Why is it OK to be mean to the ugly?

Is it OK to be mean to the ugly? 

Let me tell you an encounter. I went to NTUC recently and standing there was a young male adult with long flowing hair chatting up a young lady, with nice features, and shapely too. 

They seemed to be in the flow of things, with body language like tuning fork. Oh, the young man was supposed to ensure that patrons tap in with their TraceTogether app and record their temperature. 

Then, comes me; the dull looking, visibly hunch and bespectacled man of 51 years old - recently spotted with an unsightly tummy. I was there to buy newspapers. 

And as I approached the young man, I realised I didn’t bring my handphone and couldn’t tap in. So, I asked him for a favour. I asked him whether he could buy the papers for me. I said I can pass him the money as I wait outside. 

He took a quick glance at me and said, “no, no.” That was it. He then returned to the conversation with the lady. They were talking about why it is important to bring one’s TraceTogether app, reminding me to bring it the next time. I smiled and nodded, can’t argue with that. And they returned to other topics, chatting heartily. 

I decided to go to 7-11 to get my morning fix instead. I find the attendants there more to my age. And we click better. 

As I walked away, with their giggling behind me, I wonder, if I had been more attractive, less physically challenged, will I get the favour I wanted? 

I guess it is what it is. And, the lesson? 

Well, I should have brought my TraceTogether app...what was I thinking. That young man was just doing his job...and stop wondering Mike. If you were any uglier, with a TraceTogether app, he will still let you in, so you can get that darn morning paper, and walk out with your head held high. 

This brings me to the paper this morning, written by the effervescent David Brooks, titled “Why is it OK to be mean to the ugly?”

He wrote: “This is puzzling. We live in a society that abhors discrimination on the basis of many traits. And yet one of the major forms of discrimination is “lookism”, prejudice against the unattractive. And this gets almost no attention and sparks little outrage. Why?”

(I believe at this point, all the unattractive people reading that line, me included, are saying a good amen to that). 

Well, it is what it is, right? Who can resist taking a second and third look at something or someone beautiful? 

With a better informed and educated population, we can say that we are now less superficial, and going for natural beauty. But the ugly reality is that we spend a whole lot of unnatural effort and time sprucing up for that look of natural beauty. 

One model said that to achieve natural beauty, she has to spend about two hours and two hundred dollars. Alas, even going for that plain humble look costs a lot. 

So, what is beauty anyway? 

It’s commensurability. It’s proportionality. And if you have every body part that is correspondingly matching, with one side of the face symmetrical with the other side, and curves and muscles studiously congregating at the right places, with the right height to boot, you will be honoured or rewarded in our society with, as David Brooks puts it, likeability (esp. from jury and future employers), competency, intelligence, first-class treatment, employment at first glance (I mean, first interview), earn much more, and wildly adored with thousands of “Likes” (tell me, which member of BTS is ugly?).

And we all know about power play. One sure fire way to boost up your image is for a CEO or leader to be seen surrounded by high heeled attractive staff. That is what I call value adding, or value flogging. 

But, let me end with another encounter. It is in a book “Survival of the Prettiest” by Nancy Etcoff. It is about a famous author Mary Ann Evans. You know her by her pen name, George Eliot. A brilliant writer indeed, but she was called “hideous” and “ugly”. 

And of all the charming gentlemen in the world, she fell in love with Herbert Spencer, “a man who wrote tracts about the importance of physical beauty.” 

He refused to marry her because of her looks. Yet, George Eliot stayed with him till his death. Eventually, as an old woman, she married a handsome man twenty years younger than her. And it is undeniable that Eliot wrote “some of the most profound novels in the English Language.”

Henry James met her in her fifties and this is what he wrote about her to his father: -“She is magnificently ugly - deliciously hideous. She has a forehead, a dull grey eye, a vast pendulous nose, a huge mouth, full of uneven teeth, and a chin and jaw-bone quo n’en finnissent pas...Now in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which, in a few minutes, steals forth and charms the mind, so that you end as I ended, in falling in love with her.”

He added: “”She conveyed an underlying world of reserve, knowledge, pride, and power. She has a larger circumference than any woman I have ever seen.””

This is what Eliot said: “All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women and children - in our gardens and in our houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion but in the secret of deep human sympathy.”

