Becoming Pretty Takes Good Genes

It occurred to me this morning as I was doing my morning routine that perhaps being pretty takes good genes.

Well, duh, you say.  But let me explain myself further:

Some people are born beautiful.  And some people get some help via plastic surgery, makeup, clothes, etc.

But in this society, even though we worship plastic beauty (let's call it) and put those people on a pedestal, we also, at the same time, look down on anyone who had work done; if we should learn about it.

Now, evolutionarily speaking -- or as anthropologists would have you believe -- beauty is an expression of good genes.  Therefore, the more beautiful a person is, the more wonderful their genes.  That's the theory.

But what happens if the person is not naturally beautiful, but they get some help from a doctor's scalpel or some other modern contrivance?  Does that mean their genes are less wonderful?

Before, I would have argued yes, because that beauty they created is not an expression of nature.  But today I thought of an argument to play my own devil's advocate.  And this is the argument:

If a person can make themselves beautiful through whatever devices available to them, does this not mean that they are smart enough to find the right doctors or products or what have you to make themselves beautiful? And if they are smart enough to do that, to make themselves look good, does not that mean that their genes are in someway better?  At least better than those who don't know how to make themselves look good?

Do you see what I 'm saying here?  They may not have what you would call the "beautiful gene", but they might have what you would call, what I would call, the "smart gene", which some may argue, is an even better gene to have.  Because, being smart can get you more things.  It can even get you beauty.  Beauty can't get you smarts, but smarts can get you beauty.  And after all, these people who can make themselves look good, in so doing can attract a mate with good "beautiful genes" if they so desire, and therefore propagate even better genes down the line.

Now, I am not saying that people who overdo plastic surgery or any other cosmetic procedure have this smart gene.  Because they do not look beautiful.  And in order to possess this smart gene, one must be able to actually make oneself look good.  Making oneself look bad or worse does not qualify.  A person who can make themselves look good also has to know when to stop, when too much would be overkill and would make them look bad.  This ability to make the right decisions would show that they have the smart gene, because it takes a pretty smart person to know when good enough is good enough, and more would be too much.

Not everyone is capable of making such decisions, and that is why I would argue people who know how to make these decisions, how to become pretty, also have good genes; and they figure out how to express them.