What a day. When I woke up this morning I immediately went to the mirror; it was like I was a little kid on Christmas or something. But still, nothing; my face still looked plain. Later on, I even (laughs) I tried to catch myself by surprise, by sneaking up on a mirror, but that didn’t work. So I was kind of disappointed, and feeling just, you know, resigned to my fate.
But then this afternoon, I went out with my roommate Ina and a couple other girls from the dorm. I hadn’t told anyone that I’d gotten my calli turned off, because I wanted to get used to it first. So we went to this snack bar on the other side of campus, one I hadn’t been to before. We were sitting at this table, talking, and I was looking around, just seeing what people looked like without calli. And I saw this girl looking at me, and I thought, ‘She’s really pretty.’ And then, (laughs) this’ll sound really stupid, then I realized that this wall in the snack bar was a mirror, and I was looking at myself!
I can’t describe it, I felt this incredible sense of relief. I just couldn’t stop smiling! Ina asked me what I was so happy about, and I just shook my head. I went to the bathroom so I could stare at myself in the mirror for a bit.
So it’s been a good day. I really like the way I look! It’s been a good day.
Jeff Winthrop, third-year student, speaking at a student debate:
Of course it’s wrong to judge people by their appearance, but this ‘blindness’ isn’t the answer. Education is.
Calli takes away the good as well as the bad. It doesn’t just work when there’s a possibility of discrimination, it keeps you from recognizing beauty altogether. There are plenty of times when looking at an attractive face doesn’t hurt anyone. Calli won’t let you make those distinctions, but education will.
And I know someone will say, what about when the technology gets better? Maybe one day they’ll be able to insert an expert system into your brain, one that goes, ‘Is this an appropriate situation to apprehend beauty? If so, enjoy it; else, ignore it.’ Would that be okay? Would that be the ‘assisted maturity’ you hear people talking about?
No, it wouldn’t. That wouldn’t be maturity; it’d be letting an expert system make your decisions for you. Maturity means seeing the differences, but realizing they don’t matter. There’s no technological shortcut.
Adesh Singh, third-year student, speaking at a student debate:
No one’s talking about letting an expert system make your decisions. What makes calli ideal is precisely that it’s such a minimal change. Calli doesn’t decide for you; it doesn’t prevent you from doing anything. And as for maturity, you demonstrate maturity by choosing calli in the first place.
Everyone knows physical beauty has nothing to do with merit; that’s what education’s accomplished. But even with the best intentions in the world, people haven’t stopped practicing lookism. We try to be impartial, we try not to let a person’s appearance affect us, but we can’t suppress our autonomic responses, and anyone who claims they can is engaged in wishful thinking. Ask yourself: Don’t you react differently when you meet an attractive person and when you meet an unattractive one?
Every study on this issue turns up the same results: looks help people get ahead. We can’t help but think of good-looking people as more competent, more honest, more deserving than others. None of it’s true, but their looks still give us that impression.
Calli doesn’t blind you to anything; beauty is what blinds you. Calli lets you see.
Tamera Lyons:
So, I’ve been looking at good-looking guys around campus. It’s fun; weird, but fun. Like, I was in the cafeteria the other day, and I saw this guy a couple tables away, I didn’t know his name, but I kept turning to look at him. I can’t describe anything specific about his face, but it just seemed much more noticeable than other people’s. It was like his face was a magnet, and my eyes were compass needles being pulled toward it.
And after I looked at him for a while, I found it really easy to imagine that he was a nice guy! I didn’t know anything about him, I couldn’t even hear what he was talking about, but I wanted to get to know him. It was kind of odd, but definitely not in a bad way.
From a broadcast of EduNews, on the American College Network:
In the latest on the Pembleton University calliagnosia initiative: EduNews has received evidence that public-relations firm Wyatt/Hayes paid four Pembleton students to dissuade classmates from voting for the initiative, without having them register their affiliations. Evidence includes an internal memo from Wyatt/Hayes, proposing that ‘good-looking students with high reputation ratings’ be sought, and records of payments from the agency to Pembleton students.
The files were sent by the SemioTech Warriors, a culture-jamming group responsible for numerous acts of media vandalism.
When contacted about this story, Wyatt/Hayes issued a statement decrying this violation of their internal computer systems.
Jeff Winthrop:
Yes, it’s true, Wyatt/Hayes paid me, but it wasn’t an endorsement deal; they never told me what to say. They just made it possible for me to devote more time to the anti-calli campaign, which is what I would’ve done anyway if I hadn’t needed to make money tutoring. All I’ve been doing is expressing my honest opinion: I think calli’s a bad idea.
A couple of people in the anti-calli campaign have asked that I not speak publicly about the issue anymore, because they think it’d hurt the cause. I’m sorry they feel that way, because this is just an ad hominem attack. If you thought my arguments made sense before, this shouldn’t change anything. But I realize that some people can’t make those distinctions, and I’ll do what’s best for the cause.
Maria deSouza:
Those students really should have registered their affiliations; we all know people who are walking endorsements. But now, whenever someone criticizes the initiative, people ask them if they’re being paid. The backlash is definitely hurting the anti-calli campaign.
I consider it a compliment that someone is taking enough interest in the initiative to hire a PR firm. We’ve always hoped that its passing might influence people at other schools, and this means that corporations are thinking the same thing.
We’ve invited the president of the National Calliagnosia Association to speak on campus. Before we weren’t sure if we wanted to bring the national group in, because they have a different emphasis than we do; they’re more focused on the media uses of beauty, while here at SEE we’re more interested in the social equality issue. But given the way students reacted to what Wyatt/Hayes did, it’s clear that the media manipulation issue has the power to get us where we need to go. Our best shot at getting the initiative passed is to take advantage of the anger against advertisers. The social equality will follow afterwards.
From the speech given at Pembleton by Walter Lambert, president of the National Calliagnosia Association:
Think of cocaine. In its natural form, as coca leaves, it’s appealing, but not to an extent that it usually becomes a problem. But refine it, purify it, and you get a compound that hits your pleasure receptors with an unnatural intensity. That’s when it becomes addictive.
Beauty has undergone a similar process, thanks to advertisers. Evolution gave us a circuit that responds to good looks – call it the pleasure receptor for our visual cortex – and in our natural environment, it was useful to have. But take a person with one-in-a-million skin and bone structure, add professional makeup and retouching, and you’re no longer looking at beauty in its natural form. You’ve got pharmaceutical-grade beauty, the cocaine of good looks.