Thursday, August 14, 2008 . 9:28 AM

What is the world coming to?

I know that everyone is superficial. I have been guilty of the same charge on countless occasions, but it doesn't stop me from being judgemental. The whole episode about China using a subsitute for chubby-and-unattractive Yang Peiyi during the Beijing Olympics ceremony is the stuff reality is made of.

Let's take a look at the alleged Ugly and Pretty.



What the hell?

How can anyone look at Yang and see HIDEOUS written on it? She looks as a child should, bashful and sweet, radiating innocence in her pretty eyes. What's so wrong with looking like a kid? She's just 7 years old and probably untainted by the harsh realities of life. That is until the best thing that happened to her turned out to be the worst.

I hate to imagine how the organisers told her the bad news.

"Sorry, you're too ugly to be shown to the rest of the world, so we'll have to bring in someone else. Oh, by the way, she can't sing so we'll be using your voice. What do you mean why we're using her? Obviously because she's prettier and that's all we care about."

The confidence and self-image of a child, crushed so callously. And we wonder why our youths are so shallow nowadays. When you have shallow leaders setting such sterling examples, how can their people be expected to behave otherwise?

As if young people don't already have other issues to deal with, like 'Doing better than their peers in school'. Do they have to introduce the beauty competition so early on?

Give them a break. They'll find out how obsessed the world is with beauty soon enough. You need only to open the papers to see it. They probably already have a hint of it in school where teachers probably treat pretty kids nicer than plain ones.

All I'm asking is not to hit them over the head with the brutal truth.

And when they're all grown-up and can appreciate how 'ugly' they can, I ask that society doesn't judge when they decide to take charge of their own lives and undergo cosmetics surgery.

If by changing the size of your nose or dissolving a couple of inches off your waist, you can change your life, why not? And it's your life, no one else has the right to judge. They aren't the ones who have to look into the mirror everyday and they're not the ones who have to live your life - be it crappy or otherwise.

We're into free will right? Then I say give people the right to alter their bodies and stop judging them because they have the guts to do it. But, if you want to judge whether the surgery was a success or failure, then by all means.

I accept that people would inevitably say, 'She did her nose? The surgeon not so good ah?' but I can't stand the hypocrisy of 'She's quite pretty hor? Oh, the nose fake one ah? Eeeee... then not nice liao.'

What do you mean 'not nice'? A pretty face is a pretty face, how can a face initially judged as attractive suddenly not be when you find out that it's not God-given?

Besides, lots of hard work have gone in the man-made face that you look down your nose on. First, money has to be earned to pay for the freaking expensive surgery. Then the doctor has to do the work. Then the after surgery care. Think it's easy to be attractive?

Think again.

Being born pretty suddenly seems so unfair now, doesn't it? But, beauty doesn't last forever. If you want to extend the lifespan of your beauty, don't you need skincare? Isn't that man-made? What about cosmetics?

Let's face it. Nothing is natural anymore. So quit judging what's real and what's not.