Children of the Wasteland

And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, “Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music.”
-Leonard Cohen, “Chelsea Hotel”

Disclaimer: The following opinion has been shaped by the author’s subjectivity, body issues, experience with beauty, and distaste for the obsession with perfection. Please disregard what you do not assimilate.
-The Mgmt.

Let’s face it: we’re all programmed to respond to symmetry, aesthetics, order, and, well, beauty. As domesticated primates, our eyes have been our most important asset for millions of years, and the ability to identify whether or not a tree limb is going to break if we jump on it, or whether that alpha wants to mate (they usually do) based on the expression in his grin has been highly adaptive . Much of our judgment is centered around the beautiful and the orderly; it’s what makes us buy things, because if we see beauty, we see value and worth. Or so we think.

Patriarchal and fucked up as that is, it makes sense and we’re all given to it. Hell, most of the people I’ve dated have been very attractive. Shallow, maybe; we’re all given to our proclivities based on conditioning and preference. So who am I to judge if you want to get plastic surgery and write a children’s book called My Beautiful Mommy about what happens when Mommy gets a nose job and a tummy tuck. (Notice that she didn’t get breast implants. That would perhaps be too blatantly sexual a subject, and we don’t want our children thinking that Mommy or Daddy have a sexual interest in making themselves more beautiful by unrealistic standards). The book really is no surprise at all, and I dare say it fills a market.

But everyone I know who’s got any balls or who has done anything with their lives have done so because, at some point, they were rejected physically. Growing up awkward and shy, oddly shaped, and uncoordinated colors your perception just as much as it would if you were born Catholic, or Jewish, or black, or white, or from England or Thailand. Not to say that naturally beautiful people don’t do good things, just that there is a sense of satisfaction that comes from relying solely on the merit of your mind rather than your breast-waist-hip ratio. For those of us who are oppressed by the figures of beauty, we take solace in the inner realm, the wildness of the psyche that can’t be seen if it’s plasticized, Botox-ed, and micro-dermabrasioned out. Our lines may be deep, our breasts may be given to gravity, our muscles may not be statuesque; but we’ve got the music.

And with that, I leave you with Century of the Self. Watch it. It’s the key to happiness, success, eternal life, beauty, truth, and endless hours of tantric sex. Or at least a smug self-satisfaction that while the beautiful people are out there reading cute books about their new plastic bodies to their beautiful children who will forever be marred by an insatiable quest for perfection, you’re well on your way to waking up from the Ambien-and-vodka stupor of the American Dream.
-skyscraped