has anybody read the ted chiang short story “liking what you see”
its interesting sci-fi. i read it/am reading it today!
anyway, the reason im making this post is that the story made me realize i basically have the supposedly fictional condition that the story describes as “calliagnosia”? i think!
i mean, im not face-blind, but ive always known i had some perceptual oddities when it came to faces. the story seems to say that a normal person automatically has some kind of emotional or visceral response to seeing a really “beautiful” (or really “ugly”) face, and also that it is easy for a normal person to tell right away if another person is beautiful or ugly, without having to think about it.
i dont have that, though! i asked @pipistrellus if it knew what that meant, to respond to human faces that way, if that was, like, a Thing.
it didnt know, and then we commiserated over the shared experience of, like, trying to join in other peoples talk about cute boy band members or cute actresses or w/e, but not really being able to tell which ones were supposed to be cute
pip kind of associated it with asexuality, which makes sense, but im not asexual– i can definitely be physically attracted to people– and i still have this issue
and, yk, i can think someone is interesting or appealing to look at, for sure, but it doesnt really seem to map on to whether they’re…?? like, sometimes people call other people “striking” and i get that! i TOTALLY understand “striking”! when someone is unusual-looking, with a lot of character and presence and visual interest to them. and sometimes im really attracted to that unusualness, that interestingness, right away. but like… “interestingness” for me, when its really attractive, is as likely to involve highly visible scars or crooked teeth as it is to involve big eyes or long, shiny hair or something. and the attraction still isnt really like a “turn on” thing or even a pleasure thing, not initially and not just based on appearance. its more a fascination, like how i feel when i see a really weird-looking, cool giant bug and immediately wanna pick it up or draw it or something. plus, while im not really face-blind, i do have a lot of trouble telling people with similar features apart unless i know them pretty well. (if anything, i think this pulls me away from very conventionally attractive types a little bit, bc they can end up looking super indistinct/bland to me. sometimes i have trouble following the plots of movies if the actors look too similar in that way. its like im watching several copies of the man in the tan jacket– “well– he definitely had hair! and facial features!”)
anyway, i always figured most people look interesting and distinctive somehow when you look at them long enough, so i never really questioned those “everyone is beautiful in their own way!” and “if you have a really great personality, it will eventually shine through your physical appearance and you will look wonderful!” cliches. sure, i thought they were cheesy, and ineffective in actually changing social values/standards of beauty at all, and maybe a little misguided in the sense of why are we so focused on physical “good looks” over other stuff anyway. but i never felt like they were fundamentally untrue? i suppose a lot of people do though ( “well some people just ARE beautiful or ugly!”)
i remember telling someone about one of my many intense teenage crushes once, and i remember she said, after a really long, awkward pause, “well…im glad someone is really into [person]. im glad someone thinks [person] is cute. thats sweet.”
Ooh I definitely have an instinctive reaction of, like, “pretty face!” and “ugly face!”
It seems pretty uncorrelated to conventional attractiveness though? Like on one hand I go “pretty!” at girls with big breasts and lots of makeup and stuff, but on the other hand I also go “pretty!” at people with really kinky hair, or pudgy bellies, or big noses.
Also one of the biggest things for me seems to be, like, affect? Like there are people who are meh until you see them move or talk or, especially, smile, and then suddenly they are THE PRETTIEST and you want to stare at them ALL THE TIME.
And I *can* be sexually attracted to people who don’t make me go “pretty!” at first; like, I’ve definitely dated people where I can tell that they don’t have any of the traits that make me go “pretty!”, but also I am full of The Feels, and so they are SUPER PRETTY to me anyway.
Liking What You See is also interesting from a youth-rights standpoint (and other standpoints I have), and it might be nice to discuss it that way sometime. In a post that started out being on that subject. I’ll write one later, perhaps, unless someone else writes one first.
@ ilzo: I’d be interested in that.
As for this conversation:
I’ve been considering the term “grey-aesthetic” regarding my relationship with beauty, and this seems to support that. Like, I can tell when someone (or something, I don’t feel like it’s different with faces vs objects) is pretty, and all else equal I’ll pick a pretty object over an ugly one, but it doesn’t feel…I usually don’t feel a pull towards pretty things, a desire to stare at it longer than I would stare at an aesthetically-neutral thing, a reward of pretty things doesn’t motivate me. I say I usually don’t feel a pull because every so often I do, every once in a while I’ll see a particular pretty thing that I feel an urge to stare at, and to possess if applicable. It’s always fleeting, though: before long (hours, maybe a day or two tops), it fades, and I’m back to “okay, so it’s pretty, so what?”.
(Actually, now that I think about it, sometimes it’s longer than a couple days with people; once it was a couple months, but that was someone I didn’t see very much. Perhaps the difference isn’t people vs objects, but rather level of access: a certain (fairly small) amount of time spent looking at the thing, however long it takes to get that much time in.)
(Also, on an unrelated note, this is the third Ted Chiang story I’ve been linked to (the others were “Hell Is the Absence of God” (broken link) and “Seventy-Two Letters”), and I liked all of them. Perhaps I should seek out more of Chiang’s work.)
Tags:
#storytime #recs #reply via reblog #(when I say it was a couple months I don’t mean it was *constant* for a couple months) #(just when he was around)
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