Beauty in Men; Earned, Never Given
Picture the most beautiful man to have ever lived. Some will envision a model or performer. Possibly. Others will envision the totality of a life of kindness and sacrifice. Close, but not quite.
There are many different realms of beauty and, of course, it is arguably one of the most subjective concepts humans can discuss. For instance, my wife thinks I’m gorgeous, just like I do of her. But put us next to movie stars on a red carpet and we’d look lost grips in fancy clothes.
The official definitions of beauty are fairly far apart. Dictionary.com has a chunky version: the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations, a meaningful design or pattern, or something else. Try not to pay attention to the commas and you’ll find it sounds a lot like Merriam Webster’s attempt: the quality or group of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or the mind. Then there’s the gold standard of definitions, the Oxford English Dictionary, which says beauty is: a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight. For the sake of this article, beauty will be defined according to Oxford.
Imagine for a moment that time machines and the GEICO Caveman are real. “Attractive” probably isn’t the word you’d reach for to describe our earliest ancestors. Long before electric razors and shoes, they stunk, weren’t groomed, and most likely had more lice than manners. And yet, they cared about how they looked.
Beauty didn’t start with vanity. The first signs of us caring about how we looked weren’t bigger boobs, thicker lips, smoother skin, or heads full of thick hair. They were piercings, scars, and tattoos—the painful but earned marks of belonging and endurance. Beauty began as representations of achievement, the proof that you had endured something worth showing. Long before glossy ads sold airbrushed faces and moisturizers, humans were reshaping themselves: elongating skulls, piercing ears, tattooing and tanning skin, scarring arms and faces with cuts or burns. These weren’t accidents; they were declarations—“I belong to this or that,” “I’ve endured this or that.” Body modifications weren’t about vanity, they were about identity and warning. They meant “Don’t fuck with me.” It wasn’t until polished obsidian gave us a reflection that ego entered the picture. The mirror turned those declarations inward, shifting beauty from ritual and proof of worth into self-regard, and very quickly, into vanity.
As civilization took shape, the desire to warn people of your family’s history of violence or valor began to fade. The social contract shifted our physical bodies from warning people who didn’t know us to attracting people we wanted to know us. In tribal living, finding a mate wasn’t much of a dating experience. You couldn’t fake your way into someone’s affection when the whole tribe knew you. But civilization brought distance, which meant your reputation didn’t often precede you. Up until the advent of the digital communication age, it was relatively easy to mask your past or intentions as long as you had confidence in your expression and distance from your past. We’ve all heard many stories of skeletons and evil intentions being buried as long as a person’s presentation appeared on par with their surroundings. But appearing a certain way and actually being that way are often far from each other.
With the rise of civilization came technology, grooming, and status. The invention of mirrors allowed literal self-reflection, a game-changer for the human ego. Grooming became more sophisticated and expected. Status became something you could spot at a glance. Crafted wood plugs gave way to metal earrings. Dyed silk outclassed plain wool and cotton. And pigments once reserved for rituals or sacred ceremonies became everyday cosmetics, birthing an entire industry built to display membership in class rather than achievement.
Imagine a boy allowed to mark his face with ash or apply a pigment to his arms only after completing a grueling portion of his training. The paint is not decoration; it’s proof. It tells the tribe: “I endured. I belong. I earned this.” Now imagine the same boy skipping the training but still smearing on the pigment. To the eye, he looks the same. But the beauty isn’t in the paint; it’s in the discipline that should have earned it. That’s the dividing line between real beauty and fraud. Ancient scars, tattoos, and piercings were receipts for courage and belonging. Modern beauty too often skips the receipt and sells the illusion. What once declared virtue now disguises its absence.
The shift in how beauty was obtained and represented echoed quickly across the planet with nearly every culture giving in to the illusion of beauty. The Chinese bound feet into the shape of lotus. The Italians castrated boys to preserve angelic singing. Romans and Greeks dyed hair to mirror gods and youth. African tribes stretched necks, lips, and earlobes to highlight grace or belonging. Native Americans scarred, painted, and tattooed themselves to mark courage, vision, and connection to the divine. We’ve always modified our bodies to show others something deeper about our character than what could be seen on the surface. But over time, the signals of our accomplishments started to outshine the substance they were supposed to represent.
That begs the question: what did beauty represent versus what it’s used for today?
For three millennia, every serious religion and philosophy has offered the same prescription for human happiness: live a life of virtue. The virtue formula doesn’t change; it’s always courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. These four pillars aren’t random; they are the architecture of the good life. Whenever civilization has tested the experiment, the results have been the same: everything opposed to virtue breeds chaos, misery, and decay. Those who root themselves in virtue may still struggle, but they carry within them a steady hunger for peace and tranquility, never for distraction or pleasure.
