Attractiveness and Beauty

Affluenza by Oliver James explores the idea that "there is a correlation between the increasing nature of affluenza and the resulting increase in material inequality: the more unequal a society, the greater the unhappiness of its citizens" (my lazy literal quoting from Wikipedia).

After reading some reviews, the book is not without its critics. But there is one particular point he makes which I find interesting enough that I want to extend on it: the distinction between attractiveness and beauty. His definition is simply a perspective and is by no means objective, but the one he provides is useful to distinguish between superficial attraction (obvious, immediate, instinctive indicators and cues of sexual and physical attractiveness, such as waist-to-hip ratio, long hair, big boobs, a typically slim frame, skimpy clothing, etc) and beauty (a quality and attractiveness that transcends physique and enamates from within, by virtue of one's character, personality and how one carries himself/herself).

There is, for example, little doubt that a bombshell is attractive. Men are instinctively wired to be drawn to such cues of physical attractiveness. Beauty, conversely, has greater subjectivity to it, and is often in the eye of the beholder in the sense that if one is drawn to it, one just is, but at the same time, appreciating Oliver James's notion of beauty requires going one step further than just visually appreciating a person. It involves studying a person in the context of her behaviour and what she says, and then realizing that there's something more to her than simply meets the eye.

What is interesting about Oliver James's distinction is that very often, when it comes to attractiveness, there is often some societal or cultural standard that is in place, and everyone who wants to be attractive will be compelled to emulate it (and he argues that in affluenza-stricken cultures, there is greater incidence of such obsessions to emulate, such as South Koreans all aspiring to look a certain way through cosmetic and plastic means). On the other hand, what is beautiful has nothing to do with aspiring to look or behave in any particular way that is defined or demanded by society. A beautiful girl shines because of who she is, for who she is.

So, in that sense, seeking to be attractive deindividualizes, while being beautiful brings out one's individual beauty and never comes about through conformity to a societal standard. There can be many people who look the same, attractively, while there can never be two or more people who are beautiful in the same way.

I don't want to make this an issue of sex differences, but for simplicity's sake, a relevant example for men could also be in terms of their jobs. What appears to be an "attractive" occupation in Singapore, quite clearly, is to be a banker. This is perhaps the sort of job that a man would often hide behind in order to conceal his lack of individuality or personal choice in carving out a career path that he can call his own. I'm not trying to criticize the industry or its employees, but from personal anecdotal experience, I don't really know of many bankers who actually love their job. It's just something that is worth pursuing because it has high social prestige and pays well. In that sense, it is an attractive job, and it is a job that certainly deindividualizes. It is a big industry where nobody is really his own man. Conversely, having an interesting, "beautiful" occupation would be one where an individual has carved out and determined his own career path and whose job he will shape, rather than have the job shape him. I'm leaving this one at that, because this isn't my main point, but rather simply to explore what other forms this attractiveness/beauty divide can take.

My main insight is that it is quite clear, in which case, a person may feel more or less secure. A person who has a societal standard to live up to will certainly feel less secure than another person who has only his or her own personal standards to live up to. A woman who is compelled to look attractive according to a certain way will be afflicted with the insecurity either that one day, she will no longer look as attractive as what her culture deems "young and hot", or that her value pitted against thousands of other women vying to look just like that attractive exemplar defined by society will only be miniscule. Ugly competition is likely to be rife in this scenario. Contrast this to the woman of beauty whose attractive power comes from the beat of her heart, the thrill of her soul and the strength of her character, and this lady is her own woman - she cannot be bogged down by needless comparison.

It is silly to believe that any of us can be free of this affliction to conform and disregard the pressure that society and others put on us. Even I'm not spared, as I'm pelted quite regularly with social pressure by countless people who are curious, cynical or disdainful about the PhD route I'm taking. But I believe in my path. With every small step we take to actively switch from believing beauty lies in some exemplary ideal and striving to be like that (just like everyone else), to believing that beauty lies in being comfortable with who you are and bringing out the best in yourself for what you believe in, I think we can start to observe a positive shift in our collective self-esteem.

