Looks, online and off

For every woman with any sort of online presence, from movie stars on down to the lowliest bloggers, there is at least one place on the internet where her appearance, real or imagined, is being discussed, as Amber Taylor confirms. I have heard that even so much as giving an anonymous blog a "female" voice is enough to inspire a romantic attachment from one's readership. While I agree with Taylor that men's obsession with the physical attributes of female writers on the internet is lame, I do not share her (tangentially related--see her post) desire to "urge appreciation for a wider range of body types."

Advocating a more all-accepting beauty ideal is futile--if weight mattered less, something else would matter more. Until we begin to judge souls alone, we will judge appearances in one way or another. And weight is, when you think about it, a relatively innocuous standard by which physical beauty can be judged--race and height are far more stubborn, and race is, obviously, a much creepier way to determine who's attractive. Back in the good old days, when fashion models and actresses were a bit fleshier, they were also quite a bit more racially homogeneous. Was that beauty ideal somehow more "healthy"? Better to have women hate themselves for their weight than for their race.

Rather than well-meaning but misguided calls for an expansion of just who's considered beautiful (only to leave a tiny minority of the truly, undeniably unattractive) why not just remember that a lot of things go into attraction? Even attraction based entirely on looks is rarely about how much the object of desire's looks match what society has deemed desirable.