The Eye of the Beholder

This weekend was the Twilight Zone Marathon; two days of non-stop episodes from the original series. I was mesmerized for hours. I love The Twilight Zone. It is social commentary at its best. Who needs PBS documentaries and social psychologists when you have Rod Serling to remind you of how fragile individuals and societies are? Each episode brings to light the ramifications of our own fears, greed, and prejudices. Each one is a thirty minute crash course in social psychology.

To me, one of the most poignant episodes is the one entitled “The Eye of the Beholder”.  The episode opens with a woman lying in a bed, her face completely bandaged. She is distraught, having undergone repeated medical treatments in an attempt to make her face “acceptable” to society. She desperately pleads with the nurse, begging her for details of when they will remove the bandages and will be able to determine if the treatments have been a success. She tells the sympathetic nurse that, all her life, all she has wanted was for people not to turn away in horror when they saw her. Who can’t relate, on some level, to that type of pain? The twist, of course, is when the bandages are removed to reveal a stunningly beautiful young woman. As the camera pans out, we see that all of those around her are hideously ugly; deformed and pig-like. She, in her youthful beauty, is the aberration. 

While this episode says a lot about the cultural pressures to be physically attractive, its real social import comes in the words of the snout-faced leader seen delivering a political speech at the end of the episode:

“We know now that there must be a single purpose! A single norm! A single approach! A single entity of peoples! A single virtue! A single morality! A single frame of reference! A single philosophy of government! We must cut out all that is different like a cancerous growth! It is essential in this society that we not only have a norm, but that we conform to that norm! Differences weaken us! Variations destroy us! An incredible permissiveness to deviation from this norm is what has ended nations and brought them to their knees! Conformity we must worship and hold sacred! Conformity is the key to survival!”

Do you agree with him? Don’t be so quick to say no…

Too many of us have fallen victim to the insidious message of the snout-faced leader, and we aren’t even aware of it. While there are many of us who would quickly denounce the idea that we would discriminate against someone because of their looks, race or physical handicap, we look at ourselves in a mirror and feel ashamed of what we see there: we are prejudiced against our own faces, our own skin, our own body shape. We are hypocrites, each of us. Differences are fine as long as we’re not the ones being “different”. 

In many ways I wish I could get back my younger years. Not because I want fewer wrinkles, better muscle tone and a trim figure, but because I feel like I was too unforgiving to the girl that I was. I wish I could give her a chance to live free of the unrealistic pressure I put her under. I wish I could go back and have a second chance to focus on the things that really matter; to live free of the pursuit of someone else’s idea of perfection. But I can’t go back, and neither can you. Time flows in one direction. The attitudes we hold today, toward ourselves and others, are the only ones we can change. If we are serious about personal growth and excellence, we have to begin rooting out our prejudices, and we have to start with the ones we hold against ourselves.  

If you want to see your true beauty, you are going to need to look into the eyes of someone you have made feel accepted and loved, just the way they are. A mirror will only be helpful if the grateful eyes you happen to gaze into are your own. Beauty is, after all, in the eye of the beholder.