Professor Teddy Seminar 126G

Professor Teddy

Seminar 126G

November 27, 2012

The Advantage of Attractive People

There is an idiom in China is “The desire to look attractive is universal.” It means there is no one who doesn’t like beautiful things and beautiful people. In the world, it is not difficult to find people always like to pay attention to a beautiful thing or person. There is a potential rule in the society—Attractive people always have more chances and greater advantages in many areas. The attractive people are not only describing the people whose appearances are beautiful, but also are describing the people whose inside are very beautiful. These two kinds’ attractive people have a lot advantage in many areas, such as they have advantage in the home, friends, the work environment and daily life.

The attractive people will have advantage in home. Although children are parents’ most important thing in the world, parents still want to have a beautiful child. If the family only has one child, the parents will not have indifferent attitudes to the children. But if the family is not only having one child, the parents will have distinct different attitudes to their child who looks beautiful and who looks not beautiful. In Lucy Grealy’s essay “Mirrors”, she mentions her parents don’t care about her life too much. Especially her father even doesn’t talk to her. There are two reasons why her parents don’t care about her too much, one is her face is not complete and looks very strange. The other one is she is very timid to face the operation. So her parents feel disappointed to her. Her half jaw was cut when she was curing her cancer. She looks like not beautiful and even looks like not normal. Although her parents want to cure her cancer, they still don’t like to talk to her and stay with her for long time. Grealy mentions her situation in her essay,

“No one spoke to me, not the doctor who was a paradigm of the cold-fish physician, not the nurse who told my mother I reacted much more violently than many of the other children, not my mother, who, surely overwhelmed by the sight of her child’s suffering, thought the best thing to do was remind me to be brave, to try to and not cry.” (59)

Most people will be afraid of the surgery, especially for the children. As children’s parents, they should try to should spend more time to cheer their children up, understand their children’s feeling and make their children more comfortable. But Grealy’s mother doesn’t talk to her and only asks her should be brave and not cry. It is not difficult to feel such a heavy pressure that Grealy should endure. In this essay, Grealy also mentions she likes to stay at hospital, “Up until this time I’d been having a great time in the hospital.” (58) Most children will not like to stay at hospital, because they don’t like eating medicine or getting an injection. But Grealy likes to stay at hospital when she was a child. If Grealy’s parents like her and don’t care about Grealy’s appearance too much, the Grealy must like to stay at home rather than the hospital. Most people would like to stay at home when they have something unhappy, especially for children. There is another reason why Grealy doesn’t want to stay at home. She has a beautiful sister. Grealy describes her feelings in the essay are not good. She describes, “My non-identical twin sister started going out with boys, and I started, my most tragic mistake of all, to listen to and believe the taunts thrown at me daily by the very boys she and the other girls were interested in. I was a dog, a monster, the ugliest girl they had ever seen.” Her sister can always let she thinks and feels she is a monster. It is not difficult to find Grealy feels not good when she stays at home. She can’t get enough love and care, but only lose more confidence. There is no doubt that attractive people have an advantage in home, especially the family is not only has one child. There are many children have the same situation like Grealy’s family. Because of they don’t have an attractive appearance, their parents don’t pay more attention to them. Also if there are any children have ugly parents, they will also not pay more attention and stay with their parents.

However, these people shouldn’t be upset and even hate their parents or their children. No matter what happened between the person and his or her parents, the parents are still his or her parents, and the children are still his or her children, because they are family. Although the people can’t change his or her appearance, they can change their inside. As unbeautiful children, they can try their best in studying and help parents to do housework. There isn’t a parent who doesn’t like their children are good at studying and sensible. The children who have an attractive appearance will lose the advantage in the home, if the children don’t have a beautiful inside. The children who don’t have an attractive appearance will get advantage in the home, if the children have a beautiful inside. For most parents, they hope their children can have an attractive inside and also think the attractive inside is more important. As unbeautiful parents, they can spend more time to stay with their children and teach them. Then the children will understand their parents love them and the children will not care about their parents’ appearances. The author Alice Walker who only has one eye mentions her daughter’s words about her appearance in her essay “Beauty When the Other Dancer Is the Self”, “She says, ‘Mommy, there’s a world in your eye.’ And then, gently, but with great interest: ‘Mommy, where did you get the world in your eye?’” (73) At first, Walker is worried about her daughter will discover her eyes are different from others and then her daughter will be embarrassed. Then after she listened to her daughter’s words, she felt no pain for her strange eyes. Her daughter was not embarrassed as Walker thought when her daughter found her mother’s eyes are strange. One of the main reason is Walker really like her daughter and her daughter also really like her mother. The daughter doesn’t care about her mother’s appearance too much. The people who have attractive appearances and attractive insides will have advantage in the home.

Friends are also caring about appearance. The attractive people will have advantage in making new friends and getting along with friends. A person’s first impression is good or not to other people is always depending on that person’s appearance. It is not difficult to find the people who have attractive appearance are always very easy to make new friends when they move into a new environment, because other people will want to make friends with the good looking people. Conversely, the people who don’t have attractive appearance will difficult to make new friends when they move into new environment. Like Grealy mentions in “Mirrors”, “Exactly why I had this experience in London I don’t know, but in my first week there I received more nasy comments about my face than I had in the past three years of living in Lowa, New York, and Germany.” (58) Grealy’s situation is more serious. She is not only can’t make new friends in a new environment, but also she even can’t have a normal life. Walker also have the same situation, she mentions, “I am afratid of the school, where all the students to be budding criminal.” Her schoolmates always torture her, because her eyes have problem. The people who have good appearance have an advantage on making new friends and even some friends don’t want to stay with them, because people always judge a person is good or not from their appearances. But the people who can keep their friendship with others are always the people who have a beautiful inside. The people who have beautiful inside can always care about others’ feelings and help others. If people want get along with friends well, should have beautiful inside and they really want to have the friends. Their friends also want to keep their friendship. The people who have attractive appearance always don’t care about her friends’ feeling too much, because they got new friends too easy. But they will not keep their friendship with their friends. Making a new friend is always depending on the attractive appearance, keeping friendship with friends is only depending on the attractive inside.

Attractive people also have an advantage in their work environment and daily life. There is an interesting thing in all of companies, and schools. The women and female students always have high enthusiasm of their job and study if their field and class have a handsome male colleague and a handsome male teacher or male student. Conversely, the men also have the same thoughts. There is nobody wants to lose their face in front of other people, especially the people are they care about. People want to work with their field’s good looking colleagues or students. If you don’t have an attractive appearance, you will have a little trouble at first. The author Edward Iwata mentions his situation in the essay “Race Without Face”, “I thought I was a failure when no white coeds danced with me at a frat party.” Although Iwata can’t have good relationship with his schoolmates is because he is not a real American, in other words he still doesn’t have attractive appearance in front of the American people. People can’t work well when their colleagues don’t want to stay with them. But for most people and student they want to work with a colleague who has strong and powerful strength, because no one wants to their task fail. Also the boss always only cares about the achievement of his or her stuff can make. So the people who has strength is also have an advantage in work environment and daily life.

The attractive people have an advantage in the home, friends, the work environment and daily life. An attractive appearance is the natural advantage, it can only give people a good beginning, such as they can easily let others want to make friends with them. An attractive inside is acquired advantage, every can get it by themselves, such as Alice Walker uses her love to let her daughter doesn’t care about her appearance. Also the attractive inside can give people more advantage in all of areas.

Work Cited

Grealy, Lucy, an award-winning poet, “Mirrors”, Harper’s, 1988.

Iwata, Edward, a journalist and editor, “Race Without Face”, San Francisco Focus, May 1991.