Playing Pretend

Think Tank #6

What is it about people that makes us want to obscure who we are?

At risk of sounding, well, weird, this thought occurred to me while shaving my legs. Male readers, substitute shaving your face, or getting your hair cut, or anything else you do to make yourself appear more civilized, or well-kept.

Why, in order to appear attractive, or socially acceptable, do we make ourselves appear less human?

In terms of physical appearance, this may apply to women more than men. Body hair is natural, but it’s not ladylike; we remove it. Our hair needs to get styled, our faces painted, our pheromones masked with artificial scents. It might be the most compelling argument for the theory of evolution—we don’t find our ‘animal’ nature attractive, so we fake it, making it seem like we’ve somehow evolved past it.

The analogy works on a metaphorical level, too. Men in particular hide their emotions, because appearing more human makes them seem less masculine.

I’ve heard the idea somewhere that grey aliens are modeled after what the ideal ‘future’ humans would look like—muscular atrophy, giant brains. It’s the perfect embodiment of the predominance of mind over body.

Perhaps this is a bit of a stretch. This whole idea is, isn’t it? But it’s kind of true. What other animal does this? Don’t most of them exaggerate the features most characteristic of their species? Doesn’t the biggest, strongest, hairiest gorilla get all the girls? Or the fastest shark with the sharpest teeth? Male lions don’t cut their manes off and dye them black because they want to look more like a zebra.

If you’re more well-versed in science than me, and you think you have the answer, enlighten me. Because right now I’m just kind of confused, and half-convinced that the aforementioned ‘greys’ infiltrated our media to make the whole world look more like them, so they can—well, I don’t know. People are f’ing weird. I know that.