Appearance and Reality.

It is just in our blood to be superficial. It is only human.
People like beautiful things; be they ornaments or their other half. People will pay for beautiful things. And people will cherish these precious things because they are beautiful. As such, being beautiful or handsome gets you privileges. So, looking from another perspective, being ugly is a curse then. Such people get ignored, shunned and are prejudiced against.
I am pretty sure that you have heard this phrase before "Beauty is skin deep". Either your parents or your friend would have told you that. I believe so too. Beauty lies beneath our outer shells. But quite frankly, how many are able to walk the talk? A classic example would be that when a pretty woman walks past you, you just simply cannot help but let your gaze follow her. But while another facially average lady strolls past, you either ignore her completely or you may look at her; for all the wrong reasons. Still not convinced? Take Hollywood pictures for example. You would never ever find a 007 having a bulbous nose and a stumpy figure. You will never find Superman having puffy cheeks and blemishes. People just like to see good looking, attractive individuals even though they know that they might never be that way. Even fairy tales also carry the same message. Prince Charming uses his sword and stabs the ugly, wretched witch in the heart before climbing up the spiral stairway to find his beautiful princess. Until the advent of movies like Shrek, most children would have grown up thinking that good people were good looking and ugly people have ugly hearts. That is quite saddening. Apparently, Mum's words have fallen on deaf ears. And as these children grow older, they carry that same mentality. And therefore, the vicious cycle continues. The ugly being discriminated, the attractive gloried. Gold is buried under the soil; but is being beauty equal to having a beautiful life?
I used to joke to Allen that I find it amazing that the mirror does not crack whenever I look at it. I am not any particularly attractive. There are evidences of course. I am in my late thirties now and still single. And more often than not, I will look into the mirror and say "Ewan, you are ugly. Thank God you still have friends.". Now, you might think that being so lonesome and cornered in life must have unscrewed a couple of nuts and bolts in my head. I am still sane. In fact, my life is great now; except that it could be made even better if I had a girlfriend. I own a clinic with Allen. My profession? I am a plastic surgeon.
Of my ten odd years as a surgeon, I have come across a number of cases that left an indelible mark on me. But the one that made the deepest impression would had been Sarah.
The time was about five in the evening. Sarah stepped into the clinic with an apprehensive look on her face. She had a really beautiful jaw and lovely eyes. There was an air of familiarity around her. I have seen her somewhere before. She walked slowly towards the counter and approached me. She took two, three glances at me before saying "Doctor, make me normal.". I blinked my eyes, in total bewilderment.
Sarah is, no was, a bright spark. She earned her Ph.D at a tender age of twenty-five and proceeded to work in one of the most prestigious research institutes of the country. There, through sheer hard work and determination, she clawed her way to the top and earned the position of Head of Department of Biochemistry. That was when tongues starting wagging. Rumors were flying about, saying that Sarah got this position through underhanded methods. Soon, these rumors got so intense that the Director called her and before she knew it, she was dismissed. Jealously may perhaps be the worse kind of poison that Man can make. Undaunted, she tried for same position at other research faculties. Most rejected her because of her "infamous" record. But there was one that accepted her.
There, nobody treated her like a pretty face. People knew what she was capable of and some even idolised her. But like always, there will be bad apples. There was this man whom Sarah refused to name. He hated Sarah to the core. Firstly because Sarah got the position of Chief Researcher at the Department and secondly because Sarah rejected his confession. The man was outraged, infuriated, thirsty for revenge. From then on, he made life hell for Sarah. But the worse was yet to come.
Two Saturdays ago, Sarah had dinner with that man. She thought that things between him and her were alleviating; they were talking amiably and had poked fun at one another. She thought that this was a turning point in their relationship; in a way, it was. After dinner, the man offered to drive Sarah home. An offer, I believe that Sarah would deeply regret now. At home, he requested to be let in for coffee, a mark of courtesy I guess. The moment he was let into the house, all hell broke loose. August 21st 1995, Sarah was raped.
As she told me her story, I saw her looking cautiously out of the window. She had called the police but they have yet to arrest that devil. "That is why I want to be normal. Ewan, I want to be normal, if not ugly. I do not care what you do to my nose or cheek or jaw. Just make me less beautiful than I am.", she said. The poor girl was on the brink of snapping. As a doctor, I should naturally accept the request by the patient. But as a human, I cannot bring myself to use my knowledge and my skills to disfigure a girl. It is utterly insane! I turned her down and gave her a number of a psychiatrist.
The case of Sarah really got me thinking that night. Could beauty be, after all, a double edged sword? Would Sarah had been raped if she was not beautiful at all? Or was it a case of pure jealously that driven that man to do such an inhuman thing? I do not know. I flicked on the television remote and surfed the channels to check if they are any shows worth watching. Then I saw it.
"Supermodel Sarah Dawson committed suicide at six in the evening. The cause of death is apparently an overdose of sleeping pills. However, there has been much speculation that her ultimate cause of death would be her rape that occurred two Saturdays ago. Police are still in the search for the culprit of the rape, Trent Higgins who is Sarah's cousin as well. The cause of...." the news read. I did not at feel anything at that time. Perhaps I was the murderer? Maybe if I had admitted Sarah for treatment, she would not had ended her life so abruptly. No, she still would had. It is only a case of when and where.
Being beautiful does get you things. It makes life simpler and easier; that you have got to admit. But just like life, there is a cost. It is true that ugly people like me can never ever comprehend the joy and happiness that comes along with being attractive. But there is also the flip-side. We at least do not get to suffer the prejudice that they undergo as well. Because just like fairy tales say the ugly are evil and the handsome kind; there is still that stereotypical mentality that reads "The beautiful are dumb while the ugly, less dumb".I read it from a book somewhere which said "The ugly makes the beautiful beautiful; while the beautiful in the course of making themselves more beautiful shows ugliness.". So in a way, there is a little bit of each within the other.
I walked to the mirror and looked at myself again. The ugliness was apparent. But the beauty? That I am still searching for.