The Top 30 Most Physically Attractive Politicians, in Gayle's Opinion

[queerbychoice]

Lately I keep getting into discussions with so many of you about who I find physically attractive, how and why it differs from who you find physically attractive, and the whole process whereby we acquire physical tastes. For example, I recently came across this icon on LiveJournal and was immediately struck by how completely not attractive whatsoever I found the woman in the picture to be (despite the all-caps word "BEAUTY" emblazoned across her to help clarify for us that we're supposed to think she is):



By contrast, I then came across this one by starionwolf that I fell so immediately and desperately in love with that I had to spend the next hour trying to find more information about her (rather unsuccessfully, since her journal has only one entry).



I think datagrok's latest entry summed up very well why this kind of thing happens:

I do not think that it has to do with body parts. There are hundreds of fine body parts milling about during my mandatory daily social interactions that do not cause me to kick into drooling idiot mode. (I take an elitist superiority-complex pride in the fact that I don't crank my head around to ogle the ass of every stereotypically attractive female that passes me in the hall.) I really think it must be a conveyance of a sense of deviance. I mean, the only common thread between the various people who have really sparked my interest is that my freak-radar starts going nuts whenever I'm in the same room with them.

Not just any old deviance attracts me, but the sense that someone has chosen to deviate in the same ways that I have certainly attracts me. In the first picture, the presence of makeup and in all probability hair bleach (hair that stays naturally that pale of blonde into adulthood is fairly rare, and the women who do have it genetically are drastically outnumbered by the women who have it by way of bleaching - plus her eyebrows seem to be a darker color, which can happen naturally but again happens more often when bleaching is involved) suggest to me that the person pictured is a lot more into modifying her face's appearance than I am, and that she modifies it to conform with extremely mainstream, racist and sexist beauty standards that say pale hair is better than dark hair and women should spend hours painting their faces every morning but men shouldn't. In the second picture, the person in the icon by starionwolf appears to be makeup-free, with unbleached hair and unremoved armpit hair. She conveys a sense of being very comfortable with the body she grew up in. I interpret this as a good sign of both radical politics and high self-esteem, both psychological traits that attract me. Of course, there are many other psychological traits that attract me that don't manifest themselves physically, which is why after seeing the icon I spent time reading her journal and userinfo page in search of those traits instead of just proposing marriage at first sight.

Not every trait that can physically attract a person is even as reliable a sign of psychological traits as these. The fact that someone was born with a different-shaped nose than someone else is highly unlikely to inherently correlate to any psychological differences. However, we learn our physical tastes from many sources, including personal life experiences and the mass media, and if the mass media chooses to consistently drill into our heads millions of images of people with a certain shape of nose being nicer or smarter or better in bed than people with some other shape of nose, unconsciously we may begin to associate these psychological traits with the physical trait of nose shape and proceed to behave as though the nose shapes of the people we meet are conveying important information about their psychology to us. If enough people behave this way, people with different nose shapes might even actually really acquire some different psychological traits due to the fact that they spend their lives being treated differently by most people.

But we can also learn our physical tastes from our personal life experiences. These tastes too can be skewed, if we just happen to have randomly not met anyone with a particular nose shape who didn't behave horribly to us, and then we subconsciously stop giving any more people with that nose shape an equal chance. The odds of our personal life experiences not being skewed are a little better than the odds of the mass media not being skewed, but certainly it can still happen.

pomobarney likes to make numbered lists with pictures of the top 20 or so celebrities he finds physically attractive, and remarked a while back about finding it interesting to see other people's lists. I've previously made lists of the people I find most attractive overall, when filling out various surveys, but physical attraction has hardly figured into my lists at all, and my lists have never been accompanied by photographs because there aren't even photographs available anywhere online of half of the people I find most attractive (obscure authors, historical figures, online friends, etc.), and I have no idea what they look like and I don't much care. If I like someone's psychological traits enough, they become part of the life experiences from which I learn my physical tastes, and I become very attracted to their body type (both on them and on other people who resemble them) as a direct result of knowing them. So it makes sense that I've never felt a need to make a list of people I find most physically attractive, because it's very changeable and for that reason, not very important.

But recent conversations with several of you about such things have caused me to realize that even though it is important not to overestimate the importance of physical tastes, it still is interesting to consider what physical tastes I've acquired so far. So I decided to make a list in which I would attempt to separate, as far as is possible (which it isn't entirely, because as I said, my physical tastes are affected by the psychological traits of the people who possess them), my physical tastes from my psychological ones.

However, if I just started naming everyone who came to mind as being pretty, the only people who would come to mind would be people I like mostly for their psychological traits, because I don't pay enough attention to popular culture to have all that many names in my head of people I'm not a huge fan of. Also, celebrities tend to have a very Hollywoodized look to them, so any list I made of them would be skewed toward that look even despite the fact that I usually dislike that look, simply because that look would be all I had to choose from. So I tried to think of a group of famous people whose photographs I could easily find online and who don't tend to all have a Hollywoodized look. And the solution I settled upon was . . . politicians.

