Sydney Spies and the Curse of Beauty.

Sydney Spies is, in most eyes, a beautiful girl. She is also, alas, seemingly quite unpopular at her High School. The reason? She wants to be seen in a certain way – and the authorities, and it seems, her fellow students, don’t want her to be seen in that way.

Sydney Spies is suffering from what I call the Curse of Beauty. This is the counterpart to the hostility that very intelligent people often receive from their more ordinary fellows. Truly beautiful people are rather loathed by their same sex colleagues (except the gay ones I expect). An instinctive enmity exists between people of ordinary looks, and people of exceptional looks, of the same sex. This is, in my view, what Sydney Spies is experiencing. Basically, the ugly people around her, can’t stand her. (Let’s be blunt.)

Sydney Spies attempted to have a picture of her in a yellow skirt and black off the shoulder top placed in the Durango High School yearbook as her Senior Year photo. This was refused by Durango High School, whose authorities were of the opinion, in the words of Brian Jaramillo, that it would be unprofessional. He said: “We are an award winning yearbook. We don’t want to diminish the quality with something that can be seen as unprofessional.”

My reaction to this is quite simple: the Durango High School is run by conformist, narrow-minded morons. The rejected photo is not too strong for inclusion, in my view. It just shows something that is not allowed in Durango High School: a personality. Sydney Spies is showing her innate personality in the construction and composition of the photograph. She is showing herself as she would like to be seen. However, at Durango High School, it seems that everyone must conform to an ideal of what is “professional” - that is strait-jacketed within a narrow set of rather dull rules and limitations about what is an acceptable photograph.

A school yearbook should show the people of the school as they really are. It should show them in all their diverse character. It should not be a robotic showpiece in which everyone is presented in the same set of limited ways to create an overall “look” that is deemed “award-winning”. It should be true to the personalities in the school. Quite clearly, the Durango High School yearbook is not true to the personalities of the students. It is actually a constructed lie, that seeks to present the Durango High School students in a certain way that is deemed “acceptable”. It is a photographic fraud, thereby. I would suggest that the only truthful photograph in the Durango High School yearbook may be the very ones they rejected of Sydney Spies. In fact, they rejected three of her submitted photographs – all for pretty much the same reason one intuits – she is just too attractive. (Though they said the last one missed their deadline). Instead, they used her school ID photograph!

There is one positive side to this controversy, from Sydney Spies’ point of view. She wished to be seen in a certain way. She wished to present her personality through a particular kind of image. Well, now she has, to the whole world – for one of those rejected yearbook photos has been run by news agencies around the world. So, the wish for Durango High School to censor their student, Sydney Spies, has had the unintended effect of making her much more famous than a yearbook would have done. That strikes me as suitably funny.

There is a not so funny side to this though. Sydney spies has experienced considerable bullying from her fellow students at Durango High School since all this fuss began. This is characteristic of the Curse of Beauty, as I describe it. I am certain...100% certain that ALL the bullies are ugly in comparison to her. This controversy around her yearbook photograph is just giving an excuse to the ugly ones to take out their resentment for her beauty, on her. A beautiful person would understand her position and viewpoint and would, in my view, be very unlikely to bully her. I am sure that the resentment she has experienced at Durango High School has come from those who are challenged in the looks department. This is parallel to the kind of resentment gifted kids often receive, from their less intelligent colleagues. It is always the dumb ones who hate the smart. Just so, it is always the plain, or even ugly ones, who hate the beautiful.

I wish Sydney Spies well and hope that she becomes the successful model she aspires to be. No-one should ever be in the position of being bullied because of their innate gifts as Sydney Spies is being – not if that gift is beauty, intelligence or any other gift. All who are gifted, in whatever way, should be welcomed for their gifts – for those gifts make the world a better place. Durango High School has forgotten that. It has proven itself, in this “scandal”, to be an ugly place – ugly at heart and, no doubt, ugly by sight, too.

Best of luck Sydney Spies. I hope you get to be seen as you wish to be.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

On the value of Beauty

Beauty has great value, which may not be measurable in dollars and cents, but is there all the same. However, not everyone realizes this.

Last week, Wisma Atria, the Orchard Road shopping centre, announced that they were going to dismantle the landmark aquarium in their shopping mall, and send the fish to a better home, elsewhere. Instead, they said they were going to "improve our retail offering". By this, I assume that they mean to put another shop, where the aquarium now stands.

In the nine years since I first came to Singapore I have come to understand that many decisions here are made purely on numbers. No other means of thought is consulted. Indeed, it is clear that most decision makers have no other means to think, than by numerical means. The primary number they are concerned with is this: how much money they can make. The dollar is the true ruler of Singapore.

I have stood by and watched many stupid decisions be made on the basis of this excessive love for the dollar. Removing the aquarium at Wisma is one of them. Clearly, no-one in the Wisma management has given any thought to what the aquarium does for their mall, nor what it represents for their customers. The aquarium is the most memorable thing about Wisma, in fact, it is true to say it is the ONLY memorable thing about Wisma. People have used it as a landmark by which to find their way through the subterranean reaches of its shopping mall, since the day it was first built. Friends would meet there. People would take photographs with it, in the background. The aquarium was very much a little "star". Indeed, I took a photograph of my father standing before it, on his recent visit.

The management of Wisma are clearly thinking in terms of the rental foregone for the space taken up by the aquarium. I think they are not looking at the big picture. Those elegant multi-coloured fish, swimming away all day, implanted Wisma in people's minds. It was ever pleasant to see the aquarium hove into view, as one stepped out into the underground space in which it stands.

I think it likely that the aquarium drew more people to visit Wisma Atria, than the shop that replaces it will. I very much doubt whether the overall take of the mall will increase when the environment is diminished by the absence of the aquarium. I think it more likely that the take will decrease, in fact. With the aquarium gone, there will be no reason to choose Wisma Atria as one's meeting place, when convening in Orchard Road - other locations would be easier to find and therefore meet at.

Wisma Atria is well on the way to becoming a forgettable place, for they have forgotten the value of beauty.

Wisma is likely soon to discover that beauty has a commercial value, too: for where would you rather shop - a beautiful mall, with a pleasant environment, or one in which there is nothing but shops crammed together, all shouting for your money? Taking the aquarium away, is one big step away from the former, for Wisma, towards the latter. I don't see it as an improvement.

For me, now, another shopping mall is now more memorable: Takashimaya. Why? Because they have an underground fountain. That is where I am going to meet people in Orchard in future. I suggest you all do the same. It is very easy to find - and easy to remember, too.

Let us just hope that Takashimaya, don't wish to "improve their retail offering" by pulling out the beautiful fountains and replacing them with a shop. If they do, I am not going to shop on Orchard at all, anymore.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and one month, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and seven months, and Tiarnan, two years exactly, 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, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)