People are always interested in who is the best or most whatever. The problem is that when everyone expects to be the best, the ones not chosen feel like they did it wrong, or they weren’t good enough—as opposed to just not doing as well as someone else on this day. Of course, it’s worse when a panel of judges or the marketplace decides who is the best.
I would like to know how I compare to others, but the problem with knowing that is that when it turns out that I don’t compare as well as I want to, it hurts too much. So I prefer places where everyone is equal and no one gets measured against anyone else. When that kind of thing has started to happen here, I have strongly urged people to stop it.
So it’s not a waste of time. It’s about status. The most beautiful people are at the top of the heap, and they get the perks of that. More money, more people to admire them, and more status. Status, after all, is what people want.
We may not like it that beauty confers all these benefits, because we know it’s not something we have much control over. It’s genes, after all.
Except that we do have control over genes. We get to select the people we choose to reproduce with. Over the long run, we do control how we look by selecting the mates who have these advantages. If you think in the long run, this may not be shallow at all. For beauty, it turns out, is strongly associated with intelligence and success. Maybe we aren’t selecting for beauty, but for intelligence and success. Beauty just happens to come along.