Politicians are not a perfect solution at all, because they're still under pressure to keep their appearances pretty mainstream, which skews the list, and they also tend to be old by the time they're famous, which also skews the list. They'd skew the list strongly male too, but I solved that by searching extra hard for women to choose from. I also came up with hardly any bald men to choose from, which surprised me; now I wonder how many politicians use Rogaine. Anyway, I created a finite selection pool to choose from, by making a list of:

• All U.S. presidents who've been president during my lifetime (this includes Bush II, Clinton, Bush I, Reagan, Carter, and a few months of Ford, although I can't actually remember being told who the president was until it was Reagan - I do remember things that happened during Carter's presidency, but I don't think I knew what a president was yet), and their vice presidents
• All members of President Bush II's cabinet and President Clinton's cabinet
• All presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens, and governors general of all the countries that anyone I know or who reads my journal is from (I couldn't include all the countries in the world both because it would have taken too long and because it can be really difficult to even find pictures available on the internet of some of the more obscure ones); plus Kofi Annan from the U.N.
• All female former presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens, and governors general who I could find enough color photographs of to be able to get a clear sense of what they look(ed) like (this didn't fully even out the male-female ratio I had available to choose from, but it did help a lot)
• Two politicians who didn't fall into any of the above categories but whose appearances were so striking to me that I felt a need to include them anyway

This added up to about 100 people, and from that selection pool, I compiled my list of what I personally considered to be the 30 most attractive politicians. Actually, one of the most interesting things about using politicians for this is that you can easily tell how unable I am to fully separate my physical tastes from my psychological ones, because the politicians who made it to the very top of my list tend for the most part to not have terribly horrifying politics. I'm not at all asserting that this list is unaffected by my psychological tastes; I'm just asserting that it's not consciously affected by my psychological tastes. I made every conscious effort to base my list solely on physical traits.

And I'm not asserting that my physical tastes are the most P.C. in the world or least P.C. in the world, either. I'm just saying I have them, so since I have them, I might as well examine what they are.

The Top 30 Most Physically Attractive Politicians, in Gayle's Opinion

30. George W. Bush (President, U.S.A.): You may have been thinking he wouldn't make the list at all, or you may now be thinking that his position as last on the list makes him last among politicians everywhere, but you'd be wrong to think either of those things. (For the record, the politician I deemed dead last in physical attractiveness out of all of them is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Actually, he wasn't even included by the rules of my selection pool stated above, but I added him just so I could put him last.) A few of you who've known me for several years may have heard me remark before on how disconcerting it was for me in the 2000 elections and shortly thereafter to attempt to connect my hatred of everything George W. Bush's name stands for in politics with the actual face on the screen in front of me, which I found really rather disconcertingly cute. Not all the time, I mean - but he does have that one particular expression that he wears rather often. I'm sure you're familiar with it: the utterly bewildered, confused, helpless expression of someone with the brain capacity of a particularly dense toddler who's just accidentally wandered into an important gathering of world leaders. I think he purposely uses it to try to pass himself off as being even stupider than he actually is, because it's harder to hate someone if you believe they're genuinely too stupid to understand the harm they're causing. Anyway, when I first encountered it, I found it hard to resist - the appearance of helplessness does have a certain appeal. But at this point his face has become sufficiently associated in my mind with his own individual loathsome identity that it registers more immediately as "EVIL MASS MURDERING MANIAC ON THE LOOSE!" instead of as "Aww, look at the poor helpless-looking male version of a damsel in distress--OH WAIT, THAT'S THE EVIL MASS MURDERING MANIAC ON THE LOOSE!" and as a result, he's already gone down about five spots on this list from where he originally stood.

29. Madeleine Albright (Former Secretary of State, U.S.A.): This woman has several excellent things going for her. First of all, not only are her glasses a fabulous shade of green, but she wears them pushed down her nose and peers over the top of them with unsurpassable style. Second, just look at those eyebrows in that third picture. Anyone who can arch their eyebrows into curves that haughty deserves a place on this list. She could rank even higher, except that she doesn't seem to be anywhere near as good at bright happy smiles as she is at looking haughty.

28. Anders Fogh Rasmussen (Prime Minister, Denmark): He has a very memorable face, and lots of repeating lines around his mouth when he smiles. I like those lines, and I like the distinctiveness. Shame about his politics, which are apparently "center-right." Of course, what's considered "center-right" in Denmark might be considered "center-left" in the U.S.

27. Condoleezza Rice (National Security Advisor, U.S.A.): I'm surprised that people don't seem to comment more often on just how attractive Condoleezza Rice really is. She's quite a good-looking person, despite having sold her soul to the devil known as George W. Bush. If she insists upon wearing makeup though, she really ought to consult someone with a better sense of which makeup colors look best on her. That blue eye shadow is hopelessly the wrong color for her, and I think she could do better than maroon lipstick, too.

26. Benazir Bhutto (Former Prime Minister, Pakistan): In the first picture she looks exceptionally friendly and approachable; in the middle picture she looks like she's very determinedly standing her ground about something; and in the third picture she looks kind of nerdy. These are all excellent traits, and I can't find any pictures of her in which she doesn't appear to possess at least moderate amounts of most of them.

25. John Edwards (Senator, U.S.A.): I'd heard John Edwards repeatedly described in the media as being "handsome," and I couldn't understand this at all because his press photographs didn't appeal to me in the least. A Google image search, however, revealed that although he still isn't really my type, his press photographs don't really do him justice. The images I picked here are much better ones. Oh, and an interesting bit of trivia: he's the only male politician I can find anywhere in the entire world who parts his hair on the right side instead of the left. Seriously, there's some kind of unbreakable worldwide rule about which side all the male politicians part their hair on, and John Edwards is the only one who's broken it. (The female politicians, on the other hand, seem very confused as to whether they should copy the males or figure that females must be assigned to the opposite side of the hair-parting division, and half of them just give up trying to decide and don't part their hair at all.) Now what I'd like to know is what exactly causes John Edwards to part his hair on the right. Did he miss the day in Politician School when they taught the lesson about Always Part Your Hair on the Left Side? Or is he deliberately trying to send the voters subliminal messages about how he dares to be different from other politicians? Or is he ultra-subtly indulging his secret transgendered side and hoping no one will notice?

