9% of British men consider themselves handsome; a further 7% regard themselves as good-looking. By contrast, just 1% of British women describe themselves as beautiful and 2% as good-looking. (YouGov/The Times, 21 September 2019).
Epicurus would no doubt have commented that it is what is in the hearts and minds of men and women that matters, not their outward looks. This, for both genders, requires them to be polite, kind, attentive, gentle, thoughtful, generous and considerate of others. Oh, and to have a sense of humor.
As for this writer, he has never thought about it, really. To him all women are beautiful; some as just more beautiful than others.
Santayana helps, as he noted in his wonderful book A Sense of Beauty, that beauty is an “objectified pleasure.” Beauty is not something in the object but an experience of pleasure with the object giving rise to a sense that it is beautiful. Its more subjective than objective, but requires both, and is derived from our natural psychology. This is at least consistent with Epicurus in general, who understood that the relevance of anything depends upon the individual person. For example, he said, though the gods exist, they are not relevant to us, showing that he was inclined to view the most important things via a standard of relevance to the valuer. So I think he would agree with the general theory that beauty seen is relevant only to the beholder. That’s not the same as the old saw that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” but only that beauty does indeed depend upon some eye and the pleasure it has found. When we love someone, we find them beautiful, even if they don’t measure up to anyone else’s standards.
If British men consider themselves good-looking, its because they enjoy their looks. Go figure.
Cheers
Wes