Model Paulina Porzikova reflects on the privilege that comes with being beautiful—and the obligation to wield it virtuously.
This essay is adapted from the chapter "The Responsibility of Beauty" from Paulina Porzikova's memoir,"Easy for you to complain about the system now that you aren’t an 'it' girl—but you had no problem making millions of dollars, enjoying your celebrity, and making millions of young girls feel ugly and unworthy for decades.
Her question made me feel defensive. It seemed like she assumed that there was a responsibility to beauty—that beauty was a gift to be used virtuously, for moral good. But does being beautiful mean that you have a greater responsibility to be virtuous? By that same logic, would someone less beautiful have less responsibility to be virtuous?
People seem to understand that being beautiful is neither an accomplishment nor a fault. It is a gift. Generally, if you are given a gift or something of great value, your responsibility is to make use of it. When a person is born with an athletic or artistic ability and becomes a celebrated athlete or artist, we don’t shame them for using their gift.
Being seen as beautiful is all about being in the right place at the right time with the right attributes. Had you plunked me down a century earlier, I would have been a sallow, forbiddingly tall, and angular woman with few marriageable prospects. After all, Van Gogh had died penniless, unable to sell much of his art.
Who wins the race when we’re so busy knocking one another down? Most likely the very people and systems who set the race up in the first place. Who benefits from our insecurities of being too fat, too hairy, too dark, too old? The companies that make money selling us the products to “fix” it all. I contributed to the system, the one that set up the race by selling those very products. I had done so by accepting and using the gift I had been given.
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