We live in a world where beauty is treasured and success assured for the beautiful. This is a world where glossy magazines are adorned with gorgeous people, selling everything from clothes to television sets. The same televisions conjure an imaginary world where all the people within it are unrealistically beautiful. Make-up is a huge industry that makes billions of dollars by hiding imperfections and exaggerating perfections. Cosmetic surgery is on the rise and people all over the world are spending grand sums of money having all sorts of enhancements. Pharmaceutical companies are spending as much time and money working on a cure for baldness as a cure for cancer. Nearly everyone is guilty of spending far too much time looking at themselves in the mirror, attempting to adjust their hair or their clothes to look the best they can. George Clooney and Brad Pitt are two of the biggest movie stars around. Is it a coincidence that they are also two of the most handsome? Is it a coincidence that Hollywood’s most sort-after couple is always its most beautiful? We want to be beautiful, we want to watch the beautiful, and we want hear all about them.
The advantages in life enjoyed by the attractive do not stop there. I have seen it first hand in the job market. If you pleasing to the eye it seems you’re pleasing to many employers – at times even at the expense of experience or qualifications. As Jerry Seinfeld once mused “You don’t see any handsome homeless” – sure being homeless doesn’t usually help in keeping-up ones appearance, but there is a message here – beautiful people do find life easier – they have more luck with jobs, making friends and attracting the opposite sex. Conversely, life for the ugly is hard, and filled with the constant battle to prove that ones looks are unrelated to ones personality or skills.
The question that now must be asked is: Why are we, as a society, biased towards the beautiful? There must be a reason why it has become so ingrained in our collective conscience that we are not even aware of the prejudice based on beauty that abounds.
The obvious answer is natural selection – based on a theory of genetic evolution or Darwinism. In other words, for the millions of years we roamed the caves, the advantages of beauty must have lead in some way to survival of the species. It is easy to accept this explanation with qualities such as intelligence or strength, which clearly have helped Man survive, but beauty seems to provide no benefit to our survival at all.
With genetic evolution discounted I decided to forget about things for a while. I picked up the Harry Potter book that lay nearby and settled in for a read. Shortly thereafter I came across a sentence where the author described the unpleasant character of Pansy Parkinson as “Pug-faced”. And I thought about the other characters in the book and for the most part – the bad, hurtful, nasty characters were physically ugly, whilst the good ones were not… and it suddenly dawned on me – beauty has been ingrained in our psyche since we were born. We have grown up listening to stories and fairy tales where the maiden is always beautiful and most often saved by her hero – a handsome prince. The evil forces that attempt to destroy this beauty or prevent the hero from succeeding, are always described as ugly, and thus we are subconsciously taught that beautiful is attached to good, whilst ugly is associated with evil.
Cinderella was beautiful and her ugly sisters speak for themselves. In the end Cinderella marries a handsome prince, and her ugly sisters remain nasty and mean, and yes ugly. Is it because they are ugly that they are mean? Sure their ugliness may have turned them this way abut we as the reader are never informed. All we know is that ugly is mean.
My personal favourite is The Ugly Duckling – The Ugly Duckling is ostracised by its flock because of its unfortunate appearance. One day it turns into a beautiful swan and then everyone wants to be its friend and success in life seems assured for this late bloomer. The moral for children is that if you’re ugly, you’re different, but if you turn beautiful then everything will be alright – what a horrible lesson. It would be a much better allegory if the duckling remained ugly yet became successful through the use of its brain or wit!
As I read on with Harry Potter, I’m left wondering is ugly to often used as a metaphor for bad or unpleasant? And if so what message is this implying? No wonder our society is so superficial; no wonder our lives are bombarded with the benefits of beauty – when we have spent our whole lives learning that the beautiful are good whilst the ugly are bad.
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