An extremely attractive woman recently asked me for my thoughts on physical beauty vs. inner beauty. Here's what I told her. (Telling people what they want to hear is not one of my strengths.) If you define yourself in terms of your physical appearance, you might want to skip to the next post.

Beauty is usually defined as ‘being pleasing to the senses or the mind’. I think it causes confusion when people use the same word to describe a person they find physically attractive and things in nature that they find amazing or inspiring. I often use ‘pretty’ for physical looks and ‘beautiful’ for personality, although both labels can still be misleading.

In the case of physical attraction, I think it is highly cultural (i.e. ‘beauty is in the eye of the culture the beholder happens to be born into’). Throughout history, most men considered women who were somewhat overweight more attractive than women who were underweight (where food isn’t plentiful, thin often means malnourished while slightly overweight means having stored enough body fat to survive a poor harvest). But some things are considered physically attractive across cultures and over time and are therefore probably genetic - physical features that indicate a person’s health and absence of defects or damage (for example, I would guess that all cultures prefer roughly symmetric faces).

I don’t know if there’s a correlation between beauty on the outside and beauty on the inside. It’s certainly possible; I’m not sure if any systematic studies have been done. But poets, suitors, and Hollywood often confuse the two, knowingly or unknowingly. And I admit that I sometimes do too. I’ve heard this tendency to judge people based on physical appearance be called ‘lookism’, to compare it with sexism or racism. I guess it’s more accepted because it’s so prevalent. And like most heterosexual guys, I have an instinctive weakness for attractive women, so I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a challenge to remember not to judge people based on how they look. Although women do become more physically attractive to me as I get to know them better (if I like what I discover), this only goes so far. This is one battle with my genes that I doubt I will ever fully win.

I don't think there's anything wrong with caring about your appearance or feeling good about how you look, but I do think that things have gotten a little out of control. Cosmetics companies collectively spend 2-3% of their revenue on research and development (i.e. making their products better) and 20-30% on advertising and marketing (persuading people that their products are better than they are). These corporations manufacture a need and then fulfill it. If we could encourage people to shift some of the time and money they spend on outprettying each other (both the women for doing it and the men for being superficial and encouraging it) and redirect those efforts to finding the other, more meaningful type of beauty all around us, I think everyone would feel better about themselves and about the world as well.

Note: I'll be on the road and off the grid tomorrow, so I won't be able to post again until Wednesday. Have a great 4th of July.