theaizere Israeli supremacists and soldiers seem to act like a bunch of stereotypical villains what with them being so gleeful of what they did.
@K.C-2049 Israeli supremacists sure seem to act like a bunch of stereotypical villains what with them being so gleeful of what they did.
i mean makes sense i guess, when you have buttloads of money you don’t have to work to please others bc you’re literally the 1%, thus not only does it stifle the way you interact with others but also stifle the development of empathy and compassion towards others (hence, their shallowness). capitalism really does suck in the fact that being an asshole to your workers is more valuable than being kind for once, and that it’s a system built on inherent human suffering and the dehumanization of the global south (due to its heavy connections to colonialism).
@K.C-2049 I dont think you're meant to take the comment literally. People are a product of their conditioning, their circumstances and the society they are born into. When you're wealthy, its natural that you'll do whats in your best interest, which is in Opposition to the interest of the working class. When you are working class you usually do whats in your best interest. Your socio-economic conditions are largely determined by your birth. If you're born working class, theres an incredibly low chance that you'll become wealthy. What makes the most money is having others to work for you, and creating a Business requires money that most do not have or cannot risk spending. What determines success for a working class person is luck and maybe Talent and exceptions do not make the rule. If hard work made you wealthy, workers would be wealthy and billionaires wouldnt be. But that doesnt make any sense, billionaires dont work half as much as working class people because they can afford not to work, since they have poor people to work for them. Working class people work a lot because their circumstances require them to. I would never call rich people like Jeff Bezos evil (evil is an abstract concept), but that doesnt mean his actions dont have horrible consequences on both the people who work for him and the enviroment. Amazon workers are literally pissing in bottles, and thats not even the worst of it.
I grew up around French Canadians, who talked about "jolie laide". In English it means literally "pretty ugly" but the French phrase refers to a person who isn't conventionally beautiful, but nevertheless is attractive to others. There are some linguistic essays about it online if anyone wants more nuanced definitions.
While I believe beauty and ugliness are subjective, I think there is something to say about inner beauty and ugliness. A person with inner beauty gives off a different vibe than a person who has an ugly inside.
That's just the halo effect lmao
That's not really true there where psychopaths that were handsome and women would go to their court trials to support them and send them letters in prison one example is Jeremy Meeks we got famous because of his mug shot he even got a modeling contract and dated a billionaire daughter despite him being a criminal his looks helped him Change his life for the better
Amen
Does this go full circle into making inner beauty an objective metric? Niceness maxing? Capitalism selling things by making you feel bad about your inner self?
(Slaps the face) just miss all this "inner beaty" bullshit!!
"Beauty" has A LOT to do with how much money you have. More money = expensive products and clothes + time to focus on your looks and body. Celebs look "beautiful" because they have more money. There's a reason why popular girls are more often than not rich. Beauty is tied to class.
It can be for some but I've seen beauty across wealth. More often than not, beauty and access to do things in order to be beautiful is an effect, not a cause.
@@sp-cn8pm Homeless people on the street are never considered "beautiful", no matter what their faces look like. The "beautiful person" is a woman spending money on the trendiest makeup looks and hairstyle or the man who spends time and money working out. Beauty is subjective across cultures because it is not something we are born with, it is man-made and costs money to acquire. Human biological attraction/falling in love is not inherently linked to Beauty, even though modern society would love to link them for capitalist reasons.
@kupotenshi I only started wearing makeup in my 30s, and I feel I could surpass most women looks wise from 19. My family was 3rd world and I grew up inner city. There were loads of more attractive people, albeit poor. Sometimes looks are a result of enhancements but it does occur naturally. Cleanliness is accessible to enough people that it should dispel that belief about the homeless. All 'clean' people are not attractive.
@@sp-cn8pmI don’t know usually attractive people can be poor but very rarely I ever seen someone that’s poor and attractive. Usually those people use that to their advantage some unfortunately get SA.
@markigirl2757 it may not be as common/obvious in the US because of the way of life, but overseas, I've seen plenty to know it's not correlated. I think a lot of people here assume poor is a drug addict aesthetic, which is a whole other issue altogether. There is also a group of poor who may not make a lot of money, but they do make due with what they have, which is what I have been. That's not a privilege like people here are making it out to be. I once got a job once because my boss revealed he thought I was poor/ homeless because how I looked waiting on the bus stop after my shift. I was definitely not ugly and know other people who had similar experiences who were not attractive. People really be commenting anything that sounds good without any idea of the realities of the position, which I'm guessing is because they've never been there.
the Syndrome bit really got me
I had a girl on Tumblr try to convince me that beauty was based on science, and tried to show "proof" with a picture analysis from some website. That was when I learned to stop trying to argue with people online. lol
Syndrome was right and the Incredibles has kind of a weird boomeriffic morality if you think about it.
people trying to justify their bigotry but use woke language to soothe themselves from the obvious issues of what beauty or ugliness is to them.
so much of what beauty standards are is largely comparing white beauty standards with non-white people of the world. justifying who is "beautiful" just leads to racism, ableism, all kinds of bigotry really quickly lol
>when they tell you it's science then break out a phrenology book XD
Regarding a world where beauty doesn't matter: I'm reminded of a comment about Captain Picard made by a reporter, asking why by the 24th century they hadn't found a cure for baldness, and Gene Roddenberry replied that by that time they wouldn't care.
honestly the best way for me to think about beauty is as it just being a feature. ideally instead of taking an everyone is beautiful approach, i feel like thinking of it as just another trait instead of the end all be all is the healthiest for me. being ugly does not mean a person is less entitled to decent respect. so even if i look at myself in the mirror sometimes and struggle to find any beauty there, i know that at the end of the day thats okay. idk hopefully that made sense lol
This. Some are born pretty. Some smart. Some skilled at drawing. Some a great singer. Etc, etc.
plus the vast majority of people is average and its a scale not a binary that everyone finds themselves on
It's all about those eurocentric beauty standards, and for people like me who were not into that, people have the nerve to think I'm crazy.
it's not even that. nowadays you're only beautiful if you have an impossible mix of features that no one ethnicity can have on their own, and that most mixed people won't have either. what kind of eurocentric beauty standard praises full lips, big butts and large hips? It's much worse than that.
@@abelhapedras whiteness is still the default that was said even in the video
Same
I can confirm this experience. I personally am not attracted to the Eurocentric ideal or standard of beauty, and this is often something that people have trouble even understanding or taking seriously.
@@abelhapedrasand which skin is most uplifted along with those features? Let's make the link.
as someone who is consistently seen as ugly by society (im fat, physically disabled, mixed with textured hair, trans, ect.) yet my boyfriend is attracted to me for me and ive also had a lot of people tell me they find me beautiful - i am proof that beauty and ugliness is subjective and that objective societal ugliness doesn't take away that people will find your beautiful
In Portuguese, the equivalent saying to "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is "quem feio ama, bonito lhe parece". The literal translation goes something like this: "an ugly person will always be beautiful in the eyes of the ones who love them". The right people will always find you beautiful.
Unfortunately people who find you beautiful are pretty rare. Feels like an oasis in a desert
ohhhhh heeeeeeeell no. trans?there is no such thing as trans.
Theyre lying to you
@@LilHickory you're very shallow
Even in video games I often have trouble making a good looking non-white character. Yeah sure there are non-white options, but it feels like there’s often 5 white faces to 1 black/Hispanic/Asian face
Good point
then stop playing videogames. woke people like you is why movies and videogames today suck.
