Dispelling Beauty Lies: The Truth About Feminine Beauty | Hacker News Reader

Dispelling Beauty Lies: The Truth About Feminine Beauty

jsanilac.com

12 pointsfinite_jest8 comments

The article treats the subject as an immutable law or truth, with sweeping statements like "The reality is that all women look better in makeup."

What seems to be completely absent is any realization that we are the masters of our own reality. One doesn't have to submit to this tyrannical notion of inescapble universal beauty, but wake up to the possibility of changing the rules of the game or indeed refrain from playing it at all.

After all, beauty is a proxy. Stop focusing on the proxy and start thinking about what makes you a good human being, then construct a beauty identity around that. Not the other way around!

The most successful people get to define beauty standards.

I mean, if you're a desperate, toxic person looking for a mate above all else, then sure, follow the article's many advice. But if you're looking to rewrite history, you're better off developing your own damn personality and growing as a human being.

> But if you're looking to rewrite history

You assume people choose who they are physically attracted to. Someone being a 'good' human being doesn't mean all that much in the realm of physical attraction. It is not a rational exercise.

For you maybe. I make specific effort to make it a rational exercise because my life has been better for it. You are not slave to your primitive monkey brain desires. And our post-modern world contains much that confuses it, some even maliciously engineered to parasitically manipulate you. Like this stupid article and its "I'm not going to tell you to get breast implants, but this data here clearly shows you should."

I am not arguing people have no control over their lives and everything is deterministic. I am arguing that the rational component (ego) is only one aspect of decision making and is often reactive (with explanations for behavior), not proactive.

> You are not slave to your primitive monkey brain desires

One part of your brain influencing the other doesn't enslave it. Repeatedly denying your desires will only make them stronger, which is why willpower is almost never enough by itself. Sure, if you focus all your energies on regulating one set of behaviors you may be successful, but willpower is a resource. If you use it all there you won't have it elsewhere.

Willpower is not a resource, it's a tree. The more you water it the stronger it grows. It doesn't spend it accumulates.

Only your beliefs make it otherwise. If you believe it is a resource then you allow yourself to act as if it were depleted.

I don't doubt what you are saying is possible, but I've never come across it.

I do a few things absolutely, for life, with no exceptions, but if applied to all aspects of life the rigidity would be crushing.

I strongly recommend this article to female readers. As long as they're in need of a good laugh. The kind of laugh you need to avoid screaming.

As for male readers... note that many (perhaps most) women look with skepticism on men who use the term "mating market". That's not how they see dating, and they dislike being treated as optimization problems. Few want to see themselves "the best woman who will put up with you," and if you do, they're going to be uncomfortable.

> In fact, the average public rating of faces men submitted as their "four most attractive" was only 6.6 out of 10.

A surprisingly in-depth article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com