Summary: Throughout the article Liking What You See, the controversial topic of “lookism” is explored. The article focuses on a procedure called calliagnosia or calli, the ability not to see “beauty” or “ugliness” in a person. This controversial procedure was launched at Pembleton in the hopes that it would be voted into a requirement when attending Pembleton. As the excerpt continues, the author uses others opinions to help the reader form their own opinions.
The article interviews and uses the opinions of students, parents, professors, and advocates for both sides of the issue. We meet a 1st year student, Tamera, who talks about growing up with calli and how she always longed to turn it off so she could be like everyone else. When that happened she realized that she was beautiful. After talking with a friend about ex boyfriends she decides to try and get her ex, Garrett, back. She convinces him to turn off his calli and tries to show him that she is beautiful and he should come back to her. As it turns out he finds himself unattractive and gets his calli turned back on. After this, Tamera realizes that it was wrong trying to change Garrett’s opinion of her. She ends up going back to calli.
Other opinions are taken from advocates of both sides. The article talks about the lying and deceiving of advocates from both sides. They try to use these tactics in order to persuade people to be on their side. At the end, their fight for making calli mandatory for Pembleton failed.
Response: At first, the thought of wiping out judgment by appearance sounds like a great idea. It is something that I would definitely try, but I don’t know if I would like to have that permanently. I believe people should be able to decide for them selves whether or not they want to participate in this movement. It should not become mandatory. People should be able to have their choice of seeing people by their feelings and personality or see them by their looks and personality. If I were to choose I would choose not to do calliagnosia.
Why would you choose to not have calli? What factor caused you to make this decision?
I agree with you that it should not be mandatory. If it was, that would be imposing on a person’s free will. Why would you choose to not have the calli done to yourself? What changed your mind from thinking it was a good idea to a bad one?