Those Skyrim days
The sims 4 comes to mind.
Thank you like they never heard of features
Beauty standards are toxic and I try to ignore them as much as I can but it is very hard. As a black woman you get told that your hair is unnatractive, your nose is too big, your skin is too dark and the list goes on. It doesn't help that this stuff is everywhere on social media and sadly even black men join in to make fun of us despite us having the same features. I doubt that people will stop believing that beauty is objective because like you said it gives them power and they use it to deem non white people especially black people less deserving of empathy and care.
your skin is too dark?nobody on planet earth would ever tell you that. stop the lies. you just want to be a victim.
I get what you’re saying but blk ppl have different features worldwide
@@susanwjoh0re735who are you to deny her experiences?!!! if you're not black yourself how the hell would you know what it's like?!! learn EMPATHY asap please. you're disgusting.
it's toxic because it's not to your benefit?stop it.
@@susanwjoh0re735making fun of people is toxic.
0:05 i like how "they" define what they believe as "just the way it is" as opposed to "just the way we make it".
(Guy here) one of my friends in middle school was like 5'1" or 5'2" and they put him on human growth hormone so he could be taller, basically they gave radical hormone therapy to a cisgender boy with little or no questions asked. Idk how tall he is today but he was still pretty short when we stopped hanging out at like 15. Weird side effect was he had ripped abs despite not playing any sports or doing any real exercise outside of like gym class
As someone who was also on growth hormone I get it does make you look ripped I think it’s the increase in muscle mass
You were classmates with Messi? No way!
Because those hormones reduce abdominal fàt. . I'm sure he'll be thankful later on because short men barely get acknowledged. Height means to men what facial beauty means to women: almost everything in life is determined by that one factor. It sucks but it's 100% true
He was basically forced into a hormone therapy without his consent...like...isn't this bad?
Unless it really was needed for whatever medical reason, being short is not the end of the world.
His parents/family did this to him and the medical staff just went with it.
It increases bone density and penis length and ads to some height too but not like 5-8 inch of growth.Only 3-4 inches at max@@neigeepierrot4694
I believe in subjective beauty and I honestly don't even think about "below or above average" or average since that's still subjective. I just love seeing and looking for beauty in everything I see. I hope everyone can see this to because it's wonderful.
Cheyenne, I will never understand why don’t have as big a following as a Shanspere or a Contrapoints because you CONSISTENTLY put out bangers one after another. No bad videos whatsoever.
As a trans person, I'm disappointed no one in the survey delved into how beauty standards affect us in a special way (especially if you're not white). One of the first things that dawned upon me as I finally accepted I was trans was how the euphoric life I envisioned for myself wasn't just of a femme, it was of an *attractive* femme. My fantasies didn't so much focus on what I looked like, but moreso on how people treated and perceived me. The sort of romantic and sexual attention I desired (especially as someone who's into men) wasn't a given from merely being perceived as a femme, and that realization truly messed me up. It made me question my transition altogether, as I started to fear my whole transition was fundamentally an indulgence in traditional and unattainable feminine beauty standards.
Furthermore, while I initially figured I wasn't going to change certain aspects of myself because they didn't make me particularly uncomfortable one way or the other (especially when it came to body hair), I eventually realized changing them would inevitably help me pass, so I did anyways. While I'm happy with my decisions, I'm still quite aware that, in another world, I could've been just as happy if I hadn't done it. Fundamentally, any disconnect to our bodies is a sole result of gender constructs and beauty standards. We would all be both trans and cis if it weren't for it.
Another thing which no one in the survey mentioned is how being mentally ill also HEAVILY hinders your ability to realize yourself when it comes to your presentation, let alone confirming to traditional beauty standards, ESPECIALLY if you're trans. As someone with four diagnoses myself, it's hell.
I think it's interesting that you're talking about you being trans. I've often noticed how sexualized of an aesthetics tenas men and trans women, especially trans women, get while trying to match the body shape of the chased and desired gender. Why is it never exactly talked about?
@@BroJo676for real. It’s like, you can’t be accepted as trans if you aren’t at least sexually attractive and able to be fantasized about.
@@BroJo676 in my opinion what both men and women can learn from that is that you shouldn't have to perform your gender, you just ARE. a woman who considers herself a woman and has manly traits/hobbies/personality etc is no less a woman than any other, and a man who considers himself a man and has feminine traits/hobbies/personality etc is no less a man than any other. but it takes a lot to fully realise this mentally since society (patriarchy) enforces gender roles and stereotypes which cause people a lot of distress, both from themselves wanting external validation/not having enough internal validation, and from outsiders enmeshed in patriarchal beauty standards who treat people differently (insults related to gender, ostracization, ignoring etc) because they are not performing their gender in a certain way to meet effed up expectations
@@en2336 The thing is, most people who tend to indulge in overperformance of gender happen to be trans people. And why is that so? Because they're trying to compensate for their lack of natural physical attributes of the opposite and desired sex. If anything, trans people, their allies, and gender ideologues tend to be the ones indirectly reinforcing gender roles/attributes that Conservatives are often chastised for by Progressives and Liberals.
It's the trans camp that tells perfectly psychologically, emotionally, and physically healthy young tomboyish girls that they were born in the wrong bodies because of their interest in traditionally men's activities. The level of psychological warfare and aggression in telling young unsure kids that they're inherently dysfunctional because of their interests is wrong and you should agree that the trans camp shouldn't do it.
@@en2336 I don't really understand what the comment you're replying to was even trying to say, but saying a "man who considers himself a man" is pretty transphobic.
While I agree with your comment to a certain degree, it comes off as pretty cisgendered and incomplete in its assessment. In my experience being trans, gender self-affirmation isn't as easy/straight-forward as you're making it seem. More important than the abstract nature of gender is how it's uphold in our daily lives - through traditional/subversive gender performance in relation to how much you pass as one of the two binary genders (considering most people are ignorant about anything outside of that), and the reactions and social conditioning they elicit. Before I started taking certain steps into my transition, whilst still being trans regardless of what anyone thought of me, it didn't really matter how much of "not-a-man" I felt (as someone who doesn't really label themselves), because people STILL saw me as a man and conditioned me as such. And it sucked (and still does).
Regardless of your idealistic view of gender as something you can define yourself (which isn't wrong to a certain degree), it's still based on the assumption that people's initial impression of your gender based on your physical traits is correct. When it comes to a lot of trans people, it's not. I'm not "a man with feminine traits/hobbies/personality", I'm a trans femme - and acting as if assuming I'm not a man shouldn't be anyone's first instinct immediately throws me and other trans people under the bus.
Of course you could say that, in turn, doing the opposite ends up throwing feminine men/masculine women under the bus, but I don't find that to be true. Not only do I believe the recognition and comfort of trans people should be prioritized (considering how unacknowledged our identities already are on a daily basis), there's also an inherent issue with geting offended for being assumed to be trans. Treating someone with the assumption of being trans doesn't mean you automically think they're not cis, it just means you're choosing not to condition them through a binary lens. Of course you should always ask whichever gender identity one is/isn't when in doubt (and even when not in doubt, especially depending on your environment), but this is often not a timely or convenient thing to do (and I wouldn't blame someone for, as an example, assuming a 70 year-old Silent Gen masc person is a man).
Too many "universality" and "objectivity" studies don't actually demonstrate universality or objectivity --- they demonstrate a statistically significant (for some definition of significance) average. When they report variance, etc. at all, the data is usually pushed into a distribution that seems to support the assumption that the average is the result of an underlying objective single cause which is then subjected to variations, without addressing any of the (myriad) alternative hypotheses for causative or contributory factors.
It's the same thing as bad "evolutionary psychology" has been doing for ages -- show that the sample population has preferences that aren't completely random, and then assume that if you can give an evolutionary or neurological explanation for that tendency, that you've demonstrated an inherent, universal, biological preference.
I'm sure (/s) it's coincidental that declaring a single objective beauty norm makes it easier to socially enforce that norm as universal (and deviations from that norm by individuals or cultures/communities as "incorrect"). Excuse for enforcement disguised as description.
"Beauty is not good capital. It compounds the oppression of gender. It constrains those who identify as women against their will. It costs money and demands money. It colonizes. It hurts. It is painful. It can never be fully satisfied. It is not useful for human flourishing. Beauty is, like all capital, merely valuable."
-Tressie McMillan Cottom
This!!💯💯💯
Lmao not Botox cosmetic being the ad while watching this video 😭
One common trend I see among Gen Z is their want to correct generational trauma and current societal problems for a better life, this is truly heartwarming to see. That being said, I believe that this energy should also be channeled into correcting the vanity and superficial standards that are so prevalent in our society. Social media has played a big role in pushing these standards and it feels like nothing is being done. While Gen Z is working to correct the past mistakes of past generations, they are overlooking their own very prevalent one. The younger generations are obsessed with beauty and very superficial qualities, and they should work toward shifting this attitude toward looking inside. It sounds cliche but "beauty comes from within." This is the message that they should advocate for instead of contributing to the obsession with beauty, anti-aging, and vanity. Gen Z's obsession is leading to a plethora of problems and an unhappiness and anxiety that is hard to pinpoint and get past.
I don't know where I belong in this but I've always seen every single person that had seen my eyes as art, I felt no need to see anyone be put in a box of what people place them in. Like any creation even with flaws, I've always seen everyone as art rather than "beautiful" or "ugly" in standard. It's funny since I've been born what society insist on what beautiful is and what ugly is automatically imprinted in my mind, which had harm me and everyone till this day, but I've escaped from it and everytime I look at a person I've always seen them as an art form, from how one stand, walk, laugh, brows scrutinized, gaze, and even the little imperfections that they and society feels are flaws I see as art.
The weaponization of beauty and how that plays into patriarchal views is especially fascinating to me. You mentioned this in how men tend to see beauty as objective, because they can then exert power over women in deeming them „objectively“ unattractive, taking away their singular value as beings in a patriarchal worldview. While simultaneously finding comfort in theoretically being able to achieve objective beauty themselves, because it isn‘t their one singular value in a patriarchy, more like a nice asset. Even if you‘re Margot Robbie, you cannot be „objectively“ beautiful in the eyes of men who seek to exert power over you, even if they themselves look and smell like a walking dumpster.
In practice, I find this especially sickening when women are told from birth that beauty is their only asset, yet they‘re a shallow bitch if they‘re actually putting effort into their looks, being confident about their looks and have preferences for how their partner should look. We’re told to lower our standards if we even so much as mention that we’d prefer someone a little taller. Actually, we don’t even have to mention our preferences. I‘ve been told on numerous occasions to lower my standards by people who‘m I‘ve given no indication about said standards. Meanwhile, men can give zero fucks about their appearance and personal hygiene and can still call any woman shallow for rejecting them.
That's why beauty has no actual power, beauty doesn't end wars or world hunger , for women who posses beauty their reward is to be deemed worthy of consuption, as crumbs given up by men and women who uphold those oppressive structures . But at its core beauty is allienating If it's not used for the subject's own pleasure, beautiful people have been bestowed with the advantage that their existence is used as an excuse to oppress and mistreat other people. If You are fat and ugly you are more likely to be poor because we have conditioned ourselves to dehumanise those who we at that moment in history consider aestheticaly undeserving. That oppression is real and it's not just in people's heads , it disproportionately affects women, it could be your mother , your sister , your daughter that could one day be subjected to the fleeting beauty standards police. I too have done everything in my power to benefit from as much pretty privilege as I can , I am aware my company probably would not have hired me If i did not look presentable enough for them , the only power my beauty gives me is the one people are willing to bestow upon me until my beauty expires in their eyes , but that is power that is not given to other women and that's not fair, everyone of us will one day be deemed not beautiful and young enough and that has real life consequences. My luck is that I also value beauty for my own sake , it keeps me sane to see beauty around me , what other people find beautiful is usually driven by insanity though.
@@madalinaanton3253 Not equating beauty standards to racism, but this actually reminds me of the Model Minority myth imposed on Asians, I find it has a similar effect.
The label was slapped on to Asians meant as a "good thing" that other minorities should aspire to be. But the label isn't power given to us. It's used as a tool to exert control ON Asians, where Asians try to meet the stereotype by being subservient to white people while also not wanting to be associated with the 'lower' minorities. In turn the other minorities who were told "look at the Asians if they can do it why not you" also come to resent the "model minority" and that distraction keeps them from rebelling against the true oppressors.
I feel like the 'beautiful people' are the "model minority" (because let's face it, beauty standards these days favour increasingly unrealistic and rare traits) and men in power who set those standards point to these beautiful people and say to everyone else, "these people are the worthy ones". The ones who don't fit the standards resent the beautiful people and try to defy their position to become 'worthy', while the beautiful people themselves are forced to remain conforming to the standards and due to their privilege they do not rebel against the men who set them.
the intro of “come as you are” by nirvana ❤
I think I’ve found that commodified beauty is the co-opting of features of an attractive person, and implying that the features are intrinsic to attractive traits of the identity as a whole. If a white woman has features of a black woman, and is just so alluring to the white male gaze, the outcome will be that her identity and features are tied to her, and not any interracial homogenization of beauty standards.
The baddy era (check out Tee Noir’s video) also conflated physiological traits to aspects of identity. It is never enough to simply appear, one must also act in accordance with the standards that a person or group of people have set for said physical traits. This eventually leads to many people feeling a toil in appealing to the standards that were placed on THEIR OWN BODY! Also, very important, these traits do not need to be based on any objectivity. Racialized traits and their connection to beauty should be an example of such. Blackness is often seen as ugly, due to hateful institutions propagating the narrative.
This symbology of the body is what capitalism preys upon, but the extended caveat is that they want to separate the meaning of the symbol from the symbol. In doing so, they can claim it as an objective statement.
This line is what separates free will from determinism. If you prevent a person from knowing the science or cause behind any phenomenon, you can claim that extent of knowledge as the objective truth. We see it most commonly now as there being “2 genders”… or as black people being lazy (with the intention of removing diversity initiatives)
Also...
I've noticed that,
the general public has a harder time accepting, WOC beauty, being equal to a full blooded 🤍 woman's beauty,
it seems as if most people were taught from a young age, that only ⚪women can be beautiful.
So even us women of color get the short-end of euro-centric beauty standards stick,
if we're TOO pretty.
This is the reason why we keep seeing photos of Angelina Jolie, Monica Belluci, and Megan Fox being pushed everywhere, but barely any 10/10 (Black, Mixed, Asian, Indigenous) being uplifted as much as them. And if those same WOC are----then they just get pushed into the "white" box.
