Yesterday, I came across a Reddit post.
The idea of personal and externalized identity is central to American culture. I don’t think it would be unfair to say that in American society, a person’s immutable intersectionality, (white, black, female, male, Hispanic, homosexual, heterosexual, old, young), provides the base for how much privilege or discrimination a person receives. By our own cultural standards this is unfair, because these are all traits that are decided by genetic and cultural factors. We are taught that ultimately a person’s character, their own actions based out of free will, that we judge them for.
To some that can be an awfully high standard given how much someone’s character can be determined by these traits, and how those traits are perceived in society can determine how one personally feels about them. Nonetheless, among the traits that make up a person’s intersectionality is their physical appearance, which we can assume is what attractiveness (at least in this Reddit thread) is based on. The difference between physical appearance and those other immutable traits is that physical appearance is permeable to an extent. You can make yourself fatter, thinner, smoother, more beautiful, less beautiful. You can put on different clothes, different makeup, even different skin care. But all of this remains under the shadow of your base body appearance, the part of your appearance that is determined by genetics.
How much genetics matter in terms of how someone perceives your physical appearance is still a question of debate in our world, but instead of comparing the importance of genetics to the importance of what you can change, we can assume that genetics matter as much as the things you can change; or that more importantly, how your genetics are perceived are what truly matters.
There are some genetic traits here in America that are attractive culturally: blonde hair, blue eyes, white skin. This differs from other parts of the world because not every society has the same preferences for what they find attractive. You could say that not every person has the same preferences. Duh! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder? But I want to argue that there are some physical traits that are found attractive not just globally right now, but cultures, traditions, mythology, literature, and even in science, and yes my point will still stand.
Science has it today, that we go after attractive people because their attractiveness implies how healthy they are, and how likely they are to produce offspring that will too be healthy. But for a very long time now (at least in Western society), who we choose to procreate with is much more complex than just going after the most attractive person. For royal courts before the industrial age, their marriages were viewed more as political transactions and gatekeeping rather than love, let alone for physical appearance. In current times, many of us undergo a lengthy dating process, sometimes involving many partners over many years. Attractiveness can be a significant consideration in the dating process, but it doesn’t account for much of what a long and fulfilling relationship is, and ultimately what is important for procreation in our modern society; the creation of a stable home and a stable family.
But attractiveness obviously still has utility in our society, it still invokes a response:
from past personal experience is people randomly and frequently comping/giving you things. Food, drinks, parking (lol), merch, little extras, free upgrades, random gifts, etc. People will quite literally bring offerings sometimes.
-u/ArcticParallelogramPeople want to talk to you all the time. Everyone wants to be your friend and it’s hard to know who is genuine. It’s been hard to find a partner who likes you for you and not your looks. I will say people are more trusting of you right away.
-u/RedTulipx
Across many threads on the subreddit r/AskReddit about the same topic “What is it like to be attractive,” many comments like these share this same theme of it being a double edged sword, almost leaning towards it being more of a curse than a privilege. I would find it almost surprising, if I didn’t know the context under which these comments were made.
To be attractive feels like an unearned social privilege. It feels unfair, a betrayal of our society’s egalitarian ideals. The comments on Reddit that exemplify this are the most upvoted in the thread. The reason I say this is because although these personal experiences are perfectly valid (if true), I find that most of the discussion about attractiveness on Reddit are similar to each other, whereas on other social platforms, like Instagram, it is viewed differently, and in my own personal experience it is very different. I want to focus on that different side for the purposes of this piece.
I am in my early 20s. When I go on traditional social media: Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, the content that is suggested to me are about things people in their early 20s would care about. We care a lot about being attractive. We are not dumb, we are not misguided. We know that being attractive brings attention, we know it brings more social approval. My experience being that the attractive people around me love the social approval. How many times have I heard of someone relishing over increasing their follower to following ratio on Instagram, on how many DMs they have sent to them, while trying to play it off as it doesn’t really matter.
Think about the life that the attractive influencers push, the friends, and the experiences that are afforded to them by being attractive, or becoming attractive, as a result of mere social approval.
As you can see, it is not just about being attractive. And here is where I think the utility of being attractive is: it is a signal of privilege, of importance, and power.
I want you to think of popular figures around us who have become more conventionally attractive as their career has progressed. Think of Mark Zuckerberg for example, who was famously a scrawny nerd computer programmer archetype, and who now has a well-built body, practices Jiu-Jitsu, and has his hair curled. Markplier, who ended up starting OnlyFans as a joke in 2022. Intentionally or unintentionally, their conventional attractiveness is an aid to project authority and credibility, particularly in Mark Zuckerberg’s case.
Here in beautiful Southern California, from where I write this, attractiveness is almost solely a signal of privilege. To be attractive implies the access to wealth to maintain yourself in your beautiful state, to afford time to go to the gym, to afford skin care products, to afford nutritional supplements, to afford well-designed clothes, to afford a good hair stylist, nails, teeth; an endless list of things to upkeep. The consequences of not being attractive here are more dire than almost anywhere else in the United States. It is why I consistently see friends so anxious about their appearance, it is why I see them liking those Instagram Reels above, it is why I see the local 24 Hour Fitness busy at all times of the day. It is a cursed spirit lingering over your face like a veil, whispering to you all the things you could be, how big your biceps could be, how nice your hair could look, how everyone that has betrayed you, that has excluded you; you can become beautiful, and become the center of attention, and say fuck you to all of them. To look like a god, is to be a god.
And what does it mean to be a god? What does it mean to be above the social restrictions that we the normal people suffer through each day?
As a man, I’ve been offered the job for every interview I’ve been in except one, where union rules were strongly at play.
u/NiceEgg27Another thing: sometimes a surprising number of people knew who I was, my name, or little things about my habits/routine even though I have never spoken to them in my life.
u/ArticParallogramWatching previously “impossible” business deals go through because you showed up and somebody likes you.
u/cfaith2022Free food, free everything, people always so happy to see you. Want to talk to you. Bend over backwards for you. Everyone wants to get to know you. Random strangers wanting to take pics with you.
u/cfaith2022
It certainly means to be immune from social exclusion. And to someone who is constantly socially excluded, seeing an attractive person is like watching a god walk past. It can make you angry, even resentful. It is unfair, it is unmeritocratic, they lied to you, they said the world was fair and it isn’t. You’re just weird and antisocial.
Where do weird and antisocial people go? Think of who gets to be called eccentric and enigmatic, vs those who get called weird and antisocial. Think of how we’re pushed to certain spaces and groups on the internet, cool mainstream identity-based spaces on Reddit, Discord, and (hopefully) Tenellous.net, vs places like 4chan and Kiwi Farms. Think of how this way of thinking is not specific to ultra masculine gym influencers or beauty influencers, it exists even within the space that Tenellous.net takes up; we the neurodivergents, the creatives, the programmers, and computer nerds. Is it entirely due to personal preference whether we end up here or brooding over lolcows on Kiwi Farms? We should give merit to the idea that being accepted and rejected in real life influences how we act and where we go on the internet. The experiences and friends we have on the internet.
And it’s not all about being attractive, especially when it comes to this.