Hannah Hecht's Blog

Response:

Discrimination: treatment or consideration of a person based on the group, class, or category to which that person belongs rather than on individual merit

It is the year 2011 and many people would say that the current generation of adults has been freed from the binds of sexism, racism, and other types of prejudice. The 21^st Century is an era of acceptance and love for one’s fellow man (or woman). The young adults currently entering the workforce are liberally-minded and know better than to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religious or political views, sexual orientation, age, or disability. With horrors of the 1950’s Civil Rights Movement long past, the new Americans would never allow someone’s appearance to dictate their judgment of him/her.

Or would they? Liking What You See: A Documentary disagrees. This short collection of fictional interviews sheds new light on a type of discrimination rarely considered by the 21^st century American public: lookism. Okay… So, maybe “lookism” isn’t a real word, but there is no word in the English vocabulary to describe discrimination based on bone structure, skin clarity, facial symmetry, muscle tone, eye color, and all the other things that make up one’s general appearance, which sheds light on our ignorance of the subject. Every day, people make decisions, sometimes conscious and sometimes unconscious, about others based solely on appearances. “Beautiful” people are more likely to make friends, get jobs, and find a “significant other” while “ugly” people have much harder time with all of these things. Lookism is just like racism and sexism in the fact that it punishes/rewards people for things that they have no control over.

Liking What You See proposes a solution to this problem and calls it calliagnosia or “calli” for short. When one “has calli” it means that a doctor has stimulated his/her brain with an impulse that, more or less, makes it impossible to tell whether a person is beautiful, ugly, or somewhere in between. Instead, a person with calli can judge people only based on what is inside. Just like how the 19^th amendment allowed women to vote, calliagnosia would level the playing field by eliminating discrimination on the basis of looks.

In the last of the interviews, the main character, Tamera Lyons, comes to the conclusion that her parents should not have raised her “with calli” and that personal beauty is not an issue. She describes a world of calliagnostics as a utopia, and, as we have all learned from various science-fiction books and movies, utopias aren’t quite all they’re cracked up to be. I disagree. I believe that a world where people cannot judge on the basis of looks would be a much better place. It would be a place where Tameras and Garretts could be together and love each other without worrying that one may be “out of the other’s league.” It would be a place without young girls wouldn’t have to continue to try to live up to the media’s standard of “beautiful.” It would be a world where everyone is measured not by the number of pimples on their faces, but by their hard work, love, ability, sense of humor, efficiency, or loyalty, depending on the situation. Calli would not create a utopia; calli would just go one step farther in preventing prejudice and discrimination.

Summary:

Liking What You See: A Documentary by Ted Chiang describes, through various interviews, one school’s attempt to institute mandatory calliagnosia (a process that renders patients incapable of perceiving whether a person is attractive or not) on its students. Through other interviews, it helps the reader develop an opinion through one college student’s personal reflections on her experiences with and without calliagnosia.

At the very beginning of the story, Tamera has just come of age and has decided to “turn her calli off” which will, for the first time in her life, allow her to judge other people based on appearance. Once she has her calli turned off, she begins to see the world, and herself, differently. She persuades her ex-boyfriend to do the same, with an ulterior motive. Her ex, Garrett is significantly less attractive than Tamera and she hopes that he will want to get back together with her after realizing that he is ugly. As a beautiful person, Tamera gains more and more self-confidence, while Garrett begins to lose the confidence he once had. In the end, Garrett decides to turn his calli back on, and Tamera and he do not get back together.

The story of Tamera and Garrett is used to illustrate the high value that modern-day people place on appearances. The other half of the collection of interviews describe Pembleton University’s attempt at and the reasons why it should/shouldn’t institute mandatory calliagnosia. These interviews show the pros and cons of a process that would eliminate an entire society’s ability to gauge attractiveness. After lots of research and a student vote, the calliagnosia initiative is turned down.