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"To understand what it takes to be beautiful," writes Amy Alkon for Psychology Today, "we need to be very clear about what being beautiful means — being sexually appealing to men." She then commands: "burn those muumuus." Uh-oh. More »
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Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino was on the Today show this morning, and Al Roker asked him about the subtitle of his book, Here's The Situation, which includes the words "a guide to creeping on chicks" and "avoiding grenades." More »
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I remember my grandfather musing that, thanks to dentistry, medicine and relative affluence, people simply weren't "ugly" the way they had been when he was a child in early 20th century Arkansas. (It should be noted that he was known in said hamlet as "Moe Joe the Dog-Faced Boy," a name he carried for the next 80 years.) Well, The Times claims that whereas beauty has dominated the limelight for the past few years, now people are getting interested in the physical Other - classical "ugliness" — its societal perceptions, ramifications, and history. New ordinances protect against look discrimination. New shows claim to celebrate "ugly pretty." But...we've never defined beauty more narrowly! Can we punish this discrimination on the one hand and all tacitly celebrate it on the other? More »
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Fear of Flying author Erica Jong is currently in Italy, where, she says, "the men are just as sexist as they are in America yet there is no physical mockery of female candidates. The Italian elections are on Sunday and Monday and most of the women candidates are between forty and sixty plus. Yet no one makes fun of their looks." Um, except for Silvio Berlusconi, the right-wing Italian opposition leader who says that women on the left have "no taste" and that women on the right are "more beautiful." Italy: not quite the paragon of political correctness Jong thinks it is! [HuffPo, Telegraph] More »
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A new "no shit" study states that "personality goes a long way toward determining your attractiveness; it can even change people's impressions of how good looking you are." The study involved 78 college students who watched a computer screen display faces of the opposite sex and rated the faces on physical attractiveness while simultaneously learning about the "personality" of the person pictured. "Some were described as being honest, humorous, mature, intelligent, polite, and helpful. Others were called abusive, offensive, unstable, cruel, unfair, and rude." The students also had to note whether they would want to befriend or date the person pictured. Nothing too surprising happened: People weren't into making friends with the beautiful yet cruel. More »
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