24. Adrienne Clarkson (Governor General, Canada): She looks remarkably similar to the mother of my elementary school best friend Gina, actually, at least in that first picture. Maybe that's why I feel instantly drawn to her. Think she'd bake me cookies?



23. Sonia Gandhi (Congress President and recently offered but refused Prime Minister position, India): Look, another person who pushes glasses down her nose! She also just really looks like the kind of person who always knows what she's doing. That's probably very handy in politics. Oh, and there aren't many people who can get away with wearing that shade of near-fluorescent yellowish-green she's wearing in that third picture without it juxtaposing badly with their skin tone and making them look ill. I'm impressed.

22. Guy Verhofstadt (Prime Minister, Belgium): I believe most people have a particular look that they're ideally suited to be fabulous at. Guy Verhofstadt's ideal look would be "adorably dorky." Unfortunately he doesn't really play up his dorkiness enough most of the time, so it's only in flashes when he smiles and reveals the big gap between his two top front teeth that he achieves truly adorable dorkiness. If he took a few night classes on Increasing Your Dorkiness Quotient, I'm sure he could move up a bit in my rankings, because I definitely go for the dorky look often.

21. Vladimir Putin (President, Russia): He's fairly undistinctive-looking over all, which doesn't serve him well in my rankings since I usually go for distinctive faces (possibly because I'm not entirely good at recognizing people if they have certain very common undistinctive face types, and if when looking at a person I think "I will never manage to recognize this person if I ever meet them again," that tends to equate to, "Well then, I can't be all that attracted to them if they're this unmemorable"). However, he does have a certain air of determination or perhaps even a faint hauntedness about the eyes that gets him included.

20. Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defense, U.S.A.): Donald Rumsfeld is a seriously good-looking man. Violently emotionally disturbed, certainly. Pure evil incarnate, certainly. But seriously good-looking, all the same. The only thing really wrong with his appearance is that all his attempts at smiling just come out dreadfully creepy. He should probably just stop smiling altogether so his evilness wouldn't show so much.

19. Chang Sang (Former Acting Prime Minister, South Korea): Unlike Adrienne Clarkson, Chang Sang doesn't especially resemble any of my friends' parents, but I still have a definite weakness for Asian people. Yes, I know I shouldn't admit to such a thing, but you'd figure it out anyway by the time you got to the end of this list. I think the only Asian politician I looked up who didn't make it onto this Top 30 list was Hu Jintao, the president of China, who has too much of a politician-ish smile for my taste. Oh wait, and Corazon Aquino, former president of the Philippines. I don't know why she didn't make it onto the Top 30. She was close.

18. Hasina Wajed (Former Prime Minister, Bangladesh): Perhaps it should be acknowledged that I would be attracted to just about anyone if they were wearing that shade of red she's wearing in the last photograph. Still, she's pretty. And I like big round glasses. And in the first picture, her hair has faint streaks of dark grey in it that I adore. I don't like her lipstick though.

17. Álvaro Uribe Vélez (President, Colombia): His politics are horrid, but his looks aren't. Nothing really out of the ordinary here though - just your basic classic beauty, much like Vladimir Putin, except that Uribe Vélez has darker hair and glasses, both of which tend to give him a slight advantage over Putin in my eyes. But only provided that their brains have been removed. If they come with brains attached, Putin is much less annoying.

16. John Kerry (Senator, U.S.A.): Of course I know he's weird-looking, but he's weird-looking in such an endearing way. For example, look at those lines through the middle of his cheeks in that last picture there. Have you ever seen anyone else with lines located in that particular position? They give his whole face this marvelous textured 3-D look in a way that nobody else's face is 3-D at all. The sad part is that some of his press photos catch him at an angle where the extra lines aren't visible at all and his face looks very nearly normal. Trust me, this is not a good thing. John Kerry's visual charm is his weird-lookingness, and the pictures that make him look less weird invariably destroy the charm.

15. Edith Cresson (Former Prime Minister, France): The first photograph of her is a press photograph, and like so many press photographs of politicians, it obscures her weird-lookingness and in doing so, also obscures much of her charm. She has an unusually shaped face, as is far more noticeable in the second two photographs, and I like it. I also like something about her eyelids in both of those.

14. Junichiro Koizumi (Prime Minister, Japan): Some countries, such as the U.S.A., have elected as their leader a person who looks like the ultimate steretype of the nation's people. Other countries, such as Japan, have elected as their leader a person who looks like the anti-stereotype. Junichiro Koizumi does not look like he belongs in a business suit. His hair is too curled, and in some pictures too longish, for him to fit in with business suit clones. His personality is too clearly playful. Oh yes, and his face! His face is altogther too distinctive for him to be a clone of anybody. And I like distinctiveness.

13. Dennis Kucinich (Member House of Representatives, U.S.A.): Dennis Kucinich has almost no eyebrows at all. It's a little odd, but I think it works for him. Nice smile, too. Besides, short men never fail to attract me. That's the real reason nobody will vote for him, you know. The tallest candidate always wins. I hate that.

12. Carol Moseley-Braun (Former Senator, U.S.A.): If there were an award given out for the brightest smile in American politics, Carol Moseley-Braun would win it. Plus, look at how she looks over the top of her glasses! I still really don't like makeup, but even I have to concede that she at least chooses her makeup colors with as much sense of what colors work on her as any professional makeup consultant.

