Think about this. We have to look at ourselves in the mirror. And I don’t just mean figuratively. We literally have to look at ourselves in the mirror. We check our reflection, check our appearance before we go out. We make sure we’re looking straight, looking decent, before we go out into society and engage with other humans.

So there’s this thing that happens when we initially catch sight of another person. There are triggers in our brains. Immediately we have different thoughts about other people’s appearance, their stature, their physique, their build. We have these private thoughts, these inner notions, that sometimes we share and sometimes we don’t.

What I’m trying to talk about is attractiveness. How it works, and what it even means when we go out and see someone and say, wow, they’re attractive. This idea that some people look better than others is a lot more complex and nuanced than I think we give it credit for.

You’ve heard people say everybody looks good to somebody. There’s somebody for everyone. And then there are people who feel like looks don’t really matter, that they care more about personality. I fall into that category. I’m not going to lie. I’ve always been in the category of not being big on looks, not being superficial about that, because that’s just not my nature. I’m never going to judge a book by its cover.

I’m never going to give someone more or less credit based on their appearance, how they were born, how they look, factors they had no control over. Which is why I think it’s important, and also cliche to say, but still important: what a person is like on the inside. Their intrinsic behaviors. The energy they give off outside of their physical appearance.

But I have always found it interesting, the thing we do when we see someone that piques our interest. Someone we find attractive, good-looking, hot, sexy, fine, whatever descriptive word fits the moment. We have that moment. And sometimes it’s quite literal attraction, just like magnets. Our eyes can’t seem to divert from this person we think is so attractive.

Some people are, I guess you could say, more traditionally attractive. What I mean by that is that by a general standard, a greater number of people would say they were attractive rather than not, given a test sample or a survey. So what is it about these people that garners that kind of attention? What are these characteristics, and why are they so common in what we believe to be attractive? How does it differ between cultures and different parts of the world? And what does it say about our individualism if we fall into these stereotypical ideals of attractiveness? What is beauty? What are beauty standards? What makes someone handsome, and what makes someone ugly? Because the same way there’s a measure for beauty and attractiveness, there’s a measure for ugliness.

I’ve always thought that was interesting. I’ve never wanted to judge, but I do take note of people who are so vested in appearance, in their own and in others’, to the point that they think differently about a person based on how they look. And I think about it in a bigger sense too. In a world with so many different factors determining how we’re perceived, why do we as humans put so much stake into beauty standards and physical traits? Why not some other factor? Why not speech, or intelligence, or thought? I guess you could say it’s because we’re visual creatures, but I don’t know. I don’t know. Just something to think about.

And I always wonder where I sit in all of this. Am I attractive? Would I be in that group of people that gets more thumbs up than thumbs down based on a hundred-person survey? I wonder, and I wonder how my experience differs from someone who gets more thumbs down. It just seems really unfair. But I guess life isn’t fair, and we just have to deal with it either way. That’s just how it is.

I just always thought that was strange.