Evolution Of Pure Things

Recently I observed a discussion on friendship. Person E said that friendship is an involuntary reflex - it just happens and you can't help it. To this, person D, a budding introduction to evolutionary psychology student, responded that evolutionary psychology will say otherwise - that friendship is not involuntary.

There is a very subtle jump that people often either make or don't make, and that is to decide if something, once reduced into quantifiable packets, can still be regarded as pure (as in that thing's original form).

Take friendship, for instance. In order to study the psychology of friendship, we have to dissect it into parts, such as self-interest, reciprocation, wants, emotional closeness, need for cooperation, love and affection, etc (See, for instance, Karen Karbo's article Friendship: The Laws of Attraction on Psychology Today). The moment it becomes split into parts in a reductionary manner, the reduction can further continue - what environmental factors or evolutionary pressures led to the rise of each of these necessary constituent parts?

At this point, I think the tricky part arises. If we can divide a seemingly pure, ideal, honest and 'good' concept like friendship into parts, does that make it 'less' pure? Some people believe it still retains its original purity (like me), while others do not think so, and many people who dislike or have an aversion to reductionist thinking, technical science or evolution generally fall into this group.

I think that is entirely valid, because how you see this issue is dependent on how you see the world, how you want to lead your life, what is important to you, and whether beauty, perfection or purity can be allowed to fall apart whilst still retaining its original Form.

On the other hand, I tend to (rationally) stand on the side of reductionism because firstly that's the only way concepts and constructs can be studied in a scientifically meaningful manner, and secondly because I also strongly believe that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Each isolated element that comes from a bigger, more general concept, is certainly 'cheap'. But when everything comes together, such as a perfect combination of cheap and fluid elements like self-interest, the need for empathy, emotional bonding and cooperation (amongst many other factors), something as wonderful as friendship can arise.

(I stand on the reductionist side cautiously though, because I do know that studying big concepts wholistically, rather than broken down, also has immense value, particularly in art. This beauty element can very rarely be captured by science.)

So, going back at the original discussion between E and D, I chimed in by disagreeing with D, stating that evolutionary psychology doesn't actually say that friendship is not involuntary. The knee-jerk reaction from D, possibly coming from a perspective that says that 'things which are reducible are no longer pure', retorted by saying that evolutionary psychology asserts that friendship evolves under specific conditions, so therefore it is a non-altruistic choice. To which I replied, "I think the argument is more nuanced - it evolves under specific conditions to become an instinct, which is why friendship is indeed an involuntary reflex."

This goes for many other things that people often regard as pure and altruistic human behaviour, such as love, kindness and altruism. To think that these emotions arise out of a vacuum tells us very little about our place in the natural order of things, and such beliefs also do not account for why different people have these emotional capacities in varying degrees, or how come sometimes we demonstrate them and sometimes we don't. I certainly gain much less from "he's very unhelpful because he's a bad person" than "he's very unhelpful because he tends to shy away emotionally from people and does not trust that people will reciprocate." Evolutionary thinking will then provide the necessary precedent for why reciprocation is an important factor that gives rise to helpfulness and other prosocial behaviours.

Once these elements are in place, we have adapted possibly to serve some important need that the environment calls/called for. The adaptation becomes an instinct, which is why we feel as if friendship is involuntary and can't be helped. And indeed, it can't. When we feel drawn to people, the constituent parts that academics, researchers and scholars ponder about and tinker around with do not matter anymore - we hardly even think about them (which is the beauty of an instinct). Evolutionary pressures from constituent parts drove the stable formation of friendship psychology in humans, and then we experience it whether we know why or not, and the more we do not question it, the more efficiently it'll work. If A has the tendency to question/calculate his friendship with B, A probably isn't really friends with B.

On a slightly separate but relevant note, this TED talk by Dennis Dutton covers quite nicely how the appreciation of beauty is hardwired in our psychology, and clues to this exist in a universal appreciation of beauty across diverse cultures.