Dr. Adam Sheck examines what it means to be beautiful, and explains the elements that create true beauty in his eyes.
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As a man with a nineteen-year-old daughter, I am sometimes quite concerned with society’s continuing obsession with beauty, more specifically about our definition and attitudes about a woman’s beauty. The messages for the most part are fear-based and focused not as much on appreciating beauty as artificially preserving it and hanging onto it. The premise is that time and age make a woman less beautiful and that women must sacrifice time, money and health to conform to an externally dictated standard of beauty.
My concern is that the media has bombarded us with messages that have hypnotized us into believing that their definition of beauty is actually true. Like most of the messages we see in the media, the motivation is control and money. The beauty industry is a multi-billion dollar powerhouse that stays in business by telling us what is beautiful and who is beautiful, for their own gain.
I’m not worth nearly a billion dollars, but I am a man who’s been on the planet for over half a century, as well as a psychologist in Los Angeles, so I’ve seen and heard a lot about it, and would like to offer my perspective as a man who’s been around the block and isn’t in the pocket of the beauty business.
First, a woman is not beautiful in a vacuum, there is always an observer who interprets that beauty, even if it is the woman herself. But what I’d really like to talk about is how a man creates beauty through his perception of a woman.
Yes, I firmly believe that the love and admiration of a man has a role in creating beauty in a woman. As a former engineer, I learned that quantum physics tells us that observation affects the “reality” of what is being observed.
In making this statement, I want to make a distinction between “beautiful” and “attractive”. We are biologically disposed towards what is attractive, based upon what would make good “breeding” material in both sexes. It’s not romantic, but it’s true.
As the theory goes, classic attractiveness is based upon symmetry and proportion. The more symmetrical, the more “pure” and more prone to survival are the underlying genetics. We know and react to this deep within our DNA on a visceral, unconscious level.
This isn’t really news. The designers of the Great Pyramids of Egypt as well as Leonardo Da Vinci and so many others of the Renaissance used the “Golden Ratio” of 1:1.62 in creating their masterpieces. When an object or person meets this ratio, we consider it or them to be beautiful.
We can apply this to the ratio of face length to face width. We can apply it to nose-to-chin or pupil-to-nose ratios. It is endless—just ask any plastic surgeon.
Psychologically, we find attractive someone who embodies the qualities of our primary caregivers. The people who raised us, typically our parents and extended family are our models for relationship, emotionally as well as physically. Sometimes we choose someone who is the opposite of them, yet we are still using them as our template.
We are all drawn to certain body parts that sexually stimulate us: face, eyes, hair, breasts, belly, butt, legs, ankles. We each have different preferences, which is a good thing, as it is a rare woman who has each body part exactly as we would prefer. Again, this variation in what is attractive offers another genetic advantage through creating a more varied gene pool and is therefore more conducive to survival of the species.
Emotional maturity consists of recognizing our predispositions and focusing more on what we appreciate than on what we don’t appreciate in our partner and being grateful for that. We do have a cerebral cortex that lets us override the instincts of our reptilian brain.
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Taking all of that into consideration, I would argue that attraction and sexual chemistry don’t make a woman beautiful, they simply make her attractive. I would argue that beauty is defined by something deeper, that it is truly more than skin deep.
Love is a big part of what creates beauty in a woman, at least in my eyes. When I truly love a woman and love her beautiful way of being, she becomes beautiful in my mind and in my soul, and then in my eyes. And when she is able to witness and feel my love for her and my vision of her beauty and she can fully take it in, then she is transformed.
I’m not saying this in a narcissistic, controlling way or even in a romantic sense. This beauty-endowing mechanism isn’t something unique to me or to men in general. We all have this gift. We all create beauty in our lives and in our relationships. There is something alchemical, something transformative about it, something soulful about it.
Have you ever experienced it from the other side? Have you ever wished that you could see yourself the way that your beloved sees you? You can and perhaps you have. That’s the beauty of relationship—we can be mirrors for each other and can also be healers for each other.
I have loved deeply and experienced beauty in women that have not been conventionally attractive or classically beautiful. I have experienced tears in my eyes from witnessing a beauty that has caused my more objective friends to question my very sanity. Looking at photos of these women years later after my intense connection has subsided, I can understand what raised the eyebrows of my doubting friends. I can also understand the soulfulness and the love that expanded my perceptions.
