Audri Swisher's Blog

In Ted Chiang’s fictional Liking What You See: A Documentary, calliagnosia is a hotly debated issue. Shortened to calli in informal speech, calliagnosia is an alternative to the “deeper societal problem” of lookism, prejudice against unattractive people. Through selective anesthetics in the brain, calliagnosia effectively blocks a person’s ability to distinguish between beautiful and ugly people, as well as everyone in between.

The proponents of calliagnosia call it an “assisted maturity”: a means to look beyond the surface. Calliagnosics experience no aesthetic reactions to differing physical attributes, not even to the across-the-board definition of beauty – clear skin, symmetry, and average facial proportions. According to its advocates, calli is the cure for discrimination in the workplace, advertising distractions, image-consciousness, and devaluation of women.

Some warn against calliagnosia. The opponents ask whether it is worth losing the good with the bad. One man compares world-class beauty with the athleticism of an Olympian and wonders why a person must apologize for feeling wonder and admiration at both. He also believes that depriving ourselves of the chance to enjoy the talents of gifted individuals is a crime. Another claims that calli supporters want to condemn women for taking pleasure in their appearance.

Many of the varied “interviews” in Liking What You See pertain to an upcoming election at Pembleton University. A certain initiative, if passed, would make calli a requirement for students. The president of the National Calliagnosia Association speaks at the university, calling beauty a “visual drug” which interferes with our personal relationships and naming calliagnosia the only protection. Soon after, polls show that most students support the initiative. However, after an opponent speaker warns that calli will only create naïve individuals incapable of identifying “lookism,” the initiative fails to pass.

Response:

This is difficult for me to consider. I’ve always wanted to be judged solely on my character and not my outward appearance – leave the spiteful, empty-headed girls with perfect hair and flawless skin behind. But if I were faced with it head-on, in this way? It seems like cheating. Instead of people looking beyond blemishes or beauty to the person within, calliagnosia would make both invisible – make blinkers for us. True, calli would mean that people would be judged “by the content of their character,” in the immortal words of Martin Luther King, Jr. But at what cost?

Our decried autonomic responses are there for a reason, but let’s put reproductive success aside for now. Why deny ourselves the enjoyment of beautiful people or divest them of their pleasure? Instead of blinding ourselves to outward beauty so we can see the inner, we should teach people to love their neighbors. One proponent of calli in Liking What You See said, “True beauty is what you see with the eyes of love.” True. But I would add that instead of rewiring our brains, we could change our hearts. If we saw anyone who crossed our paths through the eyes of love, calli would become redundant and meaningless.

If this came to reality, many would flock to its use. But not this girl. Take me as I am. Take me and my bushy eyebrows. My future husband and I will still be able to tell our little girl how beautiful she is.