Is Physical Appearance Completely Irrelavant?

truth
Patiodog, I'm not familiar with Schechner. Could you give me a reference?

for JLN and Patiodog i highly, perhaps even highly recommend "Finite and Infinite Games" by James Carse. A vision of life as play and possibility. It's sociological in scope but readable not the less.

This needs to be answered on an individual basis, and I'll take the first shot.

In my case, I work in public relations, which means I am often in the public eye. I represent my clients in meetings with media, business groups, convention visitors, etc. Sometimes I function as an ambassador of sorts. My appearance reflects on the group I am there to represent. Especially when speaking. So I tailor my appearance to flatter my client's image. (I have more than one client, so I have several "looks.") Nobody ever told me I was expected to do this. It just makes my message more effective.

For design/editorial assignments, when I meet privately with my clients, I consider my appearance even more carefully. If I can't even put myself together well, what does that say about my ability to make their company look good?

My husband would be very happy if he could live in khaki shorts and T-shirts and wander around barefoot for the rest of his life. However, he works in technical sales. He contacts management at a number of corporations. So he dresses the part. He says, "If you want them to give you a big sack of money, you have to look like someone who's used to carrying big sacks of money."

Fortunately or unfortunately, we have to make a living in the real world. And we ARE judged by our appearance.

truth
Thanks, Dysl

Gee, I think I was the first one to talk about Lola's looks and style on the Western Gathering thread. But I have had less time for A2K lately.

"Is physical appearance completely irrelevant?"
Hell, no!

Who are we trying to fool? Hopefully, not ourselves.
Everybody puts relevance into looks. Even the ones who say they don't. Your physical appearance is part of your personal projection to the world. You may care a lot about it, or a little, but you care. You want to show who you are and to please the people you care to please.
And when you meet someone, you see how s/he looks like, how s/he moves, how s/he dresses. It's part of the person.
I mean we are not mind and spirit only. We are human beings. We are bodies.

This is different from lookism and other sort of prejudices. Prejudices are generalizations that come from stupidity, ignorance and trauma.

As for trying to be generally attractive, well... you have to be a fool if you want to be treated like a "sexy thing" and project such an image, but I guess very few people want to be treated as an "it".

I'll post later about online acquantainces and friends.

fbaezer
fbaezer, where have you been, Dude? We've missed you.

Now you know you are just lucky that you are so good looking, except for the genes your mother and father gave you---and your good clean moral living, of course. :wink:

BumbleBeeBoogie

Soz,

This thread is an offshoot of the Western Gathering thread in which a very personal statement was made about not only the men but also about me. So this thread is an intermingling of both specific people and about abstract ideas. There's no getting around it. I think it best if elephants are observed and addressed rather than left ignored in the room, free to **** all over the floor until things get out of hand.

Yes, I do feel criticized. I've said it clearly several times and I'm saying it again. Read the following post from the Western Gathering thread for example:

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2003 10:57 am Post subject: BumbleBeeBoogie's input

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I finally decided to get involved again after this thread no longer held any interest for me when juvenile behavior took over. I've posted three pieces I wrote several years ago that seem relevant to the dispute. They are posted under philosophy in the "appearance" thread.

BumbleBeeBoogie

This post was not made last week, but on Tuesday of this week.

I realize that Butrflynet ostensibly was criticizing the men and she has said she felt her attempt to communicate how she felt was "inept." But she was also implying, as you have just said that she thought "that OTHERS (not you) were being judged, negatively, for THEIR appearance. There was a good deal of attention given to you for your appearance, while others did not get that attention."

I don't believe anyone was being judged negatively for their appearance. The fact that it was my appearance that was the subject at that time on the thread doesn't say anything about anyone's opinion of the other's appearance. I was amazed and still am that anyone had this idea.

The thread had gone on very nicely, I think. Many of us had posted our impressions. I didn't feel negatively about anyone there. Unfortunately, I can no longer say that this is the case.

I think it's fine however much or little time anyone likes to spend getting dressed, for whatever reason. What I don't like is name calling.

thanks, dys.

this for jln while i poke around (instead of bumbling, as per usual) and see if i can sift what all's going on and whether i need to make amends for my frequently big mouth...



Richard Schechner is a director who wrote a book called "Between Theater and Anthropology" or something close to that, I believe in the '70s or '80s that I bought years ago and have never quite bothered to read! Just a name a lot of the pretentious shleps I used to hang out with would drop. I worked and studied a bit with one of his young disciples -- a very sturdy, no-nonsense German woman who took well to his sort of far-out experimental methods.

I believe a lot of his source material comes from southeast Asia and India, where he spent quite a bit of time with ritualistic dancers and the like. He's very into the origins of theater in ritual, and of trying to take the theater back to it. In other words, he's a pretentious artiste...

I'll chart my own thinking, briefly (?), and then hopefully we can go on to the more general discussion, which I think is interesting.

1.) There was a lively discussion after the Western Gathering, which I participated in as well. At the time I idly thought, hmmm, I wonder if this bothers BBB? The reason for that was NOT that anyone said anything bad about her appearance, but nobody was saying much good, either. Since BBB herself didn't say anything, and it was an idle thought -- nothing I was too het up about -- I didn't address it at all.

