The Myth of Attractiveness

Why Attractiveness is the Nemesis of Love

Of all the myths that rule modern life, perhaps the most pernicious is the myth of attractiveness. Attractiveness a plastic flower. There’s no life in it. Real beauty is a sunset. Go into it with me for a second.

We’re constantly told to be attractive, in order to increase our chances of success at love, work, play. Girls are told to follow one ideal, guys another. For guys, the myth of attractiveness boils down to muscles and money, for girls passivity and prettiness. Maybe you disagree with that. Go for it. You can put the ideal, the “what”, however you like. It’s the “why” that really matters. Because the “why” of attractiveness is exactly backwards.

You are looking for love. You buy into the myth of attractiveness. It’s everywhere, right? So you go and make yourself as “attractive” as you can. What does that really mean? It means you make yourself the most superficially appealing to the largest number of people, right? You dress this way, you appear that way, you act that way, and so on. So now you look, act, talk, in a generally pleasing way. What are the chances of love finding you this way? Zero. Why?

Even if someone “likes” you, they won’t love you. They really just want the object, surface, appearance. That’s obvious, right? But there is a deeper, and more damaging, reason.

You don’t want to be liked by everyone. You just want to be loved by one person. Maybe, over lifetime, a handful of people who can really see you, reflect you, resonate you. In a way that is deep, true, and profound. So instead of looking, acting, talking like everyone else, you should just be who you really are. Instead of wearing the sports coat, you should probably wear the studded jacket, if you get my drift.

The reverse is also true. If you’re liked by everyone, you’re probably not going to be loved by anyone. Not because to be loved you must be polarizing, controversial. But because to be loved is a special, unique, singular thing. It is not generic, run-of-the-mill, an everyday occurrence, right?. So you must be the self that you really are to be loved in the first place. That self is what is unique, singular, special in you. It is what can be loved in you.

Attractiveness gets the logic of love precisely backwards. By being attractive, we seek to appeal to the largest number of people. So what? That’s not the point at all.

Now imagine a world full of such people. They’re all appealing to everyone else, right? But so is everyone else. It’s an infinite regress of conformity. In this race of conformity, individuality has been lost. Apathy and disinterest breed cynicism and ennui. Does that sound a little bit like modern love to you?

Attractiveness is backwards. And that is why love doesn’t really find us. But let’s suppose that we don’t get any of this, and instead of seeing the mistake, we desperately to try to make ourselves more and more attractive. Love isn’t finding us, right? Attractiveness is all we know. What happens now?

Soon, we become grotesque caricatures. If we’re guys, maybe we pump up our muscles to superhero proportions, learn how to “play the game”, “neg”, and so on. If we’re girls, maybe we go full-on Kardashian. We’re not just not ourselves. We’re caricatures of ourselves. Now maybe people just as desperate as us will see the objects we’ve turned ourselves into, and desire those. But even if we desire them back, no one is really seeing anyone else to begin with. So in this little game of caricaturing one another, no love can really arise.

Caricatures of selves are ugly, right? They may be “attractive”, but they’re ugly in a truer sense. They are usually ugly people. The more that we chase attractiveness, the uglier we grow. We become mean, jealous, unhappy, envious. We have to, right? Attractiveness is a competition. It’s a bloodsport. If they’re more attractive than you, then there is fear, resentment, jealousy. But there is no competition in love. There can’t be. You are just you, and that is all there needs to be.

But if all you are seeing in people is how closely they conform to an ideal of perfection, then of course you will be an ugly person. You will grow full of jealousy, spite, resentment, anger, fear. To think in terms of attractiveness is really to say: “I must have more of everyone’s admiration than anyone”. So you have already sowed the seeds of inner ugliness, right? The moment someone else has more, you must have less. You are always competing, struggling for more, more, more. The fact that you are playing this game is to say that you are misunderstanding what love really is.

When you “win”, you are creating resentment, envy, fear, spite, and enjoying the relief of not suffering them. When you “lose”, you suffer the very resentment, envy, fear that you yourself have been part of creating. They are mirror images. But those do not give rise to love. True love is leaving this little game behind, ending it in your life, and the lives you touch.

That’s why the headlines are full of such people. Attractive but ugly. They’re fun to mock and gawp at. But you probably don’t want to be one. What does all that tell us?

There’s a trade-off between being attractive, and really being beautiful. Being a beautiful person. I don’t mean this in a sentimental way. I mean it in the simplest way. Being a person capable of compassion, empathy, gratitude, kindness, wisdom, defiance, creativity, rebellion. Then you are beautiful, because beauty is something you see in everything around you.

So attractiveness is a myth in the truest way. It makes us ugly people, instead of beautiful people. Why should we want to be beautiful people? It’s simply. We are seeking to be attractive because we need to be loved, right? To be loved, we must first love. Attractiveness takes away our power to love. And that is really why the more desperately attractive we try to make ourselves, the less love finds us.

I don’t mean that you should go full-on caveman hippie style, and wear a burlap sack everywhere. Go for it, look nice, enjoy looking and being looked at, and so on. Just express yourself. Yourself. What is singular, unique, true about you? That is what you should express, communicate, represent, symbolize. You’re afraid of choosing the burlap sack, but choosing the business casual outfit is just another version of it, right?

You’re right. There are, and always will be, people who will judge you for being “unattractive”. Let them. They are the ones whom love is not finding, remember? That is what their misjudgment really is. You are here to be someone greater, truer, nobler, more beautiful than that. Someone really capable of love. Don’t let their foolish misjudgment turn you into a carbon copy of them.

Trying to be attractive comes at the price of letting yourself be beautiful. And unless we are a little bit beautiful, love will not find us. Love is a river. It finds way around ugliness, harm, falsity. And so it will find a way around us.

So let this foolish myth go. You don’t need to be attractive. You don’t need to pretend, fake it, hide yourself, run away. Just rejoice in being a beautiful person. Then the people who should, can, must love you will at last be able to. And love will begin to find you.

Attractiveness is a plastic flower. It’ll fool you from a distance, maybe. But there’s no life in it. A sunset is really beautiful, right? What’s beautiful about it? Each one is unique, fragile, no two ever quite the same. That is why each is heartstopping, profound, true. Don’t seek the attractiveness of the plastic flower. Just be the sunset.

Umair

London

June 2016