Being somebody else... or nobody at all

After I wrote an article last week on the contemplation of beauty and the fascination it can produce on me, I could not avoid following my train of thoughts and arrived at the practical effects of beauty (perhaps linked to the mind-numbing effect that I mentioned): the so-called beauty premiums. It turns out that, in the realm of fundraising, your handsomeness can have a huge impact. As American economist mentions in an old episode of the Freakonomics podcast:

You’re looking at roughly a 100 percent increase when you look at going from a 6 to a 9.

And apparently the premium has similar effects in various directions, from the amount of attention they receive, to the effort someone is ready to put on their behalf, so there is no discussion that looking good can often be an advantage.

Photo: Gerd Altmann on Pixabay

Of course, the modern concept of beauty is, like many others, intrinsically incompatible with human condition: ageless or forever young, perfect skin, perfect grooming/hairdo, no eye rings, full lips, long eyelashes, etc, so reconciling them always comes at a cost, particularly for women, for whom the standards can be absolutely merciless, so everyone ends up running sooner or later into a trade-off between cultivating one's own image or doing something else. I mentioned a few days ago how gay men have always felt a significant pressure to keep their good looks because of the natural volatility of their emotional relationships, but these days even heterosexual men dedicate a non-negligible amount of time to this goal.

The opportunity cost of beauty (all the things that one cannot do because they are at the gym or the hairdresser's) can become so big that it displaces everything else. One example of this is the archetypal bombshell woman, who spends all her waking hours between taking care of her beauty and making use of it. One frequent criticism of this attitude is that, given the ephemeral nature of beauty, it is a dangerous bet to devote all your time to it when it is bound to end sooner rather than later. The notable exception to this argumentation is the trophy wife, who marries a rich man significantly older than her under the assumption that she will inherit his fortune once he passes away. The transactional nature of the agreement provides for general derision, but it has certain economic merit: the woman provides the beauty (and devotes herself to that) while the husband takes care of having the wife (and eventually the family) well provided.

This week we have finished watching Netflix's mini-series The Queen's Gambit, where the main character, Elizabeth Harmon, expresses her admiration for the career of a friend, who is a model. To this, the friend replies that Harmon could never be a model, because she has too much personality; models have to be essentially empty husks, so that the photographer can turn them into what is needed for the photo shoot. This sentence had me thinking of an episode when I was growing up: there was this model which I found incredibly beautiful, which even made the front page of Sports Illustrated at some point in the 90s, but once I watched an interview I found her lacking depth and interesting conversation. Probably the precise feature that made her a malleable model, great for magazines, also diluted all my attraction for her.

This effect is very visible in another renowned Sports Illustrated alum, Elle Macpherson, whose 5-episode appearance in season 6 of the sitcom Friends was simply underwhelming: she was nice to look at but did not have, in my opinion, anything to bring to the set, no particular expressive abilities or a sense of comedy. I am sure that she has an inner life of her own, but she is (or was) so used to keeping it to herself and just following the instructions she received that she came through less than lively or interesting.

For actors, on the contrary, taking the role of someone else is quintessential to their job: they have to make credible personas on the screen even if the character they are playing has nothing to do with who they are inside. Some actors and actresses are great at playing different characters, like the Australian Chris Hemsworth playing the memorable Kevin in the 2016 version of Ghostbusters. Others, like Jim Parsons, have a difficult time getting out of their usual character: I have seen him in the series The Big Bang Theory as well as in the movies Hidden Figures and The Boys in the Band, and all the three characters seem to be the same one to me, but this could be a casting problem.

At any rate, I find it fascinating how some people can turn into someone else or even nobody in particular. I think that it is a tribute to their acting skills that people acting together end up involved in romantic relationships, probably more as a projection of their characters than as their actual personal interests. They say you should never meet your heroes, but I can only wonder what it would be to have dinner with someone like that: would they be as interesting as they seem? I hope you have a nice evening.