Would you marry a dumb but attractive person
I would not, beauty fades, dumb is forever.
shareI always fell for the smart girls in school. They may have not been the hottest but quite a number were generally good looking. I'll admit that I had a lot to learn as a young man where women were concerned but I got over big boobs and such pretty early on.
shareIn my high school graduating class of 1995, the Valedictorian was the hottest girl in that grade, and arguably hottest in the entire school (there was only one other that competed for hottest in the school, who was 2 years younger).
The Salutatorian in my class was also insanely hot. Both ladies were indeed very intelligent, well spoken, great women. I respected them highly.
I was 11th place, out of 111 in my class, and was one of so many with straight A's and a high GPA. I was lucky to be in a remarkably academically competitive class. I enjoyed high school a lot, primarily for that reason.
As a left-winger, like you, and thus an egalitarian (I struggle to understand how anyone can be one without the other), I hate that.
It means all the attributes and qualities are endowed in one person rather than spread out and shared equally among society. It makes me think that if there is a God, that God isn't a socialist.
A socialist God wouldn't make one person the smartest, and the most attractive, and the best at sports etcetera. A socialist God would make one person the smartest, and another the best-looking, and so on.
So, I'm afraid as a staunch left-winger, I can't celebrate the situation you describe. It simply illustrates how unfair nature can be.
Instead, I like to celebrate ugly but brilliant women.
Bear in mind that it must really have hurt for those girls in your year who were neither as smart nor as beautiful as the Valedictorian and Salutatorian. They may have been feeling very insecure and down on themselves whilst Ms Perfect made her speech. I know I would if I was made to feel as if I had nothing to give society. And bear in mind that as a consequence of low self-esteem girls tend to self-harm a lot more than boys.
I feel ya, and I know there was a lot of jealousy and such surrounding "Miss Perfect" for seeming to have it all... she was popular, but also a bit self isolated and often seemed melancholy. However, she was hard to hate because she was kind (which probably made the jealousy even worse!)
But that inherent unfairness of life you described also means, by necessity, that it would be misguided to hold her natural advantages against her.
Fairness is a judgment that unfortunately has no relation to reality.... and if all was fair, the world would have less variety (as low as none, possibly), fewer reasons for anyone to strive to better themselves or their lot in life, etc.
However, she was hard to hate because she was kind (which probably made the jealousy even worse!)Exactly. If she was a bitch, then at least the lesser mortals could hold that against her.
It's almost ironic isn't it? Sometimes being a decent person actually has the effect of making other people feel worse. That's why I always insist on people considering how their actions, even ostensibly positive ones, affect others. That's also why I don't have a problem with the term 'virtue signalling' (although I'm not saying it applies here whatsoever), even though it's a term often associated with right-wingers as a slur against liberals. We're seeing the effect of Instagram and other social media sites on younger people, and we're seeing an increase in self-harm and suicide among young girls. It makes me wonder if the 'perfect' lifestyles displayed on Instagram and similar sites are doing more harm than good.
Still, as much as I occasionally enjoy complexity, nuance and life's contradictions, I do wonder if we'd all be a lot better off if we were living in some type of Harrison Bergeron world (and I know that story is partly a dystopian critique of a perfectly egalitarian society). Certainly in terms of socioeconomics those societies in which the wealth gap is relatively small (e.g. Scandinavian social democracies) there tends to be fewer occurrences of poor mental health and social breakdown.
Maybe we'd end up with less interesting art and less interesting conversations in general, but we'd all be a lot happier, and isn't happiness something we should all aspire to? share