In The Eye Of The Beholder

A few months ago an online dating agency, BeautifulPeople.com, I think it was, decided that some of their clients were not, well, beautiful enough.  They kicked about 30,000 people off their site but, in a belated gesture of goodwill, decided to offer these people counselling.  I wasn't on the site myself, for reasons that we really shouldn't go into, but if I had been I guess I'd have been amongst those being ushered away with a blanket over my head.

In The Eye Of the Beholder

I wanted to be one of the beautiful people,

And last week that’s what I was.

Now I’ve found out I’m too ugly,

Well – I guess it’s their loss.

Did my big thighs,

Lead to my demise?

Or was it the tattoos,

That caused the “refuse”?

Or perhaps I’m somehow deformed?

Not properly “normed”?

Too short to be sought,

Too old to be sold.

Or is it because I’m too tall,

That caused me to fall?

Is it my poor looks,

My nips and my tucks,

Or just my sagging buttocks?

I know I’ve got a short neck,

And I can look a bit of a wreck,

But what the heck!

Did they have to say I looked like Shrek?

So, I’m no longer under their Radar.

Under their net I’ve not tripped.

They say they’ve tightened their criteria,

And their standards haven’t slipped.

But let’s get to the nitty-gritty:

I know I’m not that pretty,

But I don’t look that shitty –

Can’t they have some pity?

 

What is it they’re building online?

A place selective and all snooty,

Where difference is excluded,

And the only pass-book is beauty?

This ghetto of symmetrical features,

Can never reach us.

This apartheid of self-image,

What does it teach us?

This discrimination,

Against different genes,

Can only lead to elimination -

And we know what that means.

They need to take care,

Before this nightmare,

Becomes more than a game.

For dating and mating,

With too many of their own kind,

Will produce offspring that all look the same.

If they persist,

It can only assist,

The narcissist,

To bouts of further preening.

But I think you all take my meaning:

They need to alter their screening.

We need to celebrate the differences,

That make us all what we are.

The good, the bad and the ugly,

Should all get over the bar.

The long, and the short and the tall,

And tolerance of what counts as “fair”.

Some of us might be very handsome,

But others come with lots of nose-hair.

So let’s cease this paranoia,

And let’s all be bolder.

I know I’m no oil-painting,

But isn’t beauty in the eye of the beholder?

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2011