Amber Heard, Considered by "Science" to be Most Beautiful
She Walks in Beauty
By Lord Byron (George
Gordon)
She walks in beauty,
like the night
Of cloudless climes and
starry skies;
And all that’s best
of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and
her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that
tender light
Which heaven to gaudy
day denies.
One shade the more, one
ray the less,
Had half impaired the
nameless grace
Which waves in every
raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er
her face;
Where thoughts serenely
sweet express,
How pure, how dear
their dwelling-place
And on that cheek, and
o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet
eloquent,
The smiles that win,
the tints that glow,
But tell of days in
goodness spent,
A mind at peace with
all below,
A heart whose love is
innocent!
I, for one, cannot begin to fathom the pressure on women to be beautiful. Since beauty is the most gratifying quality of feature for women, they constantly seek its ever-changing, ethereal attainment. The chase is monumental. It undoubtedly engages the entire sex. As a man, I am unable to say "I understand," yet I observe with great empathy.
Consider the fine line
between “fake” and “natural” beauty women face in their quest
for desirability. If a woman is trying too hard to be beautiful,
she's considered “fake.” If she's not trying at all, she's
thought to be “lazy.” And, If she's trying but she doesn't
“look” as if she's trying, she's achieved the apparent
goal of feminine existence: the ability to trick people into thinking
she didn't “try”
to be beautiful, but just woke up that way.
Add to the confusion
sexual attraction. Men declare they prefer ''the natural look''
on women. But, a new study from internet dating website Zoosk,
analyzed 1200 women’s profiles on Zoosk, and the results were
damning: women wearing make-up in their profile pictures attract
three times as many hits as those who don’t. Once again, men proved
to be clueless in matters pertaining to attractive females.
It should not be
surprising that physical attractiveness is of overwhelming importance
to women. Their concern with appearance is not just an aberration of
culture. Every period of history has had its own standards of what is
and is not a beautiful woman, and every contemporary society has its
own distinctive concept of the ideal physical attributes.
Does beauty matter, or
should women simply accept what the good Lord has given them and go
about their lives? Without a doubt, the “bias for beauty”
operates in almost all social situations – studies show people
react more favorably to physically attractive people. Consider that
research supports the following:
* Attractive children are
more popular, both with classmates and teachers.
* Attractive applicants
have a better chance of getting jobs, and of receiving higher
salaries.
* In court, attractive
people are found guilty less often. When found guilty, they receive
less severe sentences.
But, getting preferential
treatment like receiving a job based on looks can be problematic.
After landing a position, one woman said, "Soon I realized I was
just seen as the token “pretty girl”. I was hired to be eye candy
for potential male clients. They treated me like a bimbo. When it was
time to close a deal I had made, my manager would do it and take my
commission, saying I wasn’t experienced enough to do it.”
Another reality emerges –
when a woman is considered truly beautiful, she faces a female
bias based on jealousy and stereotyping. When she is beautiful,
other women despise her. She likely hears something like this: “What
does it matter if I hurt her feelings. She has her looks and that’s
more than I have. Life has already played favorites …” The
criticism is like being born rich. People don’t believe that a
beautiful woman feels the same pain as one less attractive. It’s a
bias that people can’t shake.
One woman described her
dilemma …
“Men were more loyal
friends, but my boyfriends would always say: 'That’s because they
want to get laid.' So I’d think: 'Women dump on me. Men just want
to have sex with me. Who am I?' My closest friend was a gay man, he
wasn’t jealous and he didn’t want to get laid. That might have
been my only pure friendship.”
How long does it take
someone to judge beauty? Quite a bit of research has tried to
determine how many seconds it takes before a person forms a judgment
of someone they meet. Their brains calculate your value in terms of
age, social standing and how approachable you are within thirty
seconds or less. Princeton psychologists Janine Willis and Alexander
Todorov say first impressions are formed in less than a tenth of a
second.
And other studies confirm
that people pay attention to other people whom they believe are more
attractive. People identify the personality traits of people who are
physically attractive more accurately than others during short
encounters.
“When old age shall
this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain,
in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend
to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth,
truth beauty, – that is all
Ye know on earth,
and all ye need to know.'”
Excerpt from “Ode on
a Grecian Urn,” John Keats
And, don't forget the
inevitable forces of nature. Even if a woman is flawless, she faces
this relentless thing called “aging.” She has the ideal … only
“for now.” As she faces old age, she may remain nice looking with
her wrinkles and falling features, but she no longer will remain one
of the outstandingly beautiful ones.
The Choose Beautiful
campaign (2015) surveyed 6,400 women ages 18 to 64 from five cities
around the world (San Francisco, Shanghai, Delhi, London, and São
Paolo) on how they feel about beauty.
While 80 percent of the
women surveyed said that all women have something beautiful about
them, a whopping 96 percent said they wouldn’t use the word
“beautiful” to describe themselves. Not only that, 78 percent of
women said they don’t feel completely confident in their own
beauty.
More interesting data from
the survey: 32 percent of women say their biggest beauty pressure is
the one they put on themselves, and seven out of 10 women agree that
beauty is more than physical appearance.
Only 88 percent of U.S.
women say they believe that every woman has something about her that
is beautiful, compared to 94 percent of women in India and 91 percent
of women in Brazil.
Were the women in the
survey just being modest or being brutally honest? My thesis deals
with the unbearable pressures a woman endures in her quest for
beauty. I can imagine women being much too hard on themselves in the
process of securing any semblance of the present standards of beauty.
There’s a huge difference between accepting something and believing
something.
I do know one thing. For a
woman to be obsessed over her beauty to the detriment of all other
areas of her life is self-defeating vanity. It serves to destroy her
spirit of attractive femininity. Why would any woman do that? I fear
the answer is clear – it is everywhere. Culture and media do
succeed at deciding what ought to be visually desirable, regardless
of a woman's own intuitive draw or what she really wants or finds
attractive. This has become a part of the Barbie Doll fairy tale
successfully sold to women in nearly every aspect of 21st
century society.
As Judy Scheel Ph.D.,
L.C.S.W., CEDS reports …
“Consider a recent
cover of Sports Illustrated, the annual swimsuit edition …
well, minus the swimsuits. It was never really about swimsuits
anyhow, so maybe removing most of the suit is more honest. The models
Chrissy Teigen, Lily Aldridge, and Nina Agdal have or appear to have
HOT bodies. The likelihood that their bodies have been Photoshopped
to smooth out skin irregularities like cellulite, fat deposits, or
sagging skin is great.
“And, all of them
have their backs arched slightly so that the skin around the buttocks
is pulled to reduce the appearance of imperfections. Oh yeah, this
edition of Sports Illustrated also commemorated the 50th
anniversary of Barbie—a perfectly sculpted, though
disproportionate, desired body type.”
(Judy
Scheel. “Culture Dictates the Standard of Beauty.”
Psychology
Today. April 24, 2014.)
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