Growing up and for years after, I was always so confused about what so many men consider beautiful. I would see gorgeous women that men would say were average and then women who, while they were making the most of their assets, were objectively average to plain, that men called beautiful.

I could. not. figure. it out.

The men in my family finally gave me insight. I was at once encouraged, fascinated, and appalled. I was assessing the beauty of women based on objective standards such as the golden ratio and regular features. Men were assessing them by how "finished" they looked, how much effort they made. No matter how perfect her features and the composition of a her face were, a woman was "ugly" if she hadn't made an effort with her hair or put on makeup. Ladies, that is why there are so many movies where the ingenue is "ugly" until she put on a fashionable (tight/revealing) dress and had her hair done. It is obvious to us that she was beautiful all along, but the men in the movie (and pickme women) didn't see it, because the women were not properly adhering to misogynistic grooming standards. So they were using "beautiful" to mean "obedient to cultural standards". ...and they weren't even aware of it.

At the time, I was thrilled to find out it was that easy to appear attractive to men. But then, and more so now, I was discouraged to truly understand how performative femininity really is.

Conversely, I rarely see a woman I would think of as ugly. Besides the fact that that is a pretty mean word, I find that most women have some hallmarks of beauty, even if it is a gorgeous personality transforming plain features. Meanwhile, so many men look around and see ugly women who are actually gorgeous women who are tired, sick, haven't made an effort to look "presentable", or who have one feature that is widely viewed as "disqualifying" (extra weight, for example).

The men who are in my life now tell me that almost all women are attractive, by the way. Green flag, ladies.