# Gwapo Problems: Musings on the Existential Anguish of the Absurdly Handsome

# Gwapo Problems: Musings on the Existential Anguish of the Absurdly Handsome

by Nicholo Jallores

There’s The Cute guy. There’s The Handsome Guy. There’s The Hot Guy. And then there’s the Absurdly Good-looking: men who are aesthetically pleasing beyond all discernible reason and genetic feasibility.

Girls fawn over them, while guys… well, they fawn over them too, albeit in a different and more confounded kind of way. You see them walking towards your general direction and suddenly you go into tunnel vision – the world whizzes by you while you are stuck looking at this magnificent being moving in seeming slow motion. Your mind races at a million miles per minute, wondering how it is possible for one guy to possess a world’s worth of beauty. Such is the discrepancy between your looks and theirs that they actually look like they are made of an entirely different organic material. If you were molded from clay, they were sculpted from diamonds. If you are the salt of the earth, they are sugar and spice, oak bark and cigars. They even smell differently – they can never be “stinky,” only “musky.” They glow as if their skin cells are microscopic prisms that bend and improve the light.

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Mind you, the Absurdly Good-looking Men are of a rare breed, as is the nature of all absurdities. In a place like Dubai, you can’t stop to take off your backpack without hitting A Cute Guy or two, and all you need to do to feast your eyes on handsomeness is to hang out in the Mall of the Emirates for a few hours. But you can’t go hunting for Absurdly Good-looking Men, as they tend to be elusive like unicorns. The Absurdly Good-looking Men come to you, most often in times when you are the least mentally prepared, so your daze is at an optimum. So seldom is a sighting that when it comes, it almost feels divinely ordained – as if God knew you needed a bit of magnificence in your life, and sent it in the form of a 6-foot model with a jawline that could cut stone and shoulders that horizontally extend towards infinity.

Blessed with physical perfection, the Absurdly Good-looking Man seems to embody mankind’s next step in the evolutionary ladder – the homo sapien superior. It’s not at all difficult to surmise that such a beautiful creature could not possibly have the same problems as the rest of us biological rough drafts, or could they? An inconvenient social dictum: the more attractive you are, the easier it is to have things your way. In as much as we admire the Absurdly Good-looking Men, we also cannot help but resent them because they have advantages that the Average-Looking Populace does not. We have to work and struggle and toil to impress others; all they have to do is, well, exist.

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This begs the question: what sort of problems does one face when one’s face is practically perfect? If your good looks borders on the ridiculous, do you also have bad hair days, bad skin days, days when you could not stand to look in the mirror? Is it at all possible for you to feel physically insecure? What sort of existential anguish besieges the Absurdly Good-looking man? We can only imagine.

1.) People expect them to always be perfect and polished

The sight of great beauty tends to leave a lasting impression in the mind – obviously, because rare is the sadist who only likes to remember ugliness. Once people have marked you for your absurd good looks, they will want you to stay that way forever, or even worse, they will want you to falter, as it has become a bit of a spectator sport to watch gods crash and scorch the earth. Imagine the type of internal pressure this creates. You can never have a zit, gain a pound, nor leave the house with a bedhead. People will audit you for consistency. In their minds, your only role in the world is to look perfect and polished – deviate from this, and your value plummets.

2.) It’s hard for them to be taken seriously

Imagine you have the prodigious mind of a young Mark Zuckerberg in the body of Tyson Beckford, and you go for your first job interview. You have a boatload of brilliant ideas and a stunning educational background, but all the hiring manager could focus on is how your rock-hard chest is bursting out of your Oxford shirt. People tend to undermine your intelligence because someone that handsome could not possibly be brainy, right? Like the famous expression goes, “Hindi binibigay ng Diyos ang lahat,” hence you can only be Absurdly Good-looking or smart; never both.

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# Gwapo Problems: Musings on the Existential Anguish of the Absurdly Handsome

3.) They are magnets for excessive and unwanted attention

Sometimes, you just want to get your business done without having to cause too much of a stir and ruckus – a functional impossibility if you were born with a face that stops traffic. Yours is a countenance that is meant for spectacles, not stealth, so even something as innocuous as rushing to the grocery for eggs can turn into a riot of creepy stares and hushed giggles. You walk the streets wearing hoodies and dark sunnies to avoid scrutiny. Sometimes you just want to be left alone, but that becomes almost improbable as the people around you crowd you telepathically. You become a prisoner of your own handsomeness.

 4.) They always have to worry about ulterior motives

Making a genuinely meaningful connection with another human being tends to be a challenge, because it’s difficult to tell if a person is truly into what you have to offer to the world, or if the person just wants to get freaky with you. Instead of establishing deep, like-minded bonds with individuals who truly respect your worth and worldview, all you have is a web sticky entanglements that are awkward at best, sinister at worst. You can never take people at face value, because that would make you naïve and stupid, which would be playing into stereotype. You must always assume that people always look at you with dark and even slightly bestial motives.

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5.) People automatically assume that they are douche-y

Handsome and chivalrous alpha males live only in fairy tales. The world has grown to be so cynical and pessimistic that it has become a hostile environment for Prince Charming. Here, an Absurdly Good-looking Guy is a conceited SOB until proven otherwise. One who is endowed with disarming good looks cannot possibly be humble and levelheaded. You’re not Prince Charming; you’re Justin Bieber, and your arrogance must be called out at the soonest possible opportunity. This often escalates into unsavory situations that range from casual snobbery to physical altercation. Imagine that. People hate you because you are beautiful.

6.) One can only go by handsomeness for so long

Your stunning good looks may get your foot through the door, but your character, talents, and capabilities will give you the right to stay in the room. Even industries that rely primarily on physical beauty also demand their own specialized set of professional skills. Contrary to popular sentiments, the absurdly good-looking also struggle with the usual daily human gripes such as stresses in the work place, unpaid bills, laundry, and yes – even the occasional bad hair day. Handsomeness can only take them so far. They would have to depend on their wits and ingenuity the rest of the way.

The next time you see an Absurdly Good-looking Man, look at him with a bit more compassion and empathy. He is just like you, only better looking. And you are just like him. He just has a different set of problems – to be exact, #GwapoProblems.