Humanity is widely diverse: some people are stout, some lean, some wall-eyed, some with crooked teeth and double chins, some lame, some misshapen. You know, the usual, the beautiful, the not-so-beautiful, and the only-a-mother-could-love. Differences make us all special. Add physical deficits coming after birth—scars, skin conditions, disfiguring injuries, years of wear and abuse—and it may be claimed, at best, everyone is beautiful in his or her own way. But in viewing the all-pervasive media, we primarily see attractive people, symmetrical faces and fit figures—pretty people, handsome people, not ordinary or unsightly people. If we were to judge the exteriors of presenters on news shows, sports presentations, and reality television, we would find eye-catching women (mostly young, smiling, and at the height of their reproductive potential), handsome men (well-groomed, firm jaws, sculpted bodies, and camera aware) demonstrating the most appealing surface features of humanity, symmetrical and proportional physiognomies. If an aspiring newscaster has a face for radio, he or she will not get television work. “Sorry, Agatha, you are just not what we are looking for.” In this case, emphasis on “looking.” Accordingly, if a viewer has a negative opinion of his or her self-image, watching exceptionally attractive presenters projected onto our screens and monitors will not bolster self-confidence. The swells occupy those frames, the 10s, the lookers, the eye-catchers, the alpha males and females. Inner beauty is not an issue, nor is it applicable.
Shouldn’t we welcome a few upfront presenters to be, well, at least plain-looking, maybe even indisputably, you know, strikingly unattractive? Wouldn’t it be fitting to see someone with crooked teeth and a carbuncle on the end of his or her nose doing the weather report? With recent emphasis on societal inclusion, we don’t condone misogynism, racism, agism, sexism, or any other ism that infringes on people’s rights, do we? But lookism is bigotry we tolerate, if not promote. Beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder; it is in the eye of the media producer or the metonymical Madison Avenue advertising kingdom. Go wide of the norms of fitness, vigor, and dress, and the viewing public will make judgments. While most of us endorse the adage, “Beauty comes from within,” media producers show little interest in inner beauty because it is all but impossible to identify on screen, so they opt for proportionate bodies and angular physiques. Let’s face it: everyone is not beautiful. Why should they be? We generally shy away from unappealing people, animals, sounds, smells, tastes, buildings, and so on. Instinctively, we have an aversion to unpleasant things. Subjective though our perceptions are, we are hardwired to avoid, if not be repelled by, what culture promotes as unattractive. Judgements come later as we marinate in cultural and media influences.
It is not difficult to separate goodies from baddies in most screen productions. Sure, many baddies are foul, off-putting characters. Maybe they sneer, have crossed eyes, and enjoy hurting others? Perhaps they affect a slick smile while cackling a supercilious laugh? We get first impressions by reading people’s physiognomies, though those conclusions are not always accurate. Most of us can tell, however, within minutes which characters are goodies and which are baddies in Hallmark-type productions. Not subtle stuff, is it? The cues are in facial expressions, body language, and not-so-subtle behavior. In those formulaic productions, for instance, we know where good and bad come together. We see and hear the social cues that explain the remainder of the story without needing to slog through to the predictable conclusion. Sometimes the baddies are too-too, too handsome, too rich, too beautiful, too full of themselves—the result is off-putting, comeliness becomes appalling, because they are beyond the pale. Jay Gatsby and Iago are smooth, handsome, and big trouble.
In case you haven’t noticed, inclusiveness is a thing. We have lots of protections for categories of people who are treated unfairly. Unseemliness is not one of those protected categories. In fact, until about fifty years ago many communities had “ugly laws,” which prohibited unattractive people, for whatever reason, to appear in public view. Most of those laws were aimed at beggars and diseased folks who made us cringe when encountered. A Chicago ordinance of 1881 read as follows: Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, or an improper person to be allowed in or on the streets, highways, thoroughfares, or public places in the city, shall not therein or thereon expose himself or herself to public view, under the penalty of a fine of $1 for each offense (Chicago City Code 1881). So much for disgusting people, eh. Though such laws have disappeared, they remain in spirit when we confront an “ugly” walking the streets of our cities, when a beggar comes our way, or when we confront the growing population of unhoused folks living in tents and plywood shelters on the verges of our byways.
As a remedy to our discriminatory past, shouldn’t we invite more hard-to-countenance people into our lives, to appear on television and in our films? Repellent people, even distorted ones, can read and speak, can present the evening news to us because, finally, we share a share of grotesqueness as human beings, and we are all beautiful in inexplicable ways. These news presenters would detail as they ought, all the horrible and grotesque events of the day because that’s the way of the world in which we live, isn’t it?
Walter Cronkite used to sign off each newscast with, “And that’s the way it is.” Might be time to change the old models for the world as it truly is.