On Looks and Love
The other day I was watching a show on television, pumping my legs and arms on the elliptical as I took in some lame episode of One Tree Hill in an attempt to keep me occupied and make my workout go by faster.
It wasn’t working.
I watched absently as one of the female leads on the show waxed on (and on, and on…) at her hometown bar about how she didn’t know what to do with love in her life. Whether she was letting a good one go or whether she was meant to be alone.
Her character is 22 years old. Yeah. Fucking ancient.
As she lamented her current single status and wondered aloud if she would ever find “The One,” the bartender looked her in the eye and said in his reassuring, made for a CW show sort of way. “Of course you’ll meet someone. Look at you.”
Look at you.
I think when I was younger, there was a part of me that equated finding love with the prettiness of my outward appearance. People who were pretty found love, it seemed. I learned that this could happen against all odds for the Disney princesses. Though they all had hearts of gold, they had hardly spoken a word (they might even be asleep!) before some equally stunning prince was falling head over heels in INSANE LOVE with them. This had less to do with how the princesses sang to birds and more to do with the way their hair shined. It had less to do with the kindness they employed with dwarves than their lovely, full lips.
In a remarkable stroke of luck, the Princes all found love with women who possessed inner beauty. Yet they had no way of knowing that. Yup. The princesses all made their initial mark because, let’s be honest. They were hot.
While we all know on some level that love does not only come to the attractive, it often feels like there is some imbalance on the playing field here. I don’t believe that people believe that the better looking deserve love more easily than the less physically attractive. But it is seen as some sort of birthright.
And let’s be honest. How often have you seen a couple that looked disparately matched in terms of physical attractiveness, and not heard someone make a comment about it it? Because it’s shocking, right? That someone could love someone not physically up to par as them. Or so, we have been so conditioned to believe.
Look at you.
And so you see the patterns. Attractive people marry attractive people. Attractive single women are approached for dates more frequently and therefore, may have a better chance of finding love than their less genetically endowed sisters.
I would like to think that in the cases that attractive couples stay together, it is because their love has transcended appearance and the shallowness of perhaps the initial attraction.
Because love is a tricky thing. After a while, real love – not pride, not ego, not distorted social values – but LOVE – well, this depends on so much more than the outward beauty of a person. I know that in some ways that’s a “duh” kind of statement. But in many ways, it’s not. We still live in a society that values physical appearance extremely highly and the messaging we send our children about it is quite frankly, a little fucked up.
- It starts with what we tell them about the Disney princesses. Though we are trying to insert some more sass in their steps these days (Tangled, Frozen), the classics tell a tale that too many of our young girls will recognize and want for their own.
- Barbie and Ken. Oh fuck that. Let’s NOT even go there.
- I would point to Hollywood, but Hollywood is as shallow as I expect it to be. While it confirms what I am saying, it doesn’t really shock anyone, I don’t think.
When our kids start dating, they are rewarded socially, whether they realize it or not, for picking good looking partners. Doors open. Party invites suddenly appear and the social ladders that were capped just weeks ago seem to have lifted much higher. I imagine this must be what it’s like when you date someone in AP Math.
Oh wait, forget it. That’s TOTALLY different.
Look at you.
I am not going to lie. I place an importance in my appearance but it is something I try not to let define me. But I know when I enter a room, my looks will be a component of how someone else chooses to categorize, rate and evaluate me. Because sometimes our world can be THAT shallow.
And so my question to you is this. We can teach our children about inner beauty. We can teach our children about the fleeting nature of all the things that society values as “pretty” today. That is, until they are shelved for the next “prettier” thing. And we can explain that inner beauty is about so much more, but how do we break this perpetual myth that outer beauty yields love? Short of shaking our children (I am not condoning shaking – just gently rocking them from side to side), how do we erase the images and stories that are perpetuated from childhood fairytales, through bad television, romantic comedies and the never ending behavior of celebrities whose agents must each carry stringent checklists on whom their clients can date?
Like, Robert Pattinson would date a girl with a crooked tooth. Yeah. Right. And my name is Barbie.
Look at you.
My daughter dreams of meeting her prince one day. She dreams of lots of other things as well – becoming a singer – learning how to play piano – so I’m ok with the prince thing. But I want her to understand that however fleeting pretty is today, love is something so much greater and more substantive. Love is with you when your partner gains those extra pounds or starts to get those worry lines on his face. Love surpasses the grays and the other fun stuff that happens when outer beauty starts to enter its dawn.
Next time you’re watching a movie and you hear a dumb line like the one I heard on the show I mentioned above, write it down. Write it down, because your child may not have heard THAT line, but he or she will hear something very close to it. And you need to have your ninja like response ready on how to address that kind of stupidity and shallowness.
Yes, the world can be shallow. Let’s not let ourselves and our kids drown in it because we start to believe the hype.
Peace my friends,
Kiran
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