High School Yearbooks and what's attractive

Tuesday night I was at my parent's house for our weekly dinner and was going through my high school yearbooks. I noticed something very interesting. Now, if you haven't looked at your yearbooks recently, I want you to take a moment and think about the popular classmates you had, who was popular, who was good looking. I'll give you a minute...

.

.

.

Okay, got it? So I opened up to our class and started flipping through senior pictures. And I noticed...some of the people I thought were good looking, weren't as great on reflection. I think there could be several things to explain why this happens:

• When you have a limited inventory of people, you think people are better looking than they actually were. It's like the mission goggle thing. It also happens when you work somewhere that doesn't have a lot of people your age. The people you are around start to look better.
• Over time your internal definition of what beauty is changes. You deepen as a person and start to notice things about people that you find more attractive.
• Styles change. I noticed a lot of frizzy, curly hair. Um, light curls or straight hair, even pony tails (somtimes) works for me. Maybe in high school I went for curly, frizzy hair. I don't remember for sure.
• Perhaps as you get older, you look at pictures of your 17-18 year old classmates and you just don't find people in that age group attractive. Hey, I'm attracted to older women.

So, whatever it is, the girls I used to think were all that, just don't seem to be as great as I remembered. It got me to thinking about beauty and perception and all that. I have never really gone for the drop dead gorgeous (so-called) women that are out there. I can recognize that a woman has a great body, but not be attracted to them at all. Case in point: Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Aniston. I just picked these two off the top of my head, but I can look at them and see that they have nice features, but they do nothing for me. On the other hand, my head will turn for someone that wouldn't be noticed by most people. And I have to believe there are more people like me out there. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I look at not so good looking men with beautiful women, and vice-versa. To each other, they really think their partner is attractive. I really find my wife attractive (because why would you marry someone you thought was ugly?). I know that not everyone would have the hots for my wife (good for me since she was still on the market when I finally ran into her) and I don't care. I like looking at her. And that's all that matters.

Now, before I start rambling, I'll quit. But there you go.