11. Ruth Dreifuss (Former President, Switzerland): Unless you've spent the time I just did running Google image searches on every prominent female political leader you can find in the world, you have no idea how impossible it is to find any female politicians who don't wear makeup. I cannot, however, locate a single picture of Ruth Dreifuss anywhere in which she appears to be wearing makeup. This is a quite decidedly good thing. We have here your basic honest-looking unadorned female human being, and I like her face. Of course, I noticed that she does still shave her legs. I guess all democratically elected female politicians still have to cater to a few mainstream patriarchal beauty standards. (Oh, and another thing: she also happens to rather resemble my own mother. I'm not quite sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.)

. . . And now the Top 10! With bigger pictures for your viewing pleasure! . . .

10. Mikhail Fradkov (Prime Minister, Russia): Mikhail Fradkov has one of the roundest heads on this planet, and it happens to be quite cute. I'm sure there are people who fail to see his cuteness, but that's their problem. His eyebrows also seem to be raised in a kind of timid apologetic position in nearly every picture of him, and I fall for that.



9. Dame Eugenia Charles (Former Prime Minister, Dominica): Look, another woman who doesn't appear to be wearing any makeup! She also has lovely big round glasses. It was very very difficult to find pictures of her, but I was extra persistent since I knew she'd rank high on my list.




8. Tarja Halonen (President, Finland): I don't know how anyone could look at that big huge smile in her first picture here and not instantly like her. She has one of the biggest smiles in politics. She also has another strikingly honest-looking face - and quite charming hair, too. Incidentally, I see she's previously been the chairwoman of a national queer rights organization in Finland, although she has a husband and says she's heterosexual. I suppose I could always hope she's a closeted bi?



7. Roh Moo-hyun (President, South Korea): This man has truly perfected the art of looking utterly dismayed and utterly adorable simultaneously. Well, I guess he does have good reason to look dismayed after Kim Sun-il was recently beheaded in response to his sending troops to Iraq, but all these photographs of him are from before then, so the fact that he already looked so dismayed in so many of the pictures I found of him makes me inclined to suspect he was just aware of how cute his expression of dismay is and purposely displayed it as often as possible. He's also doing better at the dorky look than Guy Verhofstadt, although he could still increase his dorkiness quotient further if he worked at it.



6. Kofi Annan (Secretary-General, United Nations): There's an anecdote about Kofi Annan: it seems that when he left his native Ghana to attend college in Minnesota, he resolved never to wear earmuffs, because he deemed them unstylish. Eventually the temperatures forced him into wearing them, and the moral of this story, as Kofi Annan tells it, is: "Never walk into an environment and assume that you understand it better than the people who live there." But the moral of this story as I tell it is: "Even though necessities of health sometimes have to take precedence over it, Kofi Annan has long had a flawless fashion sense." I mean, look at the man. Go ahead, just try to picture him wearing earmuffs in those pictures. It's perfectly obvious that he just doesn't belong in earmuffs, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he resolved never to wear them. He's also totally beautiful, and anyone who fails to notice that obviously just hasn't gazed long enough upon that beatific smile of his in the first picture here.



5. Joschka Fischer (Foreign Minister, Germany): If you look up "adorableness" in the Oxford English Dictionary, Joschka Fischer is the illustration shown next to the definition. After discovering him I had to search Google for every single photograph ever taken of him just to gaze for hours upon his boundless array of superhumanly adorable facial expressions. Then I looked up news reports about him too, at which point I discovered that he's been divorced four times. Yes, well, all I can say is that you can certainly see why they keep marrying him!



4. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (President, Philippines): I'm really honestly not of the mindset that looking younger equals looking better - as you'll see when I get to numbers one and two, some people really just keep looking better and better with each new visible sign of age. Nonetheless, I would definitely like someone to explain to me how this person in these pictures can possibly be fifty-seven years old. I mean, she probably wasn't quite fifty-seven when most of them were taken, but she probably was over fifty. Please, explain what kind of a deal she made with the devil, and whether he also helped out in that recent close election. But anyway, I ranked her number three before I looked up her age and found out she looks 35 years younger than she actually is. I didn't take into account probable vampiristic tendencies in my ratings. I just have been making delighted squealing noises for years every time I come across a new picture of her.



3. Aung San Suu Kyi (Elected President but imprisoned and kept out of office, Burma): Everyone from #5 onward is someone whose photographs I've compulsively looked through for hours just for the sheer joy of gazing upon them. In the case of Aung San Suu Kyi I feel sort of guilty for this, because nobody's first reaction to hearing that a democratically elected president has been prevented from taking office by a military junta and imprisoned for years should really be, "Oooh, look at how pretty she is!" And that's really not my only reaction either, but sometimes it gets a little distracting when I'm trying to concentrate on the more noble reactions. Oooh, and look at what fabulous taste in hair decorations she has, too!



2. Indira Gandhi (Former Prime Minister, India): Indira Gandhi had a trademark: two prominent swirls of white hair on the right side of her head. Everyone should have a trademark, and it's much more impressive if you can accept and celebrate one that grew on you naturally - which, as far as I've been able to discern in my attempt to research it online, Indira Gandhi's seems to have done. Knowing that, how could you possibly fail to stand in awe of her? And even not knowing how she acquired it, how could you possibly fail to be impressed by the uniqueness of it, the two asymmetrical swirls of white remaining comfortingly consistent while so many other people search frantically for a new trademark every week and invariably choose the latest fashion that never really works as a trademark because half the other people on the block have suddenly started doing it too? How could you possibly not instantly want to get to know her?



