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Three separate blogging discussions today on attractiveness and body image, three that want to own me, two that want to stone me, and one says she’s a friend of mine. I jest, somebody get these darn ear worms out of my brain.

Anyway, the fems are very much into how it isn’t fair that attractive people have advantages. The entire world must change their “irrational biases” and stop making unattractive people feel bad. All of us must change our “ingrained social conditioning” and start valuing people who show up to job interviews with uncombed hair wearing bunny slippers.

Also, people should be deeply shamed for having any recognition of attractiveness whatsoever. What does it mean to be attractive? “Pleasing or appealing to the senses.” Most importantly, to your own senses! People who feel good about themselves are attractive. People in good health who feel good about themselves are even more attractive. People who feel good about themselves, are in good health, and actually comb their hair and get dressed are exceedingly attractive!

Sorry, my irritation is getting the best of me. I really dislike these discussions because what is presented as a virtue is actually a vice. On the surface it appears as if demanding equality for the unattractive is kind and beneficial for all of humankind, but actually it is very shaming. First we must shame the unattractive and make sure they know they are being discriminated against, then we must shame anyone who might chose to hire or date the person who bothered to put on a clean shirt and comb their hair that day, and then we must shame anyone who is attractive and therefore allegedly oppressing others, abusing their attractiveness privilege.

What we really do however, is to shame all women, and that is something that really begins to tick me off. Men don’t do this, women do this to one another, and feminists, and those who seek what they call “equality.” Young girls get the idea that it is somehow shameful to desire attention and grown women get the idea that it is somehow shameful to love yourself. It is just piling more toxic shame upon more toxic shame, until in the end no woman can feel good about herself, ever. Now we are just in a state of constant misery, never good enough, or if we are good enough, ashamed of being good enough and therefore creating feelbad for others.

Girls, women, from about 6 to 96, feel good about being attractive, making themselves pretty, being delighted in. That is human nature, that is female nature, wanting to be pleasing or appealing to the senses. There is nothing wrong with that! Being rewarded by others for your efforts is also just the nature of human beings. It runs totally counter to biology to suddenly demand that people must now alter what they perceive as “pleasing or appealing to the senses.” It is not rational or fair to suddenly demand that everyone must now either cover their eyes or change what they perceive as attractive. That’s just crazy.

So yes, the more attractive we can make ourselves, the more successful we will feel. Somebody I rather admire said, “you don’t need to feel beautiful to be beautiful.” Yes you do. What is on the inside is often reflected on the outside. That is where our body image issues are often deeply rooted, we can be potentially attractive and yet never feel it, feel so down and out and unhappy and miserable about ourselves, that we can’t even see the truth anymore. We hate everything we see, the physical  all becomes a manifestation of what’s really going on inside.

So what happens when we tell women it isn’t okay to place any value on our own appearance? We go against basic female biology and  we teach young girls that there is something shameful about the very nature of women. When we praise girls exclusively for their brains or their talents, we are in fact sending the message that we disapprove of who they really are as girls.

Fathers can do a great deal to help prevent this  by making sure they remember to tell their daughters they are beautiful. Girls are whole beings, mind, body and spirit.