• Question: why are people pretty and ugly

    Asked by to Anna, Elaine, Fiona, Kevin, Darren on 24 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Elaine Cloutman-Green

      Elaine Cloutman-Green answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      This one is a very interesting question. I think what is considered pretty and ugly is not just a matter of evolution – women with big breasts are considered to be more likely to be able to have many children etc but also very much a matter of society and personal preference.

      I am not very slim and I don’t have a tan which is not a thing considered attractive in 2014; however in Georgian England I would have been considered attractive as i could afford not to go outside so have very pale skin (implying I didn’t need to work) and I obviously had enough money to buy plenty to eat (as I was curvy – hence the saying prosperous meaning well fed).

      This is true not only over time time but between countries, so what is considered attractive here is not the same as what is considered attractive in other countries. This is changing quite a lot with world wide media but still holds true.

      Whether you fit into a countries stereotype of attractive therefore depends on whether you want to? Whether you put into it the effort to tan your skin or dye your hair? What your DNA is like and therefore whether you are naturally symmetrical which is considered attractive and what you nurture is like i.e. do you like to eat too many chips 🙂

      Then on an individual level it changes again. I do not find muscle men attractive (I’m more a George Clooney kind of girl) but some people like muscle men. Luckily we are not all the same as it would mean there probably wouldn’t be enough people to go around to make good matches. That means we wouldn’t breed and the human race might die out.

    • Photo: Anna Bramwell-Dicks

      Anna Bramwell-Dicks answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      Have you ever heard the saying that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”?

      I don’t think that a person can objectively be defined as either a) pretty or b) ugly. If you were to show a picture of someone to 500 people, I think it is unlikely that you would get complete agreement as to whether that person is attractive or not. This demonstrates, that it is the person who is doing the judgement who is defining prettiness according to their own beliefs and opinions… not the subject itself.

      As Elaine said, the definition of what is attractive varies dramatically according to different cultures and times. For example, in Mauritania (in Africa) women are considered to be MORE beautiful if they are overweight – in fact, they send girls to fat farms to increase their weight. This is all linked to the perception that fatter people must be wealthier, which is an attractive quality!

      For me, personally, confidence and intelligence are what makes someone attractive.

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