Do attractive people have it easier? I would believe so. But I've never been ugly so what do I know. Ha. No, really. I can't help but smirk every time a beautiful person complains about anything because more often than not, their issues are relatively inane. Beautiful people don't have real problems. They just need to wake up and the world is handed to them.
Case in point: a friend of mine who.. umm.. okay it just occurred to me that this story would be awfully specific and my friend would be easily identifiable. I will hence tweak this story to get the point across, while staying vague enough to protect my friend's identity (and myself from a probable lawsuit for defamation/libel/slander or whatever Najib is accusing Rafizi of).
So a friend of mine is beautiful. Yes yes beauty is in the eye of the beholder and some even claim it's subjective but that's what you'd say when you're average looking or downright ugly. Real beauty is very objective, like it or not. So my friend is a person who would register as beautiful in most people's books. Judging from the tone of his posts on Facebook, he's been through hard times.. I suppose. Well, again, his hard times are starkly different from ours. His hard times consist of having to live in a picturesque, quaint European town by the lake earning an average European salary. Yes, hard times.
Anyway, after years of being relatively quiet, suddenly in the past year he's been reviving his contact list, hollering old friends and chatting people up. He's a pleasant person and we always had good discussions about stuff, so it was good hearing from him again. Apparently he was on a job hunt. The European economy being in a slump and him having only a basic degree, the axe was coming down fast. He needed an exit plan. Like any good friend who isn't in a position of power to hire people, I could only give him generic motivational advice that may or may not have been stolen from cheap posters hanging on the walls of my high school student counsellor's office. "Just send out as many CVs as possible. Be brave. Step out of your comfort zone. It's going to be okay. We've all been there. I remember when I (insert a totally petty and unrelated experience about spilling coffee and try to work it into an inspiring story about courage and patience) and that made me look at life differently, and a better person. You'll get through this. Hang in there."
I don't know what happened to him for a couple of months after that because aside from the sporadical "hey sup? good, you? k dude tc", we didn't talk much.
Fast forward to early this month. He came back to Malaysia. I whatsapped him "Welcome back". Maybe the 'hard times' had caught up to him, and he had no other options but to come back and only return when the European economy picks up. Whenever that is. In the meantime, I had no idea what he was up to in Malaysia and I didn't want to ask. It's something I've learned over the years. When you know a person has been actively jobseeking, you don't keep asking questions about their hunting process unless you have a job offer or you know how to help. Otherwise they might see it as prying or worse, rejoicing in their misery. And I don't do that.... anymore.
A couple of days after he landed, I saw pictures of him leisuring at the beach, on an island, with celebrities. I didn't know they were friends. I took a closer look. Oh. Based on the hashtags, it was for a local movie. He was one of the male eye candies/love interests of the main female character. I know he used to model before, so it didn't surprise me seeing him fall back to his post-SPM career as a model.
It got me thinking: most people, in the face of hardship, would scrape the bottom of the barrel to make ends meet. But most people are not beautiful. This dude, on the other hand, has always known that if all else fails, he'd always have that face to sell. I bet that face has saved him many a sleepless night. If a burn victim's face is saved by his ass, my friend's ass is saved by his face.
Is that unfair? I wondered. It shouldn't be, because everybody is blessed with something and you work with what you have. I have other God-given talents that I was born with, and no one is calling it unfair. Somehow when it comes to good looks, people are quick to ask you to look past it as if it shouldn't count. A lot of attractive people are successful, as reflected by the fact that I very rarely see an attractive hobo. It is no coincidence that the most 'talented' Hollywood actors are also the most attractive. I could get a thousand other women to play Satine in Moulin Rouge, but let's not kid ourselves, Nicole Kidman's face is what won her the Oscar. Is that a problem, though? The face is part of the talent. She worked hard for that body, and her plastic surgeon worked hard on that expressionless face of hers. Her acting chops are an added bonus. She has the whole package. She deserves everything she has.
Okay where was I going with this. I guess I was just trying to dig deeper into our collective disillusion that looks don't and shouldn't count, when they completeley do and should. I've always said Lisa Surihani relies solely on her looks because her acting skills are non existant. But maybe that face is actually skills enough to be an actress, and instead of giving her shit about it, I should realize that skills can be nurtured and polished, so it's accessible to anyone who's willing to work on it. Looks, on the other hand, are completely bestowed upon you. There can only be one beauty like Nicole, or like Lisa. True unadulterated beauty is rare and should be a cause for celebration.
It still irks me though that a dude with barely a degree is having fun with beautiful people on an island, probably earning 3 times what I'm earning, just because he's pretty. Oh well.