The type of beauty that I refer to defies gravity and time. It doesn’t require Botox and Pilates and rigorous diets. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t take care of ourselves and do whatever makes us feel good about ourselves. I’m saying that the beauty of love is timeless and is not affected by the ravages of life.
Haven’t we all witnessed an elderly couple walking hand in hand and gazing into each other’s eyes with a love that has endured decades and decades of life’s vicissitudes? Haven’t we all been envious of the love and the beauty that is the co-creation of their relationship?
The beauty that I’m describing isn’t about attraction and sexuality, though we all deserve to have someone we’re sexually attracted to and who is attracted to us. It isn’t limited to one romantic relationship.
It is about any love relationship. I have had dear friends and family in the throes of cancer and AIDS, at less than half of their normal body weight and they have been beautiful to me. The soul is the soul and its essence is beauty on all levels.
The title of this article is “What Makes A Woman Beautiful To A Man” and it was written as one man’s response to one woman’s piece about beauty. However, the mechanism of love is one that transcends gender and sexual orientation. I believe that it is true for ALL types of relationships between all types of peoples. The soul doesn’t care what kind of body it or its mate are living in. Love is love and beauty is beauty.
Am I a hopeless romantic or am I onto something? For the sake of my daughter and all of the young women in our world, I would like to think so. What are your experiences of beauty and of creating beauty in your partner?
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Photo: Flickr / candida.performa
What a profound article! Thank you for sharing it. At the age of 70, I have found that if you love someone for who they truly are…inside and out, you are blind to their physical flaws. It’s very sad that we live in an Airbrushed cultured it seems to be getting worse all the time.
Sweetly said. Beauty is the essence & soul of a person who radiates loving energy to others.
Now as you are being a dad and afraid that OTHER men will hurt and mistreat your daugther possibly based solely on her looks…you SEE HORROR of all that’s going on. Imagine how awful is to be born a woman in general, add to it less then average attractiveness level and we have got reality of personal hell. I bet you didn’t think about all this while being in your twenties. I bet you chased and married someone beautiful or the least very pretty. Yes, inner beauty can be noticed, but rarely appreciated or valued, especially before reaching 40 years… Read more »
Very well said 😉
wow.. beautifully said beautiful things
Yes! To paraphrase, and simplify, we experience another person’s beauty based on the strength of our connection to them, and ultimately, our oneness with tbem.
Agree. I share your view and that of Tatyana; that real appreciation of another person takes time and ‘connect’. Pity that people miss out on the opportunity to relate because of initial impressions or prejudices, “misimpressions”, or the lack of the supposed ‘standard characteristics of beauty’.
I don’t like it when people use the words “men” and “women” when talking about things like attractiveness because these words are used to mean heterosexual, but not averybody is heterosexual; some many others are homosexual and bisexual. In this sense, “man” and “woman” are appropriated under the premise of heterosexuality and homosexual and bisexual people are excluded, marginalised and isolated. Attractiveness and the condition and being a man or a woman in no way are a heterosexual monopoly or property. We should stop seeing the world in an imaginary way where everybody is heterosexual because that’s not the real… Read more »
You are a romantic AND you are onto something. “When I truly love a woman and love her beautiful way of being, she becomes beautiful in my mind and in my soul, and then in my eyes. And when she is able to witness and feel my love for her and my vision of her beauty and she can fully take it in, then she is transformed.” I’ve experienced this kind of love. It is transforming. But it was over much too soon. Now that I’ve know the kind of love I thought was only existed in fairytales is real,… Read more »
and now you’re a philosopher ?;-)
I’ve been surfing online more than 3 hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours.
It is pretty worth enough for me. Personally, if all web owners and bloggers made
good content as you did, the web will be a lot more useful
than ever before.
thank you dr. adam for this beautiful article.Thank you for the hope of reminding us women on how beautiful we are and how beautiful we can be.This has enlighten me that what our soul speaks for is more beautiful than any artificially created beauty.Love eradicates the symmetry and proportion outlook but burrows deep within a womans inner beauty…May you continue to influence everyone sir..???
