There exists a wretched group of people in this world that has been constantly scorned and mistreated since the beginning of time. We oppress them, laugh at their expense and turn our heads, simply because of the skin in which these people were born. Neither the black nor lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community has been regarded by society with such utter revulsion. The subjugation and assimilation of the Native American doesn’t hold a candle to the unnoticed cruelty that defaced this group. Even the hardships of the dwarf community are downsized in comparison to these poor, unfortunate souls.
No category of people in the history of mankind has been treated so disgustingly as the aesthetically unpleasant and attractively unqualified—the ugly people of the world. We must change our shallow ways of thinking if we’re ever going to free from this cage of oppression these elephant men and women.
Ugly people have a long way to go if they wish to find social equality in our beauty-worshipping culture, where propaganda floods our minds with messages that hold beauty as some kind of divine perfection. American fashion doll Barbara Millicent Roberts, best known by her pseudonym “Barbie,” has long held her matriarchy in the doll kingdom as the symbol for beauty. She is highly considered as a mega babe among children’s playthings. After multiple generations of women having grown-up with this little plastic narcissist, our society has been brainwashed at a young and impressionable age into cherishing her superficial beauty.
Despite the thousands of Barbie varieties in all their physical magnificence, Mattel has yet to release a single model in the rightfully due “Ugly Barbie” series. When will children ever be able to develop their companionship with Unibrow Barbie? Is Cleft Lip Barbie not worthy of spending time with? Doesn’t Early-Onset Balding Barbie need friends, too? When we condition our children to only spend time with the beautiful and well-groomed, they become disposed to neglect ugly people in their adult years.
This subliminal messaging toward ugliness is also ever present in the English language, wherein the word “ugly” has become synonymous with violence, unpleasantness and immorality. As soon as we are able to speak, we are indoctrinated linguistically to view ugliness as most wicked of all evils. Phrases such as “ugly as sin,” “the ugly truth,” or “the situation at the bidet factory turned ugly” provide examples to our contaminated way of thinking. The word “homely,” meaning physically unattractive, implies that ugly people should be shut away from society, quarantined to their houses so as not to contaminate anyone with their visual affliction. The title of 1966 Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” implies that it is better to be immoral than unattractive. Even the first syllable of the word forces one to let out a contemptuous groan: “Ughhhh…”
With this negativity toward ugliness imprinted upon us, we grow accustomed to treating the physically frightful with prejudice and disrespect. This foul mistreatment seeped into every aspect of our lives like poison. It’s flowed into the family, where parents expect their kids to bring home someone with considerable good looks, sickened by even the thought of their children perpetuating the family with the blood of an ugly. It’s oozed into the workplace, where unattractive strippers are profiled by employers, often turned down solely because of their physical appearance. It’s leaked into the media, where if Ashlee Simpson lip-syncs on “Saturday Night Live,” she is despised and labeled as a talentless disgrace to humanity. But when Beyonce lip-synchs in front of millions during a Super Bowl halftime show, everyone is—for whatever reason—too distracted to notice.
Discrimination is defined as “the act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually.” It bewilders me how ugly people are never mentioned as a topic in social rights. Surely we should classify ugliness as a category, for what could be easier to lump together than people who are, well … already rather lumpy? Just because they haven’t organized any well-known public demonstrations doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be recognized as a political body. I suppose it just means that their body maybe doesn’t get out that much, isn’t in the best shape and can’t attract the most members. It’s time that the way in which ugly people faced their grotesque discrimination had an extreme makeover.
