The Ugly Truth About Beauty Summary

Combining humor and sarcasm "The Ugly Truth about Beauty" written by Dave Barry drags us into an analysis of the differences between female and male perceptions of beauty. The author begins by admitting how men may be easily overwhelmed by a woman's question about her appearance, to the point of inventing ridiculous situations to avoid answering the question.

Barry finds himself debating that the principal cause of the problem is how women think they look vs. how men perceive themselves. He analyzes how some men think they are extremely attractive as "irresistible stud muffins” (“Ugly Truth about Beauty”). In contrast, women deny being attractive, and even, when they think of herself, an expression of rejection and disgust comes along: “woof”

They need the slim figure of Cindy Crawford, her stature, her perfect face and an emporium of cosmetics and accessories help them convince that they can match such unattainable beauty. While men do not need to look like Brad Pitt, they can focus on more productive activities than a make-up session because they have a lifetime confidence about their good appearance and can hold the same thought even when they are old and ugly.

The author implies that usually men do not care about how they look as much as the women do. In fact, they don’t notice the effort of women trying to look beautiful, but skeptical women will always believe that men, “as shallow as a drop of spit” (“Ugly Truth about Beauty”). prefer that women maintain that idea; even though, in author’s personal experience, he has never witnessed a man noticing such superficial thing as cute nails.

In desperate attempt to answer the question of how women look, men are very likely to respond incorrectly, because even with an honest answer it will always be disadvantages, such as the woman thinking that men are just trying to satisfy her because she knows she must look like Barbie to be perfect, or only because she considers a man unable to answer that since, after a basic shave, men are powerless to clean up the rest of the shaving cream out of their