is it really important ... ???

(hey I'm not the only one that actually like Savage Garden!)

As for personality over look, I totally agree. My Boyfriend is amazing (Dud...yeah , well, I'm in love with him...) but according to society's standard (the ultra "commercial" standards that most stupid movie or magazine promote), my boyfriend is no Tom Cruize or JBJ.

BUT his personality is so interesting, so unique, that I actually find him beautiful. I think his look (he looks a little bit like John Lennon but with black hair and he's ultra tall & way too thin- kind of a Gothic John Lennon!) matches with his personality. He doesn't look like a model in a magazine, mais il a de la classe!

So love or affection or friendship can make you find someone beautiful even if "society" would disagree witth you.

I've sort of found the opposite at college, there are some increadiby attractive girls, who are intelegent, and also are genuenly nice people. In many ways, this does make them more attractive I'd have to say.....

At the end of the day, looks are very important. If I found somebody ugly, I couldn't go out with them. Be friends yes, but if I actually found them unatractive, then I just wouldn't be able to move past friends. This possiably isn't too nice, but I'd say if people were very honest, this would be the same for most people. I'm not talking about girls who don't do somehting for you, who are maybe bland, or not strikingly attractive, girls who you find unattractive.

I'm not exactly Brad Pit myself, so I'm waiting for my sexyness to shine through when I'm in my own rock band, playing live.....

Also, you could argue that the really attractive ones aren't the ones you want to sit down and have a conversation with

yeah but I think the way you define "attractive" is little bit like the way I define beautiful... you need to find a girl "attractive" for you, but... To find a girl attractive, do you need her to look like a Cosmopolitain model? If the answer is no: that means that a girl can be attractive to you without being "attractive" to the "stupid- commercial oriented- society"!

my boyfriend is "attractive" to me... my mother say is cute... my step-mother say is ugly! So you see that "attrative" can be really relative!

Yes, but this does come in degrees

I can find a girl attractive without her looking like Holly Valance. At the end of the day, it is something personal, I know I've found people attractive, who other people don't, and veise versa. But, you have to consider that beauty isn't completely subjective, we are in many ways trained into what we do find attractive. Example, in past times (uncertaintly of dates) overweight women were deemed more attractive, as they were seen as well looked after, and healthy.... If I was living then that's what would have been attractive for me, but I don't find overweight women attractive now (again, that's just my personal preference). Women being tanned is seen as prefereable, or more attracitve, and I'd go along with this, (especially the Brazilian look ). The 'universal' attractiveness is always going to be the core of who people find attractive, because when it's pushed in your face all the time, you do lean to see things that way. That's not to say people demand perfection, and nothing else, I obviously have my own preferences, as I think most people do. Still, most peoples ideas on attractiveness, or beauty will in some way conform, even if just in part to the usual image of beauty. Let's be honest, if you walk into a bar, and you have the choice between somebody with great legs, long hair, pretty face, 'perfect' (again, this is somehting taught) body, and then a small, ugly person, who would you go for?

I hope this doesn't come across too badly, I'm not saying that I woudlnt' talk to, or be friends with somebody who isn't attractive. But then again, it's the minority of people who will come out completely against the general ideo of beauty and say, "No, I prefere women who are vastly overweight", or "I find taned skin, slim with big breasts, long legs a turn off" because this isn't the way the majority of people see beauty....

Also, I think it does depend on past experiance, and in some ways how attractive you are. Of cource, this isn't always the case, but attractive girls are usually with attractive guys. I honestly don't know who is, or isn't attracted to me, because I always avoid the issue when it comes to finding out how girls view me. This possiably pulls my theory down completely, because I be looking at girls way above my league, but what ya gonna do

yeah I understand the pressure of society standard... and that it is influencing what we think (even if we try to resist really hard) BUT I don't like to admit it. I might be playing the ostrich while hiding my head in the sand, but I want to resist the pressure of society standard on beauty...
I wished I could say I won't prefer AT FIRST SIGHT a guys looking like JBJ over, say, an ordinary-looking guys!

Because after speaking with the beautiful guy, I will probably run to meet the ordinary one!

Yeah. I don't think it's a consious pressure. I don't find a certain type of woman attractive because if I don't I'm going to be laughed at, and I won't be accepted. I'm that way because it's who I am, I can't really controle it. I'm saying that a society determines these things, and it's what you're brought up to think, what you adopt as your standards. I haven't consiously accepted what society deems to be attractive, nor have I been told that one thing is attractive. It's just what happens when you grow up I supose, I don't think you can help it.

I don't have any problem in accepting that this is how I think. At the end of the day, I believe this is how everybody thinks, because it's just the society that we're brought into. I know that I do have an individual taste, and that if I'm told now that somehting is attractive, unless I find it to be so, I won't accept somebody elses view.

Also, I hope your boyfriend never reads this thread.....He could get quite upset if he did

Yeah I agree with you on the "unconscious pressure"... but since we don't this unconsicious pressure exist... we should consciously try to get rid of it. when we know society is trying to brainwash us, we should do something about it.

It just like trying to refuse to fall for what ads in magazine want us to believe is "beauty". i don't deny Cindy Crawford( or what ever model) are "beautiful"woman, but I REFUSE to let the magazines force into my head that this kind of Beauty is the only one that exist... magazine will not let me forget that interior beatuty still exist!

( by the way, my boyfirend will not be angry or sad if he read this stuff... because i believe i said earlier that even if he was not the "typical standard of beauty for a man", he is still one of the most beautiful man in the world to me!)

And not only interior beauty Jeanne,
look at Julia Roberts for exemple, i think she's really beautiful, she doesn't look like all these models who are clones of each others ! there is not only one kind of beauty ...

agree... beauty is in the eye of the beholder! I think every person will define beautiful differently so we can say that beauty exist in as many forms as people on earth live!