Just Like Us, Only Beautiful by Brad Fraser @ Xtra.ca

Fraser’s Edge / Are gays more obsessed with beauty?
Brad Fraser

In the early 1990s I had an agent in LA whose name, when mentioned, always elicited the same reaction: every person who knew him would say, “Isn’t he handsome?” Despite the fact he was also a smart, cultured man and a very ambitious agent, people commented on his perfect all-American face and hair — as well as his Olympian proportions.

An actress friend who performed in one of my plays in England is one of the most stunning beings I’ve ever set eyes on; she has honey-blonde hair, slightly vulpine features, a sparkling smile, dark-green eyes and a killer body. Over drinks one night I asked her about the best and worst things about being so beautiful. She said, “Everyone wants to fuck you,” making it clear that her statement covered both questions.

I have another friend who is a particularly cantankerous type when dealing with inept sales and service staff. During a particularly drawn-out saga concerning the construction of a custom cabinet for his home — the kind of experience that is filled with mistakes, misunderstandings and endless waiting periods — I overheard one of his phone calls with the cabinetmaker. When he ended the call I expressed my shock at his uncharacteristically reasonable tone. He looked slightly abashed and said, “You wouldn’t believe how fucking hot this guy is.”

Some suggest gay society is more obsessed with physical beauty than straight society, but I suspect, proportionately, it’s not much different. True beauty — the kind that blinds people to your other attributes, the kind that makes anyone you meet want to partake of sexual congress, the kind that cuts you a lot of slack and even compels people to give you things — is widely varied in appearance and relatively rare. Of course, there are highly attractive people made so as much by their personality and spirit as what they look like, but I’m talking about pure physical beauty here. The kind that creates movie stars and fashion models, the physical form that demands nothing more of itself than itself in order to be adored.

Not all people of great beauty become famous, because we each know a few of them carrying on with their everyday lives. But we also know, because we see evidence of it at every turn, that their beauty gives them an automatic advantage in most situations. Almost everyone, in some way or another, demurs to greater beauty even as we sometimes resent it.

Read the rest after the jump…

The advantage of beauty is that our eyes and brains like to linger on things they find pleasant to behold. With beautiful people there is no need to examine details in relation to one another; no need to discover the unique, to reconcile the odd, to redefine the unexpected and then evaluate them all in order to discover an interesting person. These are very different processes: the first akin to viewing a painting, the second akin to creating one. Both engage us but in different ways and for different reasons.

Anyone who works in a business that celebrates/exploits beautiful people learns very quickly that, for the most part, they’re just like anyone else. Very few of them play into the reductive stereotypes the media feeds us so we can feel better about ourselves. They have triumphs, make mistakes, fall down, get dumped and wallow in despair just like the rest of us. In the end beauty, like being really smart, having an affinity for numbers or being particularly gifted in recognizing and dealing with the needs of others, is just one advantage that, on its own, might not be enough to achieve everything one desires in life.

Beauty exacts a price. Assumptions about intelligence and self-obsession may be made. There are some who will jealously hate beautiful people for the way they look. As many beautiful members of both sexes will attest, constant sexual advances can become tedious or dangerous. Many beautiful women have been defiled by men who wanted to possess them. Many of the hottest men of the 1970s and ’80s were the first victims of the AIDS crisis. Not everyone wants to admire beauty. There are many who wish to destroy it, most especially time. Time is beauty’s greatest enemy and is always victorious.

So if you’re one of those young men or women out there feeling inadequate because you’re not as beautiful as the people everyone seems most interested in, take heart in the fact that, 20 years from now, when you’re comfortable in your body and with who you are, no one walking by you on the street will mutter sadly to their friend as they pass “He/she used to be so beautiful.”

Brad Fraser is a Canadian playwright. Fraser’s Edge appears in every second issue of Xtra.