Appearance Kills
Philosophers ponder it and pornographers proffer it. Asked why people desire physical beauty, Aristotle said, “No one that is not blind could ask that question.” Beauty ensnares hearts, captures minds, and stirs up emotional wildfires. From Plato to pinups, images of human beauty have catered a limitless desire to see and imagine an ideal human form. Beauty ushers women to a place where men want them, out of the power structure. Racism and class snobbery are reflected in images of beauty, although beauty itself is indifferent to race and thrives on diversity. As Darwin wrote, “if everyone were cast in the same mold, there would be no such thing as beauty.”
People do extreme things in the name of beauty. They invest so much of their resources in beauty and risk so much for it, one would think that lives depended on it. In USA more money is spent on beauty than on education or social services. Tons of makeup…. 1484 tubes of lipstick and 2055 jars of skin care products are sold every minute. In fact, Kalahari Bushmen in Africa still uses animal fats to moisturize their skin and in 1715 riots broke out in France when the use of flour on the hair of aristocrats led to a food shortage.
Deep inside we all know something; no one can withstand appearances. We can create a big bonfire with every issue of vogue, GQ, and Details, every image of Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, and Cindy Crawford, and still, images of youthful perfect bodies would take shape in our heads and create a desire to have them. On one is immune. When Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was asked whether she had any regrets in life, she said that she wished she’d been prettier. A poignant statement, especially coming from one of the most accomplished, respected and admired women in history. Sad but true: people are obsessed with beauty.
If you’ve ever heard a story about a pretty woman charming her way out of a speeding ticket, then you’re familiar with some of the ways beauty can influence society. Even research shows that the beautiful are seen as inherently good. For example, Karen Dion, one of the pioneers of attractiveness research, found that adults treat good-looking children much better than they treat unattractive ones. In 1977, scientists conducted a social experiment. They left a dime in a phone booth, and on separate occasions they had a beautiful woman and an unattractive woman go to the phone booth and ask the person inside, “Did I leave my dime there?” Results showed that 87 percent of the people returned the dime to the beautiful woman, and only 64 percent returned it to the unattractive one. This biased treatment reinforces a certain cycle of behavior: beautiful people end up getting used to this special treatment, and, as a result, they develop a sense of entitlement. In another study, participants were placed in an interview with a psychologist. During the session, the psychologist was interrupted so as to keep the participant waiting. The attractive people would wait for an average of 3.3 minutes before demanding attention; less attractive people patiently waited around for an average of 9 minutes.
The above mentioned paragraphs were extracted from the Nancy Etcoff’s Book, “Survival of the prettiest”, which explores what it is in our nature that makes us susceptible to beauty, what qualities in people evoke this response, and why sensitivity to beauty crosses all cultures. She proposes that valuing beauty is an essential and ineradicable part of human nature and that it is revered and ferociously pursued at enormous cost in nearly every civilization.
