The Eye of the Beholder: Reflections on Beauty, Looks Theory, and Body Dysmorphia

This article also appears on https://welldoing.org/article/the-eye-of-the-beholder-reflections-on-beauty-looks-theory-body-dysmorphia Welldoing is a great source of articles, advice and also a directory of counsellors and therapists. Alongside a search function, where you can specify your therapy requirements, they also offer a personalised matching service if you are not sure where to

I recently told my therapist that it is indisputable that there is a clear hierarchy of beauty. 

I meant that there is a shared understanding of what beauty is, and what beauty looks like in terms of people’s physical appearance. I also meant that we could therefore not dispute the fact that – even if my sense of my own appearance is distorted by body dysmorphia – there are people who are far more beautiful than me and others who may be less so. 

Beauty to me – at least in terms of physical appearance – seems like a concrete concept, and for all my therapist’s sense that we experience other people holistically and therefore cannot entirely separate their physical appearance from our experience of other aspects of their identity, it is therefore important that the term is used advisedly, cautiously and certainly not indiscriminately. 

So far, so abstract, and possibly so confusing.

Let me rewind and explain how we got there:

I live with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a condition that means I am constantly preoccupied with my sense of the flaws in my physical appearance, which I largely find intolerable. Body dysmorphia is in fact not so much about how sufferers actually look, as about their relationship with their body image, which is a very negative one. And while there is inevitably always a mismatch between how we see ourselves and how others see us, for those living with body dysmorphia, this discrepancy is much greater than might otherwise be the case, and the sufferer is far too wedded to their own body image to consider any possible, more positive alternative views of their appearance that might be suggested by how others interact with them, or respond to their physical appearance. 

Working on BDD in therapy

One of the ideas that my therapist and I often discuss is that two opposing ideas can exist at the same time. At times I find this hard to accept, since I am very attached to my own views and my own version of the world. She tries to encourage me to allow an alternate view to sit alongside me. I don’t have to take it on board; I don’t have to replace my own view; I just have to acknowledge it is there. I manage this with varying degrees of success, but where I struggle the most is when it comes to my physical appearance.

A few weeks ago, my therapist told me that she had a fantasy (classic therapist speak) that I knew what she felt about my physical appearance. I was genuinely confused, and told her that I had no idea about what she feels or sees when she looks at me. She offered to tell me, but I told her, with conviction, that I didn’t want her to. But her comments stuck with me, and we returned to them a few weeks later, by which point I had reflected on why I didn’t want her to share her personal view:

I genuinely trust and respect my therapist. When other people respond positively to me, or offer me positive feedback – particularly if this relates to my physical appearance – I often dismiss it, assuming they are just being kind or avoiding difficult truths. Yet with my therapist, I really do believe that she is honest. She is not motivated by a need to please me or protect me, and will not shy away from the most difficult things I might tell her. For those reasons, she is probably the only person whose comments and views I have to take at face value. But when you have a negative self-image, that position is a difficult one to hold, in the face of positive feedback. If she were to give me a positive assessment of my appearance, how would I respond? Would I be able to hear and sit with her words? Or would I feel compelled to question my belief in her honesty? Would this then have a significant and possibly irreversible effect on how I engage with her in our sessions? Would it undermine the very core of our relationship, possibly even irreparably?

I shared these concerns with her, and together we explored what they reveal about the value I place on our relationship. At the end of that particular session, during which we continued to reflect on my views about my appearance and why I remain so attached to these views, she shared how she experiences me. Not just in terms of my physical appearance. Rather, she described a holistic experience of me, which integrates all sorts of things, from my physical appearance, to my clothes, my mannerisms, the way I express myself, my sense of humour, how she responds to me and how she senses that others do as well.  

This holistic experience of other people is something that rings true when I consider how I interact with and experience others. While I am a keen observer of other people, I by no means judge them in the same way as I do myself. This disparity applies not only to physical appearances, but also to areas such as personal and professional achievements, personality and life choices, in which I tend to reserve the harshest judgements for myself. Yet in relation to my physical appearance, any attempt to focus on or convince me that it forms part of a holistic view feels like an equivocation. While rationally I can accept it, emotionally it doesn’t help, since I continue to be focused on the sense that my physical appearance still dominates how I am seen and evaluated. 

A hierarchy of beauty

Which brings us back to the idea of a hierarchy of beauty. When I was thinking about this topic, I googled it to see what the internet might throw up in terms of different perspectives. Tellingly, one of the first search results was a link to a ‘beauty hierarchy of needs,’ seemingly based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This was a theory that presented the five sets of basic needs that a human requires. They are often depicted in a triangle, with the most basic and essential needs at the bottom (physiological needs), progressing to the need of self-actualisation that can only be met if all the needs that come before it are met, including safety, esteem and love. 

Rather than focusing on psychological needs, the beauty hierarchy triangle seems to present the steps one might need to take to achieve the goal of beauty, progressing from basic health, to basic grooming, professional grooming, to non-invasive treatments and finally plastic surgery. It tallies with the aesthetics of influencers on social media, which is awash with adverts for each possible step on the beauty hierarchy ladder. It also functions as a visual guide for the ‘practitioners’ of Looks Theory, which I came across whilst exploring online discussions about the beauty hierarchy triangle. 

What is ‘Looks Theory’?

Looks Theory refers to the impact of physical attractiveness on various aspects of social interaction and perception. It explores how people are judged, treated, and perceived based on their appearance, often leading to biases and stereotypes. It incorporates a number of key concepts, some of which closely align with the sense of being disadvantaged by their appearance that is often a focus of those living with body dysmorphia. 

