I have to say that the preferences of netizens this time are somewhat abstract, first Taobao has held an ugly thing contest for 3 consecutive years, and everyone is very happy to watch it.
Image source: Weibo screenshot
Recently, the term "fetish" of ugliness has rushed to the hot search, which refers to the fact that some girls will especially like those idols who are not very good-looking when chasing stars, and bloggers have listed various benefits of "fetish" of ugliness, such as wanting to laugh when he sees him, you won't be sad when he is in love, etc.
Why are netizens a little bit ugly this year?
"Ugly" is a positive quality
Strictly speaking, ugliness "fetish" is not an academic concept, but more of an emotional description of the above phenomenon. Ugly is not really a fetish, but the love of some people for the appearance that does not conform to the mainstream aesthetics, and some of its accompanying characteristics.
From the perspective of self-awareness, there is a certain reason for falling in love with ugliness, because most people are a little dissatisfied with their appearance, so idols with ugly appearance but good business ability can easily arouse our emotional resonance, so as to generate recognition and appreciation.
In addition, judging from the description of netizens' "fetish" of ugliness, it also reflects that these people seem to have more diversified evaluation criteria and can appreciate each other's strengths in more aspects, and the Big Five personality trait theory defines such personality traits as "Openness", and people with high openness tend to have broader interests, stronger curiosity, and like to try and accept new things. Some studies have found that people with high openness tend to think more divergently, which is manifested in a broader horizon of thinking, and they always look at and think about things from different angles.
Another study also found that people with high openness tend to have character strengths of appreciating beauty and excellence, which is one of the 24 personality strengths proposed by positive psychologist Martin Seligman, which refers to the individual's perception of beauty, appreciation of superior qualities, and such people are also more detail-oriented and pay more attention to the positive qualities of others.
Therefore, people who are a bit ugly "fetish" are more able to look at others or things from multiple dimensions, rather than judging each other's advantages and disadvantages only from appearance, they actively dig out the treasures of idols, and also make them more convinced that appearance is secondary, and inner quality is more valuable.
"Love ugliness" is actually a desire for truth
From the benefits of the ugly "fetish" listed by netizens, it is not difficult to see that this is actually the same as crazy literature, we are expressing our true inner thoughts in a humorous way, but crazy literature is "He is crazy, I love it", and ugly literature is "He is ugly, I love it".
And the inner thoughts expressed in "Love Ugly" may be the desire for realism, because those who are not congenitally qualified, but rely on their own efforts to catch up, seem more real, more like what ordinary people can do in our reality.
In his book The Self-Presentation of Everyday Life, Owen Goffman proposes a "mimetic theory" in which he explores people's interactions in everyday life from the perspective of theatrical performance, in which each of us manages our own impressions (persona), in front of the stage we play the role of the mediated self, and behind the stage we are the real self.
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Whether it is for the idol himself, or the film and television dramas and variety shows that the idol starred in, we need to create a sense of character design, but also a certain sense of reality, otherwise it is too fake and I don't want to watch it at all. We can accept a certain level of performance, because art always has a higher side than life.
However, with the advancement of social media and technology, what we believe in has felt a great impact, such as the repeated collapse of idol houses in recent years, the start of live streaming to perform scripts, and Internet celebrities pretending to tear their faces and scold each other in order to gain traffic.
No one likes something fake, it's just that in this day and age, perhaps more than ever, we crave authenticity.
The "fetish" of ugliness is like a mirror, reflecting our lack and pursuit of reality, because there are not so many 360-degree beauty without dead ends in reality, and it is impossible to maintain perfect makeup all the time.
If it is said that it is natural to like good-looking idols, and liking idols that are not so good-looking is to return to rationality and reality, and to retain a trace of their own sense of reality in this Internet era where there is a lack of realism.
What do we think about ugliness?
There is a very interesting group on Douban called "Ugly Things Protection Association", where everyone shares some ugly but interesting and fun things, and there is such a sentence in the group introduction: "To discover the beauty that is confined to the inherent form". This is a wonderful phrase because it tells us not only to look at the beauty of the form, but also to explore the inner beauty of the form.
Image source: Screenshot of Douban
If we take a closer look at the comments on those ugly things sharing blog posts, we will see that most of the comments are: "Hahahaha, it's so funny" and "It's ugly, but I think it's cute".
So, is ugliness really an "absolute" shortcoming? It really depends on how we look at TA.
In the book "The Courage to Be Hated", he said: "There is nothing wrong with being imperfect, so that it is humane and lovely." "Maybe TA is ugly physically, but the spirit is beautiful, or very gentle and kind, maybe TA looks ugly, but it provides us with a lot of emotional value, and even makes us feel that TA is full of power.
Maybe we will still complain about the ugliness of TA, but such complaints are full of love and appreciation, because it is beyond the beauty of form.
bibliography
[1] Roger, Dai Xiaoyang. (2015).Preliminary compilation of Chinese Adjective Big Five Personality Scale I.:Theoretical framework and test reliability.Chinese Journal of Clinical Psychology (03),381-385.
[2] Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification (Vol. 1). Oxford University Press.
[3] Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (Eds.). (2004). Handbook of self-determination research. University Rochester Press.
[4] Irving Goffman, translated by Feng Gang (2008). Self-presentation of daily life[M]. Beijing: Peking University Press.
Planning and production
This article is a work of popular science China-Star Project
Produced by the Department of Science and Technology of the China Association for Science and Technology
Producer: China Science and Technology Press Co., Ltd., Beijing Zhongke Galaxy Culture Media Co., Ltd
Author丨ACC Psychological Science Popularization Creation Team
Review丨Fan Chunlei is an associate researcher at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Planning丨Fu Sijia