In deciding who is happier between beautiful people and the rest of us, we might look at the tortoise and hare story.  Happiness is a matter of who’s point of view one is looking from.  Remember the pretty princess and the pea?

Many sources say that beautiful people are happier because they make more money, get the best spouses and everything else that’s prized.  (KXAN, Independent, Fox New)  There’s something called the halo effect.  We attribute good qualities to a person based on their beauty without verifying if those qualities actually exist.  What happens when the beauty fades?  (Training Day)

Things come easy for beautiful people.  So easy, in fact, that when the beauty fades they are often left without the social skills necessary to be successful and/or happy on their own.  Beauty is a vain thing.  As such, it is shallow. 

Beauty often comes at a price.  It seems to find a way to hurt those who aren’t.  It lures the most shallow among us into temptation and disappointment.  It sets the stage for how people treat us.  It’s like selling one’s soul to the devil for a moment’s pleasure.  Beautiful people rarely see far enough into the future to know what the cost will be.

ARE beautiful people happier than most?  This author has been wondering that for years.  She’s in the middle somewhere.  Not quite beautiful and not quite ugly either.  A routine lack of artifice and face paint is a further hindrance to popularity and special treatment.

After decades of consideration and observation, she’s decided that beauty by itself doesn’t cut it.  She has lived long enough to see model perfect friends get old.  She’s seen cheerleader schoolmates try to hold on to what looks they had in high school with hair dyes, make-up and nice clothes.  Some of them do a very nice job of it, actually.  But, are they happier than the rest of us?  Possibly.

The people she has known, who were beautiful when they were young, don’t appear to be now.  It looked like the world revolved around them back then.  They were on top of the world.  Untouchable.  Now, it seems, bitterness leaks from some of them like from a wounded bear.

There’s only one person this author knows who seems to have escaped bitterness in old age.  This might be because that person learned a long time ago how to make other people feel good about themselves (at least part of the time).  Like attracts like, it seems.

For a successful and happy life,  there must be balance.  If a flame burns brightly, it also burns quickly.  Beauty is like a flame burning brightly.  How can one weather a storm if one has never Really learned how to use their sails?

All in all, I think we all have our trials and tribulations.  It’s just the rest of us get our growth stunted by those who steal all the good stuff with their beauty.  But, then… aren’t the taller and healthier trees the ones that get cut down first?

References/sources:

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/are-beautiful-people-happier

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/04/01/beautiful-people-happier-successful-plain-looking-counterparts/

http://www.jyi.org/volumes/volume6/issue6/features/feng.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/beautiful-people-earn-12-more-than-ugly-bettys-461261.html

http://vnutravel.typepad.com/trainingday/2006/07/why_attractive__1.html