You Make the Difference by Eric Butterworth

Author:Eric Butterworth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

38. The Quest for Attractiveness

Does it make you feel good when someone compliments you on your appearance? Of course it does. We all have a desire to be attractive to others. To this end we do some strange and peculiar things. We follow style trends to determine what to wear. Many women put in long sessions at the beauty parlor, and we men take care to shave at least once a day and we spend time in selecting just the right necktie.

All around us, wherever we go, are advertisements telling us how we can become beautiful or handsome, how to have a slim figure, broad shoulders, or a schoolgirl complexion. We make tremendous sacrifices in trying to be attractive to others. Many a girl who is nearsighted will endure eyestrain rather than wear glasses, which she thinks will make her less attractive. Many a man will put himself in debt to buy a sporty car that he thinks will enhance his sex appeal. The desire for attractiveness is a wholly serious pursuit.

However, notwithstanding all the great efforts, the expenditure of money, the worrying, the study before mirrors, the consulting of books, doctors, beauticians and astrologers, how many individuals ever attain their goal? In my opinion, very few. Why? Isn’t our wonderful modern science able to transform an ugly duckling into a swan?

The answer is simple. Most of us have tried the wrong methods. Beauty is not for sale, and it has never been for sale in all the world’s history. All that has been available for a price has been a poor imitation. Genuine beauty that is the wellspring of attractiveness to others is little concerned with purely physical appearance. George Sand, the famous Frenchwoman who adopted a man’s name and who is acknowledged to have been one of the world’s most attractive women, was so downright homely that British author Thomas Carlyle described her as “horse-faced.” But young men fell in love with her when she was seventy.

Think of all the loveable, attractive people you have known. How many of them were physically glamorous? They may have been even decidedly unlovely from the standpoint of the physical, but you always thought of them as beautiful.

It has been commonly said through the ages that “beauty is only skin deep” and “handsome is as handsome does.” Certainly we do not think of someone as attractive when we find selfishness and ignorance. In his book Psychology in Living, Wendell White, a University of Minnesota psychologist, points out that “no one sees readily nor long the beauty of an unsympathetic or selfish person. And anyone may find a physical deficiency in an otherwise attractive person overshadowed by his good qualities.”

I know a schoolteacher in her forties who is about as beautiful physically as a garden weed. Yet she is a most attractive woman when she speaks to you; then she is transformed into a veritable Helen of Troy. Her warm, rich personality floods over you like a cascade of perfume. She is loved by her students and by everyone she meets.

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