Defining Beauty

How we define female beauty or male attractiveness may doom our happiness or the ability to attract the right mate. Why is that?

The first issue is how we feel about ourselves. There are few things more off-putting than a woman who puts down herself. A woman who constantly bemoans her weight, hair, or any other feature wants reassurance that she’s okay. Her date renders up confirmation that she is attractive, but she may brush the words away, too caught up in the media-generated version of beauty to accept the words.

Her date feels like she doesn’t value his opinion or doesn’t have the courtesy to listen to him. Later on, after constant needs for reassurance or obsessing about her weight, the man disappears. This only confirms what the woman believed. Women are horribly insulted when their recently departed man chooses someone heavier or less conventionally attractive.  What they failed to realize is how the man views this woman.

The new woman is okay with who she is. It could be that she might want to lose a few pounds, but she isn’t going to base her vacation plans or her life on it. People who are able to love themselves are able to love others. It’s impossible to accept other people when you can’t accept yourself. The cattiness that comes between women stems from the failure to love who they are.

Most women compare themselves to media-generated images that bear no relationship to actual people. A model on the Steve Harvey show recently revealed all the Photo Shopping that went into her bikini shoot. Here was a woman who was already trim and beautiful who had more “help” than any plastic surgeon junkie with the help of technology. Some fashion magazines use computer-generated models since human females are not thin enough.

Despite all the magazine covers and romance novels featuring men with hairless six-pack torsos, men don’t look like that.  An unrealistic standard of beauty cuts both ways.

Women often refuse to date a man under five ten.  It would be like refusing to date a man because he had brown eyes. This is another media-generated image of what a man should be. Not only does a woman expect the man to be taller than her, but still taller after she dons her skyscraper heels. According to the Huffington Post, only four percent of US women are willing to date a man their height or shorter.

How we view people makes all the difference in the world. I have women friends who are married to men much younger than they are. I have heavier than average friends who married attractive, athletic husbands. They all went on to have great lives and marriages.

The difference was they were okay with who they were. None of them lost any sleep over the fact they didn’t look like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. Their husbands loved them for the brilliant, strong, wonderful women they are. The smart men were able to see real beauty.

Happy people are attractive. Unhappy people aren’t. Often those who are unhappy with their own appearance seek validation in the appearance of their date thinking, ‘If my date meets the media criterion for beauty then that means I'm okay.’ What it means is a constant pursuit of a better model to prove self-worth.

It’s not too late to fall in love with you. It involves accepting yourself as you are right now. It’s amazing that once you are okay with yourself how many other people are okay with who you are. They always were, but it was impossible to see through your own doubts.

Loving yourself allows you to see others as they are as opposed to picking through dating profiles for the best body. This doesn’t happen all at once. I can see in retrospect that I allowed myself to be treated poorly because I didn’t think I deserved better. My dates mirrored back my own behavior.

I met my sweetie once I was okay with myself. He was the one who convinced me that I didn’t need to lose weight to be beautiful and he’s right. I see him as my gorgeous Adonis. Other women saw him as not tall enough.

There were some lonely men and women this Valentine’s Day. There were plenty of folks who would have been wonderful dates for them, but their tight grip on unrealistic beauty standards condemns them to solitude.