Exactly how powerful is beauty?

Assuming by beauty you mean in appearance, I will tell you how a beautiful woman can make me feel. I am a male of about 21 years. I consider my self rather handsome, if not exeedingly so. I often have pretty women come up and talk to me where I work. As a good portion of these women are also drunk, they can be very flirtatious and sexually suggestive. They often try to tempt me into allowing them to do something that is forbidden, or ask me to do something with them that is similarly forbidden(at least while I'm at work). When a pretty girl does this it makes me simply smile and laugh and feel slightly amused/happy. When an exceedingly beautiful girl does this, which is much rarer, I feel my heart start to race slightly and sometimes a slight regret that I was unable to satisfy them. I do not lose sight of all rationality, although it is sometimes tempting to do so. When an exceptionaly ugly girl tries to do the same, I usually, but not always, get slightly annoyed and my smile, if any, will not be as large or genuine as would be in the former cases. When a gay male tries to hit on me I usually get highly annoyed and offer no smile (not that I'm against gays, I'm just against gays trying to hit on me...). I have noticed that guys will sometimes tolerate things from a attractive girl that they wouldn't from an unatractive one. These observations are all based upon first meeting or relativitly new aquantices. After time, beauty loses much or all of its potence in a close friend or annoying girl. In a long term relationship it doesn't matter whether or not your girl looks like Angelina Jolie or Princes Shrek, the feelings you eventually feel towards them, both good and bad, take no consideration of her outer beauty (at least for me as I have dated both).

Note: I am not trying to be judgemental or anything, I am simply trying to describe as best I can my honest and unintended emotional reaction to persons of varying personal attraction. Like they say, emotions are uncontrolable. Our reation to them is.

It's incredibly powerful. It's still not clear what makes one person beautiful and another not although many of us can name things we think most people find attractive. But consider this. Beautiful people have to be rare, or at least uncommon, otherwise what's the point? So beautiful people are like a light, they shine on us sometimes and we get to feel the warmth of being part of something pretty, and we get the impression that the world should be like that.

As for me, i am a sucker for beautiful women, they have made me listen to rather strange things and made me buy rather strange products i didn't need in the first place and never use. I know i shouldn't, but there's something about being noticed by these people, to talk to them.

And, who has mentioned the effect of beautiful men? Granted we're a bit more elusive as women have more "conflicting" tastes to create a single image of what makes men beautiful. But do we have any influence? Any at all?

Great question!

I believe beauty is an ancient Jedi mind trick.

Beauty enables a woman to immediately seize the male imagination (of course, by that time, the male brain is completely turned off!).

But beauty is not enough. A beautiful woman can seize a man's imagination, but she still has to do something with it!

That's where seduction comes into play (or foreplay?). :-P

A great example of beauty + seduction is top model Natalia Vodianova, who caught her future aristocratic husband's attention during a reception. But she knows it's not enough. So she proceeded to seduce him using her knowledge of culture and theatre, which she learned from her grandmother (even though she grew up in a poor family).

He would later complain that she made him wait two whole months before their first kiss!

Conclusion: Beauty is a powerful Jedi mind trick that works on weak-minded men. But if you want to capture the hearts and minds of princes, seduction shall be required!

Let the games begin!

According to Greek Mythology beauty started The Trojan War. I think that beauty of course is in the eye of the beholder...personally, I thought all my boyfriends were terribly attractive, but my sisters/friends/parents thought different. I don't know if I feel intimidated by a beautiful woman, I know men do at times...fear of rejection. Beautiful people are fun to look at, but I can't say I have lost concentration while looking at a beautiful person. Anyway, yes I think that beauty can be powerful...especially in our narcissistic world. Brains are more important than beauty...in my opinion!

Beautiful women do indeed possess a lot of power, especially over men.

I wouldn't give a beautiful woman any type of preferential treatment due to her stunning looks. She's just another human being like the rest of us. I don't have any limits on interacting with them, because I've none. To me, they're no different from my friends or an average looking woman.

Beauty is a problem. Do you mean appearance, or who a person really is? Was it Helen's face that launched a thousand ships? If that's all it was, it was a waste. Doomed to disappointment.

I don't think of myself as beautiful, but I see myself from the inside a lot more than I do from the outside.

I have never found myself intimidated by another woman's beauty. As for my beauty, I never thought myself to be beautiful when I was younger. In fact, I thought quite the opposite even though everyone told me I was beautiful all my life. It wasn't until I really took a good look at everyone else around me that I realized that I'm above average in the looks department. I'm not preoccupied with my looks and I find that there is beauty in everyone even if it's not external.

1. Protector 2. Girl: Fair Boy: Strong 3. Unusual Beauty and strength 4. Boy: Victorious people, Boy: A champion, Girl: Light

I am not intimidated by other beautiful women. I will tell you why......I find that a lot of women that are beautiful on the outside truly know it and they know that they will get their way with the guys and the flaunt it and act like spoiled brats, therefore they are not as beautiful as they appear to be.

Then there are some beautiful women who are beautiful on both the inside and the outside. those are the women that I deeply admire. I do not envy their outer beauty and I admire them for the inner beauty.

FOr those who do not have the gift of outer beauty their inner beauty is what makes them the wonderful people that they are

I am who I am . I take pride in my appearance. If people do not like what I see and judge me by just that, then they need to walk the other way.

MOST ppl. if not all judge by appearance. It's just a fact. Of course people's opponions of others might change as they get to know each other and then maybe beauty doens't seem like the most important thing, but still, flash judgement, I hate to say this but we ALL do it.