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Pulchritude Privilege
Have you ever noticed that when you’re making your way down the aisle on your way to your seat in coach, the passengers in first class seem to be more attractive than you are? (On a recent trip to Paris, I took the photo below of the guy sitting next to me, fairly typical of the people in coach.)
What’s the deal? What are all of these attractive people doing in first class? Perhaps it’s a vanity thing. Maybe attractive people like to watch, and be envied by, the plebes who wrestle with their bags on their way to the back of the plane.
Nah, that’s not it. After doing a bit of research, here’s what I found: Attractive people make more money than the rest of us, so they apparently spend some of their discretionary income to ride in first class.
Pulchritude privilege!
A researcher for Smithsonian Magazine found that handsome men earn 13% more than unattractive ones. In fact, the income gap between attractive and unattractive people, according to Smithsonian, is comparable to the gap between genders or ethnicities.
Pulchritude privilege!
Even a cursory search on Google reveals a plethora of studies that show that attractive people have a distinct and unfair advantage over unattractive people. They are happier, more self-confident, and have more friends.
Pulchritude privilege!
They’re even smarter. According to a study done in the United Kingdom, attractive people have IQ’s, on average, that are 12.4 points higher than unattractive people. (That’s kinda weird, isn’t it?)
Pulchritude, etc.
I’ve long thought that physical attractiveness is the most powerful advantage one can have. White privilege? That’s so last month. This month, if you’re going to remain au courant, you need to accuse handsome people of flaunting their pulchritude privilege. Tell them — now where have I heard this? — to check their privilege at the door.
So how does one decide who is attractive and who is not? The easiest way is to show photos of random people to a wide range of viewers. Let these viewers sort them out by asking them who is attractive.
Some aestheticians argue that attractive people project the appearance of health. That is, they have symmetrical features, clear skin, lucid eyes, and straight teeth.
Finally, according to the golden ratio (1.62), an ancient measurement of beauty, the ideal face is roughly 1 1/2 times longer than it is wide. And that ideal face also evidences equal distances from the forehead hairline to a spot between the eyes, from there to the bottom of the nose, and from there to the bottom of the chin. These golden ratios apparently cross-racial categories. (If you’re dissatisfied with this paragraph on the golden ratio, you have every right to be. I didn’t receive a math privilege like you uppity STEM majors out there who passed algebra in high school.)
Of course, there are other privileges that come with us when we are born. There is, for instance, the fast-twitch-muscle-fibers privilege (think Usain Bolt), the perfect-musical-pitch privilege (think Mozart), the body-spatial-awareness privilege (think Simone Biles), and so on.
I’ve always thought that the pleasant-face privilege would be very nice to have. This is the privilege of people who have a face that isn’t particularly handsome but has a pleasant and inviting appearance, i.e., has bright open eyes, perhaps a perky nose, and a mouth that curls slightly upward at its ends. People just naturally take a shine to those with the pleasant-face privilege.
In case you’re wondering, I was pretty much left out of everything except white privilege when they handed out privileges. I’m slow of foot, not particularly well-coordinated, one eyelid is lower than the other, and I have the flushed complexion of my Irish/Scottish forebears. (All of this when I was a younger man. Now I’m just old.)
I only possess one privilege for certain. I can sing Yankee Doodle Dandy while patting my belly and rubbing a circle on the top of my head. Do you scoff? Try it yourself.
Postscript: If you’re attractive, I’d rather not hear about it. But if you’re as ugly as sin, come sit right here next to me and tell me about it.
Published in General
Some people are smarter, some are dumber. Some are better looking, some are uglier. Life don’t care about “fair”. That’s reality.
Miffed, you’re right. It is reality. It is unfair. So perhaps we’re closer than we thought.
Well, the really rich people don’t fly first class, they take their own planes or use NetJets. And more recently they’re taking their own rockets for joy rides. And Bezos attractive? Seriously?
Was Leslie Howard or Humphrey Bogart good-looking? Or Claude Rains? I think the homogenization of looks on screen is a detriment. I say hire for talent, as opposed to generic good looks.
And juries like them better, so they have more legal leeway.
I think the definition of pulchritudinous is not just stacked, but curvaceous, bodacious, and built like a brick house. For men, handsome, lean, and long of limb.
Not just any brick house.
Bogart was definitely good looking.
Hm. I’m of the opinion that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And that much of it has to do with character, honesty and a straight and level gaze when looking at the world. It’s possible for a rather ordinary-looking (in conventional terms) person to appear much more “attractive” than he or she might otherwise be, by playing to one’s strengths and by maintaining internal and external consistency between character and looks. In most cases, a sweet womanly, or appropriately manly, disposition will carry the day, as long as both, in the end, are kind and thoughtful.
