GC: Why can't women be called handsome and men be called beautiful/pretty? Is it the english language that says handsome can't be used to describe women and beautiful/pretty can't be used to describe men?

starsstorm · 2020-08-05T04:06:53+00:00

Handsome used to be used to refer to women as well as men. You can see it used in 19the century novels pretty often if you read that sort of thing. My spouse is a rather pretty man and I’ve been known to call him beautiful too. I don’t see what the issue is outside of modern culture personally.

worried19 · 2020-08-05T02:57:26+00:00

Those words should be neutral.

Men feel offended and humiliated to be associated with feminine words because anything that would involve them "being like a woman" is matter of shame. It's ground into boys from day one that femininity is shameful for them, and that women are weaker and lesser. That's why even so-called enlightened men will go around calling each other "bitch" and "pussy" as insults.

As for women, being called "handsome" is not shameful in the sense that it means they are weak, but any implication that they are "mannish" is considered an affront because women are taught to value conventional attractiveness. They don't want to be masculine because it means they are lower on the totem pole of femininity, and only the women at the top are prized. There's no social power in being at the top, because those women are still considered weak and pathetic, but they are at least prized as sex objects, whereas masculine women are not. Women are taught from infancy that being a decorative object should be one of their main goals in life.

luckystar · 2020-08-05T18:25:44+00:00

Is this a GC view you're challenging? It doesn't sound like one.
Anyway, I think those words should be gender neutral. That many people consider them not to be obviously ties into the whole issue with sexism and how women are expected to be visually appealing to men, and men think anything that makes them seem like a woman is humiliating. I will say as someone who speaks a few different languages, now that I reflect on it, every language I know of has this "handsome" vs. "beautiful" divide, and in every one a woman might be called "handsome" but a man is almost never called "beautiful". So I do think it goes back to sexism.

grixit · 2020-08-08T12:49:57+00:00

Why can't women be called handsome and men be called beautiful/pretty?

They can, and are.

levoyageur718293 · 2020-08-05T18:38:38+00:00

They're both subsets of "good-looking," but they carry the shadow-meaning of "looking like you should." So beautiful means "looking like a good-looking woman," and handsome means "looking like a good-looking man."

You can say "she's a handsome woman," but that's more of a quotation than a real phrase, and in practice it means "she's holding on to her looks pretty well despite her age."

divingrightintowork · 2020-08-12T02:08:12+00:00

You can call them that? I've called men pretty boys / men, beautiful, etc. I've called women handsome, dapper, etc. They do tend to track with "Feminine" and "Masculine" though.

anxietyaccount8 · 2020-08-05T18:42:52+00:00

Well, yes, some people would be offended because it implies they look like the opposite sex. But in some cases it is true that a woman is "handsome" or a man is "beautiful/pretty". I've actually heard these used as compliments before.

emptiedriver · 2020-08-06T15:07:24+00:00

It's not a question of proper english, but of whether you consider it a complement - a pretty or beautiful man is something people sometimes use to describe new wave goth boys, skinny sculpted faces with arching eyebrows.. what is sometimes called "effeminate" but if you don't want to gender these things, then it's just the detailed, more curved, long-lined type of attractiveness. A pretty looking piece of pottery would also going be different from a handsome one, which would be nice looking, well-fitting and pleasant, so a handsome woman is good-looking but not breath-taking.

I think the confusion comes with context/use. They all very generally mean "good-looking" so can be used for a whole range of judgments (like, "shrug yeah he's handsome" or "oooh he is hand-some!"), but in direct comparison handsome is a vague positive, pretty implies decorated, and beautiful has a deeper connection to aesthetic pleasure.

You can use "handsome" to refer to a positive sum of money too, whereas "beautiful" is one of the three aspects of the world philosophers traditionally investigate (the true, the beautiful, and the good...). So it's not that the words are male or female - it's that we've applied words to men and women. Men are big, positive, strong in their good looks. Women are worthy of being gazed upon and pondered over as lovely mysteries

circlingmyownvoid · 2020-08-07T21:02:53+00:00

It’s just evolved language. There was a time handsome could be used to describe women. It may be apocryphal but I heard that the root of the term basically meant “worth marrying”.

I personally would be very insulted to be called handsome because it has developed a masculine connotation. And anything masculine I would take as an insult.

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