People who choose lives of virtue are still susceptible to big flaws. They must battle demons and ego every day. They still have an inner voice justifying more ice cream, or more time on the phone, or more of the drug they’re justifying. Remember this if you don’t take anything else away from this piece: demons that keep us from virtue are also the ones that make us ugly.
Beauty is never indulgence; it’s mastery. An emotional man’s first nature wants flare and passion. That’s where we get anger, lust, fear, pride. Beauty only appears when our second nature holds the line. That trained application of reason that reminds us not to react, to not speak, or make decisions, or talk. It is patience coming through when everything in our fiber wants to scream and shout and act.
A red-faced tirade is unforgettable because it’s ugly, never beautiful. Beautiful scenes end with a steady voice that corrects a wrong without humiliation. Winning tempts us to peacock, while beauty is finishing with full effort, thanking everyone, and moving on quickly. Conquering can be good and beautiful, but it must always be done with mercy and clear boundaries. You ran from loud noises as a kid until someone convinced you not to worry. Standing confident for what’s right is beautiful and memorable; you just have to remind yourself that giving in to impulse grabs beauty by the throat. It is fidelity to virtue that overcomes the easy thrill of being a loudmouth jerk.
First nature reacts; second nature governs. Beauty is the evidence of governance.
Beauty is often confused with attractiveness. The two are related, but not identical. Attractiveness can be surface-level; beauty goes deeper. A beautiful person is one who pleases all the senses in harmony, especially, but not just the eyes. Impressions come through the actual words we speak, of course, but it’s more so the volume, tone, and the confidence behind them.
Until the Enlightenment, conservative religions dominated not only spiritual life but also philosophy, science, art, and moral codes. They set the terms of what was beautiful, true, and virtuous. Disagreeing with those could have meant heresy charges leading to exile or even death. It wasn’t until the 17th century that reason, individual rights, and secular inquiry began to challenge that monopoly. Thinkers like Descartes, Locke, Voltaire, and Kant started to peel philosophy away from religious authority. Beauty, virtue, and human happiness started being reframed in terms of reason and nature rather than divine command. Then Nietzsche happened, swinging his version of logic at the whole concept.
Frederick Nietzsche was an open and loud critic of virtue. He saw virtue as a social conditioning experiment that made us all fall into a herd mentality. He argued that restraining yourself from impulse went against human nature. He saw virtue not as an objective thing, but something the individual should frame themselves and follow at their whim. This subjective view of reality took off and soon the world was rife with narratives that an individual was to follow whatever reality they thought was best for them. That thinking morphed and came to a head with Marxism and became what’s been called postmodern relativism. By the 1950’s, beauty had become entirely surface level.
What does real modern beauty look like? As always, beauty is a representation of excellence. A beautiful person radiates confidence because, simply put, they did what they needed to do without giving in to what they wanted to do. Confidence is born from doing things the right way over and over again and restraining yourself from doing what you really want to do. Most importantly, true excellence requires very little interaction with ego.
The pursuit of beauty isn’t often talked about in masculine terms, yet I’ve seen men crave it as much as women. Men just express it differently. The male instinct for beauty has always been tied to function. Tools are put back in order and vehicles are maintained on schedule. Bodies are trained daily for strength, endurance, and flexibility, but only within purpose and never for vanity. Routines are systems designed to be followed regardless of emotion, with built in consequences. Beautiful men are warriors constantly sharpening skills and weapons as much as they are professionals finishing projects like a focused craftsman.
Look at the NFL. It sells ritualized aggression to a crowd that expects civilized control. So when a player swings, taunts, or melts down, it’s momentarily riveting, but it comes out as ugly because it breaks the covenant. The beautiful moment is excellence with restraint. Think of the Barry Sanders playbook: score, ball to the ref, jog off. No plea for attention. Just a craftsman finishing his latest project.
Sports are easy to pull examples from because they magnify our instincts, which makes them the perfect arena for criticism and laboratory for beauty. Tim Duncan’s stone-quiet bank shot vs. Rodman’s kicking. Federer’s economy of patience and demeanor vs. Mckenroe’s racquet-smashing. Messi’s refusal to submit to injury vs. every other player on the pitch. The moments aren’t the dunks or celebrations, they’re the times when instinct is mastered, not indulged. But most of us will never experience the brightest lights at the top of the sports world. Thus, everyday beauty happens when a co-worker forgives and smiles, day after day. The parent who lowers their voice when anger climbs. It’s the post you could write vs. the silence you choose.
Beauty is virtue, but its practice is restraint. It’s muzzling the tribal animal inside you, then teaching it to heel. Beauty is our second nature, the trained response that is engaged quicker for some; dare I say the more beautiful?
Bottom line: civilization requires men to restrain their first nature. Beauty in men has never been about what’s on the surface. It’s about function made graceful through discipline. A man is beautiful not when he does what instinct demands, but when he does what duty requires.
If you want to practice this kind of beauty, join us Sunday. We’ll do it together.
