Appearances

About a month ago I saw a grossly overweight teenage girl in downtown Brooklyn walking several paces behind her family, her right hand on the small of her back. “My back hurts!” she cried after them in an aggrieved tone. “If you lost some weight, fatso” I found myself thinking unkindly, “maybe your back wouldn't hurt so much.”

But then I felt ashamed. What did I know about the obstacles she faced, either physical or emotional, that made it hard for her to lose weight? What did I know of her character traits? Would I want others to judge me in the same superficial way that I was judging her? If they did, they’d see me as a bent, old man – a true enough characterization as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far. If I don’t want others to judge me on the basis of superficial characteristics, shouldn’t I avoid judging others on that basis?

This train of thought would probably have been derailed if that week my Mussar group had not been considering the trait of judging others favorably, giving people the benefit of the doubt wherever possible. No, I would have continued to cast unflattering mental epithets at those passersby whose appearance was particularly unattractive, as if I were a judge in a universal beauty contest.

I was reminded of this uncharitable habit recently when I received from my friend Spencer Grant an e-mail containing photos that appeared in three two-page spreads of the January 1975 Esquire. Entitled “Bums.” These were pairs of photographs by Jan Michael. His subjects were three derelict men whom he had found in New York’s Bowery, long before that district’s gentrification. He photographed them twice, once as they appeared to him initially and again after he had arranged a shave, haircut, and good clothes for them. It was, as my friend wrote, a clever idea.

The contrast between the photographs in each pair was astonishing. If you encountered on the street the unshaven, disheveled man shown in one of the photographs, you would avert your gaze. But you wouldn’t give him a second thought if you saw him, his hair combed and his face shaved, in a three-piece suit and tie, as he appeared in the second photograph. When you compare the two photographs you can see they’re images of the same man. He has the same features and exhibits the same exuberance (one wonders if he was sober that day). But in the first photograph he looks like what Esquire called, in those politically incorrect times, a bum, whereas in the second photograph, he looks like an ordinary middle class man. We can’t tell from either photograph if he was generous or mean-spirited, intelligent or dull, amusing or boring. We know nothing about him but his most external characteristics.

It would be pleasant to report that my heightened consciousness has led to my abandoning the habit of judging others harshly on the basis of their external appearance. Alas, I still form such opinions, but now when I do so I feel bad. These days I sometimes catch myself in the process of making such assessments, and when I do I usually manage to squelch them before they're fully formed. I haven’t yet reached the goal of abandoning such judgments completely. It's hard to change the habits of a lifetime, but I'm slowly progressing. It’s good to know that even at my advanced age, change is still possible.