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David Morgan: What makes someone beautiful?

By | Published on Tuesday 13 August 2013

David Morgan

“David Morgan wishes he was pretty” says the programme blurb. Well his show is pretty. In that it’s called ‘Pretty’. And that’s beautiful. But what, exactly, is beauty? Morgan ponders…

What makes someone beautiful – in the words of One Direction (bear with) – is not knowing that they’re beautiful. Sadly that is also very annoying, it’s like having the power to fly but being afraid of heights. If I was beautiful I’d know it, and I think I’d be the worst, the actual worst. I’d test the limits of my beauty and see if I could get away with mass genocide by smiling sweetly or twerking my way to innocence in the Hague. So we should all be very happy that I’m not super-uber-crazy-hot.

The hot but genocidal David Morgan would be taller. I have this thing at the moment where if I see a really tall man (6’6″+) I want to climb him like a tree and koala-hug him for a while. My need to be tall is odd though, because most of the hottest film actors are under 6 foot, Brad Pitt is 5’10” for example. And whilst I would climb the fabulously tall Vernon Kay, he’s not beautiful.

Dictator Morgan would have a tight and muscled body, toned and healthy though, no bouncy castle muscles that tip the balance from beautiful to terrifying. One bit of me I wouldn’t mind being a little more inflated, however, is the bit that’s gotten Jon Hamm so many column inches recently.

My building of ‘the beautiful but evil David’ is completely unattainable. People who undergo massive plastic surgery to achieve perfection end up looking like the heroes from a budget game for the Nintendo Wii (although if the hero to that game was Joan Rivers I would totally play it).

It’s odd how much emphasis we put on becoming perfect looking. And when it’s gotten to the point where people are creating super-beautiful composites from two already gorgeous celebrities or models just to lust after, it’s gone too far. Very soon the only thing that makes someone beautiful will be Photoshop. Well, at least we can print in 3D now.

In researching for my show ‘Pretty’, I read countless studies about attractiveness, and what interested me is that, whilst people might look at the ‘hot King David’ and think he’s great looking, they wouldn’t necessarily perceive him as ‘beautiful’. Beauty is a word more often reserved for a combination of both looks and personality, to be beautiful you can’t just be hot, you have to be nice too.

I take my view on beauty now not from One Direction (Zayn, Naill, Harry, Louis and Liam in that order) but from Roald Dahl in ‘The Twits’. “If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it”.

He goes on: “A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely”.

Wise words. Though of course my vanity still wants me to eat less cake and moisturise more.

‘David Morgan: Pretty’ was performed at Underbelly Bristo Square at Edinburgh Festival 2013.

LINKS: www.thisisdavid.com

Photo: Rich Dyson



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