POWER OF BEAUTY

Beauty. It can turn the strongest of us into jelly-kneed weaklings. It can sell us cars, homes, holidays and headache tablets. But is it worth all the fuss?

It can bring us to our knees and turn us to jelly. So why are we so fascinated by it?

Iconsider myself an aspiring selfactualised male. I ponder long and hard about things. In fact, on numerous family decisions, I’ve been accused of thinking too much. But a while ago, at a display suite for new apartments, I came face to face with the knuckle-dragging primate I really was.

The apartments were well out of my price range but they were so beautiful they made my eyes hurt. Likewise, the statuesque real-estate agents fussing over me. Stunningly, magazine-ly, Scandinavianly so. I was ready to – and I’m grimacing in embarrassment at the memory – sign whatever they put in my hands. They just possessed such beneficence, such perfect poise, such high cheekbones that I was willing to risk financial peril on their say-so. Fortunately, an opportune phone call from my wife (“Are you insane!”) snapped me back to reality. What was I thinking?

The problem was that I wasn’t thinking. That part of my brain had switched off.

What can cause otherwise happy marriages to bounce from the bedroom to the courtroom? What can stop traffic, garner free drinks and sell real estate? The answer can be found in bones, muscles, and skin – or to be more precise, their location, amount and quality. In other words, beauty (the physical kind).

Let’s face the truth; beauty is mesmerising. To gaze upon a being of physical exquisiteness can literally take our breath away. The sheer physiology of the visual sensation transcends everyday, humdrum optic experiences and ignites some primal place in our brains. A place reserved for just such experiences – a place immune from logic and rationale. A place that can instantly black out all of the brain’s functions except for one: desire.

We desire beauty. Plain and simple: we want it. And in varying degrees, at the sight of it, desire becomes our focus.

Beauty’s brilliance casts all other cognitive activities into the shadows. Indeed, research shows that we not only want to bond with people who are physically attractive, but that we also perceive them as kinder, smarter, more trustworthy, and that they make us feel good and warm and fuzzy. So blinded are we by what’s on the outside that we make a judgement of what’s on the inside. The actual person – their character, their real self – is out of our range of focus. Our eyes are only human; they desire what they see, and they imagine what they can’t. And while we’re on the subject of desire, that’s how advertising works. In a bit of Freudian jujitsu, not only do we desire the beautiful person, but we also want what they want, and thus by extension whatever they are selling. So, my realestate fugue is, if not excusable, then at least understandable.

I’ve known men and women to forsake years of solid marriage and school fêtes and cricket clubs for an impulsive dalliance with someone of strikingly good looks. These are otherwise rational people with families and reputations and bank balances to lose. They succumb to a desire that no amount of education, social position, nor chiding best friends can reverse.

Certainly, there are myriad factors for such behaviour, but when the number one reason is a physical attraction, then it makes absolutely no sense at all. Maybe that’s because ‘sense’ isn’t part of the equation. In fact, ‘sense’ is so far from the equation it’s not even in the same math class; it’s wagging school with ‘good judgement’ and ‘grace’. Beauty casts a spell, and it isn’t always a white witch.

It’s been so since history began. Adonis, the archetypal male eyeful, wasn’t lusted after for being a quick wit or for being good with the kids. Helen of Troy wasn’t adored for her algebraic talent or ability to rhyme in iambic pentameter. Both of these head turners were worshipped for their knee-weakening, ship-launching good looks – so much so that thousands of years later we still revere them.

And just take a look at the portraits in the Louvre and Uffizi. They’re all of fine-looking ladies and gents. (Sure, compared to nowadays they are somewhat fleshy and pale. But that’s because skinny meant poor, and tanned skin meant outdoor labour). These portraits were the Instagrams of their time, and their subjects the influencers. Beauty gets a picture; the masses get to envy it.

And today, right now, we’re awash in a sea of fabulous faces and figures. With symmetrical features, flawless skin and impossible youthfulness, these models become set in our collective consciousness as not just physically beautiful, but they come to define beauty itself. So much so that we think they are the same thing.

History, art, libidinous soon-to-bedivorced friends and contemporary culture show that bone, muscle, and skin – despite everything we’re told as kids – are to be revered.

But…

Greying hair, crow’s feet and a nostalgia for Beverly Hills 90210 come with some benefits. With life experience comes an appreciation of beauty’s place in the world. Years of interpersonal interactions, meeting new people and forming relationships allow us to see a spectrum beyond mere flesh and bone. By degrees, we develop a kind of X-ray vision that reaches deeper into a person. Hardwon knowledge transforms our eyesight so that good looks alone can hold our attention for only so long. Wisdom slackens beauty’s spell.

Sure, I can still appreciate physical beauty – but like the box of chocolates that would have had me forking over a week’s worth of pocket money when I was 10, it no longer makes my mouth water. Nowadays my response is more of a small smile in appreciation of the confectionery’s sweetness; I don’t need to actually sample them to know what they taste like.

Truly, what I find beautiful and fascinating, what holds my attention and keeps me spellbound, is fairly simple – I’m drawn to authenticity. At work, parties, markets, cinemas, museums, yoga classes, shops, airport lounges, train stations ... you’ll find me starting up conversations with people who have shed pretense and airs, and are simply who they say they are.

The only thing I value more than friendship is family, and with time the former becomes the later. Authenticity drives that transformation.

Yes, over the years I have fallen under beauty’s spell many times, but I’ve learned my lesson – thankfully without too much of a cost.

Nowadays, I’m not completely immune to its spell – that would make life boring – and I always make sure I’m accompanied by a responsible adult (my wife, who just happens to be very beautiful) whenever I investigate a display home.