Appearance

We know that the more comfortable we feel around someone, the less effort we will make about how we appear and conversely, the more anxious we are about the judgement of others, the more our reflection has the power to horrify us. The issue is never that of our appearance, it is about our sense of our vulnerability to humiliation. When we meet people who are perpetually sick with worry that they are not attractive enough, we should not rush in with physical compliments; this is only to foster and unwittingly reward an aggravating criterion of judgement. We should learn to spot the wound in their early relationships that have made it so hard for them to trust that they could matter to others in their basic state. And that therefore perpetually evokes in them an unflattering self-image. They are not 'ugly' per se, they were when it mattered left painfully unloved and ignored to an extent that they are liable never to have recognized or mourned adequately; their arrival in the world did not delight a few people as it should have done, and therefore need compassion, sympathy and emotional validation far more than they will ever require the tools of outward beautification. Feeling ugly stems from a deficit of love, never of beauty.