That Ugly Truth

That Ugly Truth

I answered a question on Quora yesterday – in the plastic surgery section-about the importance of beauty in our society and our double standards we show in our daily life. The question asked, although I am paraphrasing it here as short as possible, pretty bluntly “why do ugly people live? why don’t they kill themselves off? Or at least get plastic surgery to make themselves look normal?” I will come to my answer on quora later in this post. Right now I wish to discuss a bit more about this question here.

The first thing I checked when I read the question was the person who asked it and I was not surprised to see that the doubt had come to a girl, all of 19 years and living in India’s most cosmopolitan city Bangalore. Why I wasn’t surprised is because I know men, ugly to them is just another categorization- men will check out, wolf whistle, oogle at any girl regardless of her beauty or lack of it- she just has to be a girl, any size, colour, frame will do.  Men mostly are fair in giving every women a chance with zero discrimination and still getting panned for low standards and lack of taste.  Women on the other hand. Have you ever heard any man rejecting a girl who proposed to him by giving the reason that she was too ugly and he couldn’t show her off to his friends? Its women who can be so forthright and downright cruel when they shrug advances off ugly men by telling them so pointblank.

Of all my years practicing the fine art of esthetic surgery I have never had ( I am just sharing my own experiences here) any man bring in his wife and requested me to do plastic surgery on her because he is not satisfied with her, the way she is. But I have had lots and lots of women who bring in their (looking like lambs to the slaughter) husbands and ask if I could do “anything” for them to make them look more presentable, as if they were stuck with defective products which they were now giving for servicing. If there is something that my profession has shown me in all these years it is just that when it comes to relationships people give lip service to things like compatibility, kindness and all that gooey stuff people share as internet memes. The real wants of women when it comes to prospective partners are  - being good looking and handsome in early twenties, being at least ok looking in end twenties and ok eyes closed someone to marry in their early thirties to I just want a baby the man doesn’t matter in their late thirties. With men their wants are simplicity itself - it’s just a girl in girls clothing- be it early twenties or late fifties- that will do for all men. 

And as for my quora answer I told the girl to basically “go f**k herself off” in as polite a way as I could before she demands that 90% of the worlds population die off just to satisfy her esthetic senses.  There are not enough plastic surgeons in the world (or for that matter surgeons) if everyone who is dissatisfied with the way they look wanted to be better looking than nature made them. Do you for instance think that I would look the way I do given what I do if there was indeed a practical way of doing it? I know for a fact that I don’t intend to spend the next fifteen to twenty years and spend all of my fortune (and my ancestral fortune thrown in) just so some random person on the street will judge me as good looking. That will be madness. Compared to that looking ugly is a better option. At least I get to call out everyone who worships beauty as the only thing in life as shallow, mean minded persons, don’t I?

It’s the ugly truth, but there, it is the truth.