Serious 'beauty' lie

[Zeostar]

I'm not sure how to word the title, so it's rather poor.

For as long as I can remember, there's been a trend on social media. A person involved in a horrific accident, debilitated by a disease, or beaten until they no longer look like a recognizable human will have a photo posted online. These posts often go viral, and comments will flood by the 10's of thousands reminding the person about how beautiful they are.

On the other side of the coin, there seems to be a growing number who are totally against this. (still far from the majority, but more apparent). Asking "Why would you all lie and call this person beautiful, when it's evident the person isn't"?

I'll write my thoughts. I think it's totally harmless. If a person has been beaten down so much from a situation, there's nothing wrong with attempting to provide some shred of comfort. I also think there's more than 'physical' beauty. Calling someone beautiful does not always mean looks.

There's also the idea that many who write these comments are doing it for self elevation. Like getting a euphoric rush from praising someone in a low situation. But hey, it's way better than doing the opposite and trying to cut the person down.

I guess the takeaway question is, what do you think about these kinds of posts, and the comments related to it?

 

[Nah]

I think it's a whole mess of things really.

Society has always had a narrow view of physical beauty, to the point where if anyone doesn't match it, it's all "you're ugly and therefore worthless", but people have started to push back against that since a person's appearance doesn't make them inherently worthless. But at the same time, some people really are just saying what they say to make themselves look good and such, and not because they genuinely give a fuck. Kind of in the same vein as how during pride month all the corporations break out the rainbow decor and are like "we support LGBTQ rights!!11!1!" but they really don't care, it's just about money to them. And then so some people have a reaction to all the people saying the person is beautiful with the whole "why are you lying" thing.

And then you get to the whole difference between physical beauty and inner/non-physical beauty, which not everyone is aware of being a thing/is able to differentiate. Physical beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but in terms of the other sort of beauty, it really is true that not everyone is beautiful. There are some absolutely horrendous, disgusting people out there that really cannot be consider beautiful in that sense. Which then adds to the whole mess.

 

[Duck]

I disagree that it's totally harmless because it is effectively supporting the idea that beauty is the ultimate value a human being can have. They're not beautiful in the physical sense, and that's fine, because their value as a person doesn't come from their beauty, or lack thereof.

Saying "You're still beautiful" comes across as condescending because it's almost always obviously motivated by pity or selfishness and doesn't match the reality that person will live - a person in that situation is already extremely self aware about their looks, will probably have a whole host of dysmorphia issues in the future and will unfortunately have to deal with rude stares and comments for a long while until / if they get a good plastic surgeon.

While it is usually well meaning, and it is better than being mean, it's still not the greatest thing. I also personally have never heard or seen someone use beautiful in the internal sense, to a person, outside of platitudes or trying to make a put down gentler, but I'm not a native English speaker so maybe the nuance is there and it just isn't part of the way my native language uses the closest equivalent to beauty.

I think ultimately this comes to the way most pieces of information are conveyed in our culture - due to the visual nature of humans, beauty is often used a shorthand for "good" and """ugliness""" (or perhaps more broadly, just the uncommon) is used as shorthand for "evil", which leads to the conflation of these concepts, both in things like this but also as say, memes and TV shows and so on.

The fact that there's often very little other information about the people in these kinds of situations don't help either, since the focal point is always in their appearances - which is also a bad thing, just let these people live without broadcasting their very likely traumatic situation / thing they're likely insecure about to the entire world for fake Internet points - there isn't really a lot to comment about besides their appearances.

 

[Zeostar]

I disagree that it's totally harmless because it is effectively supporting the idea that beauty is the ultimate value a human being can have. They're not beautiful in the physical sense, and that's fine, because their value as a person doesn't come from their beauty, or lack thereof.

Saying "You're still beautiful" comes across as condescending because it's almost always obviously motivated by pity or selfishness and doesn't match the reality that person will live - a person in that situation is already extremely self aware about their looks, will probably have a whole host of dysmorphia issues in the future and will unfortunately have to deal with rude stares and comments for a long while until / if they get a good plastic surgeon.

While it is usually well meaning, and it is better than being mean, it's still not the greatest thing. I also personally have never heard or seen someone use beautiful in the internal sense, to a person, outside of platitudes or trying to make a put down gentler, but I'm not a native English speaker so maybe the nuance is there and it just isn't part of the way my native language uses the closest equivalent to beauty.

I think ultimately this comes to the way most pieces of information are conveyed in our culture - due to the visual nature of humans, beauty is often used a shorthand for "good" and """ugliness""" (or perhaps more broadly, just the uncommon) is used as shorthand for "evil", which leads to the conflation of these concepts, both in things like this but also as say, memes and TV shows and so on.

The fact that there's often very little other information about the people in these kinds of situations don't help either, since the focal point is always in their appearances - which is also a bad thing, just let these people live without broadcasting their very likely traumatic situation / thing they're likely insecure about to the entire world for fake Internet points - there isn't really a lot to comment about besides their appearances.

Oh. I actually made a topic related to that fourth paragraph. It didn't exactly do well. But nonetheless. https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?p=10390925

Unrelated to anything mentioned here, but this an oddly timed topic, as Adalia Rose died this morning too. I'll link a small biography of her.

https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/adalia-rose-29862.php

 

[Fairy]

So, I had a friend who, for lack of a better word, blew up. He poured gasoline on a still smoldering campfire and the flame ignited, traveled up the can, and exploded in his hands. He received 3rd degree burns over 80% of his body and the recovery process took years. We were about 14/15 at the time.

I remember him saying he didn't begrudge anyone who called him handsome or whatnot, but that he knew his physical features would never be the same. His facial scarring wasn't terrible, but it was his struggle to overcome what he looked like now, not anyone else's to comment on. And what really mattered is that he was an awesome dude inside, and nothing could take that away. As an aside, I also remember the doctors used the few still unburned parts of his skin to rebuild his hand. That skin happened to come from his butt, so whenever he would touch someone, he'd say, "I'm touching you with my ass right now."

 

[Corrin]

I do not like the trend of relentlessly calling everyone beautiful, I have a reason which I'll try to explain!

A person shouldn't /have/ to beautiful, in any way, to be treated fairly and decently. You should show everyone a basic amount of respect as a human being, you should be kind to people anyway, by default, unless they've done something to deserve otherwise.

Beauty should not be valued, virtues should be. Ones appearance should have no bearing whatsoever on our lives because unless we get plastic surgery, we didn't ask to look this way.
I say this as someone who has been subject to lesser treatment for not being pretty/handsome.