keep on plodding

People often tell me that I look good in many different ways.

"God, you're sexy."
"You have a pleasant look."
"Holy s#!7 you're huge."
"Your muscles are like, poking into me. 0.0"

And so on. But I've never really believed any of it; I thought that being my friends and so on, they were biased. But recently, I've thought a little more about what "looking good" means.



We've probably all been there. We have a friend who decides that for some reason, they don't look good, but we believe they look fabulous. How can this be? More specifically, how is it that two people can look at the same person, have differing opinions on how that person looks, yet both be correct?

I saw one of my girl friends today, and she thought she looked horrible, because she had an infection that everyone could see. She saw herself, and felt bad that she looked sick and not as great as she normally does, so she believed she looked bad. But for me, when I see her, I only see her, so I feel good when I see her and thus, I think she looks good.

Both of us are right! A person looks good if looking at them evokes some kind of good feeling. We could feel good when we see a person with green eyes because everyone we've met with green eyes has been lovely. And in the same way, we could feel bad when we see a person with tattoos we feel that people with tattoos are inclined to hurt us, and so on. This applies both to other people, and ourselves when we look in the mirror. Association is a powerful thing.



What does this mean in the real world?

• When a person tells me I look good, and I think I look bad, it's cruel of me to destroy their good feeling by telling them they're wrong.
  
• This is also a nice way to explain to someone who is self conscious about their appearance, why they definitely look good, and they can't argue otherwise, as sad people tend to do.