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OF SOCRATES AND FASHION

No Jive

BY: Tracy Thompson Khan

The story goes that Socrates, who was arguably the most talented, impartial, thoughtful, innovative philosopher of all time, was so badsoorat (ugly looking) he could stop a fully loaded chariot (the ancient Greek equivalent of a semi truck) just by looking at it. Turned up nose, buggy eyes, wide mouth like a sword wound -- he unluckily counted all these among his physical attributes.

But Socrates was a thinker, not a fashion model: he was blasÈ about his looks to the extent that he agreed to compete in a sort of home-made beauty pageant against his friend Critobulus -- who may or may not have been a Keanu Reeves in his time, but almost certainly was better looking than our Socrates. Critobulus had inadvertently triggered the whole fiasco by stating that function = beauty, a dangerous if well-meaning claim.

Although Critobulus may have won the pageant, he obviously lost the war. Socrates most conclusively proved that his own hideous features were more functional than those of Critobulus: his flared nostrils were better to smell with, his bulging eyes better to see with, and the flattened bridge of his nose easier to see over. But aside from proving that function does not equal beauty, Socrates left us with a more important lesson: that a person's looks are not in the slightest way related to his worth.

A poster showing memorable folk through the ages would certainly not make the cover of Vogue. The movers, shakers, thinkers, philosophisers, teachers, questioners, and answerers throughout time have been a remarkably ordinary looking group, from Mother Theresa to Aristotle, from Napoleon to Genghis Khan. These people undoubtedly would not turn heads were they to shuffle down Fifth Avenue today, or even in their own times.

Those few eternally famous folk who have displayed more visual razzle-dazzle than the norm have been almost without exception lovely by default, and their physical beauty (Cleopatra aside) a mere footnote on the list of their admirable qualities and achievements.

History favours the brilliant mind over the beautiful face. Even in modern times, those who sculpt and shape the future of humanity are largely an ordinary looking bunch. Einstein, Lady Margaret Thatcher, Stephen Hawking, our own Sheriff Musharraf, even the Burning Bush, are not particularly magnificent creatures to gaze upon.

But we, the modern public, are still inordinately swayed by the hypnotic hula of the handsome, a dance that is performed to get us to do everything from buy Diablo Detergent to vote for Marvin Magnifico, an incessant samba that feeds our eyes and starves our souls.

If we all put as much effort into avoiding a Bad Brain Day as into avoiding a Bad Hair Day, if we spent more money on books and less money on beauty, if we took 30 minutes every morning to blow our minds rather than blow dry our hair, we might produce more Lao Tzus than Toms Cruise, more Helen of Troys than Back Street Boys, more Galileos than J Los, more Babers than Barbies.

Certainly things become more beautiful if covered in gold leaf or dipped in bronze. But underneath it all, an old leather toddler shoe will always be just that: a useless item in a pretty package. Who wouldn't rather find a diamond in an old paper bag?

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