
By Dorothy Banaityte
Superficiality and obsession with beauty is often considered to be a modern invention boosted by the rise of Instagram posts, TikTok trends and celebrity culture. However, when looking back through time, society’s devotion to beauty runs deeper than just that. Going back to Greek statues or to the characters that we tell our stories about, physical beauty has always correlated to moral virtue and good character. How deep does our obsession with beauty truly go?
In literature, traces of this idea can be seen everywhere. In our oldest piece of Western literature, Homer’s Iliad, only two characters out of the staggering couple of hundreds of those named are described as ugly. Incidentally both the characters are also presented to lack common sense and moral values, and therefore are quickly killed as a consequence. In fairytales, which have now become deeply ingrained in our culture, the main hero is always virtuous, beautiful (or they become so by the end), and mostly unaware of it. The villain on the other hand is portrayed as having an unattractive appearance, doing bad deeds, and being conceited.
Moreover, we only value beauty up to the point that the object of the beauty becomes aware of it as well. The ‘good’ characters in stories do not care for their looks while their evil counterparts care too much: the step-sisters of Cinderella desperately try to appear beautiful yet fail while Cinderella is effortlessly so; as soon as Narcissus becomes aware of his beauty, he is doomed to only have the capacity to stare at his reflection; the ‘popular’ girl is mean and vain, while the protagonist is overlooked and holds ‘deeper’ values. The message is clear: a person is supposed to be attractive, but they should not appear as if they are trying to be so.
Coming back to the link between beauty and virtue, it is an inescapable one. We are less likely to link heinous crimes to good-looking and charismatic people and even when we do, we tend to be more forgiving. Ted Bundy, even after his execution for his serial murders, was able to garner a vast amount of attention on social media for his good looks in the present day. Before he was caught, he was able to avoid detection for many of the same reasons. It is a chilling thought that even after being aware of all of the crimes that Bundy had committed, people were unable to stop valuing his appearance.
In literature, the rise of the so-called “morally-grey” love interest usually means a person that is a ‘bad’ character, but is conventionally attractive, so the protagonist and audience alike are more lenient in their choice of whether to root for them. Consequently, a character’s moral degeneration is often shown by their loss of good looks. Think of Dorian Gray’s portrait becoming more and more hideous to mimic his crimes, or of the beast in Beauty and the Beast being transformed to a monster as a punishment for his cruelty. Not only do we value beauty, but we consistently expect a person’s outer appearance to reflect the level of their morality.
People excusing attractive characters in fiction does not necessarily translate to real life, but our constant link between beauty and moral goodness is telling of the emphasis we place on it as a society. Afterall, our works of fiction portray our outlook of the world, and the stories we tell showcase our principles to younger generations. The obsession with beauty is not only timeless, but it will also always be a too enticing idea to resist, as centuries of evidence suggest. Perhaps, when it comes down to it, all of us are far simpler creatures than we would like to admit, continuously losing ourselves in the face of beauty.
Image credits: Narcissus, Caravaggio 1597-1599. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica.