Attractive

There's two kinds of attraction, which I like to call objective and subjective. Both are fairly simple, really. Objective attractiveness, in a way, is a case for superficiality: Attractive people are healthy people, period. It's what you could call natural beauty. Think about it like this, and suddenly it's not that superficial anymore. The elderly, the sick and wounded and handicapped, the obese, anyone who carries the traces of severe substance abuse or other types of coping - they are violating this rule. As within, so without. Next time somebody gets accused of body-shaming or whatever, or you want to do that yourself, maybe stop and think if what they're really doing is a rude way of telling someone they're sick and need a doctor. It's still rude, don't get me wrong, but take it from a fatty like me: They have a point.

 

It's also important to remember that natural beauty and societal standards are two different things, that have been drifting apart at least since the advent of privatized mass media. And by that we have reached what I classify as subjective attractiveness:

 

That in contrast, describes what's generally called personal taste. Which is only partially the same thing the esoterically inclined recognize as the concept of alignment. It's not just a choice you make. You never woke up one morning and by way of "eeney miney moe", decided which type of person you find hot, did you? And I'm not talking about taste as in blondes vs redheads or something like that. There's more to that than meets the eye as well, but that's not the topic right now. I mean something deeper.

You attract what you are, and what you are attracts you. Here's also where you find all your bohémes and extravaganzos, but also your perverts, creeps and weirdoes. People who seek someone who's just as far out of the box, or just as broken as they are themselves. People which most others will see as despicable, controversial, or polarizing at best.

But then, these too will usually notice when someone radiates the objective, natural beauty described above. Think of the fast food junkie infatuated with the movie star or internet celebrity, who has a solid and stable social network, eats healthy, exercises almost daily and what not. There's one-sided admiration or attraction, sure, but the alignment just isn't there. Their realities are so much different, there's no way in hell they'll ever meet in person. Which I'd argue, is a good thing, and for both parties involved.

 

That's another way where attractiveness knows two distinctions: The mirror and the jigsaw puzzle. The mirror rarely works, and if it does, you probably have two people of the objective type. For all the others, which probably is most of humanity, the jigsaw is the more promising way. There's a part that's aligned, the print, but there's also a level where the two pieces need to be each other's opposite, need to compliment each other if they are to stay together.

Again, I'm not primarily talking about lifestyle here. The accountant's secretary can be the safe, quiet haven for the Hollywood stuntman she's married to, who in turn serves as the storm to bring a bit of action into her life, just as much as she needs and knows how to handle.

 

In reality, life is a bit more fuzzy than that of course. A piece of a jigsaw puzzle fits in one place, and one place only. It's much easier being a Velcro strap. That'll stick to pretty much any other piece of Velcro, so long as it's the opposite face. I mean, I guess you also can be sticky tape, which sticks to just about anything at all but the clouds. Or you can be the cloud, of course!

Done