Genetic Destiny

The vulgar love a good swindle. Imposture no longer offends sensibility, just as insulting a man's honor will not result in a duel as was customary just a few generations ago.

Honor says everything about a man's character and substance, and calling it into question was a threat of social death necessitating a duel to defend oneself. The culture of honor was undermined and ended when most people becoming openly dishonorable. Perhaps only criticism of honor by a person with impeccable honor would matter today, but would result in little more than twitter insults and media amusement, everyone too busy to track down the accusers to issue a solid dose of violence.

Imposture too goes untouched, and its advocates and enablers likewise. If you were born with poor qualities, you can trick a mate into accepting and mixing with them, diluting better genes with worse ones, getting yourself a better result while lowering theirs, much like politically popular social programs for equality.

Beauty is an audition for children's traits. A man loves the beauty of a woman because her traits promise him a healthy child. Her taut breasts indicate fitness, and from them she will successfully nurse his progeny. Each of her traits is judged similarly, measured in a split second, called love at first sight, formed under the instinctual measurement that what appears to be is in fact there, a premise no longer certain in modernity.

Having a good height is a marker of health, and genes best able to achieve this outcome are favored. Symmetry and other attractive traits are also desirable. Big industries encourage the faking of essential markers of genetic worth, promoting high heels for height and posture, makeup hiding bad skin, or hair coloring suggesting adaptations that don't actually exist, intending to fake displays of ideal youthful fertility.

Hairplugs, the modern version of wigs, hide balding. You can get surgery to fix that bad nose, but your children will get it and your spouse will be confused how a long lineage of perfect noses was unexpectedly disrupted by fraud. You can modify your breasts and buttocks to simulate health if you've been too lazy to exercise and too unconcerned to eat properly, but you'll just have an attached sack of plastic, silicone, or saline temporarily held together in a weird inhuman shape, unattractive to those who prefer the natural form won by focused activity.

Put in contacts to add color to your eyes, then mate with a recessive traited person and extinguish their genetics. Change your eye shape if its undesirable. If your chin is weak, get implants; if too strong, have it reduced. All will appear unchanged in your children and your trick will be revealed.

The desire to appear other than your genetics fakes substance in the promotion of an impossibility that cannot be achieved. Though you might fool a mate and tie up their genetics for a well crafted fraud, attempting to display traits you don't have is a false promise that can never be delivered.