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

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Of beauty and ugliness.

There is a beauty in the apt expression of words. There is a beauty too, in an honest description of childhood - for in a child's mind, much is still beautiful that, by adulthood, seems no longer. I have tried to write of the beauty of the child's world, through my daily glimpses of it, in my own sons. I have tried also to choose words which, though simple, are beautiful in themselves, for how they capture that world.

So, I have been striving to embody some of this beauty, that I see, daily, in my life, on these electronic pages. To some extent, I am sure that I have succeeded - for some of my posts have captured some of the daily wonders that I encounter. It is true, however, that, at other times, I have failed to fully reflect the beauty that I see: my words do not come close to embodying those moments that are most precious - yet, at least, I have tried. Something of those times will, thus, remain for future contemplation.

Now, on the one hand we have my own striving to capture beauty - but on the other hand, I have seen much ugliness on the internet. There are truly a vast horde of stupid, jealous, spiteful people out there in the world. In particular, quite a few of them seem to come from Singapore. I say this because, on the odd forum, here and there, I have seen the most unpleasant of comments, coming from people who almost always have Chinese names, and use terms such as Ang Moh...they also have Singlish phrasing, so I can conclude that they are Singaporean. More than a few of their remarks are highly insulting about me, or members of my family - and, this is what gets me most, THEIR INFORMATION IS ALMOST ALWAYS WRONG. Yet, they spew their spite, and justify their erroneous views with what amounts to lies, on the internet. Oddly, I have seen this kind of behaviour from two nationalities only: Singaporeans, and Americans. The Americans seem to be doing so out of an extreme sense of competitiveness (ie. your son can't possibly be brighter than my son and I am going to do my damndest to prove it...). The Singaporeans are often doing it out of sinocentric racism. It is quite sad to watch what they do, online, to one of their own citizens. Yet, they don't see Ainan as a Singaporean - they see him as a MALAY...and so they feel apart from him. They think him "OTHER" and therefore unworthy of the fellow feeling that citizens of most countries, show to their fellow citizens. Singapore is a country in which anyone who is non-Chinese is never fully integrated, never fully accepted, by the majority (who are, I might point out, Chinese themselves). Indeed, the way the Chinese forum commenters treated our family is one of the big reasons we decided to leave Singapore. There was just no way that I was going to bring my family up in a country which had so much hate of its own people. Why should I subject them to daily racism, when I can easily find another country that will treat them as one of their own? So, we did...

Anyway, for me, the internet is a place of contrasts, therefore. I am making my own personal efforts to create something of lasting beauty - my thoughts on my children's childhood as they grow up - amidst a world of public arenas that are anything but beautiful. It is a strange contrast. You see the medium that allows me to attempt to express the beauty that I see, daily, is also the medium that allows these antagonists to spew their hate, their envy, their misunderstandings and their, lets be blunt, racism.

It is my hope that the beauty that I succeed in capturing, on these virtual pages, will outshine the ugliness that is found, all over the internet. Personally, I would rather a world that did not have such people in it, as I have seen writing rubbish on the net. Their minds are too crude, too uninformed, too dim and too nasty, to be allowed access to the public arena. Yet, there they are. Would it not be a better world were they not to exist? I can't help but feel that they would vanish, if they were readily identifiable on the net. My thoughts, therefore, again turn to the idea of anonymity on the net. I don't feel there should be any. Were everybody to be immediately identifiable, people such as I have seen, would not dare to write the things they do, lest they face libel charges, or other consequences. A net without anonymity would be a much better one, I think.

In the meantime, I hope my words have more power than theirs; that my thoughts have more readers than theirs - that my readers are able to distinguish truth from lies; beauty from ugliness.

Thank you for reading.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, 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.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/
Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm/3305973/
Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/


Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)