On Being Ugly

It's a central fact of existence for many, but you don't see much writing on the subject of being ugly. This is understandable. Those who are dishonest about their motivations will sublimate their anger into ideologies of extreme misandry (Andrea Dworkin) or misogyny (Otto Weininger). I understand the reasons for this, but all these halfway forms of misanthropy never make sense on closer analysis: every fault in one sex is certainly mirrored in the other. Ugly men and women angry about rejection are too angry to question the reasons they preemptively reject each other. Those who have come to terms with how they look, on the other hand, likely see it beneath comment. As gnostics and Buddhists would have it, the physical world is a delusion, and by obsessing over delusions we perpetuate them. But I am neither a gnostic nor a Buddhist, though I appreciate their ideas. Ugliness is a hard subject to approach without some degree of bitterness, but I am going to try in the spirit of unflinching honesty.

Complaining about being ugly is like complaining about the inevitability of death: natural but useless. So I will try to provide some background information on my own situation without, hopefully, sounding like a bitter reject. I was good-looking for a while, which I know because a few girls in high school actually came on to me, though I was too shy to do anything about it. Sadly, by the time I lost my shyness I also lost my handsomeness. I am subject to the curse of the Ashkenazi: not ethnic-looking enough to be exotic, but just ethnic-looking enough to be ugly. Naturally I should warn that there are exceptions to this rule, "standards of Western beauty" are not universal, etc. But really, as valid as these points might be, they are excuses: and I aim to live without excuses. I have no right to complain because: there are lot of uglier people in the world, and I was born with many other positive, possibly even superior attributes.

One of those attributes, though I'm not sure how positive it really is, is an appetite for analysis. So, on with it. There are many virtues associated with ugliness. One, entirely untested theory I have, is that it encourages literacy. This is because television and movies tend to portray an idealized picture of easy acceptance ugly people can't relate to. Books focus more on internal development and the psyche, rejecting the world of surface appearances that ugly people have already been preemptively rejected from. And because of this preemptive rejection, the cultivation of a vibrant internal life becomes a necessity, at the very least as a form of compensation for a less fulfilling external life. What may start as a forced decision, however, becomes one of choice, as the internal comes to be seen as a place of greater rewards and possibilities even if beauty was available as an alternative.

Of course circumstances are never so clear-cut. It's quite possible to be beautiful and internally cultivated, just as it is possible to be ugly and empty on the inside. Albert Camus for instance, was brilliant as well as a handsome ladies' man. But Jesus's point about the rich man having a difficult time entering heaven may come into play here. I'd be interested in a survey examining how physically attractive intellectual figures of the past have been. One particular quotation by Arthur Schopenhauer on the subject of women stands out for me: "I was very fond of them, if only they would have had me." Self-fulfilling prophecy is certainly a factor in this kind of internal development. Attractive people get more attention, and people who automatically get attention by their very presence have no need to develop alternate means of getting it. How many beautiful, laugh-out-loud funny women are there? Maybe a lot, but I've never met any. Of course self-confidence is another self-fulfilling prophecy, and no doubt many ugly men with delusions of magnetism are magnetic precisely because of the power of their delusions. I suffer no such delusions, however, which is one of the many downsides of aiming to live without excuses.

Relevant links on the topic:
Art & Sexual Selection by Denis Dutton
Gene Fool by Scott Adams
God Loves Ugly by Atmosphere
Italy's Ugly Club Defies Convention from BBC News
Physical Attractiveness from Wikipedia
Why Doesn't Evolution Get Rid of Ugly People? from Newsweek
Women's Choice of Men is Cyclical from BBC News