People Magazine's 100 Most Beautiful People List.

People Magazine has published their 100 Most Beautiful People List for 2009. Now, I haven't been one to pay particular attention to this list, in the past, but something made me take notice this time. The list is full of people who shouldn't be on it.

What does it mean to be one of the world's "most beautiful" people? Well, to me, it means to have such great visual appeal, in the aesthetic sense, that almost no-one approaches it. It is clear, however, that this is not what "most beautiful" means for People Magazine.

The biggest surprise of the list is that Michelle Obama, the First Lady, is featured. Now, I have nothing against the woman, but "most beautiful" she is most certainly not. She is well-dressed and well presented and smiles a lot...but that does not make her one of the world's most beautiful women. To say that she is diminishes all the other women who are more beautiful than her - who, in my estimate, would constitute about 45% of the world's women. Michelle Obama, is slightly above average in appearance - and no more. She does not, if one is being truthful, honest and unbiased, have the physical wherewithal to be accounted one of the world's most beautiful people.

There are other surprises, too. Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary, appears on the list, as does White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. Again, these men are well presented, and very polished...but that only makes them well presented and very polished, not "most beautiful" - though it has to be said that both are much better looking people than Michelle Obama, relative to other men. Perhaps this list should be renamed to: the Most Influential but Not Ugly, list, or The People we Most Need to Suck Up to list, or Well Dressed Famous People list.

Other inclusions in the list have more justification: Robert Pattinson, vampiric star of Twilight, has a place, as does Halle Berry. Also present are others, such as Angelina Jolie who is widely considered very beautiful but of whom I have never thought so (some of her features are disproportionate).

A walk down the high street of any major city in the world would reveal better looking people in half an hour, than are contained on this list. The only difference is that such "beautiful people" are unknowns. This People Magazine list is a meaningless annual rite, in that it does not live up to its name. It would be great if it did...it would then be truly of interest, to see who were the most beautiful humans on Earth. However, the Most Beautiful People list is not even remotely a catalogue of the world's greatest beauties. It is a catalogue of well presented famous people, nothing more. It is a list that confuses fame with beauty, that confuses being well-dressed, with beautiful, that confuses influence with being beautiful. Beauty does not come from fame, good clothes, or influence...beauty is in the person, innately, if it is there, at all. It comes from a perfect symmetry of the features, a balanced proportion of the body, a quality of skin and hair, an overall aesthetic perfection of form. It is something immediately obvious when seen - and it is also immediately obvious that quite a few of the Most Beautiful People, do not have it. The most obvious case is Michelle Obama who does not remotely qualify, in the Most Beautiful People category, if one were to be truly impartial. She belongs on other lists: lists of influential people, of well-connected people, of famous people...she does not belong on a Most Beautiful People list.

What worries me about such lists is that they tend to influence the way people think. A principle is at stake here, even though who is beautiful or not, is not a particularly important issue. The principle is that when accolades are given they should truly represent what they are stated to be. Otherwise, people get a distorted idea of the world. In this case, the Most Beautiful People list does not truly represent the world's most beautiful people - it represents a selection of well-presented famous people, at least one of whom is perfectly AVERAGE in appearance. To say that it is a true record of the world's most beautiful people is to lie to the world's people. This is unfortunate, for there are people who will read this list and believe it...they will not trust their own eyes, which might say otherwise, but will actually believe that not only is Michelle Obama, lucky enough to be First Lady, but that she is also lucky enough to be one of the world's top 100 most beautiful people.

In another sense, Michelle Obama's inclusion trivializes her position. Being First Lady should not be about being beautiful - it should be about her role in support of her husband's leadership of a great nation. That People Magazine think she must also be beautiful, is an illustration of what Americans think is important. For modern Americans, looking good is considered to be of immense value. It seems, from this example, that it is of more value than being married to a President and supporting him in his daily role.

