TIM writes from Brazil:

I am still astonished by the following words written by you: It’s hard for men, a curse really, to choose character over beauty. 

It feels as if you had access to my most inner thoughts.

Could you please elaborate on that? What are the roots of this phenomenon? What are the consequences? How to overcome this obstacle?

Laura writes:

The roots of this phenomenon are in the Fall.

The body ever after reflected less of the glory of the soul and the passions were less subject to reason. A woman’s beauty (or lack of beauty) does not always correspond with her spiritual qualities and a man’s innate passion for physical beauty may override his desire for a good woman. It’s a defect. A man’s love of beauty is in itself good, a vestige of the order of Paradise and a time when the soul and body were one. But unfortunately beauty is no longer as it was originally intended to be.

“[W]hen man’s soul turned from God by sin, the human body deservedly lost that supernatural disposition whereby it was unrebelliously subservient to the soul.”  (St. Thomas Aquinas, The Shorter Summa, 152)

Character is revealed over time. A man may chose someone who is beautiful, but not easy to love. Unfortunately, in a transient culture, it’s hard to get to know people. It truly is, and physical appearance becomes more important. I’m not sure the best way for a man to deal with this problem except first to realize that his eyes are not the always the best judge of character, to train his eyes and to be conscious of those women who don’t immediately catch the eye. That’s hard as there are many images of beautiful women in advertising. But a married man often has to learn to mortify his eyes anyway so it’s good to start before one is married.

The best way for a woman to deal with this is to realize that she should defer to the male love of beauty (without going overboard) and make herself both beautiful and good, with the emphasis on the latter. There are many ways in which even a plain woman can make her appearance reflect the charms of her character.

— Comments —

Donal Graeme writes:

Two quick thoughts.

First, some advice for Tim. Watch carefully what women do. Not to watch the woman specifically, but what she does. We men are visual creatures, and so a beautiful woman can be distracting like nothing else. However, if you fixate on a woman’s actions it can help you determine a great deal about her character. Our Savior told us that “every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit.” Look at the fruit of a woman’s actions to help understand her better. Look for patterns of behavior, and you will be surprised how quickly the scales can fall from your eyes. It also helps to not pedestalize women- remember they are fallen human beings, just like you.

Second, I would like to point out that women are just as likely to be blinded by an attractive man as men are by an attractive woman. The web is full of stories of women complaining about their husbands, who turned out to be either weak in the faith or were non-believers all along. Many Christian women even knew this when they married them. Why did they marry such men? Because they were attracted to those men. Very attracted to them in most instances, and they choose attractiveness over character. And of course this blindness need not end in marriage- often times it “merely” ends in fornication, with women giving away their virtue to attractive men who lacked sound character. I’ve featured a few of those stories on my own blog. We all need to beware of flash, and look for substance instead.

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