The Stigma of Uncomeliness

Wording is so delicate to express these thoughts about how the world’s people see others, and how we see ourselves. I read once a story which called it the “Science of Beauty.” People often gravitate to beauty and shun uncomeliness, whether we are aware of it or not.

What is the opposite of beauty and how can we talk about the painful life of being not beautiful? Many people face challenges in life and need help to overcome life’s obstacles. Whether there is a physical or mental challenge does not matter. What matters is whether or not the person can face the stigma that comes with being ‘less than’ or ‘different.’

Many elites, I am sure, would rather keep more folks as worker bees, and they speak of education for everyone as a socialist ploy. But the universities and colleges make fortunes and they do not want education available to the population at large; the issue of education is about money.

But this child, these children, of modern poverty, have disadvantages in their place in society. They will remain uneducated with no prospects for life, and on top of it all some carry the stigma of uncomeliness. At the very least we must educate ourselves and each other.

Does heartbreak from bullying become depression? Does self harm come from being accused of moral failures? What if the not beautiful is something on the inside? Does the lives with obstacles have to accept failure and be crushed under the weight of their own stigma of being unsomething?

Does stigma own a human being? Does society have a right to tell anyone who cannot fit in in some way that they must go away, leave the mainstream? Or, should we all work to help each other and hope society will provide for and include all its people?

We can see in today’s mania with, and for, knowledge, our society missed the calling to educate. Education for the masses is not socialism, it is not left wing; education is the only hope that society has to arm people against false information. People must know how to research for themselves. People must have the means to survive and this will require some skills that we are not all born with. Learning is one of the skills to be born with.

Education about stigma can be painful, even to talk about, much less to confront. Lives carry stigma like a weight about the neck, we must help others with their burdens.

People are starving for knowledge, people are broken from uncomeliness, in some way. To help, maybe be that person in your mind, privately, just yourself. Think of that person and look in the mirror. Carry all their so-called shortcomings and feel their stigma. Look past your own biases of what a person should be, do, and look like.

Work to see all people with mercy and kindness and share with them hope. Help see the limitations and shortcomings of beauty. Open yourself to see how adoration of beauty can limit how you live in the world and interact with other people. Be open to see how beauty can really be quite ugly.