Enter the world of dating and you will find a lot of anxiety, particularly from the ladies, about attractiveness and the role of appearance in the successes and failures of their love lives.  We all know that physical beauty draws other people to you more readily and that being physically attractive makes it easier to find dates.  However, is it shallow to be impressed by and drawn to physical appearance? Is it possible to overlook other, more important qualities for a relationship such as loyalty, empathy and personal compatibility, by focusing too much on looks?

We all know that men are more visual than women and as a result, physical attractiveness is more of a premium quality for men than it is for women. Undoubtedly, women will give more of the benefit of the doubt to a cute guy, but women are more evolutionarily wired to respond to strong male traits such as dominance, aggression and confidence, than pure physical appearance.  As a result, women are more focused on their physical appearance while looking for a mate, while you’ll find that men (as long as they don’t look like a  total slob) look to improve their mating chances by asserting their social dominance through social status, money, prestige, and popularity.  Hence, you’ll mostly find the “shallow” and “superficial” rhetoric coming from women who feel like they are not up to competitive par with other, more attractive females. This is not meant to be a critique or condemnation of less attractive women, but simply an illustration of real, social dynamics.

So back to the question at hand- is it shallow (for men specifically) to place so much importance on physical appearance? The answer to this question, like most things, is not completely black and white. There are instances when yes, it would be considered shallow and others when it wouldn’t.  As mentioned, men are evolutionarily wired to respond to physical beauty, so it is ridiculous to even attempt to try to change something which has been so hardwired over eons of time. Men’s visual nature is the reason that the porn industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. Yes, men are wired to enjoy porn, which is why any effort on the part of the female partner to completely stop their guy from watching is destined to be futile- a subject for a future article. At any rate, men are naturally drawn to beautiful people, and that’s the way men are designed. In this regard, finding looks to be important is completely biologically natural, which makes the “shallow” argument ridiculous.

The “shallow” argument, however, does have merits when someone is judged EXCLUSIVELY by their looks and no other qualities. For example, if a man wanted to date a woman entirely based on her looks and nothing else mattered, then yes, that would be considered shallow. In order to be shallow, a man would have to completely disregard other qualities that a woman brought to the relationship, in essence, completely objectifying her for her appearance only.  However, this strict definition would apply only to a very small percentage of men. Most men, even those who find looks to be of the utmost importance, are first initially drawn to an attractive appearance, and then only develop true feelings for the other person once they get to know them better and be better able to judge personality compatibility and strength of character. In this way, looks are simply a screening mechanism, rather than the end-all criteria.

Usually when you hear complaints about appearance from one partner once already in a committed relationship, it’s because the other partner has let themselves go and is no longer caring about their appearance, which can imply that they no longer care about the relationship. A relationship is like a garden that always needs caring and attention, you can’t just let go of it and expect things to grow smoothly.  Likewise, you can’t expect that you can just let go of any aspect of what it was that initially attracted your partner and expect that it won’t be noticed or somehow affect the relationship. A successful relationship needs constant upkeep.

Care about your relationship by caring about your appearance. It is naive to assume that you should be “accepted anyway you are.” That is the lazy way to approach a relationship, and only rings true in theory, not practice. In theory, love lasts forever, but in reality, negative experiences within the relationship serve to erode that foundation. Leave the “shallow” argument where it belongs- as a crutch for those who believe that the real world should conform to their personal wishes.