Not everyone is beautiful

[Internet Jesus]

I will ask all of you a single question, and I demand that you defend your answer; Is Roger beautiful?

Go.

See okay in order to answer, don't we have to spell out some sort of standard that we're using, which just gets us back to losing the thread?

I mean I can honestly answer yes and no, arrive at both answers using multiple lines of reason and it would all depend on what we're calling beautiful.

Roger is beautiful because he's the end product of billions of years of evolution, all the way from a simple single celled life form up to a hairless ape that can change its environment.  That's beautiful in a sense.

Roger is not beautiful because no matter how dolled up he gets, I still don't want to stick my penis in his mangina.  (Sorry, Roger)

Roger is beautiful because his insights are the product of a mind that fights hard against the things it's been programmed with.

Roger is not beautiful because he's frequently a sullen asshole.

Again, I probably lost the thread.  My bad. Don't punish me with the spiked dildo, please.

[Freeky]

Roger is beautiful because:

His lips, while a bit on the small side and frequently tabacco and coffee stained, is perfectly shaped. It looks best in a lascivious smile, which happens whenever he looks at or talks about his wife. His eyes are a blue, with a neat butterfly wing effect you get on the desert.  He is broader in shoulder than he is in gut. His face is mostly symmetrical.

Challenge met.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Roger is not beautiful because he's frequently a sullen asshole.

I am a beacon of joy in a dull grey world.  I laugh all the fucking time.  No shit.  Granted, it's not a nice laugh (sounds like bats in an enclosed area, and maybe some lady singing Fur Elise, or maybe that's just what's in my head when I laugh), but these days you have to settle for what you can get.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I will ask all of you a single question, and I demand that you defend your answer; Is Roger beautiful?

Go.

Yes, he is.  On account of him being a pretty pretty princess.  QED.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I will ask all of you a single question, and I demand that you defend your answer; Is Roger beautiful?

Go.

Roger is beautiful in the same way a particularly deadly strain of cowpox tearing through a town full of neo-Nazis is beautiful. While it's happening, there's nothing but HORRIBLE everywhere you look. But once it's run its course, you're left with an inexplicable feeling that the world has somehow inched toward "better."

[LMNO]

Roger is a howling mad bastard who was born into the wrong time, and that's beautiful.

[hooplala]

When I met Roger I remember thinking something along the lines of "Here is a man who is himself", and what could be more beautiful than simply being who you are, rather than who other thing you ought to be?  I never detected a note of self doubt in anything he said or did when in my physical presence, and I was deeply moved by this.  Yes, I found him to be beautiful.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Roger is a force of nature, like a typhoon.
Roger sees EVERYTHING. He's engaged in the world, that takes nuts. And it's beautiful.
Roger actually gives a shit if people get fucked over.
And besides, ROGER IS A PRETTY PRETTY FAIRY PRINCESS. 

[Eater of Clowns]

Nigel, I think the OP is great insight because it extends a proven tendency for people to praise naturally occuring traits to learned ones.

If you tell a kid they're smart, they won't work as hard because they'll think they won't have to.  If you tell a kid they're a good worker, they'll continue to strive to achieve and hone that skill.  Being smart and a hard worker is great, but not only is it ineffective to foster the former, it's actually a hindrance.  I wish I could remember the name for this.

[EK WAFFLR]

I haven't seen much of Roger, but from the videos I have seen, he has one of the best smiles I have seen, ever. That is beauty.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

It also cuts the other way, too. If a woman has virtues unrelated to her looks, but also has looks, she is often reduced to being a pretty face and her other qualities are demoted to second-class attributes or even ignored. For many women it's almost a requirement to be borderline ugly before they can be taken seriously -- of course, lacking beauty they have a lot more trouble being heard in the first place. This is a great disservice not only to women but to society in general, because it encourages beautiful women to aspire only to beauty, and stacks the deck against ugly women, both of which serve to reinforce the bullshit notion that pretty girls are weak and/or dumb, and strong/intelligent women are undesirable. This is obviously overgeneralizing it but the tendency is there, I think.

But I don't think it's so easy to divorce sex drive from value judgments based on beauty, especially considering how sex-obsessed (and repressed) our culture is.

HAR!  And when they want to show a woman scientist in a movie or a commercial, she always looks like a supermodel in a lab coat.

Contrast that with the female genius in The Andromeda Strain from way the hell back in the 70s.  She's 40-50-ish and kinda dumpy from spending all her time in the lab, and a permanent slump in her shoulders from leaning over stuff.  She's out of shape and epileptic.  She hemmed and hawed a lot, and had to explain herself several times to laymen in the movie.  She's just some scientist that understands viral epidemics.

Nowdays, she'd be shown as a early 30s half-Asian girl with a flat tummy, a tiny nose, CC tits, and perfect hair & makeup.  She'd open her mouth and speak like a tenured professor.

You mean she'd have glasses so she'd be totally repulsive and miserable, then she'd take them off and realize her true calling as "TOTALLY HAWT!!1!1!!"

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

Nigel, I think the OP is great insight because it extends a proven tendency for people to praise naturally occuring traits to learned ones.

If you tell a kid they're smart, they won't work as hard because they'll think they won't have to.  If you tell a kid they're a good worker, they'll continue to strive to achieve and hone that skill.  Being smart and a hard worker is great, but not only is it ineffective to foster the former, it's actually a hindrance.  I wish I could remember the name for this.

This!

I was mostly always embarrassed to be called "smart," mainly because there was absolutely nothing to it as far as I could see. But at the same time, I knew that's where the praise was from an early age so that's what I learned to identify with. Also, I knew that that's where the shame was so that's what I learned to distance myself from. If I wasn't smart I wasn't anything and if I was smart I was phony, so FUCK!

Yeah. That.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I will ask all of you a single question, and I demand that you defend your answer; Is Roger beautiful?

Go.

Yes, he is.  On account of him being a pretty pretty princess.  QED.

HE SHOOTS

HE SCORES!

I can't believe that everybody else missed that. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Nigel, I think the OP is great insight because it extends a proven tendency for people to praise naturally occuring traits to learned ones.

If you tell a kid they're smart, they won't work as hard because they'll think they won't have to.  If you tell a kid they're a good worker, they'll continue to strive to achieve and hone that skill.  Being smart and a hard worker is great, but not only is it ineffective to foster the former, it's actually a hindrance.  I wish I could remember the name for this.

I didn't even realize there was a name for it, but yes. Totally proven effect. If you praise children for working hard, they are more likely to seek out greater challenges, whereas if you praise children for being smart, they are more likely to seek fewer challenges for fear of failing and losing their "smart" status.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Freeky, I encourage you to read the OP again, because it does NOT say that fat people aren't beautiful. It talks about the way we use beauty as a measure of value. Fat people can be beautiful. But not everyone is beautiful, no matter how you define the word, unless you strip it of all meaning.