Checklists for pulchritudinousness, requirements for hotness, and guidelines for what constitutes beauty or handsomeness are handmaidens of the commercial cosmetic industry–all the way from highly-paid surgeons to the stars, down to the underpaid and possibly exploited immigrant at the local Asian spa–and have led untold millions to obsessive and destructive acts, financial hardship, and psychological torment in the pursuit of the ideal. Phooey on all of that, I say.
I can speak to this only from the female perspective. Lots of young women go through a stage in their lives when they’re considered somewhat pulchritudinous, and I guess I’m no exception to that. (Trust me, as one ages, and as gravity, life, heartache, arthritis, and an appreciation of the finer things take hold, the “internals” of character and disposition begin to far outweigh the “externals” of “stacked” and “bodacious.” But, in my experience at least, that doesn’t matter to men of good character, and it shouldn’t matter to women either.) What I know about myself is that I’ve always taken far less offense at compliments on my physical appearance–because it is what it is, and I didn’t have much to do with how I was born, and I haven’t manipulated it at all–than I have at disparaging remarks about my intelligence, understanding, or ability to follow a logical flow of events or conversation.
One is a remark about a fact of life I didn’t manipulate to my advantage, and really can’t take any credit for–so, just “thanks for the kind compliment; you’re lovely too,”–and the other is a deliberate smack at something I’ve worked and studied hard to develop a body (so to speak) of knowledge in, so that I can think and speak credibly about it. When you insult my hard work in that regard, you have a fight on your hands.
To you maybe. He was certainly as good looking to Lauren Bacall as Johnny Galecki was to Kaley Cuoco.
I don’t know any of these names.
I think the greatest advantage is whether or not you are genetically predisposed towards happiness.
Happiness, or even just contentment.
Maybe there is a base happiness rate in the same sense that there is a base metabolic rate.
Here is what @She said: “One is a remark about a fact of life I didn’t manipulate to my advantage, and really can’t take any credit for–so, just “thanks for the kind compliment; you’re lovely too,”–and the other is a deliberate smack at something I’ve worked and studied hard to develop a body (so to speak) of knowledge in, so that I can think and speak credibly about it. When you insult my hard work in that regard, you have a fight on your hands.”
@She, well, put up y0ur dukes, then.
Just kidding. I agree with almost everything you say. It’s always been the natural girl for me. Models, skinny girls, heavily made-up women, show-offy girls with hair all over the place, surgically-enhanced busts and butts — all of these leave me cold.
After a breast cancer lumpectomy, Marie was left with an weirdly drooping nipple and a small depression in her breast. The guy who did the surgery was insistent that Marie have cosmetic surgery to return the breast to a state of beauty. He was almost obnoxious about it. “You don’t want to go the rest of your life like that,” he said. Both of us — but Marie in particular — told the guy to take his scalpels and filler elsewhere.
The upside: We both have had many chuckles through the years at Marie’s lopsided nipple. Laughs always make life better. Besides, I think it makes Marie special. It’s also a reminder — a kind of badge of courage — that she survived a fairly serious bout of cancer. So it’s all good.
All of that was about fifteen years ago. We were both fairly old at the time. We may have thought differently if we had been young. Though I don’t think so.
I don’t think I’m going to show Marie my response here. She and I may laugh about it as we luxuriate in our hot tub, but mums the word if you ever come across Marie on the street.
Never mind.
Bravo! Both of you. And “Marie in particular.” As for “the guy who did the surgery,” he’s a jackass for not listening.
Yes. Chuckles about physical imperfections, weirdnesses, imbalances, the consequences of illness and aging, are special between couples and very close friends. And the fact that you shared this means a lot.
Bravo! (Again.)
Solid that.
Pretty much. That’s the conclusion of people who are knowledgeable about genetics and psychometrics.
Lauren Bacall as a teenager starred in her first major role with Bogie as his love interest in Key Largo. They dated and then married. Kaley Cuoco as a teenager starred in her first major role played Johnny Galecki’s hot love interest in Big Bang Theory, and during the first season or two of the show they dated and were a couple.
You don’t know Lauren Bacall?