People on the internet act, as if it's a mortal sin to ever consider a person of color,
beautiful or attractive.
@@Ronsquaremy yes!
One of my favorite characters of all time is "remedios the beauty," from One 100 Years of Solitude. She's the most beautiful woman in the world, and doesn't care. In the end, she gets tired of being harassed and literally vanishes into the sky. A man legit dies for her, and she thinks he's an idiot. I like that.
I also recommend the documentary "America the beautiful" it also dives deep into this topic as well!!
I have a proposal regarding the idea of health and beauty. There are many correlational relationships which can be observed between things that our society sees as being "ugly" and an increased risk of health issues, typically associated with heart disease. This trend can be found not just between an individual's storage of fat and heart disease, but also baldness and other perceived "ugly" traits. When we have all of these correlates, usually the message we (should) hear from a statistics standpoint would be to investigate for some third extraneous variable that is being measured here. I believe that variable is stress. You can have fun looking up the damage stress does to one's body, but I truly believe being a person born into a society where genetic features outside of your control make people think you are ugly, unhealthy, lazy, etc. is perhaps one of the most stress inducing experiences a person can have. That is an exposure to trauma every day and one which perpetuates itself every time this person looks in the mirror, sees other people, watches a beauty add, goes to the doctor... you see what I mean. Sorry for the long comment but I'd love to have a discussion on this topic because I think it really matters.
what was the proposal?
@@transsexual_computer_faery Sorry I think I rambled in the comment. The proposal being that health and beauty are in a perpetual cycle created by society, with the stress created by being seen as "ugly" leading to the issues of health.
This still favors able-bodied and "physically fit" individuals though. Personally I wouldn't support it. Baldness for example is a very common punchline but it can't be helped by some people (see: Alopecia). I think neutrality to general physical traits and expressions of personal tastes would be fairer, because that's individual.
@@archangelvalentine Sorry I think I used a term that is perhaps inappropriate for the discussion. When I say this is my proposal, I don't mean that this is something I want to have happen, I mean that it is my explanation and description of what we are currently seeing. I don't know that I am fully educated enough on the subject matter to prescribe a solution, but I do think that looking at the problem deeper helps educate people and empower them.
@@patrickcoursey7288its kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. Because people that are conventionally unattractive get treated worse, they become more conventionally unattractive. But i think we cant say that the other way around (attractive people getting more attractive) would be true, cause there is so much variable and stress that attractive people also endure. the common denominator is that rich people are often less stressed, because they can just spend money on everything they need to be done. I would say that genetically blessed people arent really less stressed overall, but it can lead to more wealth accumulation, because of the favoritism, and the other way being already rich, you can just pay to enhance your looks and reduce stress.
Yeah I don't get the obsession with having a fair complexion. Im from India and I have essentially become numb towards being ridiculed for my darker skin complexion, like that's basically a part of my daily life. If people think Raj from TBBT had it tough for being the indian character in an American show. I'll let you know that people here are way more shallow-minded than that.
As a queer nonbinary person I think about beauty standards a lot, specifically how to defy them. I've found that that can be a dangerous rabbit hole in itself, but I've gotten to a healthier place by telling myself "It's ok if my body and face don't look exactly how I or others think they should. It gets me from place to place and at the end of the day, it's just a vessel for my true self: my soul." Which I guess is a fancy way of saying that what's inside is what matters.
Of course knowing that personally won't change everyone's perceptions and biases, but I can advocate for that way of thinking in my day-to-day life. When my friends tell me that they think they're ugly, I remind them that they are more than their appearance. That they are whole people outside of patriarchal capitalist beauty standards.
That’s my thoughts too I have opt out of it completely only caring about in skin care and I will say it got easier once I came out non-binary myself but I lean to masc then fem but I feel for the fems bc the beauty starts are forced on them when many are so beautiful already to me. All I can do is treat everyone well regardless how they feel about themselves or look and not take part of this societal standard to uplift only “conveniently attractive” people.
2:27 I want to be clear that I agree with the thesis that beauty and ugliness are subjective, and certainly, noone should be antagonizing others by calling anyone ugly, but I disagree that "trying to get at someone by calling them ugly reinforces objectivity." If beauty were objective, we couldn't attribute moral value to attractiveness, because it would be something entirely outside of your control. Therefore, beauty and ugliness would be facts, rather than subjective valuations of others.
As I'm typing this, I think it's clearly still problematic, but it's problematic because of the way that it conflates the value of an individual with the attractiveness of the individual, which I hope we can all agree is the root of the problem; everyone holds intrinsic value for who they are, regardless of whether anyone finds them attractive or repellent, and there's absolutely no correlation between worthiness of love and physical "beauty."
Again, I think (though I am only starting the video) that I am going to agree with all of your conclusions, but I want to voice this counter perspective while it's on my mind.
Edit: ok, so, I reached the end of the video, and I have a lot of things to think about, still... On the one hand, I am struggling with the impulse to assert a case for objective beauty. This is a perspective I found popping up in my mind periodically, and it totally surprised me because I am definitely not a beauty objectivist, but apparently I still have some internalized beliefs or impulses that occasionally surface. I do have a system that I think more or less most everyone could agree with - BUT, each metric is still subjective and highly dependent upon individual experiences.
So grateful for you for speaking on things/experiences that so often get overlooked ♡ I found your channel years ago when i was looking for more critical perspectives on American Girl Dolls (as a former doll-kid), but we seem to have a lot in common when it comes to experiences as neurodivergent femmes of color growing up in yt spaces. Whether it's about dolls, PBS kids, bullying, Bluey, or politics; you ALWAYS say the things my inner child needed to hear. So glad I stuck around; can't thank you enough ♡
So happy to be early to this vid. Was really excited for this one!!
being ugly sucks, true ugly's like me are the ones who suffer, but people are so obsessed with beauty that they fail to see that the beautiful people in the world are standing right next to them.
It’s literally both subjective and objective. Some aspects of physical beauty do have some scientific objectivity. Proportions and health probably relate to physical attraction. But there are also a lot of physical beauty standards that ARE subjective and based on culture/trends. There’s a lot of European beauty standards for example that are not based in science but prejudice.
nope there's no "scientific objectivity" to beauty. did you watch the video youre commenting on or
scientific objectivity means nothing lool
@@anju8376Oh yeah, just because it says in the video it's true 🤓☝️
Say that to a 2 year old baby crying because it saw an ugly person and then gets mesmerized by a good looking one
@@anju8376Tell me an era or place where Michelangelo's David wasn't attractive.
Wow! There’s so many great points in this video that I want to respond and reflect on, but I’ll try and keep it as brief as I can. One big point I’d like to add to this conversation is the idea of beauty standards arising mainly from white patriarchal ideas of attractiveness. I think that I would add that there are many beauty ideals that are a result of wealth and class signifiers too. For example, for much of human history pale skin was seen as a marker of refined feminine beauty, due to a bias to whiteness, yes, but also to the luxury of getting to stay indoors instead of working in fields all day. During the industrial revolution the majority of lower class employment moved into indoor factory work, rendering paleness as a sign of leisure time no longer. Then, around the 1920’s the rise of steamship travel to the tropics and train trips to Florida became financially available to the wealthy, so women with the means to do so could escape to someplace warm and return home with a fresh tan. The desirability of a warm golden tan, a sign of money and ample leisure time, still persists to this day. This historical reversal, where a long established beauty standard becomes switched up when social changes make the previous beauty ideal too available to the lower classes, is also seen in perceptions of weight. In many places and times throughout history extra weight was a sign you were rich enough to afford plenty of food, but now in an era of easily accessible junk food, weight is viewed as a sign of laziness and low class status. I imagine that there are aspects of beauty standards affected by class status that I’m not aware of, but I do think that class signifiers in beauty are worth including in the discussion of this topic.
