Good-looking Olympics

Jude Law, Alain Delon, Takashi Kashiwabara, Hyde...what do they have in common? Attractive appearances can be so impressive that people only remember their glamorous images on screen, but forget - intentionally or not - their mediocre acting skills, nasty personalities or messy private lives. Similar things happened 12 hours ago in London, where Japanese and Chinese teams were competing for the gold medal in Men's gymnastics team final. Sports commentators mentioned that judges seemed to favor Japanese gymnasts, and had been quite generous in grading their performance. Coincidentally, most Japanese gymnasts are very good-looking. Kato Ryohei (pictured at left), born in 1993 attracted most attention from the audience during his first play in Olympics. He only attended two of the five group competitions, and (honestly) he's probably below the average in Japan, but people soon started to talk about his movie-star like looking, not the real superstar Uchimura. There is rumor that all the Japanese gymnasts wore make-up to please audience and judges, which proved to be a quite successful strategy.

Similarly, Germany team also gathered a bunch of good-looking people. Marcel Nguyen (see the right picture) won thousands of fans in China soon after his performance. Sports events which require subjective evaluation from judges, like gymnastics, diving and skating, tend to favor good-looking athletes, who are more advanced to feast audience's eyes on their performances though athletes in the same event always have similar figures. Accessories, including their sportswear, hairstyle, etc, though not relevant to a tidy performance, are significant contributors to high grades. Other events, whose rating system is not so "soft", like weightlifting, swimming and sprint, are less picky of the appearance.

We can't really blame this as unfairness or discrimination against athletes with plain looks. Preferences for fair faces and rosy lips exist everywhere simply because beauty brings over more pleasure. Although people accolade diversity and eulogize different sorts of beauty for different ethnic groups, and claim that every one is beautiful for what he/she is, the truth is they still have unanimous aesthetic standards. It's undeniable that watching beauties is very enjoyable, and there is a price that people'd like to pay for the enjoyment. When judges watch a beautiful athlete performing on the stage, they probably gain some joy for his/her appearance, which will more or less compensate for the mistakes committed.

The world is not fair anyway. It's not surprising that you may have to give up singing if you're not beautiful enough, but disadvantaged in sports events for appearance sounds much more cruel. Endowment like a straight nose and rosy cheeks will remove some barriers in career life for sure, but people will unattractive looking can still have lovely smile and clear eyes. How much our personality can make up for the disadvantages in appearance remains in doubt, but at least worth trying - you never know when and how you will get paid back.