I would like to see a very different kind of "Most Beautiful People" list. I would like to see a list populated not with well-dressed famous people...but the 100 people who are truly the world's most beautiful. I wonder how many of them would be completely unknown to the public before their inclusion? I strongly suspect that many of them would be. Now, that would be a list worth looking at.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Perez Hilton/Mario Lavandeira, blogger: the meaning of his success.

Perez Hilton, whose real name is the less euphonious, Mario Lavandeira, is one of the world’s most successful “bloggers”. I use the quotation marks because what he puts on his blog does not compare to what most serious bloggers are trying to do. In brief, Perez Hilton blogs about the doings of the famous – and has an undying interest in the trivial. His blog consists of everything an intelligent person wouldn’t want to know, about people an intelligent person wouldn’t want to know in the first place.

It worried me to learn that Perez Hilton’s eponymous website secures around 100 million visitors per month. That is an astonishing number compared to the typical blog and is indicative, not of Perez Hilton’s greatness as a writer, but of his audience’s lack of discrimination. Now, I am not going to criticize his readership, for themselves, nor blame them as individuals for being interested in such classic items as: “Faeces throwing monkey” and “Soledad O’Brien: not as nice as she looks”. Other posts call Joaquin Phoenix’s rap debut, a “joke”, praise Whitney Houston’s good looks, and speculate that Courtney Love’s daughter Frances Bean (all of 16) has the hots for Robert Pattinson, of Twilight fame.

It all comes across as extremely unimportant, vapid, trivial and ultimately valueless. Yet, it sells. A hundred million people a month pop by to read what Perez Hilton considers important enough to highlight in Hollywood gossip. It is also making Mario Lavandeira a rich man: last year he earnt two million US dollars.

The big question is: why? Why do so many people actually waste precious time in their lives actually reading such material? The answer is that the culture in which they live has lost sight of what is important. They grow up surrounded by the trivial masquerading as important – and so lose the ability to distinguish what is worthy of attention, from what should be ignored. Everything Mario Lavandeira/Perez Hilton writes, should be ignored by anyone of any discernment – and probably is. However, there are millions of people who find the most minor deeds or misdeeds of “celebrities” fascinating enough to pop by for a daily read of “Perez Hilton, Queen of all Media”.

I am not sure whether this global fascination for the trivial is a temporary cultural issue, or whether it is indicative of a lasting decline in the mental powers of the human race. You see people who are thinking about whether Joaquin Phoenix really should shave, are people who are not thinking about anything more important. When you have a whole human race doing that, then matters are dire. From Perez Hilton’s traffic it would seem that a significant chunk of the human race are, in fact, preoccupied with matters as trivial as whether a particular 16 year old girl fancies Robert Pattinson, or not.

It is my hope that our present era of triviality will pass and usher in an era of more substance. However, the signs don’t look good. The celebrity culture has a great momentum about it. More and more media space is consumed with gossip on the most trivial of individuals. Then, on top of this, there is a generation on generation decline in the intellectual (genetic) quality of the human race as a whole, which is well documented and has been going on since at least the 19th century. (see Richard Lynn)

It looks like the future will be as the present, only worse – and the Perez Hilton’s of the world will find it as easy to make two million dollars a year, in the future, as they do, today.

Incidentally, Perez Hilton/Mario Lavandeira’s site was so busy it took me several minutes to load on both of the two occasions I have ever visited the site, in my life (both for research purposes, I hasten to add!). I found the whole experience rather uncomfortable and, had I not the need to come to understand the Perez Hilton/Mario Lavandeira phenomenon, I probably would not have bothered waiting.

The fact that Mario Lavandeira’s gossip can attract so many visitors leads me to ask one question: if Albert Einstein were alive today, and had a blog, would he attract 100 million visitors a month, even with his global fame?

I seriously doubt it. It is more likely that Einstein would attract a few hundred thousand interested souls lost in a dessert of others, consumed with whether a particular star brushes their teeth often enough.

We live in trivial times – fingers crossed for deeper ones, to come. A good sign would be if Perez Hilton’s site hit rate began to drop precipitously. Should it ever fall below a million a month, perhaps we could breathe more easily and look forward to more considered times ahead.

Here’s hoping.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)