Shallow Steve

A beau­ty can only ever be skin deep,
But if I’m hon­est that’s all I ever real­ly need.
–Love and Rock­ets, All In My Mind

I’ve often won­dered at the mean­ing of the lyric above. At first glance it sounds like an hon­est admis­sion of con­cern only with beau­ty: If I’m hon­est about it, all I real­ly want is some­one beautiful.

On the next read through anoth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty aris­es: per­haps instead of exter­nal needs, the line refers to one’s per­son­al aspi­ra­tions. If I am a dis­hon­est per­son, I need many things. For exam­ple I need to keep track of what I say, I need to manip­u­late the world and oth­er peo­ple with my words and deeds, I need to be clever. If, how­ev­er, I’m an hon­est per­son, liv­ing in integri­ty at all times, the only thing I need to add to that is look­ing good.

If I’m not hon­est, then I have to be con­cerned about my appear­ance at some lev­el below the most super­fi­cial. If I am hon­est, that stuff takes care of itself, and skin-deep beau­ty is what matters.

In the last few years I’ve noticed myself become much more con­cerned with phys­i­cal appear­ances, both my own and oth­ers’. I was brought up with all the apho­risms of our cul­ture about beau­ty being skin-deep and learned a gen­er­al dis­dain for those super­fi­cial and shal­low enough to be con­cerned with phys­i­cal appearance.

No doubt that I siezed upon these val­ues in some part because of my own inse­cu­ri­ty about my phys­i­cal appear­ance and gen­er­al fit­ness. I dis­so­ci­at­ed myself from my body, telling myself that my mind was the only thing that matters.

I’m no longer con­vinced that this atti­tude serves me. I’m start­ing to think that the sec­ond inter­pre­ta­tion of the L&R lyric is the bet­ter one. Make sure that I’m hon­est, and then chase after beauty.

I don’t have to be ashamed or feel that I’m super­fi­cial to care about appear­ance. The phys­i­cal attrib­ut­es I find appeal­ing are signs of health and strength and vital­i­ty, and I believe that tak­ing care of one’s body is the out­growth of spir­i­tu­al fit­ness. If noth­ing else, it’s a good place to start.

Of course there’s more to a per­son than their looks, but I dun­no; so what? Every­one has a life­time of expe­ri­ences, and I have yet to meet some­one who, when talked to, lacked for depth. Some are annoy­ing and some are none too bright, but that seems to be the case regard­less of phys­i­cal appearance.

I don’t know. This is com­ing off like some kind of apol­o­gy, and I don’t think I have any­thing to apol­o­gize for. Being attract­ed to oth­ers’ phys­i­cal attrib­ut­es seems entire­ly nat­ur­al. What’s wrong and unnat­ur­al is run­ning around telling myself that the good-look­ing women out there are reserved for the shal­low and unen­light­ened, and cer­tain­ly out of my league.