I once had an acquaintance in school. She had long straight flowing hair and big round eyes. The usual attributes that would make one a classic beauty, as many might feel? Within my clique, many would call her Miss Candy (Xiao Tian Tian), and that would please her very much. Little did she know, they were just being sarcastic. In their eyes, she broke the convention of how a pretty girl ‘should’ look like, despite having the traits above, especially since her character wasn’t exactly ‘beautiful’. Miss Candy’s label was just a tease. I was never able to call her that. I thought it would be too cruel.
So what is beauty? You might have noticed the recent S(enseless)-Factor reality TV contest. (Okay, I don’t want to be too rude here, that’s why I used the word ‘senseless’ instead of its worse synonyms which also begin with the letter ‘S’! ). If you catch a few minutes of the show, you would have a faint idea of what society considers to be stereotypical beauty for mass-consumption. Well, I can’t deny that looks do attract or repel. Good-looking persons tend to have more (superficial) advantages than an average-looking person, just as the latter has more advantages than a ugly-looking one.
A colleague once said no boss would hire someone dull to look at every day. But what about talent and creativity? We are much luckier as many in some countries faced looks-discrimination on a larger scale. It was in fact a trend that many Koreans go under the knife for better jobs and career advancement. On the other end of the spectrum, Bhutanese women are considered beautiful not because of having delicate skin and luscious figures. To them, to be beautiful is to be strong, capable of working in the fields while managing the household well. Now isn’t this a much healthier perspective of beauty?
As the society tends to have fixed standards of beauty (though they do change in history), it’s largely collective and individual karmic trends at play. This body of ours is the result of our past karma. We deserve every inch and ounce of it, even for those who choose to go under the knife. Whether surgery is successful or not is karmic too. This is not fatalism though, because if we look deeper, we can see that it is cause and effect at work. Of course, the less good-looking must have done something positive in the past to be able to have enough opportunity to meet a good doctor to reshape one’s appearance… while the good-looking must have done something negative to experience disfigurement.
While beautiful people and things are nice to look at or admire, let’s not forget the greater importance of inner goodness – for both good and less good-looking folks. How we perceive others’ appearances is none other just our limited dualistic minds at play. Everything is indeed more than what meets the eye. When I was little, I used to wonder why we don’t all look alike… like our shadows with no specific differences. I’m glad I have found a world that shares this ideology of equality, that however immeasurably better – Amitabha Buddha’s Pure Land – where all beings suffused with equanimity look equally magnificent! Let us aspire to reborn there, to be as majestic as the Buddhas in body and mind. Amituofo!