Monday, May 28, 2012

How do I know if I am ugly to most people?

How do I know if I am ugly to most people? One of the most important question i have made in Qoura  ;))
There are some near-definitive indicators:

  • Babies burst into tears on sight of you.
  • Older children run to hide behind their parents.
  • Adults avert their eyes from your countenance.
  • Dogs bark at you in the street and less assertive animals flee.
  • You can answer yes to the question "Has a torch-bearing mob ever tried to drive you out of the village?".
  • You find that Greek men will only look at you indirectly, for example using a mirror.

Outside of these flags - you won't of course. People talk about symmetry being the most important contributing quality to "attractiveness" [1] but equally some people or cultural groups prize lack of symmetry [2].

As a purely personal aside, I have nothing against classical,symmetrical beauty but I'm a sucker for a lopsided smile, mismatched eye colours or a streak of premature white in an otherwise normally coloured head of hair. Such 'quirks' make a person's appearance unique and 'unique' is for me, attractive or beautiful or whatever you want to call the opposite of ugly.

Also: to use an analogy, you can admire a stained glass window, even an 'ugly' one,  but it is only when you see sunlight streaming through it that its beauty is revealed. By which I mean it is how the inner qualities of ourselves illuminate and animate our visages that is by far the most important quality in determining whether someone is 'ugly' or not. I have met very 'pretty' people who were so nasty it was difficult to feel anything but repugnance to them. I have met people with what many (not all -  I know!) would consider 'defects': large port wine stains [3], scars and so on and - after the initial visual registration of course - completely disregarded those features given how nice/kind/funny/sexy/smar

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