Reflections of the Beholder
I remember watching an old episode of “The Twilight Zone” inspired by the cliché “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The viewers meet a man and woman in the hospital with their heads wrapped in bandages. They have undergone plastic surgery in an attempt to make themselves more attractive. The bandages slowly get unwound, and a beautiful woman and handsome man are revealed. But when they see their faces in a mirror, they’re both horrified at their ugliness. The camera then pans to the faces of the doctors and nurses, which look more like pigs than humans. “Beauty” isn’t an objective truth like gravity or the Pythagorean theorem. It only takes a quick scan through art history to see how beauty ideals have changed. But “beauty” FEELS objective. My weight squared plus wrinkles squared equals “not pretty enough” squared. The exponential weight of “unacceptable” hits me hardest when I see myself in a mirror or on video. Pre-Covid Kate was soooo close to being able to do a