Case in point: a friend of mine who.. umm.. okay it just occurred to me that this story would be awfully specific and my friend would be easily identifiable. I will hence tweak this story to get the point across, while staying vague enough to protect my friend's identity (and myself from a probable lawsuit for defamation/libel/slander or whatever Najib is accusing Rafizi of).
So a friend of mine is beautiful. Yes yes beauty is in the eye of the beholder and some even claim it's subjective but that's what you'd say when you're average looking or downright ugly. Real beauty is very objective, like it or not. So my friend is a person who would register as beautiful in most people's books. Judging from the tone of his posts on Facebook, he's been through hard times.. I suppose. Well, again, his hard times are starkly different from ours. His hard times consist of having to live in a picturesque, quaint European town by the lake earning an average European salary. Yes, hard times.
Anyway, after years of being relatively quiet, suddenly in the past year he's been reviving his contact list, hollering old friends and chatting people up. He's a pleasant person and we always had good discussions about stuff, so it was good hearing from him again. Apparently he was on a job hunt. The European economy being in a slump and him having only a basic degree, the axe was coming down fast. He needed an exit plan. Like any good friend who isn't in a position of power to hire people, I could only give him generic motivational advice that may or may not have been stolen from cheap posters hanging on the walls of my high school student counsellor's office. "Just send out as many CVs as possible. Be brave. Step out of your comfort zone. It's going to be okay. We've all been there. I remember when I (insert a totally petty and unrelated experience about spilling coffee and try to work it into an inspiring story about courage and patience) and that made me look at life differently, and a better person. You'll get through this. Hang in there."
I don't know what happened to him for a couple of months after that because aside from the sporadical "hey sup? good, you? k dude tc", we didn't talk much.
Fast forward to early this month. He came back to Malaysia. I whatsapped him "Welcome back". Maybe the 'hard times' had caught up to him, and he had no other options but to come back and only return when the European economy picks up. Whenever that is. In the meantime, I had no idea what he was up to in Malaysia and I didn't want to ask. It's something I've learned over the years. When you know a person has been actively jobseeking, you don't keep asking questions about their hunting process unless you have a job offer or you know how to help. Otherwise they might see it as prying or worse, rejoicing in their misery. And I don't do that.... anymore.
A couple of days after he landed, I saw pictures of him leisuring at the beach, on an island, with celebrities. I didn't know they were friends. I took a closer look. Oh. Based on the hashtags, it was for a local movie. He was one of the male eye candies/love interests of the main female character. I know he used to model before, so it didn't surprise me seeing him fall back to his post-SPM career as a model.
It got me thinking: most people, in the face of hardship, would scrape the bottom of the barrel to make ends meet. But most people are not beautiful. This dude, on the other hand, has always known that if all else fails, he'd always have that face to sell. I bet that face has saved him many a sleepless night. If a burn victim's face is saved by his ass, my friend's ass is saved by his face.
Is that unfair? I wondered. It shouldn't be, because everybody is blessed with something and you work with what you have. I have other God-given talents that I was born with, and no one is calling it unfair. Somehow when it comes to good looks, people are quick to ask you to look past it as if it shouldn't count. A lot of attractive people are successful, as reflected by the fact that I very rarely see an attractive hobo. It is no coincidence that the most 'talented' Hollywood actors are also the most attractive. I could get a thousand other women to play Satine in Moulin Rouge, but let's not kid ourselves, Nicole Kidman's face is what won her the Oscar. Is that a problem, though? The face is part of the talent. She worked hard for that body, and her plastic surgeon worked hard on that expressionless face of hers. Her acting chops are an added bonus. She has the whole package. She deserves everything she has.
Okay where was I going with this. I guess I was just trying to dig deeper into our collective disillusion that looks don't and shouldn't count, when they completeley do and should. I've always said Lisa Surihani relies solely on her looks because her acting skills are non existant. But maybe that face is actually skills enough to be an actress, and instead of giving her shit about it, I should realize that skills can be nurtured and polished, so it's accessible to anyone who's willing to work on it. Looks, on the other hand, are completely bestowed upon you. There can only be one beauty like Nicole, or like Lisa. True unadulterated beauty is rare and should be a cause for celebration.
It still irks me though that a dude with barely a degree is having fun with beautiful people on an island, probably earning 3 times what I'm earning, just because he's pretty. Oh well.
2 comments:
hi. if i may share some thoughts with you...i agree that 'the look doesnt matter' thing isn't always applied in the society today since we can easily see that people with the package of look and etc can easily gained follower and attention but to me there are beautiful people who might not have it as easy as it seem. perhaps he or she is beautiful but he/she is suffering from a disease or disorder. and more importantly easy isn't equal to happiness, right? and it's happiness that matter and happiness can't be justified by looks or wealth.
people are being shallow.
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