Belleza

All the people who I have had the misfortune of running up against have been hideously ugly. More than that, they have lacked beauty in their lives. From the bug-eyed, lifts-sporting presenter to the wretched stalker born with an eye on his nose, from the creepy Australian scoutmaster troll to the wide-arsed Marxist propagandist.

These individuals would hardly stand out amidst the orcs on a Lord of the Rings set. Fortunately, only one has procreated and, like the proverbial stopped clock, even he has had the good sense to avoid the family tradition of first cousin-boffing.

At the end of the day does it really matter if you have been battered by the ugly stick?

It matters when you are trying to find a mate. Apart from that, it seems fairly irrelevant:

There are some mugshots floating around of some stunningly beautiful lifers. Hideousness hardly hindered Shane MacGowan or Marty Feldman. Macaulay Culkin’s ugliness set in after he had become a millionaire actor. Angelina Jolie’s beauty emerged after years as an unremarkable, pimply adolescent.

Beauty should not be discarded – it should be treasured – by all of us, and that includes by today’s ugly, woke Puritans. Who, apart from beauty cancellers, wants to see ugliness in skill-free pursuits such as modelling in Vogue or reading the BBC News on a teleprompter?

Shakespeare was right when he wrote that:

‘Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good; A shining gloss that fadeth suddenly; A flower that dies when first it ‘gins to bud, A brittle glass that’s broken presently’

So, let us appreciate beauty’s fleetingness.

Better to have been beautiful or lived in the presence of beauty than to have become embittered, insecure and hateful – stewed in ugliness – like those whose mirrors must be formed from shatterproof glass, or held together by Sellotape.