Why are some people good-looking? It’s a question that hurls me deep into contemplation and perplexes me every time it occurs to me. It occurs to me because I never once in my life thought I looked good. Maybe when I was a toddler I used to, but I nonetheless grew into an abominable organism post-puberty and this question haunts me in a scientific manner whenever I see other people who look absolutely amazing.
Well, the simple more obvious answer since Gregor Johann Mendel, is genetics. But that still doesn’t explain why my parents look okayish but I look like a failed experiment. My sister does not count though, because she looks equally bad, but somehow still manages to at least appear cute. Now in this age of entitlement and rationalization of helicoptering-parents and their narcissistic progeny, looking good is the most important thing because so is self-centeredness. Another reason why it is important must be because the concept of sexual attraction implies that you have to look appealing to your sexual mate or potential sexual partner. This, however, does not explain why people look good in weddings. Is it just to prevent some middle-aged aunties from judging you? Why would anyone otherwise be sexually attracted to faceless gossiping aunties in wedding parties? No matter the swollen ego humans develop as they grow into pesky young adults, they are after all just great apes who like to have intercourse and procreate! This may be hard to digest, but it is what it is. Think about it: the greatest of us are apes. Einstein – an ape. Picasso – an ape. Martha Stewart – an ape! Jennifer Lopez – an aged-yet-attractive ape! No matter what you think of yourself – Christian or Muslim or Hindu or Flat Earther – you’re still apes. Amazing to think about it, isn’t it? Most of us use the word “ape” as an insult, but the joke’s on the roaster, because they can’t escape their apish reality themselves even if they tried to. They can’t just identify as a different species – it’s not like gender is it?
I read in the news a few years ago that there was this guy in Saudi Arabia who was so strikingly beautiful, that it made their women throw off their burqas and actually drive cars to see this guy. It caused so much of ruckus in the strange nation, that the guy was eventually kicked out of the country. All because he attracted women to such an extent that they forgot about execution by stoning for a moment. To people like me, this is straight out of a fairy tale. And that’s where multimedia-based social networks like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok come in: They form a billion-dollar industry which lets ugly people like me add filters and appear beautiful and for a fraction of a minute forget that we’re mortal apes who came out of another ape’s vagina and are going to wither like raisins and eventually perish. Most of us also don’t realize that there’s no after-life – it’s just void after the raisin completely dries up. But we will have our momentary fairy tales, won’t we?
Now that was me trying to be unsuccessfully funny, because it’s not a crime to look good. If you want to influence other people, you’ll have to look attractive. To top it off, if you’re smart enough and not just gifted with symmetrical and healthy proportions, you’ll also have to master charisma and rhetoric or a certain creative skill. If you have all of these qualities, you’ll end up starting a cult. The size and power of the cult varies though: it may range from a cult full of horny men who post profound yet pathetic comments on an Instagram butt model’s post, to people who voted for Narendra Modi and think Yoga will cure cancer.
They say beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, but I think this notion is a lie propagated by influential ugly people to feel good about themselves. I believe beauty is objective – but we only have certain objective compartments in our organic brains where if things fall in, we will consider them to be beautiful. If things fall outside of this compartment, they’re not beautiful, or to use stronger words – ugly. Now human beings are very unique in the ape world that they procreate even with the ugliest of their species because physical beauty and symmetry are not the only basis of sexual or emotional attraction in our variable mate-books. Human beings, though majorly stupid in many ways, do form complex relationships that defy the core Darwinian natural selection model – because of the nuances associated within the more updated natural selection models backed up by revised data and extensive scientific research. This to me still doesn’t say beauty is subjective, it’s just that we choose to prioritize other important qualities like senses of humor, or creativity, or athleticism when we consider mates or even just for simple rapport.
Having said all of this, let’s come to the interesting topic of “body positivity movement” which is such a hot topic these days. Literally anything is a “movement” in the 21st century if you don’t have a science degree and have no idea how reality, foundational reasoning, or human behavior and society function. I’ll start from the positive. The only positive thing about the body positivity movement is that it helps some people to accept their body, whatever the shape or size, and be confident in their present state whatsoever. No matter how you look, being confident is what matters in the sapio-sphere because that’s how you establish relationships with people and move ahead in society. It’s like what Tyrion Lannister said to Jon Snow in Game of Thrones, before the directors of the show had severe brain hemorrhages – “Let me give you some advice, bastard. Never forget what you are, the rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor and it can never be used to hurt you.” Accepting who we are and how we look, and not focusing on banalities is the greatest strength one can muster. It is nothing surprising because people have been saying this since antiquity or even before.
Now this body positivity movement, has a darker side as well: victim mentality. Just because you don’t look good, does not mean you’re oppressed. It means you’re still ugly, but now you have to be stronger than the better looking people because it takes courage to accept your flaws and be okay with it. I understand that this is not an easy thing to do, and mental health is not a constant factor for everyone, but unfortunately there is no other way. We cannot expect people who are depressed to be protected by fending them from insults or judgement all the time, sooner or later, whether we like it or not – we will have to face the reality. This is also the crude basis of a highly effective psychotherapy called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) – it helps us recognize our negative emotions, desensitizes us to strong emotional stimuli, strengthens our coping mechanisms and helps us gradually overcome our anxieties and depression by helping us to identify our negative thought patterns and correct them. Likewise, victim mentality disguised in the form of body positivity is a form of negative thought pattern, which demands other people to change their views by force or threats of persecution just because we feel insecure about who we are and how we look. It isn’t healthy, and euphemisms will not protect your mental health – trained mental strength and coping abilities will perhaps.
Long story short: it’s okay to be ugly and be cognizant of it. The important thing is to be comfortable. We don’t need euphemisms to mask the reality of what we are – ugly people indeed. When we are given the choice between obliterating all possible judgment towards us versus training ourselves to gain better coping and tolerating mechanisms, of course the latter will always be the right choice because the former exists only in fairy tales if not malignant socially-engineered dystopias as the one portrayed in Louis Lowry’s “The Giver”. The simple and realistic fact that we cannot prevent people from ‘not having an opinion’ makes the whole euphemism project of the body positivity movement that are disguised as feel-good terms such as “plus sized models” or “differently abled” utterly futile and petty. It will not work even if you lynch people for not complying with this new world order. People will always be mean to you, people will always judge because they’re people – apes. Apes are animals – not perfect beings. We are just survival machines trying to find significance because we accidentally evolved to have frontal lobes in our brains which enabled us to plan ahead into the future, come up with abstract as well as logical thoughts, and to develop subjective sense of morality which collectively evolved into formal ethics.
So will any “feel good” movement do anything to help people and their mental conditions? Probably not. Facing the reality probably will – but even this is not an absolute.
I am okay with being ugly because:
1) I do not have a choice not to be ugly,
2) With great looks comes great responsibilities and I do not want unnecessary burden in life, and finally,
3) As Drax the Destroyer says in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2: “When you’re ugly, and someone loves you, they love you for who you are. Beautiful people never know who to trust.” *
* Number 3 is a grossly generalized statement, I agree, but it’s funny.
My Confused Cortex 