1. Nelson Mandela (Former President, South Africa): I hope it's not some kind of sacrilege to name a person who's become a sort of secular living saint as the number one most physically attractive politician in the world. Hopefully proper feelings toward secular saints aren't bound by any Catholic-style taboos. Because see, I really couldn't possibly have named anyone else - in fact, he wouldn't have been included in my original selection pool at all by the guidelines I outlined above, since he's male and no longer a current president, but I added him in as a special exception just because he so obviously belonged at #1. He's 85 years old and with each year he ages he just gets more beautiful! He has a face that's exceptionally appropriate for him in that it transcends boundaries: in a lot of pictures of him he looks almost as much like a little old woman as he does like a little old man, and there's also something about the shape of his face that seems somehow very Asian to me even though he's not. Apparently he's so charming in person that one newspaper editor's wife who was complimented by him once remarked that she'd still have been charmed by him even if all he'd said to her was that she had spinach stuck in her teeth. Well, he won't be telling me I have spinach stuck in my teeth, both because I never eat spinach and because he's extremely unlikely to ever hear of my existence, but it seems that his charm works long-distance too.

Comments

[allyscully.livejournal.com]

You cheer me up just with the irreverence and depth of explanation that simultaneously went into this list.

My comments: Junichiro Koizumi and Anders Fogh Rasmussen are really cute. I've liked Vladimir Putin since before he became President of Russia and was still... well, being considered for President of Russia. I like lots of Russians. It's the nose. I think I would marry Joschka Fischer too if he showed up and made his "frightened hobbit" face that he's making in the third small picture. And then maybe right after that he could make the "devious!" pose in the large picture. Nelson Mandela is cute because when he smiles his eyes crinkle up and you get the feeling he really is happy.

[toppermost.livejournal.com]

This was totally entertaining! Awesome.

[pomobarney.livejournal.com]

Very cool...but I just don't get the Condolezza Rice thing. You're not the first person I've heard talk about finding her attractive, and I just don't see it. Well, to be honest, I can see it in an abstract sense, but the fact that she is pure evil just clouds my perceptions too much to see anything attractive in her at all.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Hmm, but you don't mention having any such difficulty with Donald Rumsfeld or George W. Bush?

[pomobarney.livejournal.com]

To be honest, that's probably because you're the only person I've ever heard say that those two were attractive. So I've never had the think about it before because everyone else only talks about their black little hearts of pure evil and malice...

[boyfunk.livejournal.com]

The woman you pictured as the stereotype of beauty is Charlize Theron, I believe. She is the actress who played Aileen Wuornos in the movie Monster. Did you see that? What did you think of it? Does it affect your opinion of her at all? Just curious.

I am not usually attracted to celebrities. I guess I don't see them as real people, so I don't usually think of them in any sort of sexual way, usually. I don't think of politicians in sexual terms at all, ever. I can hnestly say I have never thought a politican was physically attractive.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I practically never see movies, and no I didn't see that one. I very much doubt that I've ever seen anything she's been in.

More on Wuornos and Theron...

[boyfunk.livejournal.com]

It's a pretty good movie, though I don't know how accurate it is.

Here's a little info on Wuornos...

"Aileen 'Lee' Wuornos is on Death Row in Broward County, convicted of the murder of six men. Lee says all of the men raped or attempted to rape her.

We Believe Aileen Acted in Self-Defense

At the time of the killings, Lee was working as a highway prostitute. All of the men she killed were men who picked her up and who, she says, violently attacked her.

Lee was picked up by many other men during this period and she did not harm them. Several men have testified that they spent days or weeks with her and she never threatened them. They did say that she was worried that they would attack her."

http://www.prisonactivist.org/pubs/crossroad/6.3/wuornos.html

The info is a bit dated, since Wuornos was executed (by Jeb Bush) before the movie came out last year.

Theron produced Monster and stars in it. I am not a fan of Theron, but the movie really touched me and I did a bit of research afterwad on both Wuornos and Theron. Theron (and her mother) was attacked by her estranged father in a drunken rage and her mother shot her father during the attack, killing him, when Charlize was 15. I wonder how this factors into the story and the decision to play Wuornos. I would recommend the movie. Just from reading your posts I think you may like it. It strikes a balance between sympathizing with Wuornos and showing the horrors she dealt with in her life and how the "Monster" she became was created by society, with little sympathy for the act of murder. It doesn't leave the viewer with any easy answers. Theron does an excellent job in the movie breathing life into the character, though after seeing interviews with Wuornos she doesn't much like the actual person.

Theron had to gain 30 pounds to play the part and go through hours of makeup including facial prostetics and false teeth. I am not sure how I feel about that. I mean it's better than dolling the person up to meet insane and unrealistic beauty standards Hollywood-style, but on the other hand "de-beautifying" someone who is held up as a standard of beauty to play a role gets touted in the press as something akin to torture.

Anyway, yeah, I guess my point is I don't find Theron beautiful, but I find her more interesting for having done this movie and in a way it makes her more attractive as a celebrity, but, like I said I don't find Hollywood celebrities sexually attractive. It just makes her more intriguing to me.

Re: More on Wuornos and Theron...

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Oh, I had heard about Aileen Wuornos before. Just not about the movie. Or, I think I'd vaguely heard there was a movie about it, but no further details.

[erdbeermund.livejournal.com]

I mostly agree with you except that when I was younger, I was oddly attracted to Bill Clinton, but I still think he is more attractive than anyone on that list. I think.
But yeah, not so celebrities.

[ladypussycat.livejournal.com]

that second icon of beauty isn't who you think it is, though that LJ user gives credit to her in her icon listing...it is Furry Girl at http://www.furrygirl.com .. she is also the founder of http:://www.vegporn.com - a site that i'm linked with.

hope that helps :)

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Yay, a new person to research! . . . Oh wait, I've seen that site before so it isn't new after all. Oh well, it doesn't much matter who it is because I'd still think more highly of anyone who used it as an icon.

