Is Physical Appearance Completely Irrelavant?

Well, Keitel and Huston seem and may well be, uh, brighter, which brings us another reason to dump on people, brightness. Let me not go there right now.

I am a feminist, have been for years, think feminism makes obvious sense, would of course quibble with some aspects, as I suppose I am more of a personist. But - when I was premed, for example, it took me a while to realize that less than 1% of those who got into med schools in the US were women (1962), or some figure quite close to that, might have been .5% But I think men have had a road to hoe re expectations too. Still, I have only to talk to some unregenerate sexists to see flames come out my own ears.

Now, then, who else here has gone from a darling angel avatar to a dog but MOI???

How has it affected your thinking of who I am, if you happened to notice I am not a guy?

Imagery, style - important in getting ahead and getting a sense of selfsecurity in your surroundings. But as we all know, not everything. I had a boss once, no slouch, who said that style was everything, and I argued mightily. Still would, but see how it can help. Style is ephemeral to a large extent. And beauty often is too.

Even when it isn't, then what. One of my best friends has had the saddest life, in terms of love. Well, she has loved, but not been loved back so well. Cars used to almost crash when she walked down the street, and not in an streetwalking way.

I have, as I may have been going about on too saccharinely, an enlarged sense of beauty, and this gets me in trouble in some art discussions, when people scoff at beauty as a useful value and I mean beauty differently...I mean it as some kind of fit, some working mechanism, some complex that sings. Doesn't have to be pretty. I like good design; I don't read style magazines like I used too, look for the "bones" when I look at gardens or buildings or cities..or
other matters.

I also love real flirtation, though I am slow to ever get into it. But flirtation is complex again, or I would like it to be.

On looks, I too have had cosmetic surgery. In my case it was dumb move number 24 in a longer list. I had lost weight when I was in my early forties and had what I will describe as a rooster neck, something of a familial trait, a version of large tire neck seen in so many family group photos. I had just recently left the world of medicine for that of landscape architecture, but at the least I wasn't afraid of surgery, then. I was married to a way younger man. And the key thing, an older friend had had a chin tuck and looked forty million times better. Plus I had at the time, the money. This was in the late eighties.

I might or might not undo that now, but I wouldn't do it again. My face is my face. I have friends, the same very beautiful one I mentioned before, who have repeat work done and are beginning to look like Merle Oberon, or for those of you who don't know her, your basic sock pulled tight against a darning ball. And yet I see it for business reasons and perhaps psychological reasons.

I have another friend who is a tv anchor and she is my age, she is 61, and still does the local news at a major affiliate in a major city. First she got her eyes done, and then more. She looks fabulous. And she too is married, fairly recently, to a younger man. I can go with that, her image as a can do middle aged woman is important...she has in the last year done many rather athletic and brave efforts to get to the news...and they wouldn't have sent her if she wasn't physically fit and ... nice looking. Whether any of us believe anchors are worth two peanuts is another subject; I know my friend as very analytic and often quite wise in person.

I agree that reading others' flirtations and banter can close me off to a thread, and I don't always like the clubby atmosphere that is here, at the same time that I thrive on it.

I am not against Butryfly speaking up (except for the one apologized for dig) even though she isn't familiar to the folks on the Western Gathering thread. To see ourselves as others see us - she saw us as shallow. I have been rambling. Next post I hope to ge back and answer her specific questions on the first page of this thread.

And....on Harvey Keitel, I was writing my tome in the previous post before I saw Lola's take on Harvey being so bright...meaning, I agree Keitel and Huston are bright.

Butrflynet,

I'm glad you've told us your perspective. All are welcome. I don't agree with your perspective in that I don't find knowing how a person looks to be a detriment to getting to know them. And I find that when I find out how my internet friends look it does affect me at first. I think how a person looks is a vital part of who they are. So I like to know. But I realize not everyone has had the same experiences I have had and I try to understand what you mean. For you, appearance seems to get in the way of knowing the essence of a person. I take you at your word.

Osso, I don't find myself identifying with feminism. I've always tried to understand people. Their sex is part of who they are as is their perception of what their sexual identity means to them. All this is based on far more than gender. It has to do with experiences, adaptations and fantasy. I have always preferred to try to understand a person whoever they are. I think this is what you're saying.

Soz, Are you going to tell us your experiment? Or did you tell us and I missed it?