Beauty is definitely tied to classism, it denotes those in power, very elitist
Attraction is subjective as individual people have personal preference.
But it’s disingenuous to deny that societies have mainstream standards of beauty and ugliness, and your quality of life is impacted by how well you are able to objectively fit into your society’s beauty standards.
Plenty of people are able to be physically attracted to people who aren’t objectively extremely beautiful by the mainstream beauty standards.
But life isn’t just about individual interactions and experiences. Beauty bias/lookism isn’t just about your dating and sex life, or individual personal interactions. It’s a wider systemic impact that affects everything and everyone.
As you pointed out, beauty standards are closely connected to racism, ableism, fatphobia, classism, etc.
Wow, this video is probably the best I've seen yet tackling this subject. You were very succinct and informed, expressed things in a clear manner. I learned things in this video that I did not know already. I'm so happy I watched this!
I used to be extremely insecure about my looks and was bitter about it. But honestly, working on myself has been very beneficial. I'm more creative, less neurotic, I can interact with people much easier than I did when I felt as if I was a hopeless case. What's the worst that could happen? If they decide to not talk to me because I'm ugly, I dodged a bullet. I wouldn't want someone who would deny me mutual respect because they don't like the way I look, life is too short that shallowness. It took a lot to get me to this point in my life, but I am happy I took the plunge.
My personal two cents on this topic is that beauty has, and always will be subjective. If beauty were objective, then I wouldn't find more than half of the people I find attractive to be attractive, and I certainly also would not be receiving any compliments on my looks.
I still enjoy wearing makeup, but makeup for me has never been about hiding insecurities or wanting to look better. The main reason I got into makeup is because I've always been artistic and wanted to experiment with color and glitter lol. That being said, I dislike how the beauty industry markets its products. It still very much plays on insecurities, and a truthfully empowering makeup campaign would focus on artistry and self-expression rather than sculpting out whatever shape of cheekbone is most popular.
I personally hold the opinion that beauty is both objective and subjective. I definitely find beauty to be more subjective than it is objective but there are people who are objectively by all metrics attractive. There are people whose beauty is not acknowledged because they happen to fall outside a specific society's beauty standards.
Honneslty I've always found who people find "objectively attractive" borring to ugly. I have always prefered seeing new traits in people and found novelty prettier then all the people around me
"there are people whose beauty is not acknowledged because they happen to fall outside a specific society's beauty standards". I remember when my good sis Halle Bailey was dragged in East Asia because they don't find people like her attractive. I still remember the disgusting things they were saying about her and it's pretty crazy because they find women like Anya Taylor Joy, (a woman who looks like Halle but is white) attractive. This is why I don't agree that beauty can ever be objective because of our biases and prejudices.
Some parts of beauty standards are objective others are not.
We are biologically programmed to avoid disease, so a swollen face or signs of infection isn’t beautiful.
Our own understanding of health and ability is what creates subjective beauty.
Spending time with people who deviate from our beauty standards allows us to unconsciously learn that an ‘indicator’ of ‘unhealthiness’ is a false positive, which means we will start to ignore that.
An incorrect perception of reality can also create subjective beauty standards, like only seeing women who wear makeup in public, then a woman who doesn’t wear makeup becomes a deviation. That can create the false idea that women don’t normally look tired, stressed etc. so the perception of it is amplified and assumed to be a sign of unhealthiness.
Our perception of normalcy is constantly being manipulated with, so therefore our perception of beauty is too.
Really enjoying this so far.
I think societally we have a conceptual slip between neurology and 'naturalness' that is unfounded. We seem to forget that brains are hugely plastic, pattern seeking and social response organs that form within a culture. Rather we see attempts to abstract emotional response, beliefs about gender and sex, and sexuality out of the culture back into 'natural' via the brain, in a way I can only see as ideological (not to mention often quite poor science. The number of times I have seen evolutionary psychologists leap from 'college students prefer' to 'therefore prehistoric society must have been organised as an individualist patriarchy in which people encountered a random distribution of complete strangers out in the wild while being manly hunter men' is honestly absurd).
I think this feeds back into a common desire to find a way to game other people, in order for a minority of people (whether that be managers, scientists or philosophers) to feel like they have some how elevated themselves above everyone else by piercing through to the 'truth of things'. Ideas that 'neurological equals natural' stops us actually needing to engage with the practicality of the habituses and ideologies that form our gaze, the biomechanics that move our eye, and the very material, practical question of 'why am I looking at this person, in this way, now?'. That way we can abdicate our responsibility for those actions, or avoid questioning how our life experience might have constructed us, by clinging onto thought terminating cliches like the idea of 'instinct' or pseudo-Larmarckian notions of attraction.
I get very suspicious whenever I see studies of attraction that happen to find that things we find attractive today are 'natural', or 'hardwired', or 'adaptative' (just putting aside the fact that so few things are actual direct adaptations anyway). It always raises that question of 'Isn't it incredibly convenient that all of these elements happen to have survived unchanged into modern culture?' or 'Why should we assume that groups that disagreed with us were confounded by their culture, but ours is completely not effecting us, when we are so very aware of all the effects capitalism and media have on us? Surely we should be further away from any 'pre-civilisation' biological state?' And why should we even think any of that relevant anyway?
I didn't intend this comment to be this long. I have a bit of bee in my bonnet about the concept of 'natural' when applied to anything, but I think aesthetics and meaning exemplify it very well. At the end of the day things like attraction are value systems. Why should we assume that any value system that isn't directly engaged in material practice, even has a material grounding to it? Looking for a neurology of beauty is a bit like looking for a neurology of French. You're going to find stuff, that stuff will be interesting, useful and possibly consistent. But if you then try to project that back to other spaces and times you haven't observed, you're making a category error that only looks reasonable because of profound cultural myths we have in place about human nature, personhood, social organisation and so on, and neurologists often aren't critically engaged enough with these questions of ideology, archaelogy, mythology and so on to be particularly convincing in these matters. They just end up accidentally regurgitating the end of history narrative at us (that there has to be an objective truth and that we are coincidentally already there, while previous societies and other cultures are all wrong).
I don't like assigning values like "ugly" and "beautiful" to people, really. For me, those labels just lack nuance and complexity. Even when I see a person for the first time, I focus more on peculiar features and what those make me feel, rather than on whether they are "ugly" or "beautiful".
It would be better if instead of saying “you’re really beautiful” just say “I love your (specific feature)”
@@jjalaska exactly
same ! i love this comment
As someone with palsy on half my face and yet has found success in love has pissed me off the thing about symmetry
I have a question: if beauty is subjective, (i.e. in the eye of the beholder) how does that empower the individual being perceived? It seems more like it's empowering perceivers to call whoever they want beautiful, but it still leaves the perceived being objectified. This is why I've always preferred the "inner beauty" angle. I feel what we should prioritize as a society is a person's character, not their outward appearance.
