Forgive me for this, I know I’ve weighed in on the subject a few times, but I’m interested in some of the dynamics of these questions.
I was watching a panel discussion between a host and 7 young ladies. The host asked the women a question, and they responded in a straightforward manner. But when they got pushback, they defended themselves with a number of justifications. I think some of their defenses were reasonable. Some of the defenses were not, and a few of those girls attempted to defend their responses by “moving the goalposts” in a manner.
Another name for moving the goalposts might be challenging the premises, which is a solid argument tactic. In fact, an experienced debater will always work hard to frame the argument in a way that gets the opponent to accept certain premises. If those premises are accepted, then it is much harder to attack the argument.
Beauty on a scale
A panel of young women are asked to rate their looks on a scale of 1-10.
Out of the 7 women asked, all rated themselves a 10, but one, who gave herself a 9.5. They all said that not only were they 10’s, but that everyone is a 10. They agreed that self-love was really important, so it’s clear that they are talking about how they see themselves, not necessarily how others see them.
The pushback by the host was that it was arrogance. One girl on the panel answered that you should have self-confidence. The host responded by noting that you can have self-confidence AND a reasonable assessment of your looks at the same time.
The scale is subjective
One of the girls answered that if she thinks she’s a 10, she also accepts that not everyone else is going to see her as such.
Dave:
The defense here is that different people see things differently, so there is no way to accurately assess one person on “a scale”. The question becomes “Whose scale?” This is a fair objection too. We all have different likes and preferences.
The 9.5 girl said she believes that if 100 people were ranking her, she’d probably get an average of 9.5. She believes she would rate that highly even on a wider scale of a 100 people judging her.
The guy states: if you’re a 10, that means there are no women that are more attractive than you.
Dave:
Here I disagree with the host. A scale of 1-10 would be complete if there were 10 people. If we enlarge the group to 100, then in an absolute ranking of 100 girls (assuming such a thing were even possible), 1-10 would correspond to a percentile. A 1, the lowest, would cover the bottom 10th percentile, 10 would cover the top 10th percentile. There would then be 10 girls that are ‘10s’. Widen it out to 1000 girls and there would be a 100 girls that would be 10s. In that group, saying you are a 10 would not be the same as saying you are the prettiest possible girl. So I take the point here that a numbering system is too limiting.
In the wider context of a city, there would be thousands of girls that would qualify as 10’s. If the world has 8 billion people, and half are women, then that would mean statistically there are 400 million 10s.
Attractiveness is more than just looks.
Another girl says: being attractive is so much more than just looks.
Dave:
This is of course true. The question originally posed was where they stood on a scale of looks, not just overall attractiveness. This is an instance of moving the goalposts. If you change the equation and add in more factors, then limit the pool to the people who would find you personally attractive, then you can probably make a case for being a 10, even if you wouldn’t rate that highly purely on a scale of physical attractiveness. But that said, it IS true that attractiveness is much more than just good looks. We are attracted to people (thankfully!) for more than just good looks.
An objection to metrics of beauty.
Then one of the girls objects to the whole beauty-on-a-scale idea.
The guy asks if the women have ever said something like: He’s a 10, but he wears flip-flops. The panel of women laughs and says- well it’s a trend and it’s funny.
Dave:
I will take the host’s point that we all do in fact judge even beauty on a scale. It doesn’t have to be the predominant factor, but nonetheless we do judge it in some form.
I had a conversation once where a woman said there were lots of aspects to a personality, each of which you might put on a scale. She would perhaps want a total of 7. If the guy is a 4 on the looks scale, it isn’t a deal-breaker, but he’s going to have to be a 10 on some other scale in order to counter-balance that. I would imagine we all operate on something like this when we are first getting to know someone.
Another important factor is that what elements bump someone up on a scale can change. If someone finds another attractive, then they start to see the elements of the other’s personality, and even their looks, begin to weigh more. He might start off thinking he would really like a sporty girl, but if he meets an intellectual, then her intellect begins to be seen in a different light. At that point, intellect begins to mean more to his scale than sportiness.
So while I think the host is right in that we all use these common scales to weigh how much certain factors are “worth”, at some point, they become irrelevant.
Some other moments from the panel
The guy asks around the panel: if you’re a 10, then you think there are no women prettier than you?
The first girl says, No, there definitely are. But I said 10 because you can’t really rate that on a scale, and people have different preferences. So many people could be beautiful but the scale is a stupid way to calculate that. She thinks a numerical scale is a dumb way to assess attractiveness.
Dave:
Stating you are a 10, and then following that up with “I said that because you can’t really rate it on a scale” is contradictory. If you think it can’t be rated, why did you insist you’re at the top?
The second likewise thinks using a scale is not helpful since everyone judges differently and beyond that, using a scale puts people down.
Dave:
Yes being judged on a scale will cause you to see that some are rated higher, which naturally means that some are lower. This happens with every assessment. Saying it’s not helpful is silly. If it weren’t useful, no one would bother. But since we all assess options everyday, we use common metrics to do that.
The fourth woman admitted that sure, there were prettier women than her, but because social media distorts things, everyone was screwed up in the way they assessed things anyway.
The fifth girl says the scale is stupid because of course there will be more attractive people than we are, and there will be more attractive people than those that are more attractive than the ones that beat us and it doesn’t matter. If everyone here sees themselves as a 10, then they’re 10s. And the ones more attractive than them are 10’s too.
Dave:
This is a pretty ridiculous comment on its face. You rated yourself a 10- top of the scale. Then you said there are other people that are more beautiful, which automatically demotes you to at most a 9. Then you said there are other people prettier than the people that bumped you from a 10 to a 9, which means those that displaced you from a 10 to a 9, have now been demoted to 9’s, and you’ve been demoted to an 8. Her answer was to wave it away and declare everyone 10s. Why? Because it’s uncomfortable to admit you aren’t in the most attractive group? But she already did that, so why can’t she just state she is at best an 8? This is an inept refusal to admit she was wrong.
The sixth girl says it doesn’t make you any less beautiful if someone is more beautiful than you.
Dave:
Well, the existence of the scale doesn’t change your looks one iota. And undoubtedly, someone can still find you the most attractive option, even if there are others more beautiful. But if we are talking about judging on a scale, then yes, the instance of someone more beautiful than you does, in fact, make you “less” beautiful. ONLY in the sense of the scale, though, because the scale measures ‘more’ and ‘less’ beautiful.
I’ll add here that because beauty is such a subjective thing, it IS really hard to say a person is some numerical value on a scale. It really does depend radically on who is doing the judging. Granting that there are some women who will rate higher on many scales than others. But since most of this is done in service of finding mates, rather than trying to win beauty contests, scales become less relevant.
But let me return to the host’s framing: if you’re a 10, then you think there are no women prettier than you.
There is no such thing as “the prettiest”. I can find any number of exceptionally beautiful women that all look different. I don’t think I could possibly rank one as ‘the most physically beautiful’. This is going to happen all the way down the scale. While I can certainly assess beauty along a scale of what personally appeals to me, and I can note that in general, certain things would be given a higher rating than others, it all gets pretty muddy.
As I mentioned, we need to assess options. We do so by considering aspects and then ranking them. This is just natural and it’s natural that we do so with attractiveness as well. But at some point, many of the things we initially use to inform our choices are going to fall away.