How Important Is Your Appearance?

How important is your appearance? Although everyone wants to be good-looking, are beautiful people the happiest people? For example, it must be a problem to be a really beautiful woman because many men may be more interested in looking at you than in talking to you. They think of you as a picture rather than a person. There are also some people who think that women who are exceptionally pretty and men who are particularly handsome must be stupid. They believe that only unattractive people can be intelligent.

On the other hand no one wants to be really ugly and have a face that even your mother doesn’t want to look at; and no one wants to be plain either that is to be neither attractive nor unattractive, and have a face that is easily forgotten.

Being attractive is like being rich: it can help you to find happiness, but it doesn’t always make you happy. So may be the best thing is not to worry too much about how you look, but simply try to be an interesting person, for interesting people have interesting faces and interesting faces are almost always attractive.

Think about it:

• Who is the most beautiful woman and the best-looking man you know?

• Do you think it’s difficult to be very good-looking? Why?

• How important is it to look attractive? Why?

• Look at these common English expressions and decide whether you agree with them:

1. Beauty is only skin-deep.

2. Your face is your fortune.

3. Beauty is the eye of the beholder (i.e. the person who is looking).

14. Reading. Warming-up.

• How do men usually look at women (girl)?

• Do they start with the head and work down or start with the ankles and work up? Why?

• How do women usually look at men?

Checkmate.

As she entered the room every eye turned towards her.

When admiring a girl some men start with her head and work down. I start with the ankles and work up.

She wore black high-heeled velvet shoes and a tight-fitting black dress that stopped high enough above the knees to reveal the most perfectly tapering legs. As my eyes continued their upward sweep they paused to take in her narrow waist and slim athletic figure. But it was the oval face that I found captivating, slightly plumpy lips and the largest blue eyes I’ve ever seen, crowned with a head of thick black short-cut hair that literally shone with lustre. Her entrance was all the more breathtaking, because of the surrounding she had chosen. Heads would have turned at a diplomatic reception, a society cocktail party, even a charity-ball, at a chess tournament.

Discuss the following.

• What do you think the girl was doing at the chess tournament?

• Can such a girl be a good chess-player? Why?

• This is the beginning of the story “Checkmate” by Jeffry Archer. What do you think could happen at the end of the story?

• What is the first thing you notice in a person (the dress, the eyes, the figure, the hair)?

15. Get some pictures of people from magazines. Two people write their own descriptions of the same picture. Then compare your description with the other person’s.

16. Expand the stories.

    1. My father was forty when he married my mother, who was more than twenty years younger. She was a very beautiful woman and he was a very ugly man. They have been known in the Paris of that day as Beauty and the Beast. My mother was very small, with large brown eyes and hair of rich reddish gold. She had exquisite features, and a lovely skin. She was much admired. My father, on the contrary…

    2. Mother was a darling. She used to have her hair in a tight bun, and she looked quite fierce, but she wasn’t really. She had smiling eyes and a head of gold. Father was a very quiet man. He always looked distant as though he were lost in his own thoughts…

17. Translate into English.

1.Ты великолепно выглядишь. Ты из отпуска? – Да, я только что вернулась из Сочи.

2.Близнецы очень похожи друг на друга. Я не смогу отличить их. Оба черноглазые, широкоплечие, стройные.

3. У нее правильные черты лица и прекрасные глаза. Но больше всего мне нравятся ее волосы, густые, длинные и волнистые.

4. Мой брат среднего роста, но хорошо сложен. У него хорошие манеры, он очень нравится девушкам.

5. – Ты растишь бороду? – Да, а что? – Я не очень люблю мужчин с бородой. – Ну, о вкусах не спорят.

6. Моей маме за сорок, но она выглядит очень молодо. У нее светлые волосы, карие глаза и красивый цвет лица. Она очень энергичная и улыбчивая.

7. Она не была красавицей, но мужчины редко осознавали это, очарованные ее обаянием. У нее было поразительное лицо с темными ресницами и светло-зелеными глазами. Они светились жизнелюбием, и темные густые брови красиво выделялись на магнолиево-белой коже.

8. Красота, как и богатство, не всегда делает человека счастливым, поэтому лучше не волноваться о том, как ты выглядишь, а попытаться быть интересным человеком. У интересных людей всегда интересные лица, в то время как интересные лица не всегда привлекательны.