Let's stop assigning so much value to attractiveness...

Being attractive is a weird thing.

For starters, so many arguments about what an attractive person is, and someone who I might find attractive might not be attractive to you... but on some level, there are fairly well-known, societal agreements amongst us all about who is "attractive".

The problem is that we seem to, on some biological level, find more attractive people more trustworthy. We assign them a higher value based on nothing more than we like the shape of jawline or heart-shaped face. We want to converse with them without having an idea if they're interesting and might want to sleep with them without any idea if they'd be fun in bed.

I understand the reasons; body shape, etc may communicate whether someone can provide for offspring blah blah blah, but we still adore "attractive" people way way way too much... and spend far too much time either looking at or listening to attractive people or trying to make ourselves attractive. This is time and energy that we could spend on literally anything else to help progress the world in actual useful ways.

I want to be clear, I'm not advocating anyone letting themselves go, we need a base level of effort and attractiveness to successfully interact with other people... but we all need to realise that attractive people aren't better than everyone else... and that actions should determine someone's "value" so much more than their looks.

In the social media age... we need to stop clicking on articles because an attractive person is in the thumbnail... and Instagram models and celebrities shouldn't be the place where we seek our political information (nor should they be discounted because they are "just" models or celebrities either - their opinion should hold the same weight as anyone else's).

During the time I spent as a photographer, primarily of models who were looking to increase their portfolio to book jobs, it was fascinating to see the personalities of models, make up artists and stylists. I have no idea how many people I worked with in that industry, but it had to be hundreds... and mostly female.

Modelling is not easy, is much more akin to acting than people realise. You have to play a character, and you can't be shy. Models who society would agree were absolutely stunning, often didn't produce amazing photos because they hadn't developed the skills required to compete for attention and so weren't 'showy' enough to produce good images. My favourite models were usually either from the country that hadn't had years/decades of being revered for their looks or models that society wouldn't necessarily put in the 'stunning' category who then developed the skills to 'pop' on camera to compete.

I've taken thousands of photos, but this is one of my favourites because of how natural it all looks... but if you've ever had to smile into a camera at a party when you are having a good time, imagine smiling into a camera, in your underwear, with a room full of people all clothed, in the 6th hour of a photoshoot. Lucy here was so good-natured and patient.

I've had a lot of ridiculous attractive friends, and my success as a photographer, was because I just don't care how people look. I don't feel more special because someone the world would deem "attractive" chooses to spend time with me... and I'd love for everyone else to take that approach.

I really do think that our placing of attractive people on a pedestal is damaging to both them and us.

Allison Stokke is a perfect example. You might not recognise the name, but you'll recognise the image.

She was a pole vaulter... Her vaults were the best ever achieved by an American aged fifteen and sixteen.. that's amazing! In her last year of high school, she vaulted 4.14 m which gave her the 2nd highest high school ranking in America. At the age of 17 years old... this photo came out:

Source

Suddenly she's in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and more... everyone's profiting off her attractiveness... no one is talking about her sporting accomplishments and she all the huge attention she's getting doesn't feel at all earned. Lots more people and photographers turn up to her competitions, she feels super self-conscious and eventually is unable to make it into the Olympic team because she couldn't clear a vault a height she had cleared previously.

I'm not saying that she definitely would have made the Olympic team if that photo had never surfaced, but a young athlete was absolutely hampered by our desperation to seek out attractiveness.

I'd love us all to take a breath, chill for a second, and stop clicking on attractive people every 6 seconds. Let's click on amazing people that have achieved amazing things! Let's find qualified, intelligent people and revere them. Let's stop spending so much on fast fashion, beauty treatments and expensive suits and instead work on our own financial resilience or building something great. Make a thing instead of scrolling endlessly on Insta.

I realise I'm likely already preaching to the choir, posting on a non-traditional social media platform, but I feel like this is one of the messages that might need to be repeated a trillion times before it actually grabs any traction.

What do you think? Is this an impossible fight?