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Padriag -> RE: how important are appearances.....really? (7/26/2005 9:14:54 PM)
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First impressions are almost always based on what we see, appearances. This is true and easy to demonstrate when you stop to think about it. If I see someone across a room or they see me, we each form an opinion of the other based on what we see because at that moment it is all we know of the other, and yet on that we judge them. We may later change our opinion, but that very first impression was based on appearances. We dress appropriately for job interviews... why, to make a good first impression because we know we will be judged on it. Advertising companies spend millions of dollars every year researching packaging, why, appearances affect sales because we judge what we buy in part on how it looks (does a fancy looking coffee maker really work any better just because it looks fancy, of course not, but statistically buy them anyone even though they cost more). Book stores can tell you that part of what makes or breaks a book is the cover are... it directly affects sales, appearances (so much for not judging a book by its cover, we literally do). What we see is intensely important to what we think. So much so that Leonardo da Vinci had this to say about it.
quote:
The eye in which the beauty of the universe is mirrored for the observer is of such great worth that whoever consents to its loss deprives himself of the representation of all the works of nature which make the soul that gazes on them content to remain in the human jail... but he who loses it leaves this soul in a dark jail with no hope of seeing again the sun, the light of the whole world.
What we see matters to us, appearance matters to us. It is a Politically Correct myth that appearances do not matter. That is not to say that such things as secondary sexual characteristics are the only part of a person's appearance that matters. What matter it if a woman has long flowing hair, but is otherwise filthy, unkept and unclean? A man may have bulging muscles, but will that matter if his hair is greasy and uncombed, his clothes dirty, his teeth yellow and missing, and everything about his possession seems uncared for and neglected by their appearance? Big tits or a chiselled jaw only get you so far, if you don't take care of the total package, you'll still come up short. And even if you don't have those prominent secondary sexual features, by paying extra attention in other areas of your appearance you most certainly can make up for it.
Shallow, not at all. Its all too human.
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