I forgot to add a title but this new title isn't really any better.

In this thread, we attack strawmen. Sort of. This post contains a lot of references to physical attractiveness, so I want to preface it by saying that beauty is subjective, and what one person finds attractive another finds repulsive. So when I say "an attractive person" I really mean "a person whose physical appearance closely matches those qualities I or the viewer in question would find attractive," it's just easier to say it the first way. Nobody is truly ugly, and everyone is beautiful to someone. I was actually going to make a post about that alone, but I couldn't think of anything more to say than what I just did.

Anyway! Moving on:

I've heard a few people say it's "shallow" to consider looks when choosing a romantic partner. I would posit that it's only shallow when looks are the only thing that matters. Nobody would be happy waking up next to someone they thought was hideous. Anyone who says "looks don't matter" is lying or blind. The reason this becomes an issue, I think, is the perception that "cute" people are more likely to be approached (or have their approaches accepted) by members of their gender of preference, which, naturally, is a source of consternation for us non-super hot folks. For the next few paragraphs, I'm going to take a page from last post's book and copy and paste something I wrote on Reddit. (Woo, efficiency.)

I doubt very many people judge based on looks alone, but looks are the fastest and easiest way to determine whether or not you're interested in talking to someone. Let's say you're in a bar and deciding who to talk to: There's an extremely attractive person, a kind of attractive one and an unattractive one. So which one do you approach? Some people seem to have this perception that pretty people are more stuck up and ugly people are more likely to be nice, but I haven't found that to be the case. I know plenty of awesome gorgeous people and obnoxious ugly people. (I don't like saying that because physical beauty is subjective and I don't think anyone is truly "ugly" but for the sake of this post I'm going to run with it since it's easier.)

So, in the above example, it's quite possible the very attractive person is a horrible jerkface and the average one is kinda ok but not that great and the unattractive one is nicest, smartest, funniest person you'll ever meet, but it's equally possible that the inverse is true. You simply cannot know their personalities, so assuming it's equally likely any given one will be an ass or awesome, there's no reason to not approach the one you find most physically attractive first.

So it's not like society thinks ugly people have no worth (well ok some people act like that but they're idiots), just that it's the "pretty" people who always get talked to first.

I'm not sure I had a point there, really. This is just a topic I've been encountering a bit lately, and I needed something to ramble about, so this happened.

tl;dr Beauty is subjective