The War Against The Beauteous
Sam Sykes ~ 01/31/2024
Ugliness abounds. It may be a byproduct of capitalist corruption or socialist conformity, but beauty is under attack. As tradition is abandoned, people have come to disregard the importance of an aesthetically pleasing community and traded it for the convenience of zero effort and no fucks given. How much are we willing to destroy in the pursuit of comfort and avoidance of conflict?
Guys Just Giving Up
A random guy I saw at the grocery store was the inspiration for this article. He was the worst thing I’ve ever seen, the 9/11 of masculinity, a complete affront to what being a man is. He was maybe 6-foot-tall, but fat as shit and really leaning into his uselessness. He had the worst double chin I’ve ever seen, coupled with a wool button up sweater, basketball shorts, and headphones indicative of a guy with gaming-induced autism.
He’s obviously an exaggerated example of the inherent ugliness plaguing modern society, and although men really have no business being pretty, we should still expect a little effort as a community. Dressing in the most comfortable athletic clothing at all times shows every other man just how weak you are. Presenting yourself to society as a put together person, capable of taking an extra five minutes to throw on a flannel, jeans, and boots show that you respect yourself and are not to be fucked with.
Women Rejecting Femininity
After noticing that big tub of shit in the checkout line, I started to notice the women around him may have been even worse. All of them were dressed exactly the same. All of their pants were wholly dependent on elastic, with tangled hair put up in a bun or ponytail, and makeupless, gray faces everywhere. What an embarrassment.
When people talk about the war on beauty, they often go to the extreme and cite the militant feminists with armpit hair, mullets, and gunts that hangout of their intentionally revealing wardrobes. Those chicks are a problem, but realistically, there are not enough of them to make a difference. The real problem is all of these everyday women making absolutely ZERO effort to look presentable. I expect men to try a little, but ultimately it’s like putting lipstick on a pig. But for women, beauty and vitality has been a cornerstone of femineity for all of fucking time. Instead, they do nothing to accentuate their alluring features. A complete rejection of everything they are supposed to be.
There was a time when women wouldn’t be caught alive outside of the house without their hair, face, and outfits done up, and it’s not some oppressively sexist thing to want in modern society. Who wouldn’t want to live in a world where people actually try? When men were wearing suits and women rocked dresses were respecting society, the community, and each other. When you dress everyday like you’re at rehab, you aren’t communicating competence, you are saying “fuck you, the world is my living room”.
Blob Wheels
It’s not just people that have gotten monumentally uglier, cars have morphed from awesome and diverse designs to different degrees of marshmallow. The Ford Bronco reboot is a great example of the pussification of automobiles over the last 30 or 40 years. Driven primarily by cringeworthy yuppies and DINKs, the Bronco used to be an awesome hard-edged truck and designed with careful consideration. The new one, along with the Dodge Charger, Ford Mustang, and Chevy Camaro all look like you took the badass old school versions and put them in a rock tumbler. Every edge rounded out and designed to cater to the womanly desire for soft designs. At this point, every car goes through such rigorous design processes and focus-grouping that any risky design that pushes boundaries is quickly shot down and rounded out. Indistinguishable from one another, the marshmallows rule the road.
Tear Down Beauty, Build Up Shit
Next time you drive around your town or city, take a good look around. Instead of embracing the classic design elements that made your city charming, developers have replaced beautiful but aging buildings with monstrous modern structures that completely fuck up the culture of their respective places.
Atlantic City is a great example. It used to have the most elaborate art deco hotels with intricate design elements and carefully crafted and meticulously detailed blueprints. Only to be torn down and replaced with the gigantic casinos that destroy the coastline and culture. There’s already little reason to go to Atlantic City, but the lack of historical value is what has really led to the rapid decline of a once booming hotspot.
On a smaller scale, communities across America are being littered with ugly and charmless high density housing. Initially welcoming young professionals, it’s a matter of time before those places become projects or refugee camps. And the children of these buildings (Who don’t pay any school taxes by the way) will inevitably flood the education system near you, I guarantee it.
The new builds are cheap and designed to conserve materials while packing in as many tenants as humanly possible. There is no reverence for the aesthetics of the community in which they are building. No matter where you are in the U.S., these tan and white high rises with their micro-balconies are clones of each other all over the country. I guess America is in the Eastern Bloc now.
The aesthetic problems beginning to plague the U.S are a direct result of everyday people not caring enough about themselves or their community. Ugliness is a choice, whenever someone decides to leave the house looking like they just rolled out of bed, or they refuse to demand innovative design in the name of comfort, it hurts beauty. Let’s try not to kill it.
