Do Asexual People See Beauty Differently?

[Push Pop the Wolfdog]

My perception of beauty as an ace person:

"Subject x is hot" wth does hot even mean in this context

"Subject x is attractive" no they aren't no one is attractive "that" way i dont get it

"Subject x is cute" what

"Subject x is adorable no my dog is

"Subject x is aesthetically pleasing" you got me there

[alibali]

I find rock climbers attractive but it's more of an admiration of their talent and grace.

[Happydays97]

I do acknowledge the appearance of a person, but it's usually not the first thing I notice in a person. When I first meet someone I pay attention to how they act to others.

[Guest]

Symmetry I think is a general thing to all. Then there are personal preferences. I like green eyes for instance because my sister and father have them and I find them calming in some way. It is like asking, what makes a painting beautiful?

[Podsnap]

Everyone looks good when they're young. What people mean when they say someone who isn't young looks good, is that they look young.

Also, this is kind of off-topic but as a teenager, I was tall and blond and slender and I had perfect teeth and perfect skin and I was a loser with no friends. The most popular girl at our high school was short and chubby.

[Jamba]

Personally I find most people vaguely unattractive (including myself) but I also find both stereotypical masculinity and femininity very unattractive.

I've thought about this and I think I tend to find people attractive only if I feel they "look friendly". I have wondered if this could be the result of past bullying.

This is pretty much how I feel, I find people who look friendly and nice (people I would want to be friends with/hang out with) 1 million times more attractive than someone who is conventionally sexy. My friends always give me crap about finding someone attractive when they think they are average/not attractive and I feel like its because my aesthetic attraction is based on a persons persona/aura/vibe rather than their actual aesthetics.

[Stealthy Potato]

I find gentle intelligence and spirit attractive. Physical appearance is really low down the list of priorities. Can't say that i have a "type"....there's a bit of beauty in everyone.

[Aloki24601]

I usually try to associate people's looks with personality. I do find people attractive sometimes, but not always the typical ways. Mostly I find intelligence, kindness, etc attractive. I am also attracted to men with a gentle spirit.

I find that women can be attractive too, but mostly in their confidence or if they are speaking passionately about something they care about. I am not romantically attracted to women.

[UncommonNonsense]

I'm faceblind. I have enormous trouble recognizing people by their faces. Only faces that are *very* unusual or distinctive will be recognized immediately for me. And those are faces that most people find very ugly. Faces that are very asymmetrical, scarred, deformed, etc. Because these are the only faces I recognize easily, I am biased in their favour and generally like them. This means that I'm one of a very few people who can treat someone that other people think looks creepy or scary or grotesque politely and in a genuinely friendly manner, instead of the fake-friendly 'your appearance freaks me the hell out but I'll look like a dickbag if I allow that to show' manner that all too many people use.

Faces that are closest to society's ideal for standards of beauty are faces that I have the hardest time telling apart. It's so bad that I can rarely tell Hollywood actors/actresses apart unless they speak and have distinctive voices/accents. This is because they look so much alike.

All my life, my friends have always been people others shy away from because they're different in ways that draw the disdain or fear of most people.

[Bella the friendly kitten]

I see attractive people the same way one might see a beautiful painting or a pretty necklace. I observe and see it, but I do not feel anything.

[Adam_Jensen]

Well sometimes I might meet or see a person and I'll want to stare at them for hours but only to stare at them and nothing else.It's the same thing when I find beautiful art piece and want to stare at it also.So yea I don't know if this is attraction or something else but here are my five cents for the matter.

[Yinlotus93]

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[Yinlotus93]

personally, my ability to see beauty comes from getting to know someone the most. Artistically, I will make prejudgements, like how I consider their symmetry to appear, if they seem to exacerbate certain flaws or present themselves in particular style and appear to embrace it. but that usually only gets me as far as, "this person seems ok/not ok." But then when I get to really know someone, if they are nice or rude, arrogant or compassionate, then my opinion of their outward appearance tends to reflect how I feel about their internal characteristcs. I have considered what other people would see as very attractive or gorgeous people as entirely disgusting and unsightly just because their personality sickens me so much. On the other hand, if someone has a lot of good and respectable characteristics, same thing except they become more pleasing to the eye for me.

One example I can think of, Quasimodo (of Disney's hunchback of Notre dam). When I was little I thought he was kind of off putting, but I wouldn't have said ugly, b/c he had such bad overall symmetry. But after I saw the whole movie, and noticed how gentle, nice, artistc, kind, brave, sincere, sensitive, and selfless he was, my superficial opinions of him began to change hugely. And as I saw the movie again and again, the better I understood his character and the more entirely beautiful he just became when I looked at him. Little 5 year old me did wind up with a genuine crush on him as a result, and even today when I see that movie I smile a little too long when Quasi makes his appearance.

So yeah, for me, I have a limited initial opinion and it usually is never enough for me to determine anything solid about a person. Let alone if they are straight up ugly or beautiful. I honestly need to know them before they'll become anything to me visually for certian.

[alibali]

I am definitely attracted to people quite strongly, both looks and how they act, but the attraction stops there. I usually want to spend time more time with them than with others...that's it.

[Phantasmal Fingers]

How do you distinguish "good-looking" people from "non good-looking2 people? What do you define "beauty" as?

​In terms of their outward appearances good-looking people tend not to be fat, bald, old, ugly or deformed. But then again I would say that Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now is good-looking - and he's bald but isn't young. Some old people are good-looking despite being wrinkled - that famous statue of Voltaire in extreme old age, for example. And Admiral Viscount Nelson (he who won the Battle of Trafalgar) was apparently attractive to women and seems what I would call good-looking - even in that famous portrait by Lawrence in which he only has one arm and one eye!

But then when I say good-lookin I ain't asking what you got cookin! In other words what I mean is that I don't experience any lustful attraction (I'm aro-ace). Someone who seems to be aesthetically attractive by virtue of being well-proportioned - as in that famous drawing of the ideally proportioned human figure by Leonardo da Vinci - would seem to me to be good-looking, whether male or female. Tastes change though, don't they? I wouldn't say the women in Rubens's paintings are aesthetically pleasing (though presumably 17th century men thought otherwise) and nor are either sex in Dante Gabriel Rosetti's, though perhaps they were to him. Vivien Leigh was apparently regarded as being stunningly good looking. She's certainly a great actress and by no means unattractive but I can't really see what her contemporaries were raving about.

Sometimes though, charisma and personality outweigh the physical aspects. Casanova was apparently rather short and not terribly handsome. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." And if it's not skin deep, the mind also.

[Danny_Smith]

For me it is more aesthetic than anything else. I have learned to appreciate beautiful women similarly as sexuals, but of course there is no physical attraction for me.

[fissiparity]

I don't see any other human as attractive or beautiful and it has often annoyed me how I have observed others to be given preferential treatment based either on their looks or confidence.

[if-indeed]

When I feel drawn to someone's appearance, it's less that they look conventionally attractive and more that they look "interesting." Generic (sexual?) attractiveness isn't something that draws me in at all. It's when someone looks a little bit different from the sexy norm that I am more likely to find them aesthetically attractive.

[Janus the Fox]

Every person will have a different understanding of beauty and aesthetics, the feeling and such descriptives in word as of which also differs to the person.

Like an artist that generally knows what's beautiful in their own minds eye, shall also be someone else's unattractive, horrendous and disgusting.

[Larkaloke]

I'm rather poor at telling if people would be considered attractive, and indeed, I apparently put most if not all people who would be considered so into the "average" category -- meaning, "oh hey, yes, that is a human in reasonably good health there". I also apparently can't discern when people wouldn't be considered good looking, unless they are obviously ill (or look like they would be ill, I suppose). So... yeah. Can't tell.

I do sometimes find people's faces interesting. Somebody might have an unusual nose, for example, or a neat eye colour. I suppose it tends to be the same for other objects -- a colour combination or a combination of shapes (in this case, facial features) can make something stand out and look interesting to me, but I don't have much of a personal definition of "beautiful" in any respect, aside from as opposed to "something I would prefer not to look at". I don't make much of a distinction between a very well executed painting or sculpture and a beautiful one either, now that I think about it; the opposite to me is usually something I consider poorly done or uninteresting.

So... for me, yeah, maybe I do see beauty differently (or mostly don't see it). This doesn't appear to be the case with most asexual people, though, at least not those I know personally.

[Dragonheart]

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who's wondered about this

I've basically accepted at this point that my aesthetic perception of people is generally skewed compared to that of the people around me. It probably doesn't help that I find a handful of human traits to be quite unattractive on the whole (for instance, I find the human leg to be one of the most awkward and ugly shapes in nature. Take that how you will). I've actually gotten to the point of frustration that when my friends say someone is hot or cute or what have you, I turn around and stare at the person in question for a minute cataloguing prominent features in an effort to figure out the formula to make pretty people. (Wow, that sentence got stranger and stranger as it went on, didn't it?)

With girls, about 80% of the time my perception of beauty flatlines at somewhere around "yeah you're pretty," with little variation. I'm very much capable of saying that clothing or accessories look nice on a person and meaning it, but as far as actual facial structure and even body type goes, it takes quite a bit for me to be able to say that someone is actually unattractive.

With boys, it's even worse. I do find a guy who's very noticeably overweight to be unattractive (I admit that), but other than that, I have almost zero opinion on faces, bodies, and even clothes. I can tell you what doesn't look good, when presented with it, but it seems like my aesthetic appreciation of guys has a pretty low ceiling. I've never been able to look at someone, especially guys, and say, "Yeah, they're hot/beautiful/cute/fill-in-the-blank." There was one exception to that rule, actually, which was a guy who had been talked about quite a bit among the squad before I met him, whom we called "Hot Jon," much to everyone's amusement. When I actually was introduced to him, he turned around and my first thought was, "Yeah, I can see why she [the friend who had met him previously] thinks he's pretty." That was it. Not "He's cute," not even "he's pretty," (and "pretty" was the exact word in my mind), just a vague understanding of the aesthetic appeal. It's happened exactly once, and that's it. (Fun fact: the second thought in my head, when she said, "This is Jon," was, "Oh, Hot Jon," which I almost said out loud, oops XD I told her about that a moment later when he couldn't hear and she actually shrieked. I was very amused.)

(As far as nb people go, I have no idea. I've only met one nb person whose face I've seen, and they didn't elicit a reaction from me other than "you and your SO are cute and you deserve each other," but I don't think one is really enough of a standard for me to say anything on.)

Not sure how much this helped, but I figured I'd share my experience, or lack thereof.

[cavalier080854]

From my viewpoint attractiveness is irrelevant to asexuals, but we can still see beauty. Standards of beauty change through the ages, usually caused by fashion. But studies have shown that even people born blind can recognise body shape beauty by feel. The beauty standard for blind people is the average shape.

[Sally]

Asexuals can definitely feel aesthetic attraction, so human beauty is not irrelevant. We just don't associate attractiveness with sexual feelings.

Aside from that, beauty exists in many different situations, and each individual sees beauty individually. It isn't asexuals v. sexuals.

[Clearly~Dust]

Like a sexual person, I have a "type" that I find attractive, but its more of a romantic, aesthetic attraction (seeing as i'm ace something). If I see someone who I find aesthetically attractive, I want get to know them and possibly start a romantic relationship with them.

So i'd say I see beauty in about the same light as sexual people, just minus the sexy thoughts.

Personally, I can be attracted to the way people look, just not in a sexual way. However, I'm usually not attracted to people who are stereotypically hot or beautiful- the people I'm most asethetically attracted to are usually people that almost everyone else would find ugly. I like people who have something about their look that makes them unique and interesting, instead of people who have nice abs or whatever.

I don't think that's purely an asexual thing though. Everyone has their own preferences, and not even all sexual people will be able to agree on who's attractive and who isn't.

I can firmly say that no, this is not just a asexual thing. My brother is a VERY sexual person, and he experiences attraction in much the same way as you do. He will often find a person attractive who looks different from the norm, or who has an interesting face. Usually they are someone who our culture doesn't focus on as beautiful.

[Éadweard]

I seem to find the same people attractive as anyone else. I just react differently.

[SleepyFox]

Oh gosh. I think I have the opposite problem to a lot of people commenting here. I generally find most people are attractive in some way or another. One thing I was taught in retail was "if you want to be genuine to a customer find something you like about them and compliment it." And I've been working retail long enough that I think I do that automatically now.

I have things I notice first about people (eyes, hands, mouth/face) and things which I could stare at all day but only because I find them aesthetically pleasing. Like other people have said a person's personality, humour etc affects how "attractive" I find them. Though all of this is very subjective.

Lately I tend to see someone who I think is pretty/beautiful/cute/handsome and have to go through a "now do I see myself cuddling them or do I want to actually be them" argument. Usually it's bits of both.

[Starlit Sky]

Asexuals do not perceive beauty differently. I once thought that as well because I had noticed that, depending on the assholishness of a person, my (aesthetic) attraction could disappear in a nick of time, but I quickly found that that's just a me thing. There are sexuals who can do the same.

Aside from that, what OP seems to be talking about is body positivity--essentially that everyone should feel attractive, acknowledges that everyone has different preferences, etc. I'm a body positive person, too, so I can relate a lot to what OP is talking about when they say that they get annoyed by the "you can be ugly and still be beautiful on the inside!" bullshit.

And, OP, if you want to find a number of people who have a similar mindset, all ya gotta do is Google body positivity. Then you'll see that there are plenty of sexuals who are on board, too. :)

EDIT: I could rant a lot about how bullshit beauty standards can be. I'm thinking about the time I was younger and one girl told another girl that "even though she's black" she was still pretty.

[alibali]

Attractiveness doesn't just apply to sexual attractions. Otherwise how would we have friendship. That isn't about beauty, just about the people we feel drawn to or comfortable with. Beauty is a very cold feEling. Asexuals just dont experience sexual feelings in relation to other people. But can still want to be with some people more than others.

[Rare Aztec Whstling Chickn]

As far as I know, I'm pretty standard when it comes to this. There are some people I find aesthetically attractive, and there's people I don't. I don't know how to describe it, or why, I can just say that it does.

[SpaceNebula]

I often feel that in terms of beauty people are a blank slate. Beautiful people are the ones who are smiling, who look joyful, sincere, caring or hopeful or confidence in their body while "uglyness" is people who's faces reflect cruelty, anger, or hatred, people who are sneering or yelling

On a non-emotional standpoint- in my opinion, less beautiful things are also excessive layers of thick makeup, very poor personal hygene and morbid obesity

 

So many people have a very physical/ genetic opinion of beauty but I've never really been able to identify whatever face shape people think is the beautiful one or that one hairstyle makes a person look more beautiful, it's all subjective and to me everyone seems beautiful when they are joyful