or does anyone else find it a bit off putting when people have to say (or write/type/whatever) they are attractive? Besides, isn't attractiveness and beauty subjective?

Indeed attractiveness and beauty is subjective. But I can't help it but think that I really have an eyesight problem when the subject is VERY unpleasant to my own sight yet they claim they are attractive or beautiful to the extent of having the nerve to inject the thought to other people to convince them.

It is in the eyes of the beholder.....What is attractive to one may not be to the next person.

Normally when one has to bring attention to their looks it is due to issues they are having and feel that they have to point it out...JMO

No, beauty is an absolute.

Except for a very small number of people, every man wants a skinny wife. Each man might have a different definition of skinny and fat, but they all want a skinny wife.

Similarly, almost all women want a man who is muscular. They will differ on what is too little or too much musle, but they don't argue that muscular is better than flabby.

Symmetry is also desired in the body and face of a prospective mate. A man with one eye that is twice the size of the other would have a hard time finding anyone who found him as handsome as he would be considered if both eyes were the same size.

Angular features are desirable in a mate, but each person has their own taste as to how angular the features can be before they are less attractive.

So beauty is a objective matter, but personal interpretation of beauty is partially based on personal preferences.

If beauty is entirely subjective, why do we all agree that Axl_Rose40 and TxsGal3333 are both stunningly beautiful?

Hi, Axel. I only just now noticed your "Happy father's day". Thank you Sweetie.

The perception of beauty is subjective, but it will be distributed along a bell curve, just like everything else in nature.

No question that a vast majority of will agree on a popular standard, but there will always be populations on the outskirts.

To tell me that you are attractive doesn't exactly put me off. It's just silly. It makes me want to reply, "Well, just let me be the judge of that."

I don't agree with that.

If I had to pick celebrity crushes, they all have very different looks: David Duchovny, Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp, Sean Astin. Most of them have a very different look, yet I find them all appealing. But the way you state it, only one look should be universally sexy? Or is it because none of them are "fat"? (Again, this is what it always comes down to, isn't it? )

Another detractor to your theory, is that I would not want a muscular man. I mean, if I met someone and he happened to have some muscles and we hit it off, I probably wouldn't mind, but to me, it's intimidating. I'm pretty small, height wise, and big, muscular guys just don't do it for me. Now, surprisingly, I wouldn't mind a tall man, say 6 feet or a few inches taller. I feel the same with skinny men. I would not care for a bean pole kind of form for my ideal mate. I would rather be with someone that is overweight than has no meat on his bones at all.

I thought men liked curves. I know there is a difference between curvy and "rolls", but curvy women are rarely "skinny". Back in the middle ages, I think it was, people who were overweight were actually considered to be more beautiful, robust and healthy looking. Skinniness was a sign of poverty, malnutrition, possibly disease. Now, I'm not saying that's the case today- although sometimes it CAN be a sign of an eating disorder- and I know some people have a natural tendency towards being thin, while others have genes that make it harder for them to lose weight, but shouldn't it be what's on the inside that matters most?

I've heard of men who have dated beautiful women, and women that have dated handsome men, and a lot of those "beautiful" and "handsome" people were pretty ugly on the inside.

But hey, if all men only want a skinny wife, thanks for the heads up. I now can stop wasting my time and just delete my account from all the dating sites, since I realize now I am so undesirable to the opposite sex. All of them, apparently.

I'm a bit gun-shy on that... here's why.

One day, my significant other asked me if she was beautiful... and me, being somewhat autistic, launched into some retarded explaination that included bell-curves and statistics... I'm sure that it took a good 15 minutes to explain.
Now... she's long gone, and I think... had I simply taken a minute and told her that I thought she was gorgeous... as I truly thought, well... that mighta mattered, more.

Well, I can't help but say you are wrong about what I said, maybe I worded it incorrectly.

I am not attracted to women who are shorter than I am, but weight more. A 300 or 400 pound woman just isn't someone I'm going to be physically attracted to. That doesn't mean I'm looking for bean poles. (wait a second, how did this become about me?)

