Quote:
Originally Posted by Blue Bird
Of course looks matter. They're what cause the first impression. During your everyday life, the main factor determining what gets your attention or not, is how a person looks. Because until you know how they really are inside, looks are all you'll know. And until that point, it will be the only thing that matters.
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This is a good point. Looks set the tone in any conversation. Based on how people look when we meet them, we judge them and expect their personalities to slightly resemble the personalities of those we've met earlier who look like them.
And it makes sense; sight is pretty much the dominant perceptive tool in our human perspective of the world. It's the most powerful and longest ranging sense. After all, touch extends only a few feet, taste a few inches, smell a few hundred meters, sound, a few miles at the most. But sight...that extends for light years. Because of its range and strength, it's clearly the dominant way for us to perceive nearly everyone and everything in the world. So most of the data about every person we ever see on the roads, at a large school, in a packed stadium or rally, and on TV is based on their appearance.
It's hard to ignore the vast majority of the data, so it is only logical that we value appearance so much. Personally, I think looks and personality are heavily correlated in the majority of cases. (majority, not absolute, of course) By this, I don't mean that good looks indicate a good personality; I just mean that certain personality types happen to bear certain physical traits and clothing types. Looks are certainly a useful part of the equation to take note of.
When it comes to being good friends with someone, looks don't really affect our ability to stay good friends with them, help them with their experiences, etc. People really don't need to be insecure about their looks with good friends and family; and in the end these are the only ones who are actually very important to us: the ones who will examine our personalities in the greatest detail and really figure out who we are. If people are extremely insecure about their appearance in the presence of close friends due to the influence of advertisements, I believe they are mistaken, since good friends aren't shallow with each other.
But at the same time, we can be very shallow when it comes to light acquaintances or strangers. Advertising is one of the situations where we happen to be shallow since we rarely personally know the people we are seeing in advertisements; most of our information comes from their looks. What I'm trying to say is that I can check girls out all the time while at the same time maintaining a strict standard for what type of personality I am interested in, because they are two different realms. In a more serious situation, I can preserve the quality of my relationships by having a different standard for good friends than for acquaintances. So shallowness doesn't have to preside. For ads, sex just sells a little too well, but that's just how our world works.