The Ossobuckaroo has made a point here which has larely gone unexamined in this discussion:



As for the first part, i recall that my grandfather had old covers of Liberty and Colliers magazines on the walls of the backroom of his print shop, along with some 40's era "cheesecake." Those were fresh in my mind in the early 1960's, and, although i was then too young to have made the types of analyses i do now, i was nevertheless able to note the sharp difference between, say, Twiggy and Betty Grable. Historians and psychologists alike are given to a variety of written chin music which is the equivalent of being in love with sound of one's own voice. I won't therefore rehearse what i've heard and read about the nuclear era fascination with female death's heads (i.e., Twiggy, with smudged eye-sockets of heavy mascara and shadow and "bloody" red lips on a cadaverous, almost skeletal figure) as compared to the plump beauties of earlier years (for which the more plausible rationale is that a fat woman to a peasant represents good feeding, and is therefore a sign of success). But simply to compare Audrey Hepburn to Doris Day should show that even within the same era, there is no one standard of beauty.

No, of course physical appearance is not irrelevant, and Osso is absolutely correct to note that fashions of "beauty" are transient. But more importantly, and what i consider drives this discussion with such intensity among a community of folks in fogey-denial, is her contention about the ephemeral nature of beauty. Every man proud of his "washboard" like gut, and every woman proud of her jutting bosom, will eventually fall prey to gravity, for all the exercise they may do--we all age, and we all slip beneath the horizon of currently popular trends in physical appearance.

Since it seems to matter a great deal to so many here, which i have noted i believe to arise from the fact that so many of us here are aging and feel it--i would offer a suggestion. Genuine maturity offers us the opportunity to look past mere physical considerations in judging anyone or anything. I've seen houses which were irredeamably ugly, in which people had made themselves "at home," and which offered an internal comfort which belied their facade. And i've heard young men and women alike complain that they didn't understand why he or she is so attractive to the opposite sex, just look at him or her, how can anyone think he or she is handsome or beautiful--and been bemused at this lack of understanding of character.

So, all of you out there who are graying, sagging, going flabby--if that matters to anyone you meet, i'd say that they are not worth the time of your day--and, in any event, a few years down the road, they may have grown up enough to have gotten over what is always essentially their problem, and not yours.

setanta

Yes, but no. Like dlowan, you point to the aging factor, and that does seem to be the elephant (or one of them) in the room.

Yet you concentrate, I think, on the half of the glass that is empty here. Sure it is that anyone solely judging personal worth on some standard of beauty is 'shallow' and not much worth knowing in their present state.

But on the other hand, there can be (sometimes is) an angry jealousy or disdain for the mere presence of superior beauty or youth in another.

In the discussions which have preceded, no one has suggested that anyone else is without beauty (other than me pointing to Dys and laughing laughing laughing).

So I think the 'problem' you reference in your last line isn't quite so clear.

But let me add finally that we are fast creating a mountain here from what was really not a terribly egregious little mole mound.

Ya sure are. I took a quick glance at them pictures over there and thought, "What a remarkably diverse group of people." (I mean, a buncha white folk, but clearly, from their comportment, from rather different walks of lives, coming together and apparently hitting it off.)

Ah, well. We're all monkeys, anyhow.

Great points.

There was once a documentary about the "science of beauty" that studied what traits were most accepted as beautiful by different cultures -- symmetry, big eyes and lips and small noses were requisite. Using Audrey Hepburn and Doris Day as examples, even though they were different in their beauty, they still had similar traits, like big eyes and small noses and symmetrical features.

There's been mention of plastic surgery being one option of helping someone look attractive -- and like Osso pointed out, it can be even more than just aging vanity, but almost necessary for certain professions. I respect the decision to have plastic surgery (as I'm pro-choice in all matters), but the fact that it is something that some older women feel is necessary just for professional success takes away from the beauty of aging without surgery. And more and more young women are having surgery to "fix" features that don't fall within the "science" of beauty -- like shortening their nose or lifting hooded eyes or adding cheekbone or lip volume -- so it seems that the definition of what's beautiful is becoming more superficial with the advances in plastic surgery techniques. It seems that our popular culture has a growing lack of respect for "unique" beauties (like Angelica Huston). Like Butterfly pointed out earlier, physical appearance can be distracting sometimes from inner beauty (or lack thereof), and I agree in that regard that too much emphasis is placed on stereotypical physical beauty.