There are plenty of guys who consider plump women to not be fat and who consider skinny (ie height weight proportionate) women less attractive than fuller figured women. What you are missing in my comments is that every one agrees what they look for in a potential mate, but they don't agree on is the degree. It's like Pizza. Most people agree that pizza is delicious, but they disagree what toppings make the best pizza. Every man and every woman is looking for the same ideals of beauty (thin enough, but not too thin, fit enough, but not too fit, symmetrical, but not too symmetrical, angular features, but not too angular), but nobody exactly agrees to what degree those features are attractive.

I'll give you an example: I don't think Maria Shriver is attractive. At all. She's far too thin and her face and body are too angular. I think a woman with sweeping curves to her body and face is much more attractive than a woman whose bones show through when she moves. But I wouldn't be attracted to a woman who was 400 pounds because she would have too extreme of curves (her body wouldn't be angular enough) and she wouldn't be symmetrical. So for me, the "right" body type (ie not too fat, not too skinny) is full figured, between thin and obese. Lots of men agree with me on this, you won't have any trouble finding men who find you very attractive.

wow, thats interesting logic there,,,,

My first post wasn't very clear, I hope this is better.

Beati is subjective so if you think your self is beatiful you wouldnt be wrong just cocky lol

I dont see the reason for it personally,, unless they have no picture and are hoping the reader just will take their word for it

otherwise, what may be attractive to one may not be to the next and I guess its good to consider oneself attractive(confidence), but it doesnt really help the reader much,,lol

Agreed....

I have a mole on my back that kindah looks like a third niple...

beauty is subjective ..... indeed.

now if thats not attractive i dont know what is !!!!

I think it's a bit presumptuous for someone to tell me what I'm supposed to find attractive. And they're almost always wrong, anyway.



I certainly think so!

Is beauty objective or subjective?

I say objective. There is a beauty, and its approximations. If beauty was TRULY subjective, we'd find a coke bottle or a centipede or a grocery store sexually alluring, too.

But we don't.

There are infinitely more things that are not beautiful in the sexually arousing sense than beautiful ones.

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I know what you are going to say: Fetishes. True fetishes, when a person falls in love with their chest of drawers, or a table leg, or a tapioca sandwitch.

These people (religious, please cover your eyes) have undergone a mutation in the formation of their self, and the gene that used to select "sexual beauty" for his forefathers mutated into selecting beauties a different way.

You see, beauty and attractiveness and being lovable is an evolutionary trait. The more you feel like loving a human, the more you are apt to pass down your genes; the more you feel like loving a laundry hamper, the less it is likely that you will pass down your genes.

Evolution never stops; it produces fetish-deviants, (who are not the same as moral deviants and I am not promoting hatred of any form or degree against them) all the time, for the entire history of mankind. The reason we have disproportionately more beautiful-people lovers than haytack-lovers, is that the beautiful people-lovers have a 100 percent more chance of making people just like themselves, over the haystack lover, who has no chance of making people like himself or herself.

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This applies to beauty of humans.

Some people say Marilyn Monroe was more beautyful than Raquel Welsh, or Golda Meyr. But there are peopel for each woman on earth who will have a definite opinion that she is very beautiful.

This is because mutations on the genes that tell us what to like can mutate small, as well as big. A big mutation will tell us to love the stool or ottoman. A small mutation will tell us to love people with long, hooked noses. Or with ears that stick out. Or who slurp their soup, and pick their noses with chopsticks.

Whatever. The amount of subjective beauty perceived is determined by the sum vector of the "beauty perception" genes of the observer.

An observer is programmed to see beauty, and a different person may have a different programming (by inherited genes). Furthermore, while in the early ages of humans every one liked only one kind of beauty, the mixing of the genes allowed us to like an entire selection of different beauties.

There have been international studies made on what makes a man or a woman beautiful. Some body ratios, height, whatever, are the well-documented indicators.

But you'll be surprised to hear that there is no ugly person, which is the opposite to beauty. Everyone seems beautiful to some in the world. They may not seem the MOST beautiful, but beautiful nevertheless.

beauty is largely a cultural thing, but its still diverse even within cultures,,,