[datagrok.livejournal.com]

I was expecting you to accuse starionwolf of being another member of the Great Conspiracy to Destroy Gayle's Sanity (/users/queerbychoice/366871.html). ;)

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Ah, but that will only start applying to her if I see anybody else on LJ starting to use the same icon. The original Furry Girl doesn't appear to have an LJ account.

[ladypussycat.livejournal.com]

oh but she does..
so there goes that theory.
vegporn

[vegporn.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting my URLs, darlin.

Yeah, that doesn't sit well with me that someone took a photo of me from my site and seems to be using at as an LJ icon inferring that it's *them*. I'm always flattered when people think I'm cute, but it's I consdier it a no-no to pretend to be me.

Furry Girl
http://www.furrygirl.com & http://www.vegporn.com

[vegporn.livejournal.com]

PS: Whomever that was has taken that icon off her profile, yay. I've always been of the opinion that it's tacky to use photos of other people for one's icons/avatars, (especially if that happens to be a Jake Gyllenhaal photo), but it's even weirder to me that someone would chose to use a pic of a relatively unknown person like myself, presumably because they're more likely to pass themselves off as the pic.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

To be fair, her text keywords for the icon did say "Furry Girl." I just didn't happen to recognize that as meaning it wasn't her.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

But she doesn't use herself as an icon!

[datagrok.livejournal.com]

Hmm, let's check out the Friends list. Hey! Look at that. Gayle's posting about attractiveness of people. Hehe! I wrote about that too! Wow, but it would be pompous to think that my little post could have played a part in... *blink* *blink*

Holy cow I've been quoted in Gayle's journal!! *bounces giddily around the livingroom*

Ahem. I'm quite flattered that a quote from my little entry became a precursor to this huge, awesome post of yours. :)

I can't agree with you on Bush. At all. I find him completely physically repulsive. But I think I find him completely repulsive for the same reason you think he's cute, that bewildered-helpless expression. Bewildered-helpless-idiocy is quite unattractive to me.

I'm trying to imagine political ideas that I agree with coming out of Bush's mouth, to see if that changes my opinion of his physical attractiveness. Boy, it's a stretch of the imagination, but it just might. Hm. I wonder if it is really possible to look at someone who has not said a word and "see" the intelligence? Maybe he is cute but I've come to associate that face with the nausea I associate with his politics—even the way he talks makes my hair stand on end.

I thought that what you said about beauty-by-association was very noteworthy, and it made me really realize how often I experience it.

And now you've got me considering an entry entitled Top 30 hottest LJ userpics.. haha! :) I definitely agree with you regarding the two example userpics you've compared. Partially due to the aforementioned beauty-by-association thing. Hmm! One better, I should build a web application on my site that interfaces with livejournal... it could become the hotornot.com of LJ User Icons! (I'd have have to find a way to filter by voter personality, though... because I've little interest in what the "majority" thinks.)

[kammerat-blomst.livejournal.com]

Just thought I'd tell you that starionwolf has just made post in a community

[kammerat-blomst.livejournal.com]

.....(I touhed some wrong button)..that I'm in, called "kissmyass_cosmo".... so he might not be inpossible to reach after all!

[inkstained.livejournal.com]

Gayle I don't understand at all how you can link someone's attractiveness to their personality the way you do and then find George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld attractive.

But I am thoroughly entertained. This is the strangest and most fantastic thing anybody has ever attempted to do on livejournal.

-ink

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

They're totally sexy! Actually, my attraction to Bush is definitely fading with the passage of time, but my attraction to Rumsfeld hasn't faded significantly yet.

I suppose they just happen to look like other people who I've found to have nice personalities. :p

[rekraft.livejournal.com]

... and Vigdis Finnbogadottir didn't make the cut at all?
http://www.wic.org/pic/finnboga.gif
http://vestmannaeyjar.ismennt.is/vefir/comenius/people/vigdis.jpg

Anyway - still on Scandinavian leaders - Tarja Halonen completely won me over with that smile. It's almost enough to make me melt. Thanks for the introduction.

Vladimir Putin would look undistinctive if not for those inscrutable eyes. That's what I remember him for.

Oh, and Joschka Fischer is Germany's Foreign Minister (and Vice-Chancellor).

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I didn't look up Vigdis Finnbogadottir, because I don't know anybody from Iceland. She might have made the cut if I had.

1

[chisparoja.livejournal.com]

George Bush: I´ve commented since I first saw him that he has a very unfortunate cuteness to him which makes him seem much more inocuous than he actually is. Particularly in contrast to someone like Al Gore, whose election strategy as dictated by his ¨feminist¨ consultant was to look as macho and harsh as possible, so he could ¨alpha-male¨ bush, a strategy that I knew from the first time I read about it was destined to backfire. I´m sure even if he is unaware of the charm of his appearnce, his consultants are not, and they play it up all the can. While cute, it also makes him look the part of an absolutely brainless ditz. Were he a woman or black he would never have gotten even 1% of the support he got as a white man. No woman or minority with even double the brains he has could manage even a tenth the respect. He´s a sickeningly privileged individual in a depraved country. I do think his innocuous appearance probably won him the election though. i also think it is mistaken to imagine he is feigning stupidity.... i believe he really is every bit as stupid as he appears to be. it serves him in no way to be seen as this ditzy and mindless, and so i believe it must be authentic stupidity.

Madeleine Albright is a heartless warmonger, with no understanding of the value of human life, and as such, her glowering expression quite suits her and I certainly cannot complain that she in anyway makes herself out to be something she is not. Furthermore, if she and Rumsfeld had a staring contest (which really needs to happen), or a ¨who can look more Satanic?¨ contest, she would win hands down -- and you can´t say that about just anyone. Though I should think Rumsfeld would win a who could be more Satanic contest. Also no small feat.