What about people like Kathy Bates -- she's beautiful even though she doesn't fit in with the popular notion of beauty because her inner vibrance shows through on her face. Ann Richards is a good example of aging beautifully without surgery -- sure, she has the "rooster neck" and more lines on her face than most public figures her age, but her passion and spunk and experience show through and make her beautiful (IMHO). On the manly side of things, I think that David Letterman is a good example of unique handsomeness -- not one you'd stop on the street for but one that comes through his personality (and style).

So I guess the crux of my long-windedness here is that even just a warm smile or hearty laugh can make someone physically attractive, even if they aren't "scientifically" beautiful.

Blatham wrote: "But on the other hand, there can be (sometimes is) an angry jealousy or disdain for the mere presence of superior beauty or youth in another."

Setanta wrote "fogey denial" - (for which I shall love him forever!)

Blatham - I think you are quite right in that comment.

I also think that Setanta is right in a lot that he said.

I think here, and elsewhere, that fogey denial is one of the things feeding the jealousy and disdain.

Because we know that the only solution to our foglification by time (relative I know - but we ARE a culture in fogey denial - {I happen to think we baby boomers are changing that a bit, cos advertising and such like crap follows our hip-pockets, but, as ever, I digress}) is to die young and beautiful - (if we were lucky enough to be born so in the first place - not sure that young and ugly has the same cachet, but there goes that digression again) - it IS hard for most of us, at least to some extent, to see our youthfulness fade, and gravity and all those naughty recreational habits have their way with our tender flesh.

To the inequality in beauty that always existed, is brought the factors of genes, luck, environment etc to weight the scales again.

Things like plastic surgery can alter our fortune in this regard for a while - and may well cause jealousy for those who might like it, but cannot have it.

Life is ever unfair in many things - and our grief at the losses that age brings may be a factor in resentment of those less obviously in its grip.

I think that was a part of what made up our elephant - though I think other factors which have been explored thoroughly by other posters were also at work.

It IS an interesting elephant, though, is it not.

I wish awfully that it had not stampeded so upon its entrance, though, and hurt people.

Another factor, I think, is exemplified by Harvey Keitel (who is a GOD in my opinion) in all his lovely seamed and crevicy glory.

Like it or not, appreciation of the beauty of a woman similarly seamed and creviced would bless a far smaller number of people - and this is hurtful to we women, I think. Well, it is to me, as the seams begin to make their first entrance upon me face!

sheesh, I like a lot of the people in this community!

deb...you are a treasure

There was a movie from years ago where Jane Fonda and Alan Alda played ex-mates come together at about 50. Her character expressed some outrage at how women become wrinkled and men become dignified with aging.

But I must very frankly add here that though I greatly enjoy the company of the young women I know through my daughter and nices/nephews etc - their vivicacity and enthusiasms - in terms of romance and friendship and love-making, women my age are SO much more engaging and just plain fun.

OK, the experiment didn't really work. Which is to the credit of everyone who responded. I had attempted a post making a rather obscure point, and thought it would be easier if, instead of building it from scratch, I could create a situation and say, "see, that's what I meant."

Thanks for the compliments. I am sort of sending them on back through time to the gal in the pictures, who didn't believe she was beautiful. (And who does feel almost like a separate entity now.)

Miscellaneous rambling:

While the spark was decidedly molehillish, I think it raised interesting questions which bear discussion. My understanding is that this thread is for those larger questions. (No?)

I've recently been thinking about this stuff more. I never really "did" anything when I was younger -- no makeup, no particular hairstyle, no particular hair products. I'd wake up, shower, wash hair with miscellaneous shampoo + conditioner, towel it off, and walk out the door. No blow drying, even.

But I was accorded the priveleges of beauty -- the favors, ("oh, you don't need to pay for that") the attention, etc., etc. I intellectualized this somehow as being OK since I wasn't "trying" for it. I scorned the heavily made-up and hairsprayed babes.

This lasted through my move to L.A., when I was 26. There, my appearance needed to be "professional" or I couldn't do my job. I had to do a lot of schmoozing, a lot of fundraising, a lot of convincing people in a short amount of time that I knew what I was doing despite my youth and inexperience. And "professional" in L.A. meant something different than in Madison.

