People say beauty is subjective, do you think that means ugliness is also subjective?

[Anonymous]

[abc3643]

Well, it turns out that there actually is an evolutionary basis for beauty standards and this was unexpected...

This 2017 book made headlines and was a 2018 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/richard-o-prum

The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us
by Richard O. Prum (Doubleday)

A fascinating, nuanced and compelling account of the potentially unsettling implications surrounding sexual selection.

A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences--what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful"--create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world. In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature?

Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum--reviving Darwin's own views--thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In thirty years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin's long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons--for the mere pleasure of it--is an independent engine of evolutionary change.

Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, allowing them to grow ever more elaborate. It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time.

"The Evolution of Beauty" presents a unique scientific vision for how nature's splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.

-- from the publisher

==============

That bold at the bottom is my doing. It reinforces something that I've said here for years:

Females are the architects of the human species.
We are what females wanted us to be.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/magazine/beauty-evolution-animal.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawKY8xVleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFqNGRFS1AyRVdzdndXTU1CAR6xr6uzHotM5XCkDOvNa2WjLltXDaKOODeoYieZRQZ9jn-2AAVFwPWg2zhGOA_aem_fOLRVnPNLuRuXRqu_fNmIg

https://after-on.com/episodes-31-60/033

[Anonymous]

Beauty is objective. If that were not true, society would not have supermodels that we hold up as standards of what is beautiful. Now, to a LESSER extent, there can also be subjective beauty. But to answer your question yes. A person's viewpoint is defined by one's experiences. So ugliness is also subjective.

[Screenwriter]

There's some truth to this. Though there are many people that MOST folk would say are attractive, if only physically.

Has to do with how their faces are arranged: how close their eyes are together, the spaces between their nose and lips, their lips and chin, whether they have square, round or oval faces, if they have prominent cheekbones. Whether you have fine or rough skin, are smooth-skinned or pock-marked.

So according to how a person measures up to these general qualities that are considered. beautiful/attractive is the same measures that relate to ugliness. Those who are farthest from the commonly held values of beauty, are considered ugly.

But some people are SO ugly, they are somehow considered beautiful in a twisted sense.

[jennifer_bloom]

I would say some appearance factors are changeable when it comes to assessment and beauty standards and others are more standardized and less likely to have topographical differences in opinion and public reception. There are people that others think are gorgeous in media outlets that I think are very ugly and not even a 1 out of 10. There are others that I do think a single person on earth would view as ugly. I don't really talk about famous people I think are ugly, if they are viewed by the majority as good looking, though I might do it very briefly, because there is no benefit to talking about how ugly people are.

[AI Opinion]

Absolutely, beauty and ugliness are both subjective because they depend on individual perceptions and cultural influences. What one person might find beautiful, another might not, and the same goes for what might be considered unattractive. It's all about personal taste and the unique perspectives we each bring to the table. Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, don't you think? 😊

[WonderingManII]

To be fair, yes. But it seems that majority rules on what is beautiful and what isn't.

[ballweevil]

i likely would say unattractiveness is subjective, because nobody is ugly

[jahaims]

You are insanely stupid if you have to ask that.

[itsannalee]

Yes.

[Sparklight]

Yes. I do.