Blind Assessments Slower
Dear [Mentat],
Now I agree with the rest of what you said on the difficulties blind men face when trying to assess women quickly. Upon reflection, it seems that though the sighted can use vision to make better first assessments, they still suffer from disillusionment often. Even though a woman looks pretty from afar, this is usually a bad predictor of how stimulating she’ll be once the clothes come off. Ladies hide many a sin beneath baggy or even selectively tight clothes, exaggerating their best features with makeup, hair spray, and the like, and downplaying their not-so-pretty ones. They change their waist-to-hip ratios with girdles – a key indicator of “mate-ability,” and make their breasts look bigger by stuffing their bras with toilet paper. Even permanent cosmetic surgeries can be disheartening, because though a skilled doctor might transform a 3 into a 10, she still has the mental constitution of a 3, especially if she’s lived her whole life as a 3. Though she’s now a 10 physically, she still walks and talks like a 3. Her physical form is now out of sync with who she is on the various spiritual levels, and this dissonance will detract from her better looks.
This is bad because men worldwide are disappointed when they finally see her downside, often after months or years of courtship. Alas, the time men waste chasing women who initially appear better than these ladies actually are, is phenomenally high. To learn that things have been intentionally obscured or fabricated for such a long time is no fun. It casts permanent doubt on her integrity and makes her seem like a manipulative liar. It’s hard to love someone like that once the truth comes out. But someone like you might be more immune to this than your sighted peers.
Even though your lack of vision appears to impair your ability to make fast initial assessments, you’re not as handicapped as I first thought. Why? Cosmetics and perfumes help, though dubiously, even the playing field for the blind man among women who use them. They ensure that even sighted men can’t sense the whole picture immediately, by impairing the accuracy of the whole visual and olfactory cue system. This makes both (especially sight), somewhat less reliable as first indicators of quality mate material. And though the obscuring effects of makeup don’t obscure as effectively as blind eyes, still, you may be less easily scammed because the makeup tactics appeal to a sense that you do not have – vision. Therefore, you might see through the deceptions more quickly than a fully-sighted man, because you walk right past what keeps more able men guessing for months. Paradoxical, ‘eh?
Some forms of beauty are indeed only skin-deep. So the saying has some truth. Man-made beauty is one of these. But natural beauty on the other hand, goes much deeper than the epidermis. It summarizes well the woman’s true constitution, inside and out, and is less subject to manipulation. In fact, women who garner the confidence of their natural beauty would be unlikely to mess with it at all. Natural allure promises only what woman can indeed deliver. That is, if she excites without makeup in the bar room, she’ll also electrify in the bedroom. Men would find that the fantasies a woman inspires would likely be every bit as fun to live out as he imagines, if she has not adulterated her appearance. The male disappointment mentioned above would happen much less in my opinion, with women uncovered at the first meeting. True, honest ladies might get fewer hits from strangers, a fact that many unscrupulous females site in order to defend their “art work.” But the come-ons they do receive would blossom into love relationships more often.
But use of an eye liner, powder puff, and lipstick inspires a more hollow magnetism. The fantasies encouraged by “painted ladies” are not as enjoyable when recreated for real, as they are when played in the mind, especially if they involve the makeup coming off. Makeup [, trendy clothes, and other pieces needed for playing the lipstick game] promotes letdown. Though a made-up woman may appear attractive while covered, she very often will be markedly unattractive without the fake lashes and rouge. She may recognize her wanting natural beauty, and this could be the reason for the makeup in the first place. Indeed, the less attractive the woman [thinks herself to be], the more makeup she’ll likely use. Thus, a sign of a woman who thinks she’s unattractive is the presence of lots of makeup. If she thinks she’s unattractive, then she probably is. However, unlike made-up beauty which flows down the drain in the shower and which can change from day to day depending on how she reapplies the paints, genuine beauty lasts, and so is not the beauty referred to in the over-quoted saying about skin deepness.
Fortunately though, all this is of little consequence to you because, again, you are unmoved by a woman’s skills at artistic visual trickery. Instead, you are more impressed by things other than appearance; things that she can’t as easily alter. Her voice is a big one. The voice tells much about her natural beauty, and what it conveys generally goes in lockstep with the visual indicators. Generally speaking, when a woman has what we deem resonantly attractive, she’ll sound it, and look it too. If she sounds great, she looks great and vice versa. For instance, should she be constantly out of breath, even when at rest for some time, she may be overweight. If she wheezes and her voice is rather low, she could be a smoker, and carry the visual earmarks of that, such as prematurely wrinkled and saggy, transparent skin. If she talks loudly as a matter of course, she might be hard of hearing or lacking in social grace. Believe me. Women who sound socially inept usually look it as well. She may talk loud also, because people don’t otherwise pay attention to her. This is a clear mark of low visual desirability. The point is that though your blindness limits you, you may, as you mention, employ other ways of gleaning the same information, which are likely as effective as sight.
