Life in Gestalt

Pride and prejudice

LUCIEN LETTERS

Dear Lucien,

We all like to think we're very good judge of characters. Other backpackers I met claim that they can tell at a glance if a local was of the warm-and-friendly or warm-and-friendly-because-i'm-after-your-wallet variety. While the oft-quoted beauty pageant theme is "beauty is on the inside", who are we really kidding? Of course, we'd like to think we're mature enough to see beyond the surface of anything, but how many of us REALLY practice what we preach?

A friend of mine said today, "in this world, looks are everything." Maybe she's right. We're brought up on fairy tales extolling the beautiful princess, the handsome prince, the gallant knight, the ugly duckling who turned into a beautiful swan. How sad it must be that even in our formative years, we're taught to attach values to things which are GIVENS in life. We none of us can help the way we look. And even with all the cosmetic surgery in the world, I don't think we can ever transform ourselves completely into something else. Hey, even MJ still looks remotely like himself. hahaha.

I guess what I'm not comfortable with is the fact that I was brought up on the same subliminal theme. Beauty equals good. Beauty equals good equals happy life. Of course, my further education has taught me the sheer inanity of that line of thinking, but what about those who don't have the same opportunities to be educated? This tendency to attach positive and negative values to life GIVENS, I believe, is what causes prejudice to take root. And in its most extreme form, even racism and discrimination.

Reminds me of one of my sister's favorite movies, "Ever After", when Drew Barrymore admonishes the prince, "A gypsy is rarely seen as who they are. They are defined by their station as much as your title defines you. Yet it is not who they are."

I've probably been guilty, to some degree, of being judgmental of others by virtue of appearance. And the awful thing is I used to assuage my guilt feelings about it by saying it was just a first impression. But how many of us get to follow up on getting to know someone enough to edit those first impressions? We don't often get to do that. In the normal course of things, we have to admit, we would pursue getting to know someone on the basis of those first impressions.

How different the world would be if everyone recognized that 'difference' is a neutral concept. We wouldn't have to invent terms to be 'politically correct', and just call a spade a spade without having to think that it has a derogatory connotation, simply because it's NOT derogatory to be 'fat', 'black', 'short', 'stupid' etc. The way things are with this world, unfortunately, is that most of us make it possible to live amicably with ourselves with a little hypocrisy here and there. In our desire to live up to what we aspire to (i.e. the Kate Mosses for the weight-obsessed, the John Nashes for the frustrated genii, etc.), we demean and devalue what we are and what we were already given.

I'm not one to deny the significance of physical appearance. It's an important aspect of humanity. I admit, I was just as susceptible to your admiration as with those from other men. But that's all it is. There are other aspects to our humanity we end up leaving undiscovered by others or even ourselves simply because we 'filtered' everyone through first impressions. You and I were just fortunate, I suppose, in that my first impression of you and your first impression of me were both validated. But if we suspended our reliance on first impressions we probably wouldn't have had to give ourselves too much trouble thinking about appropriate 'preliminaries' in a conversational setting than we did then.

Aristotle really WAS right when he said "all things in moderation". When we attach values too much to physical appearance, we deny ourselves the value of complete humanity.

Of course, this isn't to say that I'm going to stop catching my breath every time I see Dougray Scott or Ewan McGregor. *smiling* I don't think any of us are required to be ascetics and deny the pleasures of the senses. But the most that I can propose, dear Lucien, is that I WILL try not to add to the world's growing list of spoken and unspoken prejudices, and take pride in the fact that our value IS greater because of our difference.

Someday Lucien, I'm going to write a fairytale, where the ugly duckling didn't have to be a beautiful swan; princesses could be both thin and fat, beautiful and plain; princes were tall dark and handsome and short, fair, and plain...but they'd all know how to really live happily ever after.

Fide.

Angel Fidelis

Posted by Angel Fidelis at October 14, 2002 10:17 AM