Most of us are, to some extent, ugly. We should accept with Stoic good grace that personal appearance is simply one of the least democratic parts of life. We tend to misunderstand how common ugliness is, in part because the images in the media always highlight the pretty ones. In truth, beauty is as rare as mass murder. The problem is that we tend to think there are far more murders than there are. Thanks to the media, it can feel as if everyone is knifing everyone else. We recognise symptoms of panic when the frequency of a bad thing is exaggerated. We don’t yet recognise a similar hysteria when the frequency of a good thing gets exaggerated. Fortunately, not everyone minds ugliness. The reason is simple. People learn about love from their parents; our elders provide the template for affection that comes into force when children grow up. Fortunately for the ugly, many parents who are kind and loving are also peculiar in looks. Many people, even very attractive ones, therefore grow up predisposed to think generously of not-so-perfect people. They are the physical types with whom they continue to associate comfort, safety and tenderness. Ugliness is fascinatingly impervious to class and status. Given all the iniquities of the social system, it is some form of compensation that there should also be – alongside the near-feudal ranks of money and power – another hierarchy based on looks, in which a different elite is established and where the shop assistant may triumph over the CEO. However random the distribution of appearance is today, time will – eventually – bring justice. No one ends up happy with how they look. For some, disenchantment may start at ten. For others it may require another forty years. It always happens. The trouble with our culture is not so much that we love appearances, but that we allow too narrow a range of features to dominate our understanding of beauty. There is ultimately something attractive in everyone: perhaps an august bearing to the forehead, a melancholy sweetness in the eyes, a candour in the nose. We should broaden our criteria of where we find beauty. And hopefully someone, somewhere, will one day do the same for us.
This Article is from the school of life
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