The theory includes the Halo Effect, which is a tendency to believe that attractive people possess other positive traits like intelligence, competence and kindness. This can then lead to ‘pretty privilege’ or the social, economic and political advantages that attractive individuals are perceived to or may in fact have. Those who are less attractive on the other hand, may be the victims of ‘lookism’, which is prejudice or discrimination based on a person’s individual appearance, particularly in relation to social beauty standards. 

That our focus on beauty has been codified into a psychological theory comes as no great surprise. What did surprise me was some of the discussion around the beauty hierarchy triangle on social media, by people who described themselves as ‘Looks Theory practitioners’. One contributor, who said she has been doing things listed on each step of the triangle for a long time, asserted that this is precisely what is required if you want to be ‘the pretty girl’ in any social or professional situation – though she conceded that plastic surgery might be optional for some. Another explained how helpful the triangle had been to her, since rather than continuing to save for plastic surgery she had realised that she could engage with the lower steps of the triangle. It had put things into perspective on her self-improvement journey. 

I was surprised, shocked even, by the frankness of the discussions I read, and by the unquestioning way that people appeared to have bought into Looks Theory. However, on reflection, I wonder how far away their views really are from my own, and from those held by people with BDD. I stay with the negative, albeit I seek to manage it with clothes, make-up and careful hair styling. The separation between my negative views about my physical appearance on one hand and my sense of my inner self on the other can at times be porous and thus damaging. Is this just the mirror image of the theory that attractive people are somehow also more competent, more kind, somehow better? I have certainly had the sense of being overlooked or disregarded due to my appearance, and the beauty aesthetic of social media can make me feel more exposed in terms of how I look. Interestingly, there is one aspect of Looks Theory that seems partly to contradict the others, and which also gets to the nub of the difficulties faced by people with BDD. Interaction Appearance Theory suggests that perceptions of attractiveness can change over time, influenced by social interactions and the way people behave with each other. This takes us back to my therapist’s sense of our holistic interaction with other people, and of the impossibility of separating our physical appearance from other aspects of our identity and behaviour. It seems therefore to be a particularly useful theory for ‘practitioners’ of both Looks Theory and body dysmorphic disorder. 

Challenging BDD related thoughts

There are other clear ways to challenge the apparent, negative certainties that BDD gives me. I began this article with an assertion of my belief in a clear hierarchy of beauty. But even as I typed that statement, I simultaneously knew that on some level I disagreed with it (and this speaks to my tendency to bend my views to suit the purpose of reinforcing my body dysmorphia).

I understand that what (or who) is beautiful to one person may lack the same appeal for another. Ask 10 people which actor or actress they find most attractive and you will likely get 10 different responses. I have never understood the appeal of Brad Pitt, but will not budge from my belief that George Clooney is a truly beautiful man. I also understand the role of context in creating a sense of beauty. When Kate Moss first walked the catwalks, other models were resentful and didn’t understand her appeal. As her gamine aesthetic gained traction, the parameters of beauty in the world of high fashion seemed to be redefined, attracting a wider range of shapes and faces into the world of modelling. A make-up-less Kate Moss in a fashion editorial stopped people in their tracks at the newsstand, whereas on a suburban street in Croydon they would have passed her by. After World War II, in a reaction to the deprivations of the previous six years, beauty saw a shift from straighter lines and functionality to an hourglass figure and the glamorous and feminine aesthetic embodied by Christian Dior’s New Look.  

What else can be beautiful?

It can also be helpful to explore beauty in a wider sense, moving away from a focus on appearance. According to theOxford English Dictionary, beauty is defined as ‘anything that pleases the senses or the mind’.

Understanding how the perception of beauty has evolved can help us move away from rigid definitions. These definitions can often feel exclusionary or exert a pressure to conform. For the ancient Greeks, beauty had nothing to do with personal taste. Aristotle believed that beauty could be measured, and saw it in order, symmetry and in particular the golden ratio, a set of proportions found in nature and applied by artists to visual culture, from architecture to sculpture to photography. 

Artists have defined beauty in a variety of ways; while the romantic poet Keats stated that ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty”, Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray presented beauty as a form of genius that could be used to conceal wickedness. Years later, Picasso also associated beauty with wickedness. He experienced the distortion of beauty by Nazis such as Leni Riefenstahl, whose films of the 1936 Olympics sought to present idealised images of Aryan beauty. Modernists like Picasso reacted against the traditional and mythical concepts of beauty embraced by the extreme right, finding it instead in a reimagination of reality, from primitive art to the vibrancy of the machine age via the everyday. Later artists gravitated to the beauty found in the extraordinary or strange. The fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld believed ‘there is no beauty without strangeness’. And just as the fashion of Chanel had redefined the sense of female beauty in the first half of the 20th Century, artists such as David Bowie explored and challenged both gender identity and conformist views of beauty. Bowie’s constant reinvention was a vivid representation of the malleability of beauty. 

It is helpful not to lose sight of this malleability, nor of the subjective nature of beauty. While it may be difficult for me – and for others – to accept this on an emotional level, it is nevertheless clear that there is no fixed hierarchy of beauty. Rather, beauty should be seen as a constantly evolving concept, influenced by culture, context and individual experience. If we can challenge rigid definitions of beauty and move towards embracing a broader understanding of what pleases the senses and the mind, we can develop a more compassionate relationship with others, and with ourselves.