Lol, I paused the video to leave my above comment LITTERALLY in the gap between part 3 and 4.... 🙄 I'm leaving it anyway for engagement, love you Cheyenne!
Terminally online incels are projecting their insecurities when labelling others 'ugly'
But let me guess, you only like guys who are over 6ft?!!
@@TiktokBro154No? Women aren't one note.
@@TiktokBro154 yea, that is the hypocrisy of these modern women.
@@abhishekverma4029 Except it's not? Men still get paid more than women for the same jobs. Men are less likely to be r worded and kidnapped at night when they're alone. Men are more likely to commit more violent crimes.
Come back when you experience real sexism. Come back when your opinion isn't taken seriously because of your gender, or when you're paid less than women (assuming you're a man). What counts as misandry is the fact that men can't show emotions without being labeled.
@@abhishekverma4029 😢😢😢
Good video. I feel like for me at least personality plays into how attractive someone is big time. We've got someone on our work crew who's literally supermodel level, but I have absolutely zero attraction to them, cause they have such an immature personality
yeah we shouldn't be bullied for being ugly, but we are, and will be our whole lives.
"be kinder to each other" most people are not going to do that any time soon.
I do understand this. Beauty should not be objective. I have never considered anyone I have seen beautiful or ugly. I know I am beautiful based on this "objective" standard and my husband is told he is lucky and how he got me, etc. because he isnt considered "handsome". I do not find my husband ugly in any way and the personality of someone is much more important anyway. To me, beauty is all that is seen. My husband likes my personality. I am a complete hippie and I dont wear makeup. I refuse to make myself look better for any reason. I wear what I want, I hate makeup, etc. I dont pursue being beautiful. I dont have control how I look and I do feel bad because others around me feel bad. I dont want them to. I have told them that they are beautiful as far as I am concerned. No one needs to feel bad about their appearance. I know I will probably get some kind of hate from people in the comment section because it's "easy for me to say" because of how I look. But I promise you that there are people who think I am not pretty. I dont doubt that for a second.
The idea that attractive people are dumb is definitely thing. Many have thought I have to be stupid, shallow, etc. It isnt true. I made straight As my entire life, went to college, and Im Buddhist. I absolutely love philosophy.
Just remember, beauty is in fact subjective and beauty standards do change over time. I could be the ugliest person ever next year. I dont know. Who knows what the beauty standard will be.
I've always found the people that others call ugly or weird to be more beautiful and attractive, they look human and interesting.
It's almost like "I've seen what you people cheer for, your boos mean nothing."
As someone who's been judged their entire life based on their physical appearance by straight people and other gay people, I'm glad I'm at a point in my life where I no longer care to be beautiful anymore. The constant need for validation outside yourself is going to destroy you mentally.
I'm not gonna say that beauty standards are formed by white beauty but whitening products in Asia are not usually used to be more "white". Pale skin was and somewhere still is connected with social status as when people used to work outside in sunlight their skin was darker than the ruling class that protected their skin by staying inside or in any other way
I do appreciate you went into this deep dive about this since i do feel insecure or didn't feel mattered or welcomed by how i grew up or even choose not to follow trend.
Well it's nice i was told by my dad or parents i looked like snow white as a kid but it doesn't help as i grew up with puberty and change my mom constantly tells me as a teen and young adult i wasn't have enough weight or i don't have right "boobs" like my older sister or wasn't tall enough and compared it to my other family members and it doesn't help.
It doesn't make it better of how i was pressed in highschool or it's a competition because all teen girls wear makeup as acceptable sexy teen women.
And give me weird looks because i was wearing braces because of buck teeth ans huge bushy eyebrows and i wasn't stright or tall.
As i went to college and grew up being an adult some guys only compliment on how pretty I look because i look like a 12 or 17 yr old and that's acceptable.
It's very creepy if that's only acceptable beauty to how they see me. I did find out by my friend he only said this he wants to bang me rather understand me as a person since i have a mild optimism and a learning disability.
I don't bother following quote on quote trends since to me it's too exhausting and it makes me even more miserable.
I was lucky i have friends to say otherwise and it's more about being kind to others and to be kind to yourself and accept yourself little by little and it's not easy.
People being kind and encouraging to be kind to others and yourself makes a big impactful difference.
Oh my,I was there,I run from my abusive home teo years ago,I'm trying to build a life since them,thanks for your comment your last words make feel somehow better.❤
I like a lot of this vid and appreciate the content but I think sometimes the phrasing about "eurocentric thin etc." beauty standards ironically perpetuates them. I think these standards have many factors and there is always context that should be covered.
Hollywood media is very white-focused but I wouldn't say this is always about beauty, it's about white dominance. Beautiful POC are not always / rarely always allowed the limelight and a big part of white supremacy is the threat of POC beauty/power. This is an important thing and distinguishment to note. So it's not always so much that whiteness is seen as more beautiful, it's that POC beauty is not allowed to feature or win many times. POC-ness is othered, tokenised.
I think many speakers on this topic operate from personal experience that is 10-20 years ago and dated. It was more relevant back then but doesn't always apply today. The rise of tech/social media and media production has broken barriers and allows more POC exposure and featuring. A conventionally beautiful, thin, fit etc. POC will get better limelight and treatment in ways than a not as goodlooking, not as thin/fit etc. white person too. Class/wealth/education /social status are all relevant too.
Ironically I think many POC/speakers really perpetuate eurocentric, skinny etc. beauty standards by the way they speak on it. Talking in too much black/white and really general terms doesn't acknowledge more and discuss further. In reality, many people with thinness but some thickness and curves can be seen as better and more desirable than actual stick thin people. It's mainly media and red carpet/runway and very particular social circles where thinness is pedestaled. That media is definitely not the overall social norm.
A medium tanned, mixed featured, "exotic" and racially ambigious looking, thin but athletic with certain curves/muscle and boosted by plastic surgery look is becoming a top beauty standard for models/celebs and this is an important pointed direction to cover I feel.
I would like to share, that I consider myself pretty, I usually recive compliments about my looks, and I put effort into my appearence, and things like the halo effect makes me feel bad, because puts my selfworth in doubt, am I really good at *insert activitity, achievement or things in that sytle* or its just that I'm kinda pretty and proffesors and other authority figures think of my work and achievements as "better or smarter" because am pretty and white
About men enforcing objective beauty standards, I think that part of this has to do with the role mimetic desire plays for men. There’s this idea that if an unattractive man has a very attractive girlfriend, he must be extremely wealthy or successful or otherwise remarkable.
Envying people we see in seemingly-happy committed relationships is the most common pastime of lonely people of all genders. With men in particular, since the onus is mostly *on us* to make the first move, it also feels like the onus to actually *be attractive* is also mainly on us, and when we're not successful at it, we would like to know why, so we can improve. Unfortunately, there are only ever two answers to this question if you are a WLM:
The unwoke answer is that women are a shallow, materialistic monolith, whose attraction can be mapped on a chart directly proportional to adherence to tradtional physical, emotional, and social norms, and the ones who say otherwise have been brainwashed by feminism.
The woke answer is that there is no answer, because the nature of individual subjectivity is such that there is nothing you can do that is guaranteed to attract most people because everyone is too different. The most you can do is just vague self-improvement in the direction of other things in your life that you value and hope to meet and attract people through that.
