The Ugly Face of Beauty

Working in the real world and having your own place sure make it harder to blog...especially if you like to write about deep subjects that require long, prolix posts to dig into. It’s been a long time since my last post. I was very pleasantly surprised to not be disowned by many people for that post. (Woohoo!) There are only two, actually, who seem to have severed all bonds with me. That means that most everyone who disagrees with me let me have my opinion and not let it affect our relationship. That’s the way it ought to be. :) Anyways, it’s time to whip out a topic that’s been churning in the ol’ noggin’ for months now, slowly cookin’ away like a roast in a Crock-Pot.

There is an age-old question lurking in the back of every guy’s mind, one that most Christian guys will not even acknowledge is there, let alone attempt to answer. For me, even mentioning this question makes me uncomfortable, and I want to move on to the next topic or suddenly start making idle chitchat about the lovely weather we’ve been having in Denver (even though this summer the weather consisted mainly of monsoon rains for several weeks on end).

The question is this. “Does physical attraction matter in a girl?” Of course, the way in which questions are posed often limits the range of answers that can be given to satisfy them. This is a logical fallacy, a trap, called “plurium interragationum,” known in layman’s terms as a trick question. Notice that the way I phrased the question allows only two possible answers: yes and no. If you answer yes, you are deemed by many as a shallow and superficial person. If instead you answer no, you’re left standing there scratching your head, because physical attraction is an innate, fundamental trait of human nature given to us by our Creator: women desire to be recognized as beautiful, and men desire to be the recognizers of that beauty. To deny this is to deny reality, a facet of human existence that is self-evident. Sometimes it can be hard to know what exactly to believe, but when something contradicts what is self-evident, that belief must be rejected.

Let’s try rephrasing the question. “How much, or to what degree does physical attraction matter?” Now we’re talking, or talking it out, rather. An unhelpful yes-no question has been opened up for discussion, and an honest answer can be sought. This is not an easy question to answer, but like all important questions, we must seek to answer it as best as we can. This is my best shot.

On the one side of the fence we have the world in all of its superficiality. The world, through the use of media, tells us what it thinks we ought to look like. Men are dashingly handsome and women are stunningly beautiful. Never are they overweight, but always fit as a fiddle. They have no blemishes in their complexions. Men will have ripped abs and women a perfect hourglass figure. In Hollywood, people get numerous plastic surgery procedures done on themselves to keep themselves in accordance with these “beautiful” standards, and fake has become the new definition of most real to many. People, especially women in the eyes of men, get reduced to mere objects that are nice to look at (yes I used “that” instead of “who” as the relative pronoun for effect).

On the other side of the fence we have certain people, regardless of religious background, who will tell you that physical attraction does not matter at all. “It’s what’s on the inside that counts,” they’ll tell you. They try to convince themselves and others that paying any attention at all to beauty makes you a shallow person. Such people are few and far between, but when you run into them you always remember it, because you feel horrible about yourself afterwards. If you’re a guy, you go home and set a resolution for yourself for the future: you will disregard physical attraction completely from now on. How long does that last? Until the next time you see a pretty girl. Again, disregarding physical attraction completely goes against the way we’re wired, our DNA.

As with most things in life, the correct answer does not lie on the extreme ends of the spectrum but somewhere in between, a shade of gray. Finding that shade of gray is very difficult and time-consuming, and as faulty, sinful human beings we can’t even be 100% sure we’re right when we find it. Although just because we know imperfectly does not mean we give up knowing and thinking altogether. We were given minds to think as our Heavenly Father thinks, to the best of our (limited) ability.

A very well-known Scripture verse on this topic comes from I Samuel, chapter 16. “Man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” In a very direct manner, we are told what God cherishes most: our hearts. And what God cherishes is what is best, because God is the epicenter of all that is good. But notice what the verse has established: the heart is more important than the outward appearance. It outranks it. But does this mean that the outward appearance doesn’t matter at all, or that it is bad and something to be cast away? Ahhh it does not.

Let’s jump over to Song of Solomon. If ever you wanted to find a missive in the Bible where the physical beauty we identify by nature is presented, this is it. All throughout the book, he is gushing over his lover’s appearance; only one chapter does not refer to her as beautiful, and in several instances in the other chapters it is “most beautiful among women.” In chapter 7 he compliments her feet, thighs, navel, breasts, neck, eyes, head, and even her belly and nose. This chapter makes me breathe a sigh of relief. Beauty is NOT something we necessarily need to shun and abstain from admiring! From this we know that there is a way for beauty to be handled rightly, that we don’t necessarily need to become ascetics and reduce God and all of His world to colorless, drab monotony like nuns in black robes.

But what is this balance? It seems to be sitting on a razor edge.

