Beauty

Mmmmhmmm, you know I'm going to take the easy way out on this one, say 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder, skin deep, inner beauty' that sort of thing, so why write about it at all?

Physical attractiveness counts for something, there is a deviding line between people we want to be around to drink and talk shit, and people we want to hold, brush their hair back over their ear... all of that. And it is like one tenth of the forces that attract me to people.

There are for example, some peeps that I love right to the bottom of their souls but fundamentally lack the chemistry to make me want to be with them, physically. I see no point denying this.

Having said that, being attractive gets you not far. We have ultra-fast firing spindle cells that connect straight to the Amigdala or whatever, that make decisions about everyone we come across in literally a fraction of a second. Whether we want to fight them or flee or fuck them or quite possibly eat them. BUT we then have like our orbital frontal cortex that processes information and this, our thinking mind is very capable of overriding our hair trigger impressionistic mind. Both are capable of being wrong. One works by rule of thumb, the other by careful introspection.

So the advantage you gain by being physically attractive is a slight boost in the quick and dirty evaluation done by the reactive brain. This is not enough to overcome your personality.

I have no problem with physical beauty, I'm quite a fan of it, but it's a 'nice to have' rather than a necessity. It makes a poor investment, like property people are often naivelly over-invested in their outward appearance. Make-up I will begrudgingly admit can give somebody confidence to go out and face the day, but only because they've been made to feel ugly in the first place. That sort of shit.

Now, let's start sidestepping. Over the weekend I was at my 10 year highschool reunion, due to last minute date changes and short notice and shit, many people sadly missed out. But it was a great night, I had a great fucking time, and everybody looked more beautiful than they did on our 5 year reunion. What the pop-corn?

My former brother in arms at shared earth whom we shall call Captain Kirk made the call to me when I was around 22 or so that 'all of my friends have just gotten hotter when they turned 30.' Which I was skeptical about, but Kirk was sizzlingly hot himself, so I entertained the thought and now at 27 I must concede, he has a very good point.

At the 5 year reunion, myself and my peers were going through an awkward adjustment phase, more awkward than adolescence. It was too soon for us to come to terms with the realities of ageing, that you go bald, your metabolism slows down and your body starts falling apart.

Crucially, people were playing the hands they were dealt - poorly. This is a crucial element of beauty, ownership. I am attracted to people who fucking own their appearance. They express themselves, they are in control, they are not beholden to external standards. They carry their weight with dignity, the abandon their dignity with confidence and deliberation. These are beautiful people.

I have also always maintained, that in my personal case, personality carries an 80% swing factor. Which is probably extreme, and personality is probably a vague and ambiguous term. In part this reflects that 'beauty' is just one quality amongst kindness, intelligence, humour, tolerance, courage, honesty, flexibility, optimism and loyalty.

Another thing I should probably tidy up is that personality is an assumption I make about people based on the behaviour I observe, and behaviour can be seen.

I remember Honda hired some douchebag image consultant that bastardised the 'communication breakdown' of 7% of communication is the words we say, 33% is the tone we employ and 60% is body language. He took 'body language' and changed it to 'how you look.' So let me do the reverse, since behaviour can be seen and evaluated 'how you look' consists of 1. Actions you undertake. 2. Words you say. 3. How you say them.

These are all behaviours, that I and everyone observe and evaluate. I have met some 'good looking' people in my time in the narrower sense, that have invested a lot of time, energy and money into the physique, complexion, hairstyle and attire and just completely fuck up everything else about their appearance which is the vast majority.

Does somebodies body language make you feel welcome, comfortable and confident? Do they make eye-contact? Do they make you feel interesting and beautiful?

I am yet to come across a person who is so physically arousing I can forgive their other defects in personality.

You can become wealthy enough that you can treat people obliged to treat with you like shit, but... why? I don't think you can be attractive enough that people can overlook how you treat people, nobody you'd want to attract anyway.

Which makes me think, in any given room beauty shouldn't be some pie to be divided up by it's occupants. It isn't about taking out the competition, it's about bringing a platter of beauty to share.

Somebody truly beautiful builds confidence, and confidence makes people more beautiful. Few people look better frowning than smiling. People look better yet laughing. Beautiful people make others feel better not worse.