The former is outmoded, unhealthy advice that hurts men and makes them worse, often worsens their chances with women, sometimes *ruins existing relationships with women,* and just generally makes dating seem more cold and transactional than anyone would like it to be.
The latter is vague and unactionable at best, and at worst predicated on the idea that a person should invest time and effort into X in order to produce Y outcome, which is very counterintuitive. You wouldn't tell someone who wants cake to bake a casserole and hope that it morphs into a cake, but the most common leftist advice I see about finding a partner is "try making friends and then hoping someone catches feelings for you, but also don't go into a friendship with this goal in mind because that's dishonest and manipulative."
For me I find comfort in the fact that the truth is in the middle. Beauty will always be subjective because it's a concept and everyone defines it for themselves, it always changes and it's different in different places even at any one given time, but we can't deny that there're general tendencies that transcend race and culture that are imbedded in the human psyche. Our first reaction to something ugly or beautiful is an instinct, but we can choose how we proceed with it.
Great video! Just a heads up, there was an ad for Botox right before your video, which is kinda hilarious.
This is interesting. I know that beauty is subjective and can't be objective but these comments are truly interesting. I've never been able to bring 10-15 people together and have us all agree on what beauty is and I've tried in 40 different countries. People like what they like and it doesn't matter what you look like there is someone who think you are amazing the way you are.
Fabulous and very interesting video. You always have an interesting perspective on everything and I love it!!
What a timing this video had. It appeared in my feed exactly as i was resentfully thinking about the violence I experienced for the same reason.
beauty is only subjetctive between people who are already beautiful, than obviously you'll think its subjective but its not, its just that there is different types of beauty, but when a person is ugly they are trully ugly and theres no subjective beauty about them, nobodys gonna find them beautiful. beauty being subjective is just an excuse people created so everyone could feel good even being ugly, but its just not truth.
Beauty is both objective and subjective. Thats the only right answers. There are traits on attractive people which change by time and by society, a couple years ago or in certain places in Africa it is more attractive to be a little heavier because it indicates status and resources. However there are also objectively attractive or unattractive trait that our bodies learn recognize as signs of better genes and reproductive capabilities.
Damn this video was everything ive been thinking about but actually articulated and thoughtout. Thank you for this!!! I wonder how different your poll and answers to your poll would have been had your audience been a different demographic. I think that social media creates an echo chamber for users where of course youtube recommended this video to me but isnt the point of these types of videos to reach those who might benefit from these essays? And yet I feel like it won't and if it does it'll bring a ton of heat like viral political/polarizing/feminist videos have in the past. Its like I want these types of videos to reach people (men and women who think theyll benefit from capitalist ideals, but never will) and yet I'm also fear the thought of it. I'm not sure what I'm trying to convery, I clearly struggle with being articulate lol. More of why i enjoyed watching this video. Regardless, you did an amazing job!!!!
I don't agree on everything stated in this video but very much respect your opinions. I hope I am allowed to disagree on some points without offending anyone and can only offer my apologies if I did. .
I think both beauty and ugliness have objective criteria based on region and culture and harmony. But we as INDIVIDUALS take a subjective approach to beauty, since our personal standards and beliefs will change our relationship with that "objective" beauty model. TL;DR My eyes will not see the same as somebody else's, but if we're from the same place, we could probably agree on what kind of person would be hired to be a model.
I think the word you're looking for there isn't objective but shared or 'intersubjective' because objective means independent of the human mind and experiences. And i think beauty already can't be (because attraction is by definition something you as a peson experiende) but it *definitely* can't refer to a cultural idea. That is, more than anything, connected to experience.
Intersubjective means people collectively agreeing on a concept or experiencing it the same way. For example, there's no cold hard objective reason the world "blue" should refer to the color blue and not green or orange. Language is made up. There's nothing written in the laws of nature that says that color *needs* to be called blue, andnin many languahes it isn't! And yet, when I say blue, you know what I mean anyway. We have a shared understanding of the word and color blue. Just like beauty standards are a shared understanding of the concept of beauty.
Can you make a video about Rihanna's racial harassment of Karrueche Tran? It was based on K foolishly deciding to get involved with Chris Brown after what he did, but Rihanna subjected her to Asian hate for it.
This video is a huge oversimplification of a complex subject. "Beauty" is used to describe a whole range of things. Physical attractiveness (subjective), Health based beauty standards (objective), moral or ideological beauty (subjective), aesthetic beautys (both objective in terms of mathematical proportion and subject in terms of taste such as color, volume, texture, etc.). All of these and more interplay to determine what an individual finds desirable, be it in a human partner or in the beauty of a flower or song. So many people think of beauty as something that is or isn't, that must be objective or must be subjective, when like most social constructs it is far more complex than that. Within our biological imperatives there is room for diversity. The answer is neither subjective nor objective, it is both.
Your videos always calm my anxiety, thank you 🩷
Always stunned by ur videos and reaserch ❤ keep it up i binge watched all of ur vids:*3
lovely, thoughtful video!!! i listen to it like a podcast so i can learn while i clean :]]
But what about men with great character and personality who are constantly rejected just because of their looks and height?
You can be attracted to someone who isn't 'beautiful'.
People tie those two things together.
There are other things that make people attractive.
And if it was only about looks then 90% of people would be single.
I like to say something much deeper. I’m mixed and I learned beauty is a big issue. But when we talk about the rich people and models. We forget something. Beauty all of the world wants white or lighter skin. For Asia it started with china bringing it to Asia. That why everyone in Asia wants to look lighter skin than brown skin. Or tan. Then Europe had many beauty products like everyone else did. So beauty standards started when we became people that wanted the right person to like us. Women have the issue too. I never believed that because women dating women means you don’t deal with beauty. Now the reason is beauty is our eyes. I dated different people and learned what it personality which makes you call someone ugly or attractive. Look is only the thought. Now you make me think about a video. But I could talk about beauty. The reason rich man makes the beauty is because women buy into it. Us guys we buy into having six packs. Because we believe that help us get girls before personality.
Being racist to the point of denying Zendaya's conventional attractiveness and sexist to deny Margot Robbie's is WILD! Logic and reason have nothing to do with this!
Zendaya is not ugly but she looks like a tween. There are more stunning mixed girls. Zendaya appeals more to women.
@@starchannel123 🍅🍅🍅
@@starchannel123she looks her age 😂
This was a very thoughtful, well-researched video and I don’t want to minimize the work you put in…and…it killed me when “unless it these people” came up.
Oh
My god
That was such a deep and thorough dive
Wow.
Thank you for your work
@@aleks-wy6uf Matter of opinion
There is mine and there are many different ones, and none of them exist to compromise any other
And, say what you will, but the study on beauty and ugliness that addresses the topics of capitalism, consumerism, patriarchy, misogyny and objectivisation of women is anything but shallow
I dislike the term "pretty privilege" because societal beauty standards are based on having features that are associated with other privileged identities. For someone who is white, thin, abled, cis, etc. to claim pretty privilege is redundant and it reinforces the idea that those privileged identities make someone objectively more desirable. I also don't think it's necessarily good for people to make these types of judgements about their own appearance, but using the language of privilege makes it seem like there's a moral responsibility to do so, otherwise you aren't "checking your privilege" and I worry about what that mindset would do to people who already have self-image issues (I'm no therapist, but I imagine feeling guilt over having poor self-image isn't going to help anyone).
