5 The Beholders Eye!

Now where was I? Oh yes….last time I was going to talk about dealing with being beheld. Because we’ve all somewhat reluctantly accepted the idea that beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but we do still like to believe there is some absolute essence of beauty and we’ve all been given varying amounts resulting in an internationally accepted pecking order with Brads and Angelinas at the Top Table and the mingers hanging around outside. And then of course there’s the ‘Ravages of Time’ effect where stunners like David Essex and Adam Ant and David Cassidy become grey and baggy eyed. Bucking the trend of all this is the situation where we are perceived as more beautiful than we feel ourselves to be. If someone believes we are beautiful we’ve got a few options. We could accept their view as valid and enjoy basking in their appreciation of our beauty. We could attempt to change the situation by invalidating their view- persuading them through what we did or said that they are in fact wrong, that their view is inaccurate, a misapprehension, a misperception or that maybe they are just plain warped! Or we can choose to move away from the discomfort. Move towards people and situations that will reflect more accurately the view we hold of ourselves. So take your pick on that one. Though I guarantee it’s likely to feel nicer in the company of those who recognise your beauty than to be hanging around with people who are happy to reflect with you on your perceived shortcomings! And it’s certainly less effort than arguing the toss over whether you’re beautiful or not!!

More commonly we are valued as less beautiful than we actually feel. Now, as a Gay Man Having Self Esteem Issues [and bring me the Gay Man who doesn’t], I’m a bit prone to accepting a more negative view of myself than is probably the case. But we can all tell when we are being underrated. Now I would hold that this underrating happens as a mass effect in our society right now towards ageing. It’s a bit complicated but I think it’s something to do with how people generally appreciate and categorise the world. So there’s the majority of people who dichotomise- who see the world as full of good and bad things, situations and people. And of course whatever it is that a society chooses to see as “bad” is  beheld that way by the majority. My Spanish teacher tells me that in Spain it is considered Bad Luck to meet a person with a squint. So if you’re born with a squint you spend your life having people crossing roads to avoid your gaze. And people move into or out of these zones of positive and negative behodenment [if that can be a word]. The ugly duckling grows to be a very fine swan indeed! But ageing is the opposite process. So for thousands and billions of people worldwide, as you become old, you enter this zone of being negatively beheld. More or less so depending on the relative store put by the individual person on the unattractiveness of the aged state [usually in direct relationship to the degree  of fear they themselves have of not being accepted for whatever reason but more often than not it’s to do with a fear of loosing their sense of how beautiful they’re perceived to be] I said it was a bit complicated!!

I’m just trying to step outside the process a bit to understand why people increasingly either look right through me as if I don’t exist or actually scowl at me as if I’ve brought a bad smell into the room!