Not Ugly, Just less Attractive
Pearls of wisdom from beyond the grave
My grandmother, rest her soul, was born in 1915. She died in 2012. 96 year old. She was not only my Mor(we called her Mor, that’s Mother in English) but also my best friend and third parent.
I‘ve had many serious talks with Mor over the years. And she is one of the main reasons I am the way I am. For good, not the bad stuff, that’s someone else's fault, probably Donald J. Trump.
She early told me this:
Don’t call anyone ugly, just less attractive.
I started this post with my grandmother's year of birth. I did this so you can understand that she wasn’t always politically correct. She dodged german bullets in 1944 when her husband, my grandfather, was sitting in a concentration camp while she raised six kids. That’s another level of tough, and she wasn’t afraid to say what she meant, no bullshit or filters. For good and bad. Mostly good.
I have always thought that saying someone was less attractive was the same as saying someone was ugly, just wrapped in a see-through paper. But it is dawning on me that she was smarter than I gave her credit for.
For some reason, that lesson has been milling in my head the last two or three months and I haven’t quite understood why. But the other day it hit me.
I know now what she meant.
Attraction is in the eye of the beholder
Why didn’t she just say that in the first place? Remember I was a kid when she told me. I wasn’t able to grasp the true meaning of attraction is in the eye of the beholder. But the sentence: Don’t call anyone ugly, just less attractive, was understandable. Even if it took 30 more years before I really understood the full meaning of it.
What’s attractive for me isn’t necessarily attractive to you. I might get attracted by humor, by how the left eyelid hangs a little lower than the right. Or the way someone is laughing, smiling with crooked teeth, or the way they care for people around them.
I am a writer, and if there’s something I have been constantly hammered with from editors and coaches it is this: Never write that someone is pretty. The reader won’t know what it means. You have to describe it.
Show, don’t tell.
Society has defined beauty. Unfortunately. But instead of me trying to argue for that statement, I will do an experiment with Unsplash. I will open up the search-for- photo tab and write in the word Beauty, and I will choose the first picture.
I already know what it is, even though I haven’t seen it. Here we go:
…typing…
… waiting…
Result:
Surprised? I’m not. (To all the 0,32 people testing this out: No I didn’t pick the first, because it was a leaf with someone behind. But you saw all the other pictures there making my point, didn’t it?)
Don’t put Baby in a box
The references for this headline are for my peer retros (better retro than old, right?). But the meaning is clear. We need to stop labeling people. Everybody is beautiful, for someone.
Don’t get caught up in the societal brainwashing. Remember, not long ago, in the renaissance, beauty was defined as being on the heavier side, with wide hips.
Like what you like, but never call anyone ugly. Because you are wrong. They are just less attractive. For you.
Ses! (Norwegian for seeing you later)
