this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
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Asklemmy
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The wealthy surround themselves with beautiful people, get blood transfusions from young people, get cosmetic surgery. In our stories, good characters are usually portrayed as beautiful or handsome and often young. Successful characters, whether good or evil, are often beautiful or handsome. Regular-looking folks more often appear as side characters or comedic characters instead.
this view is encouraged by the fashion, skincare and cosmetics industries (not that there's anything wrong with fashion, skincare, or cosmetics per se).
So we are all being conditioned to worship or favor beauty and youth.
I agree on the conditioning aspect but is there not some biological imperative as well? Generally attractive traits deemed desirable from an evolutionary perspective
What we view as attractive is socially constructed and varies over time and place. See e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0738081X23000251
Youth and health are probably a proxy for fertility, so that would be related to physical attraction, but why should that affect how we treat people? That's not a reason to favor the young or to disfavor the old. Not only that, but community care of children meant everyone had a role in the greater sense of "fertility".
Thanks for replying and it provides proper answer to my first question. But I would like to know your opinion on the 2'nd question, "Is negativity of lookism causing people to incline towards lookmaxxing?" (to aquire pretty privileges)
I'm no expert, but if we have a hierarchy of beautiful/youthful looking people above regular folks, then yeah people are going to do some wild, desperate stuff to try to get that edge. capitalism and hierarchy pressure us all to get every advantage we possibly can.
looksmaxxing itself is based on incel delusions about how women choose men, taking societal hierarchies and pressures I've been talking about and viewing them as biological/evolutionary (which is nonsense)