As a man that used beard, I used to be "ugly" in the sense of not shaving and not being well groomed. Somehow, somewhere between 2012 and 2014 I didn't change a thing, and I became beautiful with my beard. Well, the reverse might as well happen, I think.
I've always hated the "health" argument with regards to defending western beauty standards. My dad was a body builder throughout his 30s and everyone always told him how good he looked. Nobody ever thought he "looked unhealthy." Why would they? They only saw pecs, biceps, and a tan that was borderline blackface.
They didn't see him dehydrate himself to cut water weight. They didn't see him binge eat the night after a show because he finally felt free from a diet only he was enforcing on himself. They didn't see the feds come to the door and ask him if he knew anything about his friend from the forums getting busted for trading HGH. They didn't see him rip his shoulder muscle off the bone deadlifting 500 lbs and realizing he had a problem.
Now I'm 30 myself, staring my own belly in the mirror, wondering if there will *ever* be some third option between "torturing myself into an IG model" and "be fine as an utterly unremarkable human being that no stranger would ever validate as desireable"
Regarding Plato and excerpt from the book "the once and future sex": Plato understood women as fallen men and naturally inferior to men as a result. Correspondingly, he contended that society should organize itself in such a way that that men would be able to control women.
What I hate is how Plato and his lot are always presented as these mathematical, objective, almost scientific thinkers when in reality they were misogynistic dudes that created any narrative to support their beliefs. Just saying. I get the urge to throw up when I hear his name.
Generally I love to analyze this topic and these kinds of videos, but this one just has too much "men are evil, it's all their fault" rhetoric for my taste. Too much victim mentallity, if you will.
People with body dysmorphia and the internet are more obsessed with this than people in real life. I think todays generation is going to be really depressed when they become older and loose their youthful looks. No anti aging can stop that from happening. But I did notice some weird men or women that reject people because they prefer “hotter” people. You don’t want people like this…they might end up divorcing or cheating. I have seen it a lot. People that only care about appearance are miserable. And those people that judge actually hate themselves or something about their life. So just ignore miserable sad people. Just be yourself. And follow your goals. And people that rate 1-10 on looks are creeps. I don’t understand why parents now a days are too lazy to parent and give their kids iPads…I mean the internet is obsessed with this beauty standard stuff. Look at the kids trying to do anti aging. Poor kids. I have a lot of thoughts on this.
"When everyone is beautiful, no one will be"- Syndrome
I think the truth is somewhere in between. Beauty is a very vague term, but it is obviously subjective. The thing is that the beauty standards exist for a number of reasons: biology, where you see healthy genes as beautiful, society we grow up in being taught those standarts and then reinforcing them.
But as subjective as beauty gets there are still people and things which most of the population will find beautiful. Not all of them, but most of them.
As a solution for beauty subjectiveness we have a fetish culture which came with the internet. And I am not talking only about sexual fetishes, but about beauty fetishes as a whole (Rule34 is the greatest example still). So now almost any your imagination of beauty can be found on the internet. And that's cool, though many people find fetish culture sick and disgusting, which is sad.
Aristotle is the ancient equivalent of a Twitch debate streamer.
I think an important part of what we perceive to be beautiful is what is or is not attainable for the average person in society. Think about it. During the Renaissance, the beauty standards were very similar to those of Ancient Greece: red hair, pale skin, plump stomach and thighs, small breasts. These were all signs of a wealthy young woman who was most likely a virgin, since full breasts were seen as a sign of motherhood. Pale skin would have been unattainable for your average working woman, since they would be in the sun more often, and a plump stomach meant you had enough to eat.
Now look at the beauty standards popular in the past twenty years. Thin, or slim/thick, with tan/racially ambiguous skin tone. For your average woman working a nine to five job, or a twelve hour shift at a factory, these standards are difficult to achieve. She doesn’t have the time or money to go to the gym and exercise for two hours a day, and she most likely doesn’t go outside enough to get a proper tan -forget those of us with Scots-Irish blood who burn like paper in flame and can’t go out long even if we wanted to.
All this to say, beauty standards are influenced by ableism, racism, and misogyny, but also by classism and the fundamental human truth that we will always desire what we do not have.
Let me put it in much simpler words (in my opinion):
Beauty is objective, attractiveness is subjective.
We can all agree that someone is pretty or handsome or like "objectivelly attractive", that does not mean that you find them personally attractive. Like someone could say "yeah, Angelina Jolie surelly is a stunning woman, but i dont personally find her hot, for me".
Do I make sense?
As usual, amazing deep analysis. Thank you so much for sharing!
Thank you so much! I’m glad you liked it :)
It’s a little bit of both. Expand your mind and develop the skill to find a level of beauty in everyone.
Outer beauty, depending on preference, will attract people to your domain. But, if your soul is ugly, i.e., you are a horrible person, when people find out about that, they will never disassociate you from it. A prime example in fiction is Griffith.
I oftentimes see beauty as a facet of what makes up a person. Because beauty standards so often change over time, in addition to youth being fleeting, it's better to go with what makes you happy. With cultural diversity and a plethora of subjective ways in which someone can be deemed beautiful, there really is no one 'right' look. Someone could be described as having a sharp look with angular features and gaunt proportion, while another can appear sweet looking with doe eyes and a plump appearance. There's many subcultures, aesthetic trends and a variety of looks to choose from that shows how you don't have to follow the mainstream media of Eurocentric beauty standards.
💯Thank you for making this video.
Still watching but to comment early I no
longer takes part of the beauty industry. Only skin care is what I focus on but I’m lucky bc I’m still youthful despite being in my 30s. I had pretty privilege for most of my teenage to college years so it’s much easier to let go bc it got boring after awhile. However, I do feel sorry for those that never will. That’s why I try my best to treat everyone equally and not base it on looks bc I see how shitty people become to those who are not “conventionally attractive”. I refuse to ever treat people like shit jsut bc they aren’t attractive and it’s sick people do that to others smh. Unfortunately ableism is the root cause along with classism/racism/xenophobia combined! It’s no wonder our generation (especially gen z) are miserable…
I support your ideas in this video! but something that has always bothered me is, what if the other side has a point? things that are "objectively" not beautiful like, having many acne scars/pits , large moles, crooked nose or crooked jaw, other obvious asymmetries, -these don't have to do with cultural differences or different types of facial features, they are just things that are objectively not pleasing to the eye. if someone could provide a counterargument to this I'd be grateful
some body features just are less mathemically attractive. it's impossible to deny this.
this doesn't preclude that beauty ideals are toxic, but it means that we need to be aware of different layers to beauty, some of which are toxic, some of which are neutral, etc.
Beauty is a primitive signal for health
They are pleasing to the eye tho? Ill always go for someone with any of these over a borring face
@@PossibleBati know many conventionally attractive people who are extremely unhealthy and chronically ill
some things are just neutral. like not everything has to be beautiful. sometimes things just exist on normal human bodies 🤷♀️ i have severe acne scars but i’ve never had an issue finding people who are attracted to me
I don't think Cheyenne is happy unless she can personally ruin my day by explaining in excruciating detail how fucked up the world is.
Taking a trip down to cope town
objectively true doesn't mean it's the same all the time. it is objectively true in our time that there are beauty standards that most people feel that skinny pretty white bodies are real, and other people's are not, and people will not change anytime soon.