True Beauty

I'm kind of lacking ideas to blog about today. Maybe I've been watching too much reality TV (hello? can we say embarrassing guilty pleasure?). I was going to do one of those list-y blog-y things where in the end you tag 200 people who are supposed to do the list-y blog-y things on their respective blogs, but I don't even have an interest in that today. My blog will remain a list-y blog-y virgin for yet another day.



Yeah, it must by the reality TV. Has anyone seen that new "True Beauty" show? After I watched the first episode, I got off the couch and slipped on the pile of brains that fell out of my head during the hour that I had watched it. Did I watch it again the next week? Yes, yes I did. I could give my excuses (nothing else on TV, DVD player maddeningly broken), but that fact remains that I watched it.



The idea of the show is that the contestants think they are being judged on their outer beauty, but they are actually being judged their outer beauty plus on . . . something else. The hosts say it's actually their inner beauty, but I'm not sure that's what it is. Basically, the judges watch all of the hidden video of those two contestants looking for moments when they fail to throw away litter or they belch really loudly. The person who does the greatest number of bad things gets kicked off and the person who does the fewest number lives to belch another day.



So, you see, at the end of the show, we will know who of this group of reality TV wanna-be stars was either the person with the fewest awkward moments or was so fabulously gorgeous that their inner beauty was never called into question.



I happen to think that "True Beauty" is actually based on a concept with a lot of potential. I mean, inner beauty, that's a pretty interesting topic and arguably one that has been fascinating smart people (people like, ahem, myself) for ages and ages. College courses are taught on the subject (although they are typically given names like "Philosophy 301: Ethics"). If someone gives hugs and snuggles to a complete stranger who falls off his bike, what does that mean, really? If someone who hardly has any money donates some of it to a fake charity, what does that mean?



I would have failed a lot of the inner beauty tests that the show sets up. When grown man falls off a bike, I honestly think, "you know, the biggest injury that guy just took was the hit to his pride, so I'm just going to walk on by and pretend that he did that on purpose." When someone at a table in a public place asks me to donate to their charity, I occasionally donate, but I usually don't. There may be people who live in the middle of New York City who give money to everyone on the street who asks for it, but I'm not one of them.

When I tabulate the multiplicity of ugly points to my character, my failure to donate to table-charities actually falls pretty low on the list. In fact, my tendency to watch pathetic reality TV shows comes a lot higher on the list than my failure to donate. Do I have my priorities mixed up?