Ugliness in Beauty

“You are so beautiful!” “Too bad you’re so ugly, inside.”

Have you ever noticed that things of beauty are not always good things?

A tornado, a beautiful and fearsome wonder, is the vilest of storms, wreaking destruction and devastation everywhere it goes. A rare book, bound in gilded pages and sumptuous leather, winds up being a dull read, or worse, complete trash. Maybe that beautiful garment you spent months contemplating turned out to be the most uncomfortable or painless to wear.

The blue jay is clothed in beautiful blue plumage, a rarity in animal coloring. The blue in its feathering is not actually that sharp blue. Their coloring is actually brown. Light refracts off their feathers, making them appear blue and more vibrant. The bluejay is a nice-looking bird. It rivals the cardinal in my opinion, and for many years, I favored it over the blood red bird. That changed when I discovered it is not a nice bird.

Blue Jays do not have a beautiful song. In fact, their sound is like the screeching of nails on a chalkboard. It is loud and almost offensive.

It is a very intelligent bird. It is capable of mimicking a hawk’s sounds. That skill is used to warn and to confuse other birds. The hawk-like squawk probably keeps others of its kind from their own territory.

The blue jay, part of the corvid family of birds, has the ability to solve problems and use tools, as well. It can pop pebbles into a vessel to bring the volume of the water inside it to a reachable level for drinking. It can use items in its environment to its benefit, such as leaves to rake items together or closer. Like many birds, blue jays have social systems and bonds, and ways of communicating with one another. It bonds with its family and can express emotions.

That being said, if the way they sound was the issue I have with it, I might be okay with that. The same goes for their intelligence. Neither of those traits bothers me. It’s their character that is ugly.

The blue jay has a diverse diet and eats nuts, bugs, and seeds. Many birds do, but the jay will actually remove the eggs of other birds to eat them. They are scavengers and self-serving.

That quality makes it ugly. It is cannibalistic.

This depiction of the blue jay is similar to what we see in society. In many cases, the most beautiful of us have some of the ugliest characters or hearts. How many times have you seen a drop-dead gorgeous woman, or a devastatingly handsome man, to discover that the minute they open their mouths, their personality is hideous? Conversely, there have been many people I have met, over the years, who were considered unattractive, and yet their manner or character made them more attractive, maybe even downright beautiful.

Sometimes I think about the adage, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. While it is true that we are the ones who perceive the beauty of others in our own minds, the slogan should be worded differently. There should be a but at the end of it, with the addition of “but beauty does not determine likability.”

If it were easy to see a person and know they are beautiful inside by their outward beauty, we would have a much easier time knowing. We would not waste time with people who are not good for us. I think of the abused woman, or the jilted man, who falls for a gorgeous person, and only later discovers the ugly truth of their attractive partner’s personality.

We see images on the screen every day of beautiful people. We fawn over them and later see that they are cruel or selfish people who are not worth our time.

A long time ago, I found this to be true in most cases, and that is when I changed tack. I chose not to immediately decide on a person’s beauty, based on their packaging, but to hold my belief of that appeal until I met their behavior or nature. Character and good looks do not always go hand in hand. I reserve judgment until I know a person well.

I don’t judge a book by its cover. I read a few chapters, and only then do I decide to keep reading or pass. I can still admire a gorgeous person, but I don’t have to have their ugliness in my life. The opposite is true as well. I can get to know a person who may be considered not at all attractive, and discover that they are the most beautiful person on the inside. That kind of beauty won’t change with time or deteriorate with the physical appearance with age. It is part of their makeup, their being. That quality is beautiful and makes a person beautiful beyond measure.