In “Beauty And The Beast,” an enchantress says that beauty is within. In “Liar Liar,” Jim Carrey says to his son, when he says this, “That’s just something that ugly people say.”

Both are wrong.

We are dealing here with two completely different and completely unrelated things. On one side we see physical attractiveness. On the other side we see goodness of character. I see no reason why the two should relate to one another at all. Some people will have both, some people will have one or the other, and some will have neither.

We see many claim such things as that physical beauty is somehow incompatible with spirituality or intelligence or personal strength. They obviously haven’t met many Russian women. The people who have such beliefs have no business claiming to be spiritual or intelligent. They are driven by greed and hatred. And their effect on society is poisonous.

I have loved a number of women who were both beautiful and good people. I stick up for them as a labour of love. Their concerns become my concerns, and their battles become my battles.

When I was writing in defense of beauty I was told that I was thinking with my penis and that I was a sham. I have no sexual feelings for women in my family, but they are all beautiful. They are also good people. Most of them are also spiritually developed. They, like many women from Russia, are a refutation by counterexample of this claim.

If the point is that people should pay more attention to people’s character as opposed to their appearance, then that claim is correct. If the claim is that there is something incompatible between inner beauty and outer beauty, then that claim is completely wrong. I see no reason why the two should have a relationship, either a positive one or a negative one. We are dealing with two completely different things. See both for what they are and act accordingly.

Ilya Shambat
https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought