Imagine the following — you are at a fancy bar with your friends when a few strangers approach your table and engage in small talk. Everyone’s having a good time, laughing and drinking, but you notice that none of the strangers’ questions are directed to you.
Your friends invite them to sit down at your table and suddenly, you’re the odd one out. All interactions are between your friends and the strangers, and your attempts at inserting yourself into the conversation are ignored. Perhaps your friends entertain your trying, but are quickly dismissive in favour of the new, exciting people who pay no attention to you.
This is what it means to be socially invisible. Pretty frustrating, right?
Conventionally beautiful people do not experience this — they are the friends who receive the time of the day. It’s understandably hard to put yourself in “socially ugly” shoes if you are a handsome person because you simply do not live this. If you’re charming with a good sense of humour, you are probably reading this while your phone is blowing up with notifications and messages.
If you’re unsure what lookism is, count your lucky stars. Lookism is discrimination based on appearance, especially if the person is ugly or has too much or too less of something, for example weight or hair. Most people have experienced some form of lookism, be it job interviews, going out with friends, or even standing in a queue at the grocery store with just one item.
Plastic World
South Koreans handled this issue in their own way — plastic surgery. To advance their careers and improve their quality of life, at least a third of Korean women decide to go under the knife to get double eyelids, smaller jaws or implanting silicone into their chests.
Some of these operations are so drastic and successful that these people have to make brand new ID cards because they are unrecognizable, which is quite problematic for foreigners who go to South Korea for medicinal tourism, as they call it, and the facial recognition system at airports does not pair their passport face with the new one.
This social phenomena probably has consequences on the society of South Korea and their definition of “beautiful”. How many people were rejected from their dream job just because they wear a B cup? Is the essence of a person their appearance or their values? Is beauty becoming a new personal value that trumps all the others? Hard questions.
DUFF
Designated Ugly Fat Friend.
In order to gain popularity and attention, women will often adopt a DUFF to make themselves look better. They will go to great lengths, such as pretending and faking a friendship with another person they consider to be lesser in appearance, just to gain a better image on social media.
There are countless of experiences of women who were the DUFF, only realising their role in other people’s lives once they’ve lost weight, started exercising or advanced in their careers beyond anyone’s prediction. Once they become too “hot”, the so-called friends either keep putting them down or start ghosting them.
“It’s not like you lost a lot of weight anyway.” / “Your nose is still big.”
Women can truly be cruel to one another.
The Jaw Issue
It’s not all about women, either. A few centimetres of jaw bone moved into the right direction and, as a man, you can live an easy life without much effort. On the contrary, if you’re missing certain “manly” attributes, you are invisible. Quite a drastic polarisation, considering we’re talking about a few centimetres.
What can a man do about a weak jaw? Either suffer in silence or get plastic surgery. He could be the best potential partner, the warmest person on Earth, full of understanding and compassion, but he will go unnoticed because of an appearance flaw he cannot change, much like his height.
Judging a person by their cover
Everyone’s heard of the phrase “Eyes are the windows to the soul”, but when you add in physiognomy to the mix, it quickly turns into the term “crazy eyes”.
The assumption of someone’s personality based solely on their appearance is deemed irresponsible by modern science, but we all do it subconsciously.
“He looks like a psychopath.” / “She has the crazy eyes.”
We’ve already decided that we know everything about the person based on their clothes, shoes, hair, eyes, smile, before they even have a chance to speak and possibly change our minds. That’s why Tinder exists.
In the era of social media, it is hard to be unbiased when we’re creating our own self-image outside of our minds.
Everyone looks perfect, so must I.
It does not matter what the perfect person thinks, says or does. If they look astounding, all that matters are likes and hearts.
Lookism is becoming more widespread than ever, and far more extreme than anyone would like to admit, as a person’s value is based on their appearance. It is a scary thought that, in the near future, we will all have predetermined careers and partners chosen for us based on our looks from a young age.
To a degree, it’s already happening.
