Glad I Was an Ugly Child, Part II

In the last part of this piece, I wrote that I grew up as an ugly little kid and how this trait led me to take refuge in books. Consequentially I would advance in academia to the tune of 2 college degrees and an MD by my 25th birthday. All initiated because I was an ugly little shit, who’d have guessed?

The concept that intelligence and physical attractiveness have an inverse correlation is an old one indeed. Here are a few brief examples to demonstrate my point. Have you ever seen the cheerleaders at Harvard? Well compare them to the cheerleaders at Florida State. Have you ever taken a peak inside a lecture hall where the speaker is discussing metaphysics or number theory? Contrast that crowd to one attending a lecture on the same campus where the students are learning primary education or sociology. And a final illustration I won’t describe in full detail, but I could write a full entry about: Celebrity Jeopardy.

Men have known this detail for centuries. The “dumb blonde” stereotype is born of this assumption. There was a recent South Park episode that commented on this occurrence. In this transcription, an older character is talking to one of the kids who learns he was voted “ugliest boy in the class” at school:

“You think you've been cheated because you’re ugly, but I am here to show you otherwise. Come! There is much to see. [walks out] I want you to look in here. [they approach a random house and look inside. A bored woman is playing with a pencil and pebble at her small dining table] This woman is Nancy Pinkerton. As a child she was consistently the most beautiful girl in her entire school. Her life as a youth was filled with praises, and everything being handed to her. Boys told her she was special. She was funny. She was interesting. But that's only because she was hot. It wasn't until she reached age 40, when her looks started to fade, that she learned she was actually about as interesting and special as a wet carrot. [they leave her as they found her, playing with a pencil, all alone in her dining room. They move on to the next house] This is the home of your new ugly friend, Yamal. [Yamal is shown playing a piano] Because he's ugly, he gets nothing handed to him. He has to work at making something of himself. But that work is gonna pay off when he's an adult. He will have character, something that kids who are hot rarely develop. Like your classmate, Clyde. [they approach Clyde's house. Clyde is all cool laying on his couch talking to someone on the phone] Now that he knows he's good-looking, he doesn't have to make any effort to be special.

Now his life will be about girls. Chatting with them on the phone and buying them shoes. He will most likely marry very young, and not realize until age 40 that he's a total douche. And so you see, Kyle, it is actually the beautiful kids that are cursed.”

Unattractive people, men in particular, really need to stand out in a specific area of life. Otherwise you won’t have a good job, you won’t have any money or friends, and most importantly to young people, you’ll never get laid. That is the real lynch pin of this whole thing. I won’t get into gender differences here and why I think men are, by most standards, incredibly more interesting and better developed psychologically than women, but you can be sure that the impetus behind it all is pussy.

This relationship is also very old. The popular Revenge of the Nerds series was about a group of ugly, hyper-intelligent college kids who want to fuck very skinny, tan girls with 80’s boobs. In all fairness, it was the 80s, so at least the boobs were decade appropriate. At any rate, the Revenge films weren’t the first but were probably the most prominent film to depict this social phenomenon: Ugly kids have potential to grow up into fascinating adults who can, in very simple terms, do a lot of cool shit.

The Louis Skolnicks and Boogers of yesteryear are today’s leader of industry. Titles aside, nerds are the ones who created the Internet (Not Al Gore or any other asshole politician). Nerds design and build hybrid vehicles. Nerds made the iPhone. Nerds wrote and directed the newest Batman movie. Nerds figured out how to make Coke Zero after previous failures with Tab and many Diet drinks that tasted like cough syrup. You can be sure that most of these nerds, just like the characters in Revenge, weren’t on the Homecoming court.

Another trait that separates the ugly from the beautiful is overall kindness. I’m not saying that all the ugly chodes are nice and all hot chicks are bitches, as would the writers of Shallow Hal. There’s just such a lopsided surplus of assholes in this world that inevitably some of them are unattractive. The average ugly person, or person who grew up ugly, is much nicer than a person who has always been gorgeous. Have you ever noticed that people who have worked as a waiter or waitress usually tip well? That is largely due to empathy they feel for other wait staff. People who grew up ugly are prone to have some empathy for the downtrodden in general. I can’t prove this last assertion, but it’s something that I’ve consistently observed.

The beautiful people of the world, specifically “pretty girls”, will always have someone to open doors for them and pay their credit card bills insofar as their looks are maintained. But they’ll never listen to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” and feel the weight of the world pressed against their head. They will, however, have sex with the person paying the aforementioned credit card bill and probably have a lot of pretty babies, just like they were as kids. That will be the crowning achievement of their life: spawning. But hey, look at the bright side of things. At least there’ll be plenty of open seats at that number theory lecture.

Glad I Was an Ugly Child, Part I

Growing up can be tough. I remember that there were plenty of TV shows to remind me of this as I aged: Different Strokes, The Wonder Years, Family Ties and more. Many of these programs recycled the same predictable plots and dealt with familiar coming of age issues like bullies, drugs and finding first love. Something that these shows didn’t really touch on was growing up as an ugly little kid. From Kevin Arnold to “What you talkin’ bout” Arnold, all the young people in these shows were at least cute back in the day.

Almost by definition, many kids did in fact grow up ugly. I should know, because I was one of them. This isn’t fishing for compliments. This is mainly my reaction to photos of my youth; it’s hard to argue with empiric evidence like that. It didn’t help that my parents were always telling me how handsome I was while they dressed me in clothes that the Salvation Army wouldn’t accept as a donation. Mainly for little boys, it’s also true that many of these ugly children are also not the most athletic. In my case I was short and exceptionally frail. This combination of ugly facial attributes, out of date clothes and complete lack of athletic talent led to a rough upbringing.

At least I wasn’t alone; many of my friends growing up were also unattractive and bad at sports. Incidentally, almost all of my friends were also Jewish, which further isolated us from the rest of the school. Then one day something happened that would literally set us aside from our classmates. Turns out my friends and I did very well on the state IQ tests and the 7 or 8 of us were put in “Special” math and reading classes with different books and everything. Intelligence is no doubt a multifactorial trait with genetics, upbringing and many other features interacting. But I really think that my friends and I were pushed, or in the least nudged in this direction as direct consequence of our ugliness.

Ugliness was the main reason we felt isolated from our peers and it was one of the reasons we found each other in the first place. It makes sense that ugliness enhanced our introversion. We weren’t chasing girls, as they would have nothing to do with us. And we didn’t excel at any of the accepted sports (does Ping Pong count?). But damn we were good at pre-algebra. That’s where most of our focus was concentrated. It wasn’t just about studying either. We developed deep, lifelong interests in a diverse range of subjects from art and music to chemistry and electronics. Luckily we had each other so we could discuss these things and learn from one another. The athletic and attractive kids had no such company.

I’d like to think that at some point Brendan Doyle, the quarterback of my HS football team, picked up T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land after a scrimmage and contemplated the futility of mankind. Instead I’m sure he spent that time honing his skills at throwing a leather ball with great accuracy and speed. Perhaps that skill, throwing the leather ball, will be of huge utility at some stage of life. Maybe in a different state of life altogether, like at the gates of heaven if you have to hit a moving target at 30 yards with a football I’m most certainly hell bound. I have no idea what Brendan Doyle does now, but I bet it has nothing to do with football. And I bet he still hasn’t read The Waste Land. Which is ironic, given the title and what I imagine he’s done with the past 30 years.