Okay stay with me now. I’m not disagreeing with this phrase, but there is a lot left unsaid.
Have you ever seen a piece of media where there is someone that is ‘unconventionally’ attractive, and there’s that one hero/heroine that pulls THIS iconic line?
Down to its core it’s seemingly nice, but if you actually stop to think about what it really means, it really hits you that this is only counter productive and enforces some pretty problematic ideas. Society as a collective perpetuates a view that external appearances are a measure of worth. So, everyone wants to be beautiful right?
As good as that phrase may sound, this quote is only dismissing anyone who has struggled with self image. Telling someone it’s only the inside that matters completely invalidates this person’s struggles. Furthermore, saying “appearance does not matter” IS NOT TRUE AT ALL. People have faced REAL struggles in everyday life over discrimination from their appearance, and saying it ‘does not matter’, comes off as extremely tone deaf.
This quote doesn’t actually fix anything and only downplays this person’s issues. Not to mention, it’s really just a backhanded compliment. It’s a pretty subtle way of telling someone they are not attractive. In a nutshell, it is just a euphemism for “Yeah, you’re kinda ugly, but at least it’s what’s on the inside that matters, right?”
You have acknowledged that their external beauty does not meet up to standards, and in result feel the need to compliment their internal beauty to over compensate for it. If anything, this just reinforces that fact that internal beauty is not as prioritised as external, unless it’s a flaw. THEN all of a sudden that’s all that matters.
They need support, not dismissal. Period.
Another thing is that telling someone this, only shames them for wanting to look beautiful and demonises it to something that is inherently shallow. Changing one’s appearance is a source of confidence and boost of self esteem for many, and telling someone this, only makes someone feel silly/irrational for caring about their appearance.
That being said, worth is about how YOU feel about yourself, not how someone else feels about you, inside or out.