That’s the beauty of women (and men). We are complex. Statements in this thread have shown just that:
[quote]
I enjoy color and playing with makeup. It’s fun. I don’t regard it as a chore or something I’m doing to please society or “the man”…I am a casual, athletic, low-maintenance person,/quote.
Meh, I’ve learned to pick my battles. That class had a set of parameters where this one event looks a bit more sexist than it comes off.
One of the perks of being a college professor, for me, anyway, is that it is a professional job where women quite commonly don’t wear make-up, but also where they may color their hair purple, or have extensive tattoos, or are overweight but wear girly dresses, or have long gray hair, or shave their head, or have loads of piercings, or none at all.
And it’s all. O. K. I like that in a community! 
I would certainly agree that academia is not the venue in which to find a large number of attractive people.
^^^OUCH.
We don’t need to be petty. We don’t.
NOPE. We can talk about almost anything in Parent Cafe, assuming it is within the TOS. That what it’s for, actually.
mowc Who are you agreeing with? That’s certainly not what Garland said. Or did you just decide that those people described could not possibly be attractive?
Ah, kids. As I usually say, they are welcome to check out our Colonoscopy thread!
@BunsenBurner, too funny. 
Speaking of ‘cat sweatshirts’ has anyone seen the new movie with Melissa McCarthy, ‘Spy’?
Wow, MOWC. I guess that comment speaks for itself. So much for “we’re not commenting on others’ attractiveness, we just like makeup.”
Actually really surprised by that level of vitriol from you.
Garland- No vitriol. Perhaps non-PC, but my academic friends have made similar statements. I have my opinions on what I find attractive, just as everyone else does. I am just less passive-aggressive about it all.
Response to partyof5 at #465:
Yes, there is some truth to it. For gay men, the hostility mostly comes from older gay men who bought into the theory, common in the 1970s-1980s, that trans women are all just gay men who couldn’t accept themselves. From younger gay men, especially those of my son’s generation and younger, I think there’s much more acceptance. There’s been infinitely more hostility over the last 40 years from some lesbian women who like to patrol the borders of the Country of Woman and (for allegedly feminist, especially radical feminist, reasons) think trans women are all simply men who want to invade that Country (in bathrooms, locker rooms, and women’s music festivals) and take it over on behalf of The Patriarchy. Like the notorious Janice Raymond’s claim that “all transsexuals rape women” by constructing and thereby appropriating female bodies. And so on. Again, though, I believe the women who believe that kind of thing, as loud as their voices still are on the Internet, represent a tiny minority of all lesbian- or queer-identified women, especially of younger women in their 20s on down.
The problem is attractiveness is not objective - never has been never will be (yes, there is facial symmetry, but that’s where it ends). Hairstyles and standards of beauty have changed vastly over the ages and from area to area of the world. So, that begs the question, attractive according to whom?? You? Other people? ‘Society’?
I find purple hair attractive, personally.
It is all so superficial anyways. I think it was a mean comment, not because it’s “non-PC,” but because labeling a whole group of people with some arbitrary, superficial, subjective standard is just mean-spirited.
You are mischaracterizing my statement. Shocking! I did not say everyone in academia was unattractive. I did not label a whole group of people. I suspect there is little concern in much of academia about appearance, which is totally fine. It’s not going to be confused with the Vogue cover shoot, though.
No. What I am arguing is that a Vogue cover shoot is what it means to be attractive and someone with purple hair and make up is not attractive.
I’m sure there has been purple hair in Vogue, and it could be quite attractive.
I think we’re hearing it entirely as it was intended. I like it when people say what they mean–as you say, no sense in being passive aggressive. You were quite straight forward.
Brb. Going to dye my hair grey.