Agreed that analyses of this word/concept are confused. Unfortunately, this doesn’t deconfuse things, it just adds some epicycles to the confusion.
You’re right that there are multiple dimensions to what it might mean to be “attractive”, but you’ve missed the complexity of individual judgements, aggregated non-linearly to social agreement within a given subculture.
Whether someone has a symmetrical face and clear, smooth skin is somewhat objective. How to notice that, weight it against other attributes, and give praise for it is both individually decided and socially constructed. Avoiding the confusion means acknowledging the non-objective nature of the evaluation, both highly variable among individuals and normalized among cultures.
Agreed that analyses of this word/concept are confused. Unfortunately, this doesn’t deconfuse things, it just adds some epicycles to the confusion.
You’re right that there are multiple dimensions to what it might mean to be “attractive”, but you’ve missed the complexity of individual judgements, aggregated non-linearly to social agreement within a given subculture.
Whether someone has a symmetrical face and clear, smooth skin is somewhat objective. How to notice that, weight it against other attributes, and give praise for it is both individually decided and socially constructed. Avoiding the confusion means acknowledging the non-objective nature of the evaluation, both highly variable among individuals and normalized among cultures.