The confusing pursuit of beauty When a woman asks a man how she looks, it is very difficult for him to 1___ the right answer. Men do not think of their looks in the same way as women do. They 2___ an opinion and like to think of themselves as average-looking. They don’t 3___ to their looks. However, women tend to think their appearance is “not good enough”. They would 4 ___ the smallest imperfections in their bodies. The differences between how men and women view their own looks are caused by complex 5_____ and societal factors. First, men and women have different childhood experiences with toys. Girls’ dolls have slim figures whose physical measurements are 6___ for living human beings to achieve while boys’ toys are weird-looking. Second, beauty industry exerts different influences on them. Women are 7___ that they must buy the newest beauty products and 8___ them carefully, whereas men are not influenced; they don’t face the societal 9___ purely on physical beauty. Men and women also have differences in care for details in women’s appearance. Men 10____ the details, but women spend great efforts on details of appearance only to 11____ themselves to criticisms by other women. Anyway, to get back to my 12____ point: There is no easy way for a man to answer a woman’s question of how she looks.