As students at Bowdoin and as young adults in the modern world, numbers are an inevitable and undeniable fact of life. We are constantly getting feedback that places us within a system of gradations and numbers: grades, GPA, weight, height, team scores and clothing sizes, to name only a few examples. Now, numbers are not entirely irrelevant by any means, for they provide some semblance of order to an otherwise incomprehensible web of information. However, assigning numbers to something or someone—in this context at least—is inherently a reductive act.
Objectifying a person’s worth to and for them not only distills the worst elements of our culture but also provides an incorrect and illusory understanding of a person that, ironically, neglects their actual value as a human being. We constantly make assessments of other people. This fact seems unavoidable.
What worries me is the language with which we pass such judgments. When I hear someone assign a number to someone else outside a party, it doesn’t seem cool or funny. It looks more like a symptom of self-conscious anxiety about physicality and appearance. Clearly, people contain more multitudes than their looks or grades can possibly capture in any fulfilling way.
These numbers lose all power in light of how arbitrary they actually are. What does 10 represent? What does it actually mean to be a 10? To be perfect? How can we agree upon the terms? I recently had an argument with a friend who insisted that the ranking system is making important leaps and strides in recent years: “now you can factor in face, body and personality so it’s fair.” Even still, what is 10? What is one? There is no reference point and thus no meaning at all behind these numbers. Not to mention that the concept of ranking personality and of ranking these aspects separately is an almost laughable, and, I hope, fleeting phenomenon.
To rate someone—and more so, to allow yourself to be swayed by someone else’s ranking—is to allow someone else’s narrative to override your own. It is to allow one’s complexity to be overridden by a particular, narrow and unimportant analysis that conforms to the essentializing and superficial standards of our society. It seems to me that these issues are important ones to consider when thinking about how we talk about one another.
The way we learn to talk about beauty stays with us. When men rank women, women begin to compare themselves to other women using the same format. They judge men in the same way. If one can make a person disappear behind a number, this makes them less of a threat; it gives the ranker the power.
And admittedly, it feels good to have that power sometimes, to be the wielder of assessment. As if we have any real control over another person’s looks, over our own, over the intricacies of interpersonal attraction. If we believe in the ranking system, it means that our peers can decide whether or not we are sexually desirable, not based on their own subjective attraction, but rather on an arbitrary numerical scale. And that’s frightening.
Though it would be impossible to keep anyone from expressing their opinions about another person’s looks—and frankly, you wouldn’t want to do away with that altogether—I think it’s important that the way we talk about this subject changes. Numbers are not the way to do it. At their best, they are empty; at their worst, they can be incredibly hurtful. To conform to the system of ranking is to succumb to the societally conditioned conception of what it means to be “hot”: a conception that lacks nuance, and which wrongfully evaluates and oppresses us all.