"It is important to look good"

I have heard the phrase above many times.
You know in reference to interviews, engagements, dates and a whole lot of other important end-outcomes.

Those dreaded first impressions?
Does the colour of a necktie or a cut of a dress tell whether a person is efficient? Does it mean that if you naturally have hooded eyelids; you are condemned to be lazy? The point is that first impressions do not tell anything much about character. It in fact hides a lot of things like laziness, inefficiency and all kinds of lousy traits.

However, I am not championing on going to meet a person with T-shirts stained suspiciously and unwashed hair. Those things are detrimental to you and the person next-to-you and is not pleasant on the eye.

Not pleasant on the eye.
Not pleasant on the eye.

Contradicting it sounds, actually because if you take it far enough, it would be alright to hire the handsome gentleman because the guy with the braces is an eyesore. Few words: it is plainly unfair. For one simple logical reason: you might not be choosing the better person because of something so superficial. Period.

We have to draw the line and I think the part about whether whatever that irritates your occipital lobe* is really detrimental or not should be defined. Not technically very hard: I sometimes choose to write them out on paper to remove the visual bias. I am open to better techniques though.
* the part of the brain concerned with interpreting what we see

Mirror, mirror on the Wall,
Who is the Fairest One of Them All?
We humans like beautiful things and everything positive is associated with being beautiful in the loosest sense. What was supposedly neutral is perceived as positive. Cinderella was beautiful and her evil sisters had to be ugly. Witches were undoubtedly with crooked noses. In short, ugly humans were bad humans. Even food had to look good with garnishing so much to wet our appetites. Is it instinctual? No, I think it is a very wronged learned behavior to appreciate skin-depth beauty based on pigmentation preferences. Cavemen were icky. Look I am into this now. It is ingrained to say so much. Before we are mature enough to appreciate true beauty (the one which is formed by positives), this dangerous principle has been seeded into our subconscious. Even this skin depth philosophy is tainted and crooked in its own way, some people still see tall, fair (which is so unfair ... oh the malignancy has spilled into syntax too) and thin as beautiful. The irony of fair being unfair is enough to speak volumes on our so, civilized nature.

My point is ...
Bad habits are difficult to weed out. Watching children watching their weight, dying of anorexia, resort to stealing to finance their labels, losing self confidence and the ensuing vicious cycle. This dreaded prophecy is almost as equivalent to shoving the reality of the situation right under our noses. If we still choose to deign to ignorance and continue teaching our kids wrong lessons, don't complain when civilization crumbles because it was important to look good.

We do not borrow this earth from our grandparents, but we owe them from our children.