SCALE
OF BEAUTY

Topics: Beauty; Body; Contentment; Coveting; Faultfinding; Intimacy; Judging Others; Lust; Perfection; Pornography; Satisfaction; Self-centeredness; Sex; Vanity

References: 1 Samuel 16:7; 2 Samuel 11:2–5; Proverbs 6:25; 31:30; John 7:24; Galatians 2:6; 1 Peter 3:3–5

A woman is beautiful—or not—depending on who she’s with. That’s according to psychologists Sara Gutierres and Douglas Kenrick of Arizona State University, who have studied the phenomenon of beauty for the past twenty years.

We judge both our own and other people’s attractiveness based on the social situation we are in, research shows. If a woman of average beauty enters a room of extremely beautiful women, she will be perceived as less attractive than she actually is. If the same woman enters a room of unattractive women, she will be perceived as more attractive than she actually is. The same applies for men.

The researchers found that this contrast effect influences many women to devalue themselves: “Women who are surrounded by other attractive women—whether in the flesh, in films, or in photographs—rate themselves as less satisfied with their attractiveness and less desirable as a marriage partner.” For the overwhelming majority of women who don’t meet these impossible standards, multimillion-dollar industries are eager to help improve their appearance.

The effects on men are also damaging. The researchers note that “under a constant barrage of media images of beautiful women, these guys have an expectation of attractiveness that is unusually high—and that makes the people around them, in whom they might really be interested, seem lackluster, even if they are quite good-looking.”

—Michael Levine (with Hara E. Morano), “Why I Hate Beauty,” Psychology Today (July–August 2001)