I don't think the idea of what is beautiful is only what is fed to us by the media. I'm pretty sure that we do have an internal sensor of what's beautiful to us. I don't like some of the guys my best friend likes and vice versa, and that's because we like different things. Some things are commonly considered beautiful. If you see someone who you think is stunningly beautiful, then you know it. Because you have to control yourself not to drool slightly, right? And like another poster has said, some people are stunning even face to face. It could be all the symmetry and right proportions deal, leading us to believe they have good genes and that, but I think maybe there's something more intangible to it. I can look at someone and recognize instinctively that they are beautiful outwardly, in my perception.
I think part of the problem for us women is that most men are very visual creatures, and so beauty is an important element to some extent for many of them, something they can't separate from the rest of the "package". Women do it too, but I think to a lesser extent. And then some men also believe the crap fed to them by the media and so they want someone just so. At least for me, I have heard things from men I know and ex-boyfriends where it made me wonder what they're thinking, while also planting seeds of self-doubt in my head. I'd like to apologize to any men reading this who feel offended but remember I'm only generalizing.
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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.
Fernando Pessoa, 1918
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