A Better World

Do not judge a book by its cover.

Blah blah blah, we’ve all heard this before too many times. It’s cliché by now, but that does not eliminate its legitimacy and significance in this world. And yet, I’m sure most if not all of us still do judge people based on appearance; it’s our inherited instinct to make general assumptions about people simply because of their appearance. People generally associate positive human traits with an attractive face; negative traits are associated with an unattractive one. Researchers believe because back in cave times, men and women had to be able to distinguish who they can trust. Since attractive people were associated with positive qualities, they are treated better. But I don’t even need to really explain any of this, everyone living at the moment or have ever lived would come to know this as true from personal experience.

But why?
This is not a rant on beautiful people, haha. But can anyone really explain why we treat attractive people better? What is it about an attractive face that can alter people’s attitudes towards that person? Surely not everyone commits to beauty bias, many people treat everyone equally. But for the remaining 99% of the world population, we favour beautiful people. Why?

Beauty bias appears to me to be more prominent for males than females. Men instinctively put more emphasis on physical beauty when looking for a potential mate than females because we associate a woman’s beauty with more potency in reproduction. This is instinctive to men, some can fight it; but most will succumb to a pretty face. What does this mean for guys? Don’t worry you don’t have to look like a prince; just focus on building your character! And for the ladies? Sorry, the ugly truth is the pretty girl will probably have an advantage over you in terms of winning over your dream man.

So where is this all going? Since we can’t seem to change our instinctive nature to associate positive qualities with beauty, what would make this world a better place? The proposed solution: have people’s physical attractiveness directly proportional to the beauty of their inner soul. Yeah, it is pretty much impossible. But if such natural biological law existed in this world, then finding the beautiful people – both body and soul – would be almost trivial. Concurrently, it would be just as easy to avoid the, let’s just say “bad people” for a lack of a better term.

Why is there such a need?
Most of us will learn in our lifetimes how to deal with many different kinds of people and will also discover how diverse this world really is. There is a complete gradient of people that exist in the world, ranging from extremely virtuous to extremely vicious. When meeting strangers, it’s very hard to discern their intentions and personality. Sometimes it’s scary when you start realizing people’s façade, especially if you THINK you know that person. What’s worst is that attractive people can get away with it a lot of the time. A beautiful face is essentially just a physical mask, basically the starting gear our parents gave us. You will never know the true contents of their heart and soul until you take enough time to get to know them. But guess what? You will encounter people who can totally defy your perception of them no matter how long you’ve known them for or how well you think you know them. Why is that? Masks are worn by people all the time. The best actors in the world are not those on the stage or in films, but people all around you who can put on a spectacular deceiving performance.

If only people’s physical appearance reflected off what kind of person they are on the inside. This would allow everyone to know publicly if you are a good person or not. As for the unattractive people? That’s because you’re ugly on the inside too! But that’s okay, if you change, you can become attractive too. If only such world existed…

But we all know such world cannot exist. People’s physical attractiveness has ABSOLUTELY NO correlation to their true basic nature. People should understand that a person’s physical exterior and their soul are completely separated with minimal to no relationship between them. So don’t judge a book by its cover!

But as we all know, in the end physically attractive people win. Fuck you beautiful people!