So, I capitulated, bit by bit. First the clothes -- suits, high heels. Then makeup -- lipstick, occasionally mascara (I never went beyond that -- no foundation, blush, eyeliner, whatnot.) Contacts. An expensive haircut. Expensive hair products.

It worked, but I knew at the time that I would be in L.A. for only 3 years (E.G's postdoc at Caltech) and so I saw it as something to get through before being a stay-at-home mom for a while and relaxing and being "myself."

I moved while 6 months pregnant, then had a new baby, and was completely absorbed in her for a while. Then I started to come up for air, started to try to figure out my "look." Because after 3 years of makeup and hair products, and the stressors of pregnancy and childbirth and new motherhood, I didn't look like I did before the L.A. interval.

So, the question -- accept that the beauty I used to take for granted is no longer there? (Well, I'm being extreme -- I'm still me, but my skin has changed, my teeth aren't as straight [wear your retainers, boys and girls!], I wear glasses instead of contacts, etc.) Just damn the torpedos and refrain from "doing" anything, as I somehow think is more honorable, more honest? Or go get a facial, wear lipstick to the playground, get another expensive haircut?

I'm still somewhere in the middle -- got the haircut, no lipstick -- but have found the process interesting. Why do I care? Who am I worried about? (My husband, bless him, is steadfastedly appreciative.) What, exactly, is wrong with "doing" anything? Why my distaste?

I like the haircut.

How Cool is Cool?
HOW COOL IS COOL?
By BumbleBeeBoogie

Don't be misled by the impressions you hold
about people you think of as shy, not bold.

How cool is cool? Hey, you're in for a surprise.
That gray-haired lady might be the last you'd surmise
to be the coolest, most secret adventuress
name on Harley Davidson's mailing list.

She may secretly sigh over the long-haired studs
in their skin-tight black leather bike duds.

There ya go!!!

(The opinion I was waiting for.)

The Fustaluge
THE FUSTALUGE
(* Archaic term for a grossly obese person)
By BumbleBeeBoggie - May 6, 1991

Hey, nigger! Yo, honky!
(Sticks and stones)
Lazy dagos! or greasy spic wetbacks!
(May break my bones)

What about krauts, chinks or gooks?
Or, even more timely, rag heads and camel drivers!
(But names will never hurt me.)

Even liberals, the hated liberals.

And queers, don't forget the queers!

What is a fustaluge? The person it's still socially acceptable to malign. Even the most thoughtful, otherwise sensitive people call fat persons Fatso or blimp. Even a comic strip with a fat broad.

A Fat Broad! Have you ever said that? Thought that?

Hey, jumbo, if it's jelly it must shake like that! Move over, tubby, get your fat ass out of my way.

Literature demeans someone as evil or grotesque, not by describing them as thin, but nearly always an evil fat slob with fat lips, fat fingers, greasy fat oozing evil and degradation.

Don't you know any neat, nice loveable fat people in this world? Have you ignored their humanity, shut them out of your scope of interest and brushed them aside?

Names hurt. All names hurt!
Sticks and stones.

Whoa!

(The "timely" part is interesting, given when it was written.)

I think you're getting at some of the same things I was trying to get at, BBB.

Hard to do head-on.

Illusions
ILLUSIONS
By BumbleBeeBoogie
(A true story)

He was a slender urbane man of 45, with silky black hair cut long in the European style. His neatly trimmed black goatee was tinged with wisps of gray at the corners of his smile. He wore a wine-colored dinner jacket over a ruffled white shirt with a black silk tie, black trousers with satin side stripes, and glossy black patent leather loafers. A paisley handkerchief was folded in the pocket of his jacket.

His carefully manicured fingers flew over the keys of the baby grand piano he played in the lounge of a posh restaurant overlooking the Marina. His lyrical music and witty banter attracted the dinner crowd, who lounged around the piano bar waiting for their tables. After dinner, it was the custom to request songs (he knew them all) and to sing along with his rich baritone voice.

The men enjoyed him because he was a man's man who achieved instant camaraderie with even the dullest among them.

The women were mesmerized by his charm and because he was so virile, handsome---and suave. His manners were elegant; his sophisticated smile beguiled them. From his piano he conducted intense minute-romances with every woman in the room, never neglecting the plain for the beautiful.

