A Very Attractive Post

There are some people whom all agree are just good-looking, end of story. Movie stars and the like. Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, but there are just some who pretty much everyone thinks attractive. Orlando Bloom or Anne Hathaway, perhaps. I don't know.
Then there are others who have striking features, but may or may not be considered classically handsome/pretty. People disagree on the attractiveness of these people. Benedict Cumberbatch is a very good example of this: from what I've gathered, most people don't originally think he's handsome, but as time goes by his features sort of draw them in until they are practically foaming at the mouth for more pictures, more viewpoints, more him. Of course, there are exceptions: some just don't really think he's handsome, and others thought him gorgeous straightaway.
And, naturally, there are the people who we'll just have to agree to disagree on. They are total toss-ups, with some at one end of the spectrum finding them mindblowingly attractive and others at the other end who just don't see it. For example, Daniel Radcliffe doesn't really inspire anything but apathy in me, but I've a friend who all but has a shrine to him. It's simply a matter of opinion. That may be a bad example, but it's nearly three in the morning, give me some latitude.
Lastly, there are the so-called ordinary people. People who will never really be called stunning by complete strangers. Me, for instance. Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against my looks. I'm actually probably one of the few people alive who's not self-conscious about how I look. I'm perfectly happy with my appearance. I hardly break mirrors, but I'm hardly something special.
And on the topic of breaking mirrors, I honestly don't believe in the concept of ugliness. Gargoyles are thought to be hideous, but I've always rather liked them - they're certainly more interesting to look at than angels, who tend to have roughly the same features no matter who sculpts or paints them. It's the diversity of gargoyles that makes them interesting - the different ways one can render what is basically the same thing. It's the same thing with people. Ever notice how every single model, the class of people charged to be pretty, seems to look exactly the same? You can see so much more beauty just sitting in a busy cafe.
Yes, just by nursing a cup of tea or coffee or what have you, you can and will see more beautiful people than in the entirety of Fashion Week.
Why is that?
It's because the people you see look normal. They look like (and are) people you could pass on the street. They look like the family who live a few doors down that you wave to whenever you drive past.
And I love poetry.
Doesn't that seem like a total non sequitur? It isn't. A staggering amount of poetry is about finding beauty in the most ordinary things. Poems can focus on the tiniest, most inconsequential things and make you see them in an entirely new light. But it doesn't work half as well on things that we already know are beautiful.
Sunsets are pretty. Everyone knows this. It may be that some aren't nearly as interested in watching them, but everyone kind of knows in a very abstract way that they are beautiful. Fairly simple, right?
Now, how many people can find beauty in a manhole cover? A broken light bulb? The paint used for lines on the road?
I've always been fascinated by such things. Manhole covers, for instance, usually have such intricate patterns on them that no one ever notices, and the wear patterns can't help but make me wonder about all the sorts of things that have gone over them since they were laid down shiny and new. Broken light bulbs never break in exactly the same way, and the jagged sharp edges contrast so well with the much more fluid, curved shape of the original bulb. And have you ever noticed that if you just stare at the paint lines on roads (this is when you're not driving, obviously) it's almost like watching a movie? You can watch as it twists and turns, grows fainter and bolder, and sometimes the marks of past journeys will scuff them up for a momentary blip.
Back to my original point. These kinds of people are like poetry. They are ordinary, and yet the very fact of their ordinariness makes them so wonderfully extraordinary. They are average, yet somehow the fact that they are average makes me want to examine them further. And the more you examine, the more interesting things you can find.
If you're a Doctor Who fan, there's a quote from "The Girl Who Waited" that kind of explains what I'm trying to get across here.
"You know when sometimes you meet someone so beautiful and then you actually talk to them and five minutes later they're as dull as a brick? Then there's other people, when you see them you think "Not bad. They're okay." And then you get to know them and... and their face just sort of becomes them. Like their personality's written all over it. And they just turn into something so beautiful."
It's like if you look deeper, you can find extraordinary beauty in the simplest and most ordinary things. And this, this is why I tend to prefer the people who aren't, strictly speaking, handsome or pretty. I mean, they are, but most of the world wouldn't agree with me. Sure, I like a classically gorgeous person sometimes, but only after I get a peek at what's behind the long eyelashes and high cheekbones.
Why not look deeper? Why just accept the surface? Sure, there are people who are completely, jaw-droppingly beautiful and the sweetest, most wonderful folk who ever lived. But I've come to believe that that particular type of people is fairly rare. Not extinct, but certainly rare.
I don't really crush on people, not really. Not people my own age, not people older or younger or dead or fictional. I may admire them. I may be sensible that they are attractive or hilarious or startlingly, refreshingly intelligent, but I don't really develop an infatuation.
Perhaps that's why I think this way about beauty and attractiveness. Perhaps my psyche is just messed up. Perhaps I've spent too much time behind the lens of a camera, in the stanzas of a poem, or pushing pencil to paper in an inevitably futile attempt to capture the beauty I see in things with a quick sketch.
Who knows.
But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or so they say, and the eye of this beholder will always be drawn to the ordinary, the normal, the people of real life.