Do I believe in love at first sight? Absolutely not, because love is not sight. Love at first encounter, however, is something I’m willing to accept. Deep down I know that love goes beyond appearance, and what matters most is who people are and what they live for. We are told, again by Solomon, in Proverbs 31 that “charm is deceitful and beauty is vain.” Gosh, how many guys have experienced this? Every one of us. We’ve all come across a girl who is outwardly very attractive, but even just a quick glimpse at her personality and character reveals a person that we might not even wish to have as a friend, let alone as our wife. I want to be accepted and loved for who I am, regardless of how I look, and I know from the Golden Rule that that is exactly the way I should treat others, especially women since I’m a heterosexual male.

But while physical attraction must take a back seat to character and inner attraction, it is not completely nullified. I myself dream of having a wife who is, in every respect, through and through, without remission, DROP DEAD gorgeous. When she walks into the room, even without makeup on and her hair all frizzled after she’s just woken up, I want my breath to be taken away. Literally. I want to be in awe every time I see her and never lose that sense of awe. I want to be unarmed with my knees weakening upon mere sight of her.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with dreams like this. After all, the reason we appreciate beauty at all is because 1) beauty exists (it was created from the mind of God, and any creation reflects some quality of its creator) and 2) our faculty to appreciate beauty exists (it was created so that the beauty could be enjoyed, otherwise the beauty goes unnoticed without beholders to behold it). We’re not misfiring on all cylinders when we notice physical beauty.

But how important is it that my wife be drop dead gorgeous? This is where I must talk to my mind and slap some sense into it. I wish for a drop dead gorgeous wife, but that quality is expendable. It doesn’t break any deals. Love is not diminished in any way in its absence. Who she is, and therefore my love for her, is not affected by how she looks. Sure, her face will come into my mind every time I hear her name, but that’s just because we put faces to names. We can’t really visualize someone’s soul, who they are inwardly, so the best we can do is to picture their face.

It saddens me when I realize how many girls I write off simply because of how they look. Conversely, I will notice an attractive girl and think to myself, “man, I wish she could be my wife.” What do I know about her? Nothing other than how she looks! I know just as much about her as I do about the girl next to her, but I’m only paying her attention because I admire how she looks. That’s me being shallow. Yes, I wish to have a beautiful wife, but I can’t let that overtake my discretion and become mandatory. If I can’t even tell someone what type of personality she has (i.e. I’ve never spoken to her or even been around her), how can I say I like her? I know nothing about her. I only like her image. Even if I do know her, I may still only be interested in her because of her image.

That’s a realization I think a lot of guys need to come to and accept. The first time you meet your future wife, the first thought that goes through your head may not be “man she’s pretty.” She may just be average-looking. But that’s okay, and you need to accept that. I need to accept that. Because while you wait around endlessly for that girl whose appearance meets your standards (your ill-imposed, unreasonable standards), you may be missing some great, great girls, who while they are not over-the-top beautiful on the outside, are inwardly as beautiful as they come. And when you fall in love, beautiful becomes redefined. Beauty becomes not so much “what” but “who.” You stop describing beauty by components (eyes, face, clothing) and define it by identity (character, personality, faith). As long as it has something to do with “her,” it’s beautiful to you. It’s beautiful the way she smiles with bubbling joy, or dances to her favorite song, or prays to God from the bottom of her heart, expressing her love for Him. The world may never recognize her as beautiful, whether they see these things in her or not, but does that really matter? We shouldn’t accept their standard anyway, so we really can’t give two hoots about what they think.

So unfortunately the answer to the question is not a sentence long, or even a paragraph long. The full answer would probably take a chapter to flesh out, possibly even a book.

In any case let me try to summarize it:

1. Outward beauty is not meaningless.

On the contrary, everything in creation gives us some insight into the character of God. It serves some purpose and, with the right disposition of heart and mind, is a good thing.

2. It is okay to appreciate outward beauty, as long as it is not done in a sinful, excessive manner.

Shallowness is not synonymous with recognizing beauty, but it is its own separate response that proceeds it.

3. It is not okay to award beauty the gold medal of highest importance.

We must fight the current and go against the grain of the skin-deep, plastic-minded fixations of the world we live in that we are bombarded with every day.

4. Like many things in life, sin occurs not simply when an action is present (admiration of beauty), but when that action is taken out of its proper order and placed above something truly more important (loving people for who they are).

It would take a long dissertation to argue for and I’m no theologian, but I propose that the following statement about sin is true: it never introduces anything new, it only rearranges the order of levels of importance. As long as everything is in the right order and receives the correct amount of our devotion, we are not sinning.

My challenge to guys is this. Keep on appreciating girls’ beauty, but loosen your grip on it when it comes to your future wife. Don’t morph into someone you’re not around beautiful girls and be all charming and benevolent but then suddenly turn into a cold, lifeless brick wall when a less attractive girl is around. If your eyes are open too much, blind them some, though you needn’t blind them completely.

Keep the eyes of your heart open enough to acknowledge and appreciate beauty as something carved from the fingers of God, but closed enough that they do not become covetous over an inferior beauty that is in some cases deceitful and vain, and in all cases fleeting and fading away.