The way we look seems to still define how people relate to us
Very recently I agreed to take part in an unofficial experiment on the Po’s Peek website I agreed to respond to relationship questions emailed by the site’s visitors while keeping my identity unconfirmed (which is not quite the same as a secret).
To keep things interesting the site’s organizers added a choice of five publicity pictures of ‘Alisa Millers’ readily found on any Google search and mentioned a little of my bio. The point is that out of almost 1000 responses just 8% managed to get my identity right, matching my publicity picture with the picture of me they had formed in their heads, through my writing.
The interesting thing here is that while a little research on Google and Amazon where my books Ultimate Guide to the Perfect Relationship and How to Talk to a Girl You Like are sold would have told them who I was, the preconception developed in their minds by the combination of subject matter and style of writing, left them sufficiently convinced to not want to take their research further.
This raises some very interesting issues. We all want the world to not judge anything at a superficial level. We repeat the conventional “a book is not judged by its cover” like a mantra designed to exorcise doubt (which it is), we say that “beauty is only skin deep” (and that is right) and, in the meanwhile, react to beauty in ways which undermine our logic and common sense and make a mockery of our protestations.
This means that, at a certain level at least, we are trapped by our looks which then define, in part, the way we relate to the world. Now personally I have huge issues with that not least because I do not want to live in a world where everything is judged by looks alone. Everything we have achieved has been the result of applied logic, hard thinking and the ability to get past stereotypical, knee-jerk reactions designed to trap us into thoughtless patterns of action.
You begin to get that I feel kinda strongly about this, or at least strongly enough to devote an entire blog post to it. Normally I focus on relationship issues or on the subjects covered by my books like the recent How to Talk to a Girl You Like, but in this case I am making an exception.
We are lucky enough to be living in the 21st century, at a time when electronic communication, instant messaging, mobile phones and the web have made the world a very small place indeed. In this there really should be little place for anything beyond our ability to assess and accept each individual based on their worth (first) and the accident of their condition (second) which means looks, whether good or bad should always be a very secondary criteria in our likes or dislikes.
I know that to achieve this it requires a certain degree of application on our part. After all, we really are geared to respond to visual stimuli and in evolutionary terms we are still a very young species. We have progressed materially as fast as we have because we have a brain that learns much of its behaviour and has very few instincts. This is a crucial difference which has enabled us to travel under the oceans and into space. When seen in this light the ability to overcome personal prejudices seems a small step indeed and one which we should all be capable of taking.