I completely agree with this and was actually talking about it the other day. The human body is intelligent and knows what it needs. When I was a teenager I would only be focused on the “traditional” beauty in a man, instead of physical attraction. I would go for the guy that everybody thought was handsome, without regarding anything else. At some point at my 20s, I started feeling incapable of starting anything with a guy I didn’t feel that certain “click” with. That “click”, as I call it, is chemistry, it’s what’s described above. Attraction and instinct. Ever since… Read more »
Personally I really enjoyed this segment. I really got a full understanding from a simple word that creates a thousand feelings. Yes like my self we as men all have our preferences on looks and physical attraction and the human sex drive that derives from deep within our DNA ultimately coming down to will or will not this person be a good mate. It all cones from deep within our subconscious as to how we were raised. Who influenced us in our lives etc. But he’s right the soul wants love and beauty is only skin deep. And I’ve experienced… Read more »
You’re a hopeless romantic, but it’s beautiful.
I believe it’s necessary to be natural. Because it helps to present the reality of a human being in a natural way. The more i am real,honest to my behavior, emotions and feelings, the more i am beautiful to my partner. As said by my love to me
Thank you for such a well written piece
I agree with you and have been saying this for years
Nice words lovely ideas but why as a woman do I have to beautiful? By anybody’s definition?
Seriously ladies, getting your nose bent out of shape. Have you not ever been around a man that admired you? And this made you feel good, and encourage you? Mirror, he uses that word. I like the point of the article, meaning that our soul is beauty….beauty has a beholder whether it be the woman or the man admiring her…and he encourages her in her beauty. My take away. Sexist? really? I don’t know about that, I mean men and women are different, but this admiration and encouragement can go with any relationship.
A great and true article.Hope many girls knew this and wouldn’t have a hard time deciding weather they are beautiful/attractive.Also,it’s great that we are aware of media’s control over our minds.Thanks for the good article.
I can’t ignore when he says “A man creates beauty in a woman when apreciate them” that is only a man’s game. A man creates beauty in a woman that wrong way, when they figure themselves out across the woman’s beauty. By choosing, watching or feeling atracted to them but also it gets creepy when it comes that they build they concept of that idea of the woman’s beauty straightly related to their capacity to be a man(like they need to get the girl everybody wants to feel what they represent, and they tend to magnify the value of that… Read more »
I appreciate the points this article makes, so thank you for that. What seems most important to me is how one percieves her (or him) self. In the same way that a happy person’s sense of joy can be enhanced through love, so too can one’s sense of beauty. It is unfortunate that so many women (and men) are not able to feel beautiful until they meet a person who sees that beauty. So with regard to your daughters, and I realize this is not news, it is important to support their positive self-images so that they recognize how they… Read more »
I believe so, that you’re on to something I mean. Because even I, a woman have experienced this. In fact, two of the guys I’ve loved the most I didn’t initially find attractive. It wasn’t until I got to know them that I began finding things that I really appreciated about them and yes I mean physically. For example, my last boyfriend. I took one look at him and thought, nope. But then, I had a conversation with him and we hit it off. Then as time went on I started looking at his jaw line, the way his cheek… Read more »
That is your female mind. Girls really do pay more attention to the personality than the physical. The male mind doesn’t work like that. If the woman isn’t hot from the beginning, she can be as cute and sweet as it gets, we will not want to have a relationship with you. At least not for long. We could still bang you when in need and even date you for a while but as soon as an actual hot woman appears we will feel this urge to just leave you and seek the better female. Sometimes the guy will fall… Read more »
Adam,
Really nice piece, thank you. I am curious, your room the impact of the love of a man on a woman, isn’t it the love – romantic love I assume – of anyone, male or female? It seems a bit narrow or hetero-centric to limit loves impacts to our bias or unconscious norms about gender, relationships and love.
Jim,
Thanks for your kind words. I would agree with you, that this mechanism of beauty/love is true for most men as well as most human beings. As a man, writing for the Good Men Project, it is a fine line I walk: if I speak for men, some people judge that I’m paternalistic and not including women. If as a straight man I speak for men, some will consider me hetero-centric. My challenge is to be specific, yet inclusive, AND to have thick enough skin and to recognize that I’m writing to support people.
