There’s a TEDx talk that says looks aren’t everything, and that we should believe Cameron Russell, the giver of the talk, because she’s a model.

Which is hilarious, because she starts off by saying image is powerful.

I mean, doesn’t the very fact that she is a model represent that looks do matter? The fact that there’s an entire industry that revolves around being pretty, an industry focused on tall, slender figures, and all the other physical qualities we’re biologically built to admire. Everything points to the fact that looks do matter.

The very fact that she’s the recipient of a legacy, someone who won a genetic lottery, something that she herself admits she’s been cashing out on, means that looks do matter.

I think she tries to make the point that as much as we admire the people in magazines, the glamourous people who always seem to look good, they’re all constructions. But again, isn’t the very fact that we have all these people working towards the ideal or notion of “pretty”, “hot”, or “sexy”, yet another nail in the coffin of “looks don’t matter”? Clearly, they do.

I like when she says there are people paying a cost for how they look, not who they are. Because, if nothing else, it serves to drive home my point that looks do matter, and thinking anything else is just burying your head in the sand.

Oh, she’s insecure because she has to think about what she looks like, every day? Hey — maybe looks do matter. She’s received all these benefits from a deck stacked in her favour (her words, not mine), and she’s telling me looks don’t matter?

Please. Don’t tell me looks don’t matter — tell me image is important, tell me it’s superficial, but don’t tell me looks don’t matter.

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