If you’ve ever seen someone and thought “Wow, they are so attractive!” while also not wanting to touch, date, or have sex with them, then you have likely experienced aesthetic attraction. In addition to the obvious—liking someone’s body or face—being aesthetically attracted to someone’s appearance can include an attraction to their fashion style, tattoos, piercings, hairstyle, and overall demeanor, says licensed therapist Neathery Falchuk, LCSW-S, CGP. “There is a misconception that you have to experience aesthetic attraction in order to feel sexual attraction. There are many people who develop sexual attraction after an emotional connection and may not be at all aesthetically attracted to the person,” clarifies Falchuk. Some asexual people further clarify their identities by using terms such as panaesthetic and biaesthetic to help describe how they experience aesthetic attraction (i.e., a biaesthetic person is aesthetically attracted to people of more than one gender, as a bisexual person is sexually attracted to people of more than one gender).
