Analysis Of Ted Chiang's Short Story: Liking What You See

Imagine living in a world free of materialistic judgment, where your flaws would go unnoticed and your personality would shine. In Ted Chiang’s short story, “Liking What You See” he introduces a unique fictional procedure called Calli. Calli modifies the way we view one another by altering our brains reaction to physical appearance. One can still see perfect and imperfect faces, however, the aesthetic reaction that a person feels when they look at a perfect or imperfect face is nonexistent. Calli causes people to look beyond beauty and appreciate people for who they are, instead of how they look. While Calli may seem like a good idea of the surface, judgment is much more complex than appearance alone. People tend to search for solutions such …show more content…
According to Maria deSouza, a third-year student at Pembleton, and the President of the students for Equality Everywhere (SEE), “The societal problem is lookism. For decades, people have been willing to talk about racism and sexism, but they’re still reluctant to talk about lookism” (282). Lookism is known as being prejudice against unattractive people. Lookism is something that is not taught, it is naturally acquired and due to society, it is constantly reinforced through many sources such as social media, fashion and television. Our society has become increasingly superficial and materialistic; it is becoming less about who you are and more about what you have. Calli “evens up the odds; it takes away the innate predisposition, the tendency for such discrimination to arise in the first place” (284). Calli would rid one of shallow judgment and would cause you to look inside the book instead of only at its cover. With Calli, you would still be able to recognize distinguishable features of a person’s face, however you would not anesthetically react. Calli alters one’s mind, by allowing one to judge others more accurately based upon their true characteristic …show more content…
In no way is one learning how to embrace his or her insecurities or learning how to love themselves. Instead, Calli is erasing them and “pretending” that they never existed in the first place. Calli takes away from the cycle of maturity. As one grows older, they learn to adjust to their imperfections. However, when one has Calli, they are never required to adjust to those imperfections, they are able to forget them because they are not comprehendible. Plastic surgery also has the same affect by altering your imperfections, and creating a new image of one’s self that in turn replaces the old