Condoleeza Rice (or should I say, ¨Condi¨) has absolutely been complimented by the press on her ¨beauty¨. If they haven´t done it more often, and thank goddess for that, it is but for the grace of whatever rag-tag feminist groups out there manage to get out of the American media. She´s quite good at that patriarchal ideal thing. I´m surprised you give her so many kudos for that and I´m relieved that more people don´t, especially after the way Albright and Reno, two Democratic women politicians with masculine appearances, were abused on a daily basis in the media over their appearances. And Rice should rank above them even in your book? That disappoints me. You´re less put off by makeup than you let on. :p

John Edwards: He´s very ¨conventionally handsome¨. Which, in mikieland, means he´s ugly, patriarchal and disliked. :p

Guy Verhofstadt: I completely agree with you. ;)

Vladimir Putin: He´s quite stunningly handsome. In my not so humble opinion, that´s why the Russians elected him, along with his incorruptible, doggedly determined, unshakeable ¨calm¨ expression -- which, imo, is in reality a perfectly practised poker-face, which he will have learned during his many years with the KGB. Which is also what would probably be haunting him so much. Not that the Russians would mind any of that, especially since the rouble has stabilized. ;) They did get a bit pissed though when the Kursk sank and killed all sailors on board, all because of the government´s floundering, and the only reaction Putin could manage from his golf course was his usual stony-faced glare.

Re: 1

[chisparoja.livejournal.com]

also, i forgot to add, i don´t believe that if he were black or a woman, people would be so quick to assume he must be feigning stupidity as part of an elaborate, brilliant electoral strategy. they would just assume s/he was dumb.

Re: 1

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Ah, but I'm so not any less put off by makeup than I let on. It's just that practically every single female politician anywhere wears makeup, so I had no alternatives to choose from. All the ones who didn't wear makeup made it to very near the top of my list, and the only instances where anyone not wearing makeup was outranked by anyone wearing obviously visible makeup were instances where the one not wearing makeup had very obviously curled or dyed or otherwise artificialized her hair, which is just as bad as makeup in my eyes.

I had thought before I ran the Google image search on Janet Reno that I would like her because she would be more "butch." But when I actually looked at her pictures, she was wearing lots of makeup in all of them and just looekd like she was trying and failing to conform to patriarchal standards. That doesn't get her anywhere with me. She needs to stop looking like she's trying, and start looking like she knows better than to want anything to do with them.

John Edwards: That's exactly why I said he's not really my type. I just don't all-out dis like him as strongly as you do for it, I suppose.

2

[chisparoja.livejournal.com]

Donald Rumsfeld must be an incarnation of Satan. Because whether smiling, frowning, or whatever, one automatically wanders toward the spots on his head where the horns had to have been amputated. I have never seen utter male chuavinist masculine evil so completely perfectly expressed before. Even Albright seems to have human grudges to settle. Rumsfeld´s only grudge seems to be with the continuance of life itself. He does try to package the evil in a seductive, tempting way, I´ll admit, like a sort of incubus.... if horrifying, heartless, compassionless evil attracts, anyway. Which I suppose it does. Unlike Albright, he tries to pass himself off as something other than a homicidal warmonger with those smiles of his, so he´s also a manipulator. Albright has a look on her face that says, ¨I will kill you¨, and then she kills you. Rumsfeld has a look that says, ¨I will sternly reprimand you, but then I´ll smile in a fatherly way at you,¨ and then he kills you. But as you´ve noted, even when he smiles, it just ends up looking like someone filed down his fangs. He looks like a demonic entity whose master has instructed him to smile so as to make the mortals more comfortable with him, but even for his most earnest attempts, cannot seem to quite get the knack of how to appear benign.

Álvaro Uribe Veléz: I´m definitely not seeing it.

Junchiro Koizumi: He does look really charmingly unconventional, and he acts it too. But he´s another ¨pity about the politics¨ one. :p

Carol Moseley Braun: She looks fantastic, but the red lipstick absolutely massacres it.

Ruth Dreifuss: Wow. I would make her no. 1! She´s really handsome!

Mikail Fradkov: Omg, don´t be fooled by those apologetically raised eyebrows! That´s Kremlinese for, ¨I am guilty as all sin.¨ ;)

Dame Eugenia Charles: Agree totally.

Tarja Halonen: I agree again. All the Nordic politicians have honest smiles though. They´re honest people, they just can´t help it. ;)

Roh Muu-Hyun: If I were Prime Minister of South Korea these days, I´d have that same dismayed look myself. He is sweet and innocent looking though. In that sort of, ¨I´m not the mad, megalomaniacal dictator starving my people so that I can field an army of one million conscripts and make nuclear weapons.... that´s that other guy. Hi. (wave)¨

Re: 2

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Donald Rumsfeld is TOTALLY SEXY when he's not smiling. I notice it every single time I see any picture of him anywhere. The only time his creepiness actually becomes visible is when he smiles. Then he's just scary and not sexy at all anymore.

But your description of Madeleine Albright's "I will kill you" look is right on, and that's why she's hot. :p

Carol Moseley Braun: You summed it up exactly perfectly, except that at least the red lipstick isn't nearly as bad as Condoleezza Rice's maroon lipstick.

3

[chisparoja.livejournal.com]

Kofi Annan: He is gorgeous and he deserves a first or second place position imo. And he has a really fantastic personality, and is probably one of the nicest and most well meaning politicians in the world. Pity he has the least actual power of any of them. I love his quote about the environment. I don´t know this poor guy manages to keep from becoming suicidal.

