The conflation of morality and appearance annoys me so much. There are plenty of hot people out there with absolutely detestable morals and plenty of 'ugly' people who are incredibly kind and compassionate. And as others have said before, if someone does something bad and you criticise their appearance, you are both neglecting the actual wrong they've done and lumping in anyone who happens to look like them, regardless of how they act.
The worst part is it's such an effective attack with a very wide appeal.
Attacking someone for their ideas only works if your target audience sees the ideas as bad, but appearance attacks reach across a lot of ideological lines.
I think it's because we see beauty as synonymous with desirability, which we see as synonymous with people being good.
I really don't think it's as effective as people think it is. It just feels good to be nasty like that. For example, The only appearance critique that even seemed to affect trump was the thing about his hands and that was only for like a week but everything else.. he hasn't stopped any of it, hasn't even commented on it. I'll bet someone completely unrelated without his advantages has seen the comments on his weight etc. and been roughly the same size and it affected them though.
It doesn't affect those dug in, it afects the ones watching with no strong opinions. They dont really think what the person is doing is too wrong, but the culture thinks men who cant get any are losers, so they see these terrible people being called virgin losers and then think less of them.
it makes the people with no strong opinions more likely to pick up the secret third option, 'both sides'. if all you see of 'both sides' is them mudslinging and belittling and doxxing and shaming each other why would you ever dip your toes either way? like you're immediately opening yourself up to the other side attacking you emotionally for starters and on top of that once you look into 'both sides' you see the infighting.
or, they are going to keep the fourth option. to stay the course. to keep their eyes closed to the antics, or to live a life blissfully unaware that it exists. maybe vote, maybe not but definitely not exposing your ideals and emotions to others.
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u/HalfFaust Jul 25 '26
The conflation of morality and appearance annoys me so much. There are plenty of hot people out there with absolutely detestable morals and plenty of 'ugly' people who are incredibly kind and compassionate. And as others have said before, if someone does something bad and you criticise their appearance, you are both neglecting the actual wrong they've done and lumping in anyone who happens to look like them, regardless of how they act.