Beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder
Hot or Not?
Physical attractiveness has certain advantages. Not only do you get to go on more dates if you’re good looking, but research by social psychologists such as Dion, Berscheid and Walster shows that you’re more likely than your less attractive fellows to be perceived as intelligent, pleasant, warm, well-adjusted, sexually proficient, and competent. The benefits of attractiveness start early. Karen Dion, for example, has found that the way that we judge the behaviour of young children is influenced by their physical appearance. Bad behaviour of children perceived to be attractive is more likely to be explained away as a temporary aberration than it is on the part of children perceived to be unattractive. The benefits extend into adult life. Did you get good marks at college? If so, then perhaps you were helped by your looks. Landy and Sigall have found that identical essays will receive significantly different marks depending upon the perception of the attractiveness of their authors. Needless to say, better looking means better marks.
There is an interesting point to be made here about the lives we live in the virtual world. One facet of internet communication is the absence of many of the cues that we rely on to make judgments about people in the everyday world. If someone has the looks of a supermodel, then likely it won’t be an issue in email communication in quite the same way that it is in a face-to-face situation. Perhaps, then, there is a sense in which communication in cyberspace, especially when one considers that cues to do with sex, age, social-class and race are also frequently absent, is less distorted than it is in everyday life.
However, the internet has not escaped our obsession with beauty. For example, have a look at the web site Hot Or Not? It is a matchmaking service with a twist. You upload a photograph of yourself to the web site, then other visitors to the site are able to rank, on a scale of one to ten, whether or not you are “hot”. A visit to this web site will be enough to dispel the myth that we don’t agree about what constitutes attractiveness. If we didn’t, then each person would score more or less the same mark – because of the effects of averaging over a large number of votes – but they don’t, which goes to show that beauty is not solely in the eye of the beholder.
A more extreme version of the Hot Or Not? phenomenon emerged a few years ago on the LiveJournal blogging community. LiveJournal allows users to create online communities, which are organised around particular topics. The Nonuglies community was established for beautiful people only. To join, it was necessary to post a picture of yourself on the community to see if existing members rated you as a beauty. If they didn’t, then they would tell you so. Bluntly. Here is an example:
You are one ugly bitch [shudder] . You are practically the epitome of ugliness. Double chin, horrid braces, no eyelashes, limp, boring hair, big ears, absolutely no color, shapeless eyebrows, no fashion sense…
Why bother mentioning such gratuitous and crass nastiness? Partly because the Nonuglies community was incredibly successful. It is credited with being the inspiration for a huge number of spin-off communities, including communities for teenagers, gays, lesbians and couples. Morever, there are also communities that are devoted solely to chatting about the Nonuglies phenomenon.
But also because the existence of communities such as these raises a number of interesting philosophical issues. The members of the Nonuglies community were criticised for their cruelty. It was pointed out that many of the people who were judged to be ugly were very young, possibly vulnerable, and were quite likely to be hurt by the criticism and abuse which came their way. The response to this criticism tended to be that people know what the community is for before they post their pictures, so if they don’t want to have their looks criticised, they shouldn’t get involved. However, the problem with this response is that it just isn’t clear that the fact that a person accepts the possibility that they might be hurt justifies the act of hurting them. For example, many people will consider a wager which involves a toss of a coin and a fifty-fifty chance that a person will either receive £1,000 or be electrocuted to be morally suspect, especially if the person taking on the wager has a strong need for the money.
It is an interesting point about closed communities on the internet, such as Nonuglies, that there is no real possibility that dissenting voices will be heard. Gordon Graham makes this point in his book, The Internet: a philosophical enquiry. He argues that the internet encourages the formation of pure confluences of interest.
Surfers have the opportunity to seek out kindred spirits and to pass over the sort of reforming and refining influences that operate in the normal processes of learning.
If Graham is right, then given the centrality of attractiveness in the non-virtual world as a source of esteem and kudos, it was probably inevitable that some of the beautiful people of the world would band together to form a community such as Nonuglies in an attempt to reclaim a birthright threatened in the virtual world by the fact that cyberspace is normally blind to the body beautiful.
Category: Ethics, Philosophy, Sociology | Tags: internet, mental health, sex 8 comments »
March 3rd, 2009 at 8:58 am
People can be cruel, and internet, where there is no face to face contact and no chance that the other will punch you in the face, gives people a chance to be even crueler. Certain occupations are already becoming communities of nonugly people. For example, an ugly person would have difficulty getting elected to many public offices. Children, of course, are very cruel to those who are weaker or have some defect, and generally, with the years, people learn to be more considerate with others, but perhaps internet gives us the opportunity to preserve our childhood cruelty until an advanced age. Such is progress!
March 3rd, 2009 at 9:58 am
“where there is no face to face contact and no chance that the other will punch you in the face, gives people a chance to be even crueler.”
I find this point very interesting, actually. I think we might have talked about it before.
In the recent past, Daniel Davies has called me a liar (in effect) andLouis Proyect sent through a whole load of abuse (“neocon scumbag”, etc).
I’ve never met these guys, and it’s possible that they’re psychotic loons in the real world, but one suspects not. Does Louis Proyect really go around calling random strangers ‘neocon scumbags’? It seems unlikely.
I do think the fear of physical retribution has something to do with it. If you call someone a liar for no good reason, then you at least run the risk of being hit. There’s other stuff going on as well, obviously, but some of it is just the fear that things might turn nasty if you’re too abusive.
March 3rd, 2009 at 10:53 am
Internet is Plato’s ring of Gyges.
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:02 am
That’s a great metaphor, Amos. I might pinch that for an article if that’s okay!?
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:26 am
It’s funny though…In the real world you run the risk of being hit if you call someone a liar, but on the internet you have the certainty that your name-calling will be on record. Both Proyect and Davies have already built up a considerable reputation for this kind of thing, which seems not altogether desirable.
March 3rd, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Sure. Would you have imagined before internet that there were so many Holocaust deniers (I’m referring to literate, educated people), people who get off on child pornography, etc?. Internet seems a test of virtue ethics, of what your character (if character exists) is, when no one is looking.
March 3rd, 2009 at 12:48 pm
[...] per the discussion here, online bullying is apparently at epidemic proportions (though it is the Daily [...]
March 24th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
I’m not sure where this discussion is focused but I shall comment on ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’. I believe that the appreciation of beauty is a form of intelligence. Is there any proof that any other life forms have the capacity to recognise beauty? Im not sure that there is. There are some components of ‘beauty’ such as symmetry and fashion although these in thenselves are not beauty itself. Some of the above comments seem to refer to sex appeal on the internet which is rather digressing from the discussion. Beauty in humans is a sign of health. In an environment the sense of beauty allows us to move towards healthy patterns of living. There will always be a large agreement in what is beautiful. That is why I believe it si a form of intelligence, as yet indefinable.