As midnight neared, couples began leaving to take home their babysitters and to kiss their sleeping children goodnight. The partiers remaining until the piano bar's 2 AM closing time would have been surprised and, perhaps disillusioned, to learn the terrible truth:

After leaving the darkened restaurant, the sophisticated piano player stopped by the local newspaper's distribution center in the pre-dawn darkness. He picked up bundles of papers and bound them into rolls with rubber bands. He flung the papers from the window of his aging red truck onto the driveways of his route's customers. As the sun rose, he returned to his real world to have breakfast with his wife---his wine-colored dinner jacket hung in the closet to await recreating his illusion.

I could not agree more. I often assume the character of a country boy when posting here, and this is not a pose, for so i was raised. But i was born in the Big Apple. Even though we left there when i was quite small, there seems to be something which enters the character from even such a small exposure. I'm always comfortable, right at home, in fact in New York. I instinctively like and understand New Yorkers (the real ones, not the transplants from Wisconsin and Utah paying way too much for a loft in the East Village), and get that response in return. Although somewhat credulous as a small boy, you basically can't sell me anything i don't want, ideas included (having an evilly plausible elder brother helped enlighten me far beyond my years, it is true).

The combination of "city slicker" and "country boy" has always stood me in good stead. I'm happy to be taken for a rube, in the sense of someone's perception, because in underestimating me, they do themselves a disservice, and i can't be taken in the sense of being conned. And i'm glad that my "city slicker" side gives me the opportunity to turn on someone who has underestimated me and is treating me with contempt, and reduce them to an intellectual pile of ashes, when they deserve it. This has also lead me to a very broad pragmatism, understanding "what works" in a great variety of situations and groups.

Which leads me to why i quoted the Cunning Coney. She is absolutely correct in her statement of the injustice which is visited upon women in the matter of aging. And i believe i know the cause, or the proximate cause, at the least. Men generally do not age gracefully. Far from going gently into that good night, they have to be dragged kicking and screaming into anything resembling a dignified old age. They run out and buy an expensive sports car, in which they drive way too fast and recklessly, and with which they hope to "pick up chicks." Picture me at the side of the road, in my country boy mode, saying: "Uh haw haw haw, just look at the way you are!" If the facial and pectoral tissue of said chick is smooth and soft, so is the brain tissue. The thought of taking to dinner someone who will need an explanation of the intended purpose of the "extra" flatware bores me. The thought of the physical demands likely to be made by said chick exhausts me. The mature woman has the beauty of character which we have discussed here, and she also has self-possession, and, one hopes, tolerance and understanding.

Yes, life is indeed unfair to women as they age, as compared to men. But console yerselves, girls--they get what they pay for, and they'll come crawling back someday, although i should be surprised if you were interested at that point. The Hungarian novelist, Steven Vizinczey, wrote In Praise of Older Women, in which he details his sexual education under the tutelage of mature women. I read this when quite young, and it was an eye-opener. It also lead me down some very entertaining paths, but that's none of your damned business . . .

Setanta Loved that book...and again, a wonderful post. I have always been of the school of thought that who you age with is more important than how your looks change over time. The main thing is if the relationship works. Some people are shallow, and maintain shallow lives. The rest of us thankfully do not.

Funny story: Mrs. cav, being a Viggo Mortensen fan, posts on a Viggo board. One female member criticized her sharply for using <thud> in response to a post of a hot Viggo picture. To paraphrase, the member's post basically stated that this was sexist, and Viggo probably wouldn't want to be treated like a sex object, and this was a total insult, and would Mrs. cav please stop using <thud> on the boards (like this member is the sensitive one who will catch his attention and marry Viggo one day)....There was a long and pointed response from Mrs. cav that I won't get into, but it got many cheers apparently from the other members (let's just say she almost missed dinner). People are funny...

Life and ageing may be about compromise, but anyone who puts physical beauty before the content of your soul is just a dick, male or female.

Seeing as pics are being posted, I'll put up this link again, I know a few have taken a peek, but why not? http://cinnabar10.tripod.com/memywifeandaplateoffood

I am posting this again in reference to the smile comments...I took a look at my smile in this picture, and I think KitchenPete might be my dad

Sozobe, you watch that Sozlet when she is old enough to date, especially with your good genes...

Cav, one of those pictures really offends me, and I can't help but judge you adversely for it. POACHED salmon?!? Ohhhhhhh...........