2.) Butrflynet addressed it, not in terms I would have chosen, and in terms she has since apologized for. Again, since I saw how the terms were hurtful and were too easily misconstrued, I didn't say anything.

3.) Butrflynet then met with a great deal of quite negative response, including after her apology. I felt that was disproportionate, and it was continuing. My sympathy for Butrflynet was building in the absence of anyone else standing up for her. This is the leaping to the defense syndrome I mentioned before. If nobody had been standing up for you, Lola, I would have felt compelled to do so. As it happens, many were.

4.) This thread was started. Since BBB hadn't said anything, and I didn't want to assume, I started out by talking about the subject at hand -- especially in terms of the fact that I seem to be at the threshold between being "young and beautiful" and therefore not "having to" do anything, and whatever lies beyond that threshold. I have had the luxury of not needing to think about this stuff much, except for professionally -- while doing nothing in particular beyond keeping clean and enjoying clothes, I have been accorded the benefits of being seen as "beautiful" -- and now I'm thinking about it more. It's interesting.

5.) BBB spoke up. It was clear to me from reading her posts that what I suspected -- that she may be bothered -- was true. I then started to be more specific, rather than just speaking about my experience. Especially, I took issue with what I called at the time "the jealousy card" -- that what BBB or Butrflynet were saying or feeling was about jealousy rather than something more subtle. I spent some time on this point, not so much because of you, Lola, but because that word had come up often with regards to Butrflynet.

6) We agreed on that point, and then things got a little murkier. Mostly, I am just trying to show that I think it is reasonable for someone to feel hurt by an absence of attention, rather than just negative attention. This particular point is not about me, nor is it about you, Lola. I understand how the "sundress" comment would have thrust you into this -- I dislike that comment as well, and, again, it was recanted and apologized for. I'm saying that the subsequent conversation, the subtleties, have not been about judging you or your appearance. It is about that very simple thing -- being ignored can hurt as much as being insulted.

Finally, while I have tried to make myself clear, I'm not actually that emotionally invested in this, and apologize if I have hurt anyone's feelings. The larger subject is an interesting one, and I'd like to continue to discuss it.

"To be political in the mode of infinite play is by no means to disregard the appalling conditions under which many humas live, the elimintation of which is the professed end of much politics. We can imagine infinite players nodding thoughtfully at Rousseau's famous declaration "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." They can see that the dream of freedom is universal, that wars are fought to win it, that hero's die to protect it, and songs are written to to commemorate it. But in the infinite player's vision of political affairs the element of intentionality and willfulness, so easily obscured in the exigencies of public crisis, stands out in clear relief. Therefore, even warfare and heroism are seen with their self-contradiction in full display. No nation can go to war until it has found another that can agree to the terms of the conflict. Each side must therefore be in complicity with the other. Before i can have an enemy, I must persuade another to recognize me as an enemy. I cannot be a hero unless i can find someone who will threaten my life-or better, take my life. Once underway, warfare and acts of heroism have all the appearance of necessity, but that appearance is but a veil over the often complicated maneuvers by which the antagonists have arranged their conflict with each other. It is because of the essential theatricality of politics that infinite players do not take sides in political issues-at least not seriously. Instead they enter into political conflict dramatically, attempting to offer a vision of continuity and openendedness in place of heroic final scene."

(hee hee -- parallel discussions on the same thread...)

dys, I've no idea what an infinite player is... but damn it if I don't feel inclined to find out. (And damn it if that book is currently overdue at the library. I may have to spend, grrrrr, money on a book.)

BTW, Dys . . . you might enjoy Rousseau's Sur l'origine de l'inegalité, from which i believe that remark was taken. That translates as On the Origins of Inequality. His basic take is that all humans in a certain pre-tribal state are free agents, and then proceeds to review what he believes are the causes that humans surrender or have taken from them, their freedoms. The title is simple enough that i'm sure it's translated that way into English--but i've never read it in English, and haven't looked for that title.

dys, That's the reason why many of us respect the story of David and Goliath. Only two people are affected, and only one die to declare the winner. c.i.

Didn't that little confrontation take place on a larger battlefield? Or did Joseph Heller mess about with the details? (Most of my biblical knowledge comes secondarily from other works of literature; I was raised on Pooh, Babar, and Ant & Bee...)

Yeah, them Israelites an' Philistines was asmitin' hip and thigh all over the place . . . they smote one another 'til they was plum wore out . . . but, of course, the Israelites had Jehovah fer their shield and buckler (always wondered, effen ya got a shield on one arm, an' a buckler on the other, what does ya do with the sword?), which was mighty damned handy when it came time to run away . . .

Now Samson was a mighty man
An' he fought with a cuddy's* jaw
He fought a t'ousand battles
Wearin' crimson flannel drawers . . .

(*Irish-English, cuddy=an ass, a donkey. Crimson flannel drawers refers to the modesty shown by actors in 19th century morality plays . . . )

"Unheard silence does not necessarily mean the death of the player. Unheard silence is not the loss of the player's voice, but the loss off listeners for that voice. It is an evil when the drama of a life does not continue in others for reason of deafness or ignorance. There are silences that can be heard, even from the dead and from the severely oppressed."

An oddly sombre and sagacious wind seems to be blowing up to me from the southwest, getting sand in my eyes and cracking my dry, burnt cheeks...

OK, Dys, I agree, I'll quit.

love ya honey bunches