Earlier today, I saw an episode of a show called The Ugly Face of Prejudice, on the 4 O.D. Channel on Youtube. This show groups a pair of people, one who is completely engulfed in making sure they are as beautiful as they possible could be whilst the other has a physical deficiency, usually in the face, which resulted from either birth or an accident. The aim of the show is to take two complete polar opposites and 'force' them together to encourage them to step in the shoes and walk two moons in the other person's shows. This allows us as viewers to deeply understand lives in two complete different worlds and help us realise how a mere physical appearance can change your life. Inevitably, Beauty becomes the central topic of this show, whilst touching upon and discussing many of its subtopics such as surgery, media, and even street walking.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/beauty-the-beast-ugly-face-of-prejudice
In the first episode I saw, the pair consists of a man named Leo (shown left on the picture) who as a child was caught up in a fire at age 14 when his school burned down. The fire had scorched his face and hands, turning skin to charcoal and massive scars and disfigurement on his body. The woman named Yasmin (shown right on the picture) is a normal human being who has constant self-confidence issues and finds it near impossible not to wear cakes of make-up in order to cover her 'oh so apparent ugliness'.
As they have dinner their first night together, they start discussing their beauty problems and the woman, carried away by her ego problems jumps into the topic of surgery head first, quickly ranting about breast reductions, face lifts, liposuction, etc. The man, already taken aback, seems confused and asks her, why would you get surgery. He says its artificial, it hurts, its dangerous - the usual arguments against surgery. However, soon after, he said something that took me aback. He said, that for people with disfigurement, surgery is viewed as 'the cheap way out'. He said that as a child he had already received many surgeries and the last thing he wanted was to get another artificial alteration to correct his face. I found this interesting as I only ever viewed cosmetic surgery for beauty queens, barbies, and models and of course for injury. However, never did it occur to me that someone who had undergone practical surgery would despise it so much. It was a very interesting argument, and in my opinion, I think they are absolutely right that one must embrace any fault they have in order to be happy.
Half way through the show, another man named Adam Pearson appears on the show, because he himself has a facial disfigurement. He discusses how people with disfigurement never appear on the media because they are not the ideal beauty that people look out for. He, along with a one-armed friend of his, posed for the famous advertisements of David Beckham in Armani's underwear ad and Eva Herzigová in Wonder Bra's ad, respectively. He then printed billboard sized ads of these images and posted them up just like normal ads and the response from the general public was incredible. The professionals within the modelling world all said (quite harshly as well) that this was not good advertisement as people would never aspire to look like that. However, the public all said that was extremely inspiring showing that anybody can do anything no matter what they look like.
http://www.channel4.com/assets/programmes/images/beauty-the-beast-ugly-face-of-prejudice/
series-1/episode-1/model-behaviour/96220c32-7fc1-495b-bebe-4ef3b9af6a70_200x113.jpg
http://cdn-ugc.cafemom.com/gen/constrain/500/500/80/2010/10/20/16/dx/3w/pohj3q61w0wmqb.jpg
Finally, Yasmin and Leo had a night out together on their last day together. They merely went out to a restaurant and bar and they each had a chance to showcase the public's reactions to how they look like. In general, they look at Leo like "why the hell are you with a girl like her?" and made extremely rude and obvious comments about Yasmin's breasts. This was shocking to me that people could summon up the 'courage' and complete ignorance to say remarks like this. However, to the pair, this was natural.
That was a huge wake-up call for me and I feel like I've learned a lot about living with a physical deficiency or being obsessed with how beautiful you look.
Goodbye, World.
Goodbye, World.
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