Are You Pretty Or Ugly? (Be Honest)

Hi everyone, it's Matthew Hussey here. This is Love Life. Today we're talking about this strange phenomenon that's out there right now, which is young teenage girls posting videos on YouTube asking the question, am I pretty or ugly? And if you actually look these up, many of them finish with in brackets, please be honest. Now, when I first saw this, I mean, I'm sure most people, when they first see this, if they're of any reasonable age or intelligence or maturity, think this is really disturbing. And they question why this is happening. And of course, the comments on these videos vary radically. You've got the comments from people who say, you stopped valuing yourself like this. This is crazy. You're beautiful. You shouldn't be asking strangers opinions on this. Other people say, hey, you're beautiful and just end up making it something that is validating for them. So then it repeats the process because everyone thinks, well, if I'm going to get comments saying I'm beautiful, I'm going to do this more often. Other people say, oh my God, you're so ugly. And that's probably the polite end of the spectrum. It gets far worse than that. So why are people doing this? I think firstly, there are any number of unoriginal arguments about this, about, you know, we're a beauty obsessed culture. You can go down the route of saying how technology is just ruining the world and our teenagers and our young ones and how terrible that is. You can go down the route of saying kids are growing up too fast these days. And look how kids are so different from how they used to be. They used to be worried about what game they were going to play in the garden or what tree they were going to climb. And now they're worried about how beautiful they are and posting it on YouTube. There are many unoriginal arguments about this. For me, what strikes me as perhaps the most scary part of this is how we seem to be unable to educate these people on where real value comes from. And I don't mean from the point of view of saying, well, your value isn't in your looks. Your value is from something else. So, you know, everyone's beautiful inside. I don't mean in that cliched way. I actually mean in a real world sense of when you grow up. I recently read an article where someone defined the difference between a child and an adult as being an adult sheds the insecurity of the child because they understand what really does bring value in life. And we seem to be failing to educate young people on how you actually bring value in life and what will end up being valued when they start to grow up. And this beauty obsession of young girls saying, am I pretty or am I ugly, shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what's going to be important later on. Because if you think about it, even in a relationship, because I know there are going to be people whose cynical sides are going to say, yeah, Matt, but when people grow up, looks are still really important. But actually, if you look at most relationships, I've never known a guy who will just be miserable with someone for the rest of his life who's really hot. I've never known it. Guys leave those people. They don't stay in those relationships. And it's also that there's that great Alfie quote from the original Alfie where he said, whenever you see a beautiful woman, there's a guy who's sicker, shaggier. And it's an interesting quote because although it sounds misogynistic, it's so true. Beauty never kept anyone around when they weren't happy outside of that. The fact is we need to bring value in a to other people. What ways do we make the world a better place? What things do we create? All of those things bring value to the table. Beauty is one way that people bring a very superficial form of value, but there are so many other ways to bring value. I often think it would be interesting if we lived in a world where everyone was born looking exactly the same. You were born looking exactly the same as everyone else, but you got better looking by the more value that you added to the world and you got uglier when you added less value to the world. That to me would be a far more interesting take because every beautiful person you saw, you'd go, God, they're an amazing person. Look how much value they must be adding to the world. They're gorgeous. We don't live in that world. And by the way, that's really for many beautiful people because they'd be really ugly if we relied on that. The fact is many beautiful people need their beauty because for them in their lives, it's their biggest asset or it's the one that uses their biggest asset. But what we have to do is get back to a place of not firstly, it's easy to blame technology. It's easy to get angry at YouTube. It's easy to get angry at magazines or every advertiser out there who places all this emphasis on beauty. But the fact is it really comes down to education. How much can you educate the person that you care about that their real value isn't going to come from the way they look? Their real value is going to come from what they bring to the world. I want to see YouTube videos where kids are posting speeches that they make at school and they're saying, what did you guys like about this speech and what did you guys think was terrible? And someone says, well, you have this nervous tick you do with your hands. And that person goes, oh, I didn't realize I had that nervous tick. And they change it. I'd love to see people posting a joke online and saying, is this funny or is it not? I'd love to see people showing their value and then actually getting people to rate that, because at least then they're getting people to rate something that A, took some form of creativity or effort and B, they can actually change. They actually have some control over. That's where real empowerment comes from. Not asking strangers to comment on your face and seeing if they like it or not, which is the most absurd form of value in the world. So that's it for me today. If you like this, share it through Facebook or Twitter. This has been Love Life. I'm excited to be with you each time. And if you like this, also tweet us, hashtag Love Life. I'll see you in the next episode. Take care, guys.