Prettyburgis

A completely unhinged, unserious 1,200-word treatise on looking just fine

I had been eyefucking him since we were introduced to each other just around an hour and a half earlier. The dance floor of this gay bar in Taguig’s business district is pulsing to the beat of my heart as I feel the air between us get heavier and heavier with each jarring transition to a new song. “Sex in the air—“ I fix my gaze on his face, oh his handsome face. “I don’t care—“ I lean in and so does he. “I love the smell of it.” Our lips embrace and our tongues wrap around each other in a dance from hell.

The alcohol levels in our blood continue to rise as more Cuervo shots are passed around. Looking at everything now through a 2013 Instagram filter — blurry, warm and oversaturated — I gain enough courage to ask him a shallow question: “Do you find me attractive?”  A brief pause. “Gusto mo ba ‘yung totoo?” I nod, but I already know where this is going. He continues, “Saks lang.” A disk scratch. Silence. Then he goes in again for our tongues to jostle.

My mother always tells me that I am attractive; but she is my mother and I am her child. I have known since my early teens that I am not that handsome, at least in the conventional sense: Not facially challenged, but still lacking in face value. 

I’ve tested this at least twice. Once I told my notoriously frank (borderline judgmental) college classmate that I’m ugly. “Hindi naman! Sakto ka lang. Seven out of 10.” I’ve always taken that as a compliment. Another time, I told a guy I met at a party in Quezon City that I’m somewhere between attractive and unattractive. “I’m sorry for you,” he goes on to say in jest. But he quips, “You have a cute face naman.” It’s a nicer way to say that I’m not that attractive, but he would still be willing to ask me for a friendly kiss before he leaves. So yes, he made his tongue slither in my mouth (as a friend.)

Still, it is not enough being good enough, especially among the gays who can be so cruel, as if we don’t already face cruelty every day. My success rate in the dating scene is laughably low, my beeline on Bumble rarely reaching double digits, and I frequently receive a block whenever I send a picture of myself on Grindr. In these instances, I try to console myself by saying that I just have a niche market.

That works most of the time. Looking at the glass half-full, not being that hot means there is less unwanted attention to filter through. But looking at the glass half-empty, that just means that I’m not getting enough attention. During these episodes, I look at my body and get disgusted at the sight of my belly protruding and my chest not being small and humble so you do mistake them for mountains. So I invest in looking better: I get better clothes, maintain a rigorous skincare routine, keep my hair neat and make feeble attempts to go to the gym. The intended result is to expand my market share, guide more people through their customer journeys and get more conversions to dramatically increase returns on my investment.

I know it’s crazy to be saying all these things. I had realized that during one session with my psychiatrist where I used marketing buzzwords to talk about my desire to be more attractive. “Oh my God. I’m commodifying myself.” “Glad you noticed,” she said. 

But it’s hard not to aspire to be more attractive, especially when I see how much social capital pretty whey gays on the internet have with all their equally pretty whey gay friends. They have hordes of gawkers ready to defend them when they get cancelled, during which they initially double down on their statements and actions, issue a half-assed Notes app apology, go private, then return in a few weeks with a picture of them flexing their biceps and showing their bushy armpits to much critical acclaim, then all is forgotten. They are able to plunge people into a collective amnesia without having a sophisticated communications plan and a well-oiled political machinery. Pretty privilege accords people with so much power, perhaps too much. In social settings, they are the ruling class — the gourgeoisie.

Those immediately beneath them are people like me: Not pretty enough to be gorgeous, but also not ugly enough to be hideous — the prettyburgis. Just like the petite bourgeois described by leftist thinkers, they aspire to be like the ruling class and play a role in maintaining the power that the gourgeoisie has. They (Or perhaps more aptly, we) are the pick-me gays on the social media accounts of handsome men, desperate to get even just a like on a comment just to gain the satisfaction of knowing that our existence has been acknowledged. We are the ardent defenders of errant gorgeous people and our battlecry is, “I can fix him.” The prettyburgis try to fix themselves too in order to replicate the looks of the ruling class. In the quest to be beautiful, we tend to be fixated on what we lack even though we probably look fine. I guess that is the problem, that we look just fine and not fine af.

But there is a more pressing problem than our self-perception. This process of propping up the gourgeoisie at the expense of the emotional and mental well-being of the prettyburgis is unhealthy, to say the least. It is debasing to be constantly seeking approval of people and depressing to always be so self-critical. There is absolutely nothing to gain from licking the ass of pretty people except a slim chance of getting noticed and maybe E. coli. The only people who do benefit from this are the few who are in the upper echelons of society due to their appearance.

Why should we continue to subject ourselves to such embarrassment? Why should we allow ourselves to be submit to the mercy of the gourgeoisie? There are more of us than there are of them. That thought alone should be enough to soothe us and illuminate the path to liberating ourselves from being enslaved by the craving to get noticed by beautiful people. There is more than enough of us to go around, maybe we should not be looking elsewhere for attention because there is plenty of that among us. Perhaps we can consider redirecting our desire to each other instead of fixating on people who benefit too much from our admiration.

A good part of the power that the gourgeoisie have is contributed by us, who help elevate their status in society. When we realize that we outnumber them, that we are the people who truly wield power, and that looking good enough is good enough, we can deny them of the privilege they have been enjoying for too long. We can turn inward and see the beauty in each other and in ourselves. Because I have had enough of telling myself I am ugly when really, I look just fine.