The study of the superficial aspects of sexual attraction in humans, came from studies which focused on bird and mammal sexual attraction. Studies about human facial aesthetics, and others parts of human sexual attraction have been published for 40 plus years. Why does one animal choose to mate with another? Part of the answer is linked to differential mating strategies. Both female birds and female mammals make greater investment in child production and rearing than males. So they want a mate that is likely to produce a healthy offspring. Females use visual cues, noting all the surface characteristics, they use behavior characteristics, sound, and smell. We, like all mammals, are judging the sexual attracton of all other humans all of the time. We do this, mostly, without thinking. We are oblivious to this, for example, think of our presidents, in the last 100 years none of our presidents are 5’5’ or less, or are bald, or are 300 pounds, or have a disfigured face (even a birth mark). Think of the number of women married to men 5’ shorter than they are. We are doing this all the time, We comb our hair, and wear makeup and shave our entire face, or parts of our face to present an attractive public appearance.
It is true that across the world there are differ ways of expressing public fashion, from piercings, to coloring, to hair treatment, to clothing. However in facial aesthetics, if we take a stack of pictures of human faces around the world and ask all different populations to sort them from the least attractive to the most attractive, all groups sort human faces in the same way. So we can identify the characteristics which shape attractiveness.
Our theology tells us that we should not be fooled by our eyes, we should note the character and ethics of those we associate with. However, we should know that we are, like all mammals, influenced by our wiring. Our judgments about others are shaped by visual attributes. There are thousands of papers on this subject, one could start with the work of Judith H. Langlois, and Randy Thornhill who wrote in the 90’s and spend days examining the past and current research.
What!!! Are you crazy?????
How much shorter are the men?
Afternoon Dave,
As a demonstration question, I asked, how many couples do we know where the woman is 5” taller than the man? The largest example of this is seen in the number of Black men who have married women from China, Japan, of women from the Pacific Rim, versus the number of Black women who marry men from the same countries. When everything is held similar the differential is large.
In my youth, I didn’t have any illusions about my attractiveness. I wasn’t. In college, I’d go out drinking with girlfriends at a club, and everyone would get asked to dance, except me. I did notice, however, that if a guy talked to me on the phone first, he would usually be interested once we met in person.
Obviously I need to give this more thought. A quick response. In my limited experience, Dutch women seem to be the tallest. After several trips to China spread out over a decade, I noticed how tall the Chinese have become.
This is quite intriguing and I must admit, strains credulity. Given such broad spectrums of ethnic cultures, Mongols, Somalis, Nordic, Pacific Islanders, Eurocentric just to name only a few, idealized beauty and forms in each of these ethnicities are so distinctive and frequently self-describe as superior to others. It even seems to intensify within regions that share many traits: Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Thais have historically expressed contempt for the others idealized attractiveness. Not singling out the Far East as this phenomenon can be found throughout the world, even USA: California girls, southern girls, mid-west farmer’s daughters, northern girls ~thanks Beach Boys!
I am genuinely curious Jim, is there literature or studies available to validate this? I just might be looking to start a new “make you more beautiful” enterprise with these features ;-)
I once saw a composite face of all the various aesthetics from around the world combined into one face. As I recall, she looked like a cute, but womanly, light-haired surfer girl. Sort of like a young Christie Brinkley.
Evening Graham,
The last 25 years I worked in the Medical Illustration dept at IU med school. Every two years we had an art class for plastic surgery residents, and in the class we reviewed the current research on facial aesthetics and also breast aug and liposuction. To your first question, do all cultures rate facial beauty the same, yes, even if the folks making the evaluation have never see some of the races of these faces. One used to go to Google Scholar and type in Facial Aesthetics, under that category one could review all the studies concerning what makes a beautiful face. There are several photoshop programs designed specifically for facial plastic surgeons. These programs allow photographers to show the patients what their face will look after surgery. First, the pt has their face photographed pre surgery to document the starting point (post surgery pts often forget how they looked when they started), also this is part of legal defensive work. Then the photographer shows the pt what their face will look like post surgery, this image will be less attractive than the pt will actually look like post surgery. The programs are designed to mirror image one half of a face to the other allowing the pt to see how their faces would look if it were more symmetrical. Lastly the pt is photographed in the same studio with the same lighting after the surgery has healed.
The research has produced so many curious facts. For example, plastic surgeons with symmetrical faces make more than surgeons with asymmetrical faces, unfortunately there is not correlation between symmetrical faces and surgical skill or the ability to visualize three dimensionally. Also, as many folks have heard, women who are in the fertile phase of their cycle prefer men with more pronounced secondary sexual characteristics, like Harrison Ford, and when they are in their less fertile phase they prefer more feminized male faces, like Leonardo DiCaprio’s.