Who Said Ugly?
The other day I watched a cartoon with my baby that had these characters I thought were very ugly.
Every time I see cartoons with characters that in my opinion are ugly, I wonder what the producers were thinking.
Then on this particular day, I decided to probe the thought further, and asked myself, if we can assume that most of these cartoons are products of research on what would be entertaining to the target audience, then the producers of cartoons with ugly characters must have a reason or at least a justification for their choice of appearance for the characters in their cartoon.
So I figured that they must have realized that what matters more to children are the bright colours, the pace of action, and the sounds that are pleasant to baby ears.
Then it occurred to me: BABIES DON”T KNOW UGLY!
We were not born with a beauty or ugly detector. We grow up to learn these things from the people around us and the media in all its forms (traditional, social, print, etc.)
So I became perturbed about the fact that this recognition of beauty and ugly may be the very thing affecting our ability to be accommodating of others; to embrace diversity; and to be genuine in our dealings with people who fit into our definition of ugly for one reason or the other.
Think back to times when you thought a thing or a person was ugly, and try to imagine how differently you would have acted had you not put them into the ‘ugly box’ in your mind’s filing system.
My commitment is that I will not contribute to the already large collection of ways by which we have defined people as ugly, and will encourage others not to do so.
If anything, we didn’t choose our looks and should be accepting of all God’s human creation as being perfect even as He is.
Think back to times when you thought a thing or a person was ugly, and try to imagine how differently you would have acted had you not put them into the ‘ugly box’ in your mind’s filing system.
I'm sure you will have a different view of what's ugly and what's not when you read this article.