Well, deep human sympathy it is. For the unattractive, there is always that depth we can develop, that resilience we nurture, and that shared humanity of brokenness, even the most beautiful amongst us cannot escape from. 

Yes, beauty is skin deep, ugliness may be bone-deep, but that shared broken humanity is soul deep. It will of course take time to cultivate within us, and to know another beyond his/her appearance. 

And maybe, if that NTUC attendant gets to know me, if we too share a dialogue together, he might just spare the time to do me that favour after all, and buy me that paper.

 

Race Issue : thee Parkash Saga 2.

 

Tan Boon Lee. He’s educated. He’s a lecturer. He’s unrepentant. About one week ago, he told one Parkash off that he is preying on Chinese girls, and her parents are disgraced. 

He lectured at Ngee Ann Poly. He is an engineer. Now, Tan has not only made racist insults, he is also against religion. And usually, students have fond memories of their teachers, but not for Tan. 

After his public fiasco with Parkash and his girlfriend, his student, Ms Nurul Fatimah Iskandar, 22, came forward to tell ST that 4 years ago, Tan “opened websites about Islam and explained why he didn’t agree with certain Quranic verses. He then singled (Nurul) out, and tried to start a debate on the topic. It didn’t help that (Nurul) was the only Muslim student in class and (she) sat in the front row.”

Mm...there’s nothing wrong with an open and goodwill discussion, but Tan, who was Nurul’s lecturer and being much older than her (he’s 60 now), should have known that the context or setting is wholly inappropriate, and his tactics are underhanded and smacks of a bully, putting a minority lady sitting in front on the spot. 

Mind you, Tan also made disparaging comments about Christianity in class, according to one Instagram user. That caused an outrage amongst the students. 

Nurul said she didn’t speak up because he was her lecturer and he was the same person grading her. She didn’t want to jeopardise her chances of getting a scholarship. This was four years ago. 

While Ngee Ann Poly had suspended Tan, and said that it has a zero tolerance approach on such racist conduct from their staff, Nurul said she “finally mustered the courage to send an e-mail to the school about what happened. She never got a response.”

Another former student was asked by Tan to take off her hijab in class. She said: “The hijab that I am proud of wearing became something that I felt ashamed of when he was around.”

Lesson? I guess there is no smoke without fire. Tan is basically hardcore, and he is proud about it. I would expect a person of such credentialed standing, teaching in a tertiary institution that aims to open hearts and minds, to not just teach with knowledge, but character, understanding and humility. 

It is one thing to inspire your students, give them the tools to learn the trade, and prepare them for the world out there. It is another thing altogether for Tan to humiliate and degrade. As a senior person holding such revered authority, Tan had abused it because he cannot accept that he can be wrong. I believe being right for him is an obsession and a form of prided exhibitionism. 

And although he is helping the police to investigate, which I felt was a clear-cut case as shown in the video, he never once came out to say that he is sorry. That is, sorry for accusing a stranger for being a predator and the girl for being a disgrace to her parents. 

Tan in fact reminded me of the ebenezer scrooge who despises Christmas. However, in his case, he is a Scrooge who despises any alternative views that are against his own. He is so firmly entrenched in his high tower of confirmation bias that he has no patience for anyone who holds another view. 

Maybe the many years of lecturing, being placed in a pedestal position where his young students are often made to submit to his warped ideas on race and religion, has made and defined the man for who he is today. It is either my way or the highway. 

And of peculiar interest for me is that Nurul did complain four years ago. She did write the email to the school. But she said she did not get a reply from the school. I think Ngee Ann Poly will need to reply to that. 

Let me just say here that I know it is difficult to ensure her many lecturers make a conscious effort to draw the line when it comes to race and religion. And it is expected that some of them may just cross the guarded threshold once in a while. 

But for someone like Tan, it is much more than occasionally stealing away moments to cross the line. His conduct, in public and classrooms, was and is one where he openly crossed it, pitched a tent on the other side, and then proudly hurled stones at those who conscientiously abided by the respected line. Some of whom were even his vulnerable students.

 

Though we ought to give the respected institution a benefit of a doubt, there is always that lingering thought that at most times, they may feel that Tan is up to his antics again, and it’s thus better to just let dead dogs lie than to stir the hornet’s nest of negative publicity concerning the possible reality that amongst her stable of lecturers, they may have unwittingly allowed a self-smug, unyielding, and self-referential staff in her payroll, and freely roaming in her backyard.