Joschka Fisher: I agree, but I think he´s ranked too high.

Arroyo: Several layers of foundation is my guess. She´s another one who´s very much about conventional standards of beauty and it rather surprises me again that she would rank so high on a list of yours, higher than the Finnish Prime Minister or Kofi Annan, for example. But this is approaching the standard of Western beauty that all of us are now struggling to achieve, so that we, too, can be cooed over in this way. ;) Personally I´m not attracted to her. Also I don´t like her style of leadership too much. She´s too much about rule by iron fist and liberal application of the death penalty. I wouldn´t be at all surprised if the same companies that preserve her look as it is also ensured her reelection. That´s how democracy works! :p

Aung San Suu Kyi: Quite frankly I find this very upsetting and offensive. If Mandela can be called a ¨living saint¨ and commenting on his physical appearance a ¨sacrilege¨ it should certainly apply just as well to Suu Kyi. She has tireless and relentlessly fought for her country for decades, against a brutal military regime, at the cost of her freedom and her family. Her husband, a Brit, died of cancer and she could not visit him even once as she would have been expelled permanently from Burma. You should feel guilty that your first reaction to her is ¨ooh look how pretty she is!¨ Very guilty. It´s wrong. And that such an inspirational figure, who has fought so hard and so long agaisnt such odds, should be seen in that way in an ostensibly feminist environment, is very depressing. And the worst part of it is that she is still being kept under house arrest at this moment. She should not be on this list or spoken about in this way. I´m disappointed in this too.

Mandela is not the saint he´s made out to be either, though he is not bad looking by any means.

I´m surprised that Janet Reno and.... the War Crimes Prosecutor at the UN tribunals, I forget her name, and Bernie Ahert, and, for goddess´ sake, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (guapíiiiisimo)!!! are not on your list.

and now it will tell me i wrote too much....

Re: 3

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

But it does apply to Aung San Suu Kyi too and that's why I made exactly the same types of comments upon her! Apparently you just read them differently than I intended somehow, but my commentary about her was totally about the inappropriateness of focusing on her beauty when she's so much more important than that. Everything I was saying was totally about the fact that I do feel guilty for focusing on that.

The reason Gloria Arroyo made it so high on my list is due in large part to the fact that I have a terrible weakness for Asian people. And that her makeup isn't easily visible as being makeup, so I can't know that I'm supposed to fault her for wearing makeup if I don't know she has any on. (Remember, I ranked them before finding out her actual age.)

I didn't look up or consider the War Crimes Prosecutor or Bernie Ahert. They weren't in the running for the list. José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was though, and the pictures I found ofh im just didn't do enough for me for him to make the list.

Re: 3

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Oh, and for the War Crimes Prosecutor, do you mean Carla Del Ponte? Because she'd never have made my list even if I'd considered her. Much too blonde for my taste.

The Irish Prime Minister/EU President's name is Bertie Ahern, and I'm completely mystified as to why you'd find him attractive, because based on my Google image search I don't process his face as anything but "Oh, some other old white male who looks just like all the rest of the old white males." I mean, I guess he does have some distinctive facial characteristics but they aren't distinctive in a way that registers with me as being particularly noteworthy or interesting in any way. He wouldn't have made my list even if I'd considered him for it either. And I would have expected him to rank even lower on your list than on mine because you seem in general to be a bit less attracted to white males than I am (except for Vladimir Putin). But I think you're also a bit more influenced by people's politics in your judgment of their appearances than I am, possibly because in some cases you know more details about their politics than I do.

Re: 3

[chisparoja.livejournal.com]

i´m mystified as to how you can process his face as ¨oh some other old white male who looks just like all the rest¨ and then go on to sing the praises of the likes of Donald Rumsfeld. bertie´s face is very cute, and his smile is authentic and he doesn´t remind me of Satan.

anyway, this is silly. but it is interesting to see your tastes, i´m actually really surprised by most of them.

[interjections.livejournal.com]

starionwolf commented on one of my entries in kissmyass_cosmo and I adored her user pic too.

And before I saw farenheit 9/11 I always thought GWB looked rather goofy and monkey-like. . .but as I was watching it I couldn't help but notice that he is kind of cute *hides face in embarrasment*

[enile.livejournal.com]

ARGH! i can't believe you put in the prime minister of my country, Anders Fogh Rasmussen... urgh. anyway, that was my first reaction... i'm not used to people knowing anything about Denmark at all, so i was very surprised to see him on your list...

if we talk only of physical traits, the one thing that i don't like about him, is his incredibly beady eyes - to me he looks like a psychopath. but you can't really tell from the pictures you've chosen... apart from that, i hate him. in Danish standards, he's very right wing, especially in realpolitik, but would probably not be very right wing in the us'ov'a...

hmm... i love how long and eloquently written your entries are, by the way...

oh well. he once proposed to my aunt back in the 70's, and apparently, he's queer... (hush, big secret)...

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't know anything about him until I looked him up, and the reason I looked him up was that I was looking up the leaders of all countries where anyone reading my journal is from there, and see, you're from there, so I looked him up because of you.

And oh my! I'm now in on Danish governmental secrets, of a sort. I feel special.

[bpt.livejournal.com]

Our World Leaders: HOT or NOT?

"At last it's time. Time to reclaim democracy for the little people. Time to get to the heart of world affairs. It's time to rate the world's leaders on the one thing that really counts: fuckability."

[allyscully.livejournal.com]

Something I realized while looking up recently-announced vice presidential material: Mr. Al Gore was also fond of parting his hair on the right.

John Edwards is the new Al Gore! Hahah. Anyway.