The Beauty Of Both Genders

Which gender does society view as more beautiful than the other?  The female sex, of course.  Ask most people which gender is more attractive and many of them, both men and women alike, will probably answer that women are.  Someone who stated otherwise would probably receive dismissal, but this only establishes the irrationality of those who elevate the beauty of one gender over that of the other.  Does this often unchallenged view ultimately have any basis in reality?  No, not at all.  This is a topic few people ever seem to contemplate and even fewer seem to hold a logically-true position on.

I find it very interesting that the Bible directly and regularly clarifies that some of its central male figures were quite handsome.  Joseph (in the Old Testament) [1], King Saul [2], King David [3], Absalom (son of David) [4], Adonijah (son of David) [5], and the prophet Daniel and his three male companions [6] are all specifically mentioned to be very attractive men.  Many of these men were in the line of Christ or part of the Jewish royal family.  Unlike modern society, the Bible does not elevate the beauty of one gender over the other but praises the beauty of both.  Society expects men to not be as naturally attractive as women and also expects them to not have the same level of interest in personal appearance that it expects women to.  Despite the feelings of some, this conclusion has no logical or Biblical authority.

The clothed and unclothed male body is beautiful,
and Scripture acknowledges this on many occasions.

Clearly the Bible teaches that men can be incredibly beautiful, just as women can be.  But American society elevates female beauty to an extremely high status and does not encourage or acknowledge male beauty as much.  Female clothing in current America is usually more colorful, varied, and sensual than male clothing.  Women are also pressured to use makeup while men are not, with society judging woman with a far greater emphasis on physical beauty than men it does men.  These facts may contribute to the societal assumption that female beauty exceeds that of males (and likely also to the mistaken belief that men are "visual" while women aren't), even though there is no legitimate rational basis for justifying such a claim, and despite the agreement not even being universal.

Remove such variables and I suspect that more people would notice that absolutely no reason exists to reinforce beliefs about one gender being more beautiful than the other.  Of course, it is logically fallacious to defend a claim by appealing to widespread agreement or common sentiments among various people in an area.  I find it odd that I have met people who deny the objectivity of beauty by saying that something is only beautiful to an individual, claiming that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" (I will address this below), and then say that women are objectively more beautiful than men.  My bullshit detector activates around such irrational people!

As for beautiful women in the Bible, various texts state that Sarah [7], Rachel [8], Abigail [9], Bathsheba [10], and Esther [11] were notably attractive, with these comments intermingled with sentences also noting the attractiveness of men in narratives.  These declarations of a person's beauty, intriguingly, are located in the Old Testament: there is not a single passage that talks about the physical attractiveness of any particular individual in the New Testament.

The clothed and unclothed female body is beautiful, and
Scripture acknowledges this on many occasions.

Once we set aside the fallacies of appealing to cultural attitudes (appeal to authority), popularity (appeal to popularity), and conditioned ideas (appeal to tradition), it becomes apparent that, left to themselves, neither gender possesses some feature that makes its members more inherently, verifiably physically beautiful than the members of the other gender.  Some men are more beautiful than some women, and some women are more beautiful than some men (individual men and women have different appearances and thus can't be equally beautiful).

Now I need to acknowledge a difficulty in making aesthetic judgments in general.  Although logically speaking a person, object, or shape is either objectively beautiful or is not beautiful (law of non-contradiction and the law of excluded middle), our specific perceptions of what particular people, locations, and colors (just to name three examples) we judge beautiful are purely subjective and arbitrary.  One person may find a waterfall more beautiful than a rainforest and vice versa; a person may think that a certain arrangement of furniture is more beautiful than an alternative one although other people will disagree; a man or woman may think that dark brown hair is more attractive than blond or black hair, and so on. 

Subjectivity of perception does not mean that one person's aesthetic perception or preference is not more accurate than that of others.  Anyone who claims that objective beauty does not exist because people disagree about aesthetic judgments commits the non sequitur fallacy (non sequitur means "it does not follow"), but all humans are utterly incapable of verifying which set of aesthetic perceptions of theirs, if any at all, correspond to objective beauty.  People commit the non sequitur fallacy when they assert that disputes about morality mean that no objective moral obligations exist.  Likewise, moral objectivists might succumb to fallacious arguments for aesthetic relativism which they would never tolerate with regards to moral relativism.

The objectivity of beauty, in that every claim about beauty is by necessity either true or false, remains even if we have access only to subjective perceptions of what strikes us as beautiful.  For this reason, here I have emphasized 1) that the Bible gives numerous examples of both attractive men and women, never saying that one gender possesses more innate beauty than the other, and 2) that my culture has no logical basis for claiming that women are more beautiful than men.

In art and life, Christians should be the first to defend the beauty and admiration of human bodies, both male and female.  The Bible never teaches or implies that women are intrinsically beautiful and males usually aren't, that one gender is just naturally more attractive than the other, or that males are visually attracted to women in general but the inverse is largely not true.  Instead, it affirms the opposite of these three positions.  It speaks of attractive members of both genders, of bilateral physical attraction between both genders as opposed to unilateral attraction from men to women (which is often associated with the fallacious Western elevation of female beauty over male beauty), and how the bodies of both genders are good (Genesis 1:31).

Because of the fact that, unlike most Christians I know of, I welcome friendships with the opposite gender, I get to see both females and males express common aesthetic judgments very similar the conclusions I have presented in this post.  I have heard women praise male beauty many times and have seen the inverse occur.


[1].  Genesis 39:6--"Now Joseph was well-built and handsome . . ."

[2].  1 Samuel 9:2--"He had a son named Saul, an impressive (handsome in other translations) young man without equal among the Israelites--a head taller than any of the others."

[3].  1 Samuel 16:12, 18--"So he sent and had him brought in.  He was ruddy, with a fine appearance and handsome features . . . One of the servants answered, 'I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the harp.  He is a brave man and a warrior.  He speaks well and is a fine-looking man.  The Lord is with him.'"

[4].  2 Samuel 14:25--"In all Israel there was not a man so highly praised for his handsome appearance as Absalom.  From the top of his head to the sole of his foot there was no blemish in him."

[5].  1 Kings 1:6--"He was also a very handsome man and was born next after Absalom.)"

[6].  Daniel 1:3-4, 6--"Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility--young men without defect, handsome . . . Among these were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah."

[7].  Genesis 12:11--"As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai (Sarah), 'I know what a beautiful woman you are.'"

[8].  Genesis 29:17--"Leah had weak eyes, but Rachel was lovely in form, and beautiful."

[9].  1 Samuel 25:3--". . . his wife's name was Abigail.  She was an intelligent and beautiful woman . . ."

[10].  2 Samuel 11:2--"From the roof he saw someone bathing.  The woman was very beautiful . . ."

[11].  Esther 2:7--"This girl, who was also known as Esther, was lovely in form and features . . ."