Being Disadvantaged (and insecurity in general)

An incident last night reminded me of a conversation I had with Vaughan a couple of weeks ago. We were discussing that time-old wonder of almost all couples being comparably good-looking. It's not uniformly true, I'm sure (I think I got the better end of the deal with Mike), but glancing around New York, I conclude the standard deviation is pretty small. I had always assumed that this was a simple evolutionary thing: you find the mate with the best looking face you can, and this pairs people up approximately according to looks. Vaughan mentioned a slightly different idea: the person who's the less attractive one in a couple with a large "looks gap" often becomes needy and clingy and constanty demanding of reassurance. This is a real drag on the better looking person and their relationship as a whole. If one person feels unworthy of the other person, the relationship can't work.

At first I couldn't believe that he was almost categorically putting the blame on ugly people. Then came last night's incident.

I was sitting on a reasonably crowded 6 train, and across from me, next to the door, was a woman with a cane, probably in her late 50s or early 60s. She had her cane somewhat precariously balanced on the pole next to the door. At one stop, a woman, probably around 35-40, walked on, brushed the older woman's cane and kept walking. Immediately the woman with the cane swoops down to pick it up and starts yelling at the younger woman. "Hey, when you knock over someone's cane you pick it up! Do you understand? Do you realize I can't walk without this cane? You have no respect for an older handicapped person! You young people, you don't have any manners. Schmuck! Bitch!" The other woman kinda muttered under her breath. But I was thinking, "Wow, this handicapped woman's a real dick!" Sure, it sucks to be disabled. Sure, that can piss you off and put you in a perpetually bad mood where you harass people on the subway in an obnoxiously loud voice and rude tone. But once, you're at that point, who cares if it's because you've suffered, you are legitimately being a dick! Perhaps this woman was sort of a pain beforehand, but I would guess that her disability exacerbated her irritable personality, as it would for many, many people.

And I believe this is the true ill done to people by having some disadvantage. The biggest problem with the handicap was not that she could walk, it's that it turned her into a genuinely unpleasant person. The problem with being physically unattractive is not that you're hard on the eyes, but rather that you become insecure about your looks and that affects all parts of your personality. I would say that Vaughan was probably right, to a degree. The less attractive people likely become worse boyfriends and girlfriends because they're insecure about their looks.

Insecurity is one of the most powerful forces. Any person who is fully secure comes off very, very well. Insecurities manifest themselves in so many little and big ways: arrogance, obnoxiousness, shyness, smugness, shyness with outbursts of smugness, fascism, whatever. Worst of all, I don't think there's any reliable method of eliminating insecurity. It's a lifelong goal, I suppose...