Author Topic: Love at no sight  (Read 2180 times)

Offline Kelda

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Love at no sight
« on: May 27, 2009, 08:24:56 am »

Thought this article was very interesting.

Love at no sight

In a looks-obsessed world, are blind people immune to appearances when they fall in love? As a new film looks at how sight-impaired people find romance, Damon Rose who is blind, says you don't have to be sighted to be shallow.

There are many questions that blind people find themselves fielding regularly. There's the one about whether you can see in your dreams, the one about how you know where your mouth is when eating ... but the other, and possibly most surprising of all, is the one that goes: "How do you fancy someone if you can't see them?"

To answer the question simply and directly, blind people will tell you that it's the voice, brain and personality which initially catch the eye, or in this case, ear. It's a good understandable answer. Everyone hears attractive voices on the radio. Voices are powerful organs that convey humour, quirkiness, intelligence, sweetness and attitude.

Your voice is the mouthpiece for the brain, it communicates your personality very effectively.

Though love at first sight may happen for people blessed with eyes, love after first discussion is the closest you'll get to it if you can't see.

I've often thought that "sighties" might be just a little bit disabled by having vision. I've seen friends chasing people for their looks yet getting hurt very badly because their beauty is only skin deep, their personality somewhat rotten.

But good looks and attraction can be complex for blind people. And oh how I'd love to be able to sit here and tell you that blind people are without prejudice: not caring if you're a prince or whether you're plug ugly and that we don't care about such superficial matters. Sadly, that's just not true.

It's impossible to live in the UK and not soak up discussions about beauty and presentability. It matters to everyone else, so of course it matters to us by proxy.

Blonde ambitions

When I was a teenager, I went to a boarding school for blind children where the sound of wildly rushing male and female hormones could be heard on every corridor. I particularly remember a new girl arriving. No one took much notice in her first few weeks... until one lad said they'd heard she was blonde.

She may have been a quiet shrinking violet but she suddenly started getting a lot of attention after her hair colour was made known. Of course, few of her admirers could see her crowning glory, or even knew that blonde was a kind of light yellowy brown, but because "blondes" are talked about as desirable, and dare I say thought more attractive than darker haired people, she became very popular.

Shallow, isn't it. But beautifully so.

Similarly, a blind friend of mine fell completely head over heels in love with a girl he thought the world of. They started dating. He talked about her all the time and, as mates do, he stopped going down the pub and started to prefer homemade meals and a nice bottle of wine with his loved one.

I remember him saying how much he liked her soft voice and her perfume. They had similar politics, liked the same films, read the same books - a match made in heaven.

Then, his brother met her, unpleasantly told him she looked "a right dog" and my friend dumped her.

She was devastated... and he started going to the Red Lion again.

I found it terribly sad but half understood where he was coming from. So insecure was he about the world and what image and attractiveness meant, that he felt he had to get rid of someone who could reflect badly on him because he didn't know any better. And on this occasion, he deferred to his brother who can see, after all.

Feat of clay

Beauty is power. Attractive people have an air about them. They're often very confident. As the phrase goes ... they can walk into a room and own it. But if the room has blind people in it, the "power" of their looks goes out of the window.

This can be confusing for people whose good looks usually count for a lot more than I'm giving them.

Let me give you an example. I'm at a party. I start talking to someone. I have no idea whether they're good looking or not until this happens:

"I just thought I'd better tell you what I look like. I'm 5ft 5ins, I've got shoulder-length blonde hair, my eyes are a deep brown colour and my skin tones are very light. If anyone asks who was the petite one you were talking to, that'll be me."

Huh? What? Hello? How am I supposed to react to this?

This is a situation that a number of blind friends have reported happens to them too. In the early days I mistakenly thought I was being chatted up. As I got a older though, I began to realise that this was more of a case study in egotism.

Some people just can't bear the idea that the blind person in the room won't consider them special or even worth talking to... until they tell you how good looking they are. The irony is that blind people tend to think less of them for doing it.

Of course, Lionel Richie has taught us that blind people are even more soulful than his music. The video which accompanied his 1984 hit Hello featured a storyline where teacher Lionel had a seemingly unrequited love for a blind student in his art class.

At the end of the video, we discover she has feelings for him too because she modelled a likeness of his face. Her soul touched his in a way that meant she didn't need to be able to see him to know what he looked like. I guess the biggest insight into what blind people think is attractive is to hurl a lump of clay at them and see what they turn it into.

Damon Rose is editor of the BBC disability site Ouch! Blind Loves is showing at London's ICA until 7 June. See related internet links, right



Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/magazine/8069993.stm

Published: 2009/05/27 11:00:12 GMT

© BBC MMIX
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Offline Katie77

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Re: Love at no sight
« Reply #1 on: May 27, 2009, 05:12:03 pm »
That is a very interesting article Kelda, covering things, that as a sighted person, I had never thought about before.

A similar thing can happen for us sighted people, here on the net. We can talk to people on here, and get a visual of how we think they look, and then we see a photo of them, and they are nothing like what you imagined.

It doesn't mean you like them any less, but it does change, sometimes, how you chat to them, even what you talk about.

How many of us, have been surprised when we see a photo of someone, we have been communicating with on here? And I dont mean that in a bad way, its good, because we definately get more of a feel for someone.
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It means you've decided to see beyond the imperfection

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Love at no sight
« Reply #2 on: May 27, 2009, 05:35:45 pm »
That was a really interesting piece, Kelda! I also liked the joke at the end, about the clay. Thanks for posting it.

And good point, Sue, about how our experience on the internet is in some ways similar. I don't know if I've changed the way I talk to someone once I find out what they look like, but I definitely have been surprised at times to meet Brokies, or see them in photos, and find they look nothing like I'd imagined. Of course, it's silly to imagine in the first place, but there must be something about our brains that wants to fill in an image even if there's nothing to go on.

Lots of times I wind up thinking of people as resembling their avatar, even if their avatar is of Jake or Heath -- even if their avatar is Jake or Heath and they're a woman, or older, or whatever. I remember one Brokie whose avatar was Roberta Maxwell as Mrs. Twist, so that's what I always thought of her as looking like. Finally, I met her, and she looked nothing like Roberta. But even afterward, I reverted to imagining her as Roberta-esque from her posts.


Offline Kelda

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Re: Love at no sight
« Reply #3 on: May 27, 2009, 06:21:50 pm »
Yup, I agree I have images in my mind about what a lot of the people here on BM look like
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Offline Katie77

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Re: Love at no sight
« Reply #4 on: May 27, 2009, 06:25:20 pm »
I'm the same, as far as avators go....and as you say, even if they are Heath or Jake, the visual is there connected to the name.......I wonder why that is?.....in fact I had never thought,thats what I do, until you mentioned it. The one who I always definately do that with is Shasta.....her avator to me looks like David Schwimmer out of Friends, and thats how I think of her....in fact I thought she was a he for a long time......sorry Shasta.

The same goes for voices.....I worked in a branch of a credit union one time, and talked to people from head office many times every day, and once again had a visual. Then we all met up at a meeting, and there were definately some surprises there.

So, getting back to Kelda's article.....the probility is, that the blind person, does not get the proper visual from voice and touch and conversation, unless they have a stronger perception that what we have. And, if they are blind from birth, and have never seen any face at all, I wonder how and what they actually do visualise.

So many questions, makes one remember to never take for granted what we fortunate ones are able to see.

Being happy doesn't mean everything is perfect.

It means you've decided to see beyond the imperfection