Thanks again,
Adam Sheck
It’s wonderful that you think your supporting people, but isn’t the POV that *matters* actually the one of those who can say ‘this supported me’? Otherwise that’s an awfully hubristic and borderline arrogant thing to say.
I think it’s clear your article comes from a good place, but I genuinely found everything from the title of the piece to some subtle yet still outdated ideas about women, to be offensive to me, as a woman. It stills feels largely cloaked in objectification however magnanimous it purports to be.
*you’re (couldn’t live with the typo…)
You walk your line balanced and gracefully.
Society doesn’t exist as a seperate entity,completely foriegn from, and to, the will and values of the common person.Furthermore,women exert tremendous influence in defining beauty standards for themselves and others.And yeah it sucks if one cannot meet the top standard. But not every woman turns bodyimage or not meeting THE beauty standard into a cause celeb.Women are not the only who must deal with this issue,not by a longshot.Nonetheless,because of politics and insecurity,it is percieved exclusively as a woman’s problem.MEN and WOMEN define what is attractive and alluring to each other.In both cases,what represents the MOST beautiful, of course, is… Read more »
Most of the beauty standards are created by the media, by these people there who don’t give a damn about people’s emotions, feelings and dignity but their money. So that is not something out of this world to say women, as a group, do not exert such tremendous influence in defining beauty standards, as most of the media is controlled by men (these particular men, of course). White, straight men at that. In fact, that is exactly why we have much more female skin being shown then men’s skin. That is why white beauty is considered the top beauty. The… Read more »
“That is also not only about insecurity. After a while, people get tired. Many times people get harassed for not meeting the standard. Sometimes it is out of their control. Maybe you don’t see how disgusting it can get because you are not that familiarized with the issue. Maybe you seem to try to turn it into something much simpler because you believe it’s still not affecting men the same way it affects women ” Bang on, July! … I’m 51 & have about 18 years total experience in my career …2 years ago got pushed sideways by a very… Read more »
I read it as how The man defines beauty in woman to himself. Not how he is defining it for others or for her. And in that context, i completely agree. His example of his friends thinking him crazy for finding a certain woman beautiful at a certain time in his life when they clearly did not agree was spot on. Especially, after He has moved on down the line he looks back in retrospect and doesn’t view his definition of her beauty in the same light. I imagine many many men who have been divorced thinking of their Ex… Read more »
Unfortunetly Sledge, sometimes how men define it for themselves individually still finds a way to seep into how women define it for herself as well.
Can you share more about what you see with your daughters and how society is trying to define beauty for them? What you seem them experience or go through and what exactly sickens you?
Pure Darwinist Bunk and Dreck of the Highest order. This article is full of so many fallacies and falsehoods, it disgust me. This clown purports to be an authority?
Well, somehow I missed this article until now, but I’ll comment anyway. These two sentences are just, well frustrating as hell: “But what I’d really like to talk about is how a man creates beauty through his perception of a woman. Yes, I firmly believe that the love and admiration of a man has a role in creating beauty in a woman.” Cuz, you realise that is PRECISELY what Mulvey was talking when she discussed the “male gaze” right? That is absolutely objectification, right there. A woman’s beauty is CREATED by a man observing her? In that scenario the woman… Read more »
And yes, I did see this tacked on sentence, “This beauty-endowing mechanism isn’t something unique to me or to men in general.”
But, frankly when you have an entire article devoted to the idea that men create beauty in women, and it’s titled “What Makes a Woman Beautiful to a Man,” a single sentence saying ‘I don’t mean JUST men creating beauty in women,” doesn’t cut it. Not when this entire article is read in the context of a sexist culture like ours. Not when the rest of the article is so full of patriarchal nonsense.
Creates beauty as in finding things beautiful about her to him? Eg, the nose on an actress I saw yesterday was super duper cute, and her overall facial structure I found to be beautiful, I created beauty for ME and me alone, others of course have their own idea of beauty. “Not when this entire article is read in the context of a sexist culture like ours” You do realize your confirmation bias n other things that colour your view will change the context of his message right? When I read creates beauty I thought straight away he meant for… Read more »
Maybe it helps him acknowledge the beauty already existing. But creating beauty?
You do realize social groups have their sensibilities that other groups should be aware of? That other groups, like his own, as a male, should respect and not trigger? Okay.