 

Race Issue: the Parkash Saga 1

I saw the video. It’s close to 10 mins. And I applaud Mr Parkash’s patience. He dealt with the Chinese man as kindly as kindness goes. At one point, he did call him an idiot. But I guess he was still unpacking the moment in the best way he knew how. And idiot comes in many forms. 

That real-time video garnered enough attention that even drew in a few ministers to openly register their disapprobation on social media. 

Ministers Shanmugam said Singaporeans must not be xenophobic. Dr Janil Puthucheary said that the video shows “blatant racism and bigotry”. And MP Leon Perera was encouraged by the many likeminded netizens who supported Prakash, and are against the Chinese man’s words and conduct. 

Here’s a little backdrop. 

The Chinese man accused Parkash of “preying on a Chinese girl” and assumed blatantly that “Chinese don’t like it.” He pointed at Parkash’s girlfriend and said that she’s a disgrace. He even blamed her parents, saying that they too are a disgrace. That seemed to unhinge Parkash as he confronted him - yet maintained his cool.

At most parts of the video, the Chinese man was incoherent. I couldn’t understand his idea of racism. When Parkash called out his remark as racist, he replied: -

“You are the example of racism. You don’t see a Chinese guy preying on an Indian girl?” (Actually, Prakash is half-Indian and half-Filipino and his girlfriend is half-Singaporean Chinese and half-Thai. But, I don’t think it mattered to that Chinese man. He sees what he wants to see). 

And I don’t know what he meant by preying. But, I have seen many marital breakdowns and talked to couples in courtship, and there are just as many Chinese husbands/boyfriends preying on their spouses/girlfriends as there are such behaviour in other relationships of different races. I have also heard of Indian/Malay spouses exploiting their same-race partners too. 

So, when it comes to taking advantage of your better half, each race has its own fair share of so-called “predators” (in the proportionate numbers). Bottomline: all this has nothing to do with the colour of your skin. It’s about the content of your character, as MLK would put it. 

Yet, however much I extoll the virtue of being colour-blind, the reality is that the Chinese man is not the only person in Singapore who carries that attitude. This tribalistic mindset is bubbling in the surface of our society, and for some, it takes a pandemic-like trigger to flush it out. Most are just publicly embracing, but privately distancing, that is, you can be my close friend, but don’t get too close with my daughter. 

In fact, I see the man as being very cocksure about himself, possessing a high self-regard for the purity of his race, and this is shown in the manner he spoke to Parkash. 

He was like giving Parkash advice to reform himself because in his eye, Parkash was just wrong, period, regardless of how he treats or loves his girlfriend. It is highly unlikely that that would matter much to him anyway. For he is not going to care about that, because for him, many things defines Parkash (an almost perfect stranger to him). 

First, for him, Parkash’s skin-color spoke louder than his words and actions. Second, his unconventional hairdo might have set the contours of the stereotype of his kind. Third, his public display of affection for his girlfriend was nothing to him but the flirty acts of a playboy who has ulterior motives in his mind. Fourth, even his reasoning with him seemed like an effort of a predator trying to cover his exploitative tendency. 

And I can go on and on, but my seemingly-contrived point is that the man would rather spare no effort to guard, reaffirm and protect his inflammatory bias/prejudices against Parkash and his girlfriend than to take the time to know the couple, their background, their love story, and their struggles before coming to an opinion about them. 

I guess that would take too much effort on his part, and it would thus be much easier to assume that, if you have darker skin, you have darker motive. Rule of thumb; rule of character. 

And most times, we allow the shadow of our prejudices to keep us in the dark prison of our reeking attitude. For the chain of such bondage is the false security of our heritage. 

But, the problem with such an attitude is well spelt out by author Isabel Wilkerson, in her book “Caste:The Orgins of Our Discontents”: - 

“The tyranny of caste is that we are judged on the very things we cannot change: a chemical in the epidermis, the shape of one’s facial features, the signpost on our bodies of gender and ancestry - superficial differences that have nothing to do with who we are inside.”

Well, I am sure that that man does not want his daughter to be judged at her workplace by her gender. Or his son to be judged by his looks. Neither himself being judged by his age when a fresh undergrad replaces him from a job he has been working for four decades. 

Alas, a little self-awareness will go a long way, and for some people, it may take them on a journey that might just change their lives for the better.