Wondering About Good Looks

These days I'm reading a book called The Secret Life of Lobsters by Trevor Corson. It is a great and very intersting read so far (and it makes me quite hungry for seafood), however, the thing that struck me today was how everyone in it is described as being good looking in one way or another and it got me thinking: does everyone look good in someone else's eyes?

Being quite the Star Trek Next Generation fan, my thoughts naturally wandered on to an episode, in which Worf comments on the beauty of a couple of fish-like personages (exposed by Lwaxana Troi, they turn out to be terrorists), who - like the lobsters in my book - eat something that looks like festering bits of fish.

Different cultures have different ideals and fetishes that dictate what is attractive and sexually arousing and what is not. But is our perception of beauty nevertheless so personal and unique that everyone, regardless of conventional parametres of beauty, will have someone out there, who'll admire them and describe them as being good looking? Or have we all been so thoroughly influenced by our cultures that we find no beauty in those who "break the mold"? Or are we born with an affinity for certain physical features?

I am just wondering...

I know that most people find something in their partner that makes them melt and gives them butterflies in their bellies, whenever their partner turns that particular indescribeable something on. But do we all find our loved ones unparallelled attractive?

In my experience there is a certain distinction between "real life" beauty and the beauty we aspire towards - iconoclastic beauty if you like. Hardly anyone really expects their real life encounters to live up to the standards set by supermodels or other culturally accepted beauty role models. So we look for something kind of like them, but not quite, in those whom we meet. Or perhaps we end up seeing their less tangible qualities in their physical appearances?

We all have friends and aquaintances, whom, when first we met them, we found less than attractive but over the years have come to see perhaps in an altogether opposite light. And looking back we'll sometimes wonder why we thought that other someone was soooo hot. Yes, personal preferences and tastes change, but perhaps our feelings for and esteem of others show themselves best in our physical perception of the people in our lives? But what if you are ugly and nasty? Will anyone find redeeming qualities in you to soften your appearance?

Or is beauty just all about being average? I wonder...

... even Worf found love...