There is one core rule instilled in me by every teen rom-com and Disney movie: Pretty people are nice, while mean people are inevitable cursed with the status of “uggo.” Outward beauty is, of course, a sign of merit. It is important to note one qualification: A mean person may be born pretty, but once they prove themselves to be mean, they will be cursed with a unique ugliness in adulthood. This rule makes complete sense and has been proven by science. Imagine my surprise, then, when I arrived at my 10-year high school reunion and discovered that my bully, who was universally dubbed hot in high school, remained super hot.
But I ask you this: If mean, how hot?
Maxwell Pierce made my ninth-grade year a living hell. While his bushy hair and penchant for soccer blinded the idiot girls in my class to his mean ways, I faced the full force of his ire. He would give me backhanded compliments like “Nice hairdo!” and “Congrats on your grade on the math test!” but I saw through this facade to the ugliness beneath. He was mocking me.
The only thing that gave me solace in these times was knowing that eventually, Maxwell’s bushy hair would recede, and his beautiful brown eyes would become a sort of muddy, yucky brown. He would grow up ugly. I knew this in my bones.
High school ended, and I got really hot, as I always expected. When I arrived at my high school reunion solely to gloat, however, I was disturbed to see that he looked the same, if not better. He had gotten really muscular, and his hair had only gotten fuller.
How was this possible? Surely the gods would have cursed him with a brutal puberty that ripped his beautiful face from him and replaced it with a slightly awkward, off-kilter face that was still fine, but not really hot if you think about it. They kind of face where someone might have a crush on him, but if they showed their friends a photo, their friends would be like, “Okay?”
Who was this harlot before me, and how had he skirted karma?
My worldview crumbled. If the “Hot Equals Nice” paradigm could collapse, what else could collapse? Would spinach not make my arms explode into two muscular lumps? Were politicians not always working in the public interest? Was my seminal text, Snow White – which posited that truly hot people were inherently good – just a story? I feared so. At least there’s one thing that will always remain true: Short people are evil.
