Opus 2014-285: On the Street: Beauty Is No Longer Skin Deep

Whatever happened to the beautiful people?

I noticed it years ago on airplanes.  When I first started flying it was only women serving.  Men need not apply on most airlines and would have been considered strange if they did.  In addition, every stewardess seemed to be a fashion model.  They were young, attractive and easy on the eye.  They fit well in the aisles.  They also had wonderful attitudes. 

No more.  Now they are normal people.  You can’t tell them from the passengers except they get to stand up when the seat belt sign is on.  They often are forced to go down the aisle sideways like many of us that have size issues.  They are definitely not young and attractive. 

Recently I have been noticing it on TV.  I remind you that I do not watch TV on my own.  I have not turned on a TV for personal consumption in years.  I do see things in passing and occasionally am forced to sit and watch or expect a divorce.  What I see does not bring me back.  Leaving aside the insulting content, corse humor and insipid plot lines, what happened to the beautiful people?  I have a vision, recently delivered, of two fat, sloppy men in a seedy bar, drinking beer out of bottles and talking about something.  I think they were two of the stars.  On another pass through the room I saw what appeared to be four women kneeling around a coffee table doing a parody of praying to Jesus.  There was not an attractive women in the bunch and they all could have posed for “before” pictures in a Slim Fast commercial.

It seems that attractive people have gone the way of the nuclear family on TV.  I don’t need super models or perfect families.  Although I have lost weight, I am still considered overweight on the official scales.  No, I would settle for mildly attractive people and families that I would want to be a part of.  By lowering the bar we are creating lower expectations.  Lower expectations drive us to lower the bar again.  If it were confined to TV I could live with it, but it is spilling over into the rest of culture.

I can run, but I can’t hide.

homo unius libri