How do you know someone is attractive if you aren’t attracted to them?
Is it possible to judge someones looks for instance without being attracted to them?
it is possible to judge someones looks as far as society’s ideals are concerned or compared to the media’s ideal image. also it is possible to look at someone and think they’re pretty without them being attractive.
Apparently theres a specific look in all humans that we find attractive. Its a angle or degrees (something like 3.149857) the closer a persons face (and even body parts) match this angle the more attractive they are; it showed a block of pictures with 50 womens faces, the participants placed them in order of attraction and found the really ugly ones were way out the 3.1498237 and the generally attractive ones of the pictures were closer to the angle. Im not sure why this angle, all i know is even in all medieval 18th, 19th century portraits these angles were again used (subconsciously). Thats perhaps why most of these pictures are seen today as pictures drawn by a painter who was under pressure from the portrait’ees.
there is a difference between attractive=goodlooking and attractive=i would like their babies. a combination of the two is how we judge who we fancy.
You’re not really hitting the question. Is it possible to be detatched from the emotions involved in attraction? If you understand the attractive qualities of something like say the physical structure of a person then does that mean you yourself are attracted to the way the person looks?
Another way of putting it… Is saying “I can see why you find person A attractive although I myself don’t find person A attractive.” a logical statement?
Those are really just emotions: lust and affection.
but metavoid you can find someone really ugly to be affectionate by how they look.
Good point cba, i’m going to go back to it:
yes, i think it is for the reason that you specified: that is, emotions (passions) and the reasoning (subconscious or otherwise) are connected. they are not detached. kesh’s post about the science involved speaks to this.
i can understand perfectly your pyschological state and can deduce from this who you will find attractive. simply because i can understand your psychological state does not mean that i also become it — there IS a seperation between the knower and the known.
i think that once this assumption is established then your first question is answered, that yes, it is possible to judge someone as attractive without being atttacted to them.
Certainly I can understand the concept of which men are attractive, even though I have little or no attraction to men. But occasionally there are people who utterly baffle me so I am inclined to disagree with Trix, I think you’re either attracted to someone and can understand it, or you are not.
Take, for example, Uma Thurman, I have never ever found her attractive, I think she is a minger and always will do. I have never seen the attraction at all. However Cat Slater (for all you English Eastenders fans out there) for some reason I actually find attractive. To be vulgar, I would give her one. I know a lot of people who think she is repulsive. Who knows.
I could never see how Uma Thurman is attractivce, though I understand the principles. It’s like that with men, I understand the prionciples of what makes a man attractive, but not the essence, occasionally I will be surprised by someone who seems to contravene the conventional rules.
It’s still a toss up for me. Only because comprehension isn’t based on feeling the beliefs of the person you’re trying to comprehend. How is it possible to understand someones beliefs without feeling them yourself? With no reference then there is nothing to base a feeling on. Are we just generalizing and assuming we’re understanding the whole idea of attraction?
The question was spurred by someone who asked do homosexuals chose whether they want to be homosexual or not. The arguement boiled down to attraction. If everyones attracted to the opposite sex than they choose. Of course this may pursuade you more so to lean towards the hetero arguement but so be it.
Another point that was brought up in the debate was “If people idolize others of the same sex with nice bodies does that make them gay?” They are obviously impressed by it and some also attracted to the point that they themselves go out and attempt to emulate the look.
for no one’s fault except my own, i lost my post. here is the abbreviated version that is perhaps better because of this:
– there is a difference between iconlasm and attraction; being drawn to a person in a bar and being drawn to a movie star are incredibly different things. the difference largely being that the latter is solely one dimensional, invovling mainly the desirees’ feelings to project on the object of desire.
– cba is right, to an extent total understanding cannot be achieved without feeling the emotions
– however, there are MANY levels of understanding. one can get very close to total understanding, without the emotions bit – something like attaining true opinion as supposed to knoweldege.
– further, i think, there are many many different levels of attraction, with the asethetic level being only one. it is possible to find someone to be asethetically pleasing (thus, attraction on this level) but not attractive on other levels. for some, the asethetic level is all that matters. for others, there are different levels that have higher values.
Does this mean if I want (for example) to look like JLo so guys fancy me I could be gay and admiring her body? That’s an interesting phenomenon
Well that was the idea but according to trix there are levels of attraction which makes perfect sense to me. You could be gayer than other people though 
I think if you love someone very much you could not only want to worship the ground they walk on but also kiss anything related to them (For UK corrie fans, think Todd and Nick’s kiss). It doesn’t necesserally mean you’re gay just that you love them so much… anything to do with them makes you excited etc.