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“I want to look good for myself” has a nice ring to it, but it is often a false statement. In fact, most women — and an increasing number of men — seek to emulate a beauty that they believe will bring them love, success and happiness. They do this, ironically, even though extremely beautiful people are not well liked.

But wanting to look good may not be as modern a phenomenon as you might expect.

Wanting to look good is a primal need that evolutionary biology can explain, according to Winfried Menninghaus, a professor at the Free University of Berlin’s Department of Comparative Literature and author of “The Promise of Beauty.”

Menninghaus said that most people today pursued a beauty ideal they could never reach. Everyone sees ideal bodies in the media that make one’s own body seem defective and in sore need of improvement, he pointed out.

In the view of Waltraud Posch, a sociologist from the Austrian city of Graz who teaches at several universities, people who beautify themselves nowadays are not after beauty per se. They actually want to create an identity and position themselves in society, she said.

Injecting oneself with wrinkle remover, she said, is also a way of saying that one’s thinking is modern.

“Today, physical attractiveness is considered to be a fundamental prerequisite for a life oriented toward social advancement,” Posch said.

People who are young and slender tend to be seen as flexible, she said, and natural-looking people are thought to be more trustworthy.

Posch added that contemporary society assumed everyone to be personally responsible for his or her actions. And since there were many ways to shape one’s body — fitness studios, cosmetics, plastic surgery — everyone could optimize physical appearance.

What, though, is regarded as beautiful? “There aren’t many different beauty ideals. Basically, there’s just one,” Posch said. Slender, youthful, fit and authentic.

“The beauty ideal now is very rigid,” agreed Nina Degele, a professor of sociology at Germany’s Freiburg University

Hence the “voluntary” decision to make oneself look good is actually a must. Still, women constantly say in surveys that they do so because it makes them feel better, Degele said.

Why the deception? Her answer: “For many people, admitting to making oneself look good for others would be tantamount to a declaration of bankruptcy.”

As Posch sees it, a lot of people have internalized society’s beauty ideal to such a degree that they believe they are pursuing it of their own free will.

Is there truly a connection between good looks, success and happiness? Degele pointed to studies showing that good-looking people are more successful in love and at work.

Mennighaus is more sceptical, at least as far as happiness is concerned.

He said studies had shown that negative character traits tended to be attributed to especially good-looking people. Being somewhat better looking than average makes people happier, he said, “but not, apparently, being a lot better looking.” 



DPA