A Grandpa Reacts To Seeing Himself In His Granddaughter's Selfie — And It's The Reality We All Face
He was harshly honest about the way he thinks he looks.
YAKOBCHUK VIACHESLAV / Shutterstock A young granddaughter stepped into the kitchen, phone in hand and ready to record a sweet video of her with her grandfather. The two of them were matching, wearing green shirts, and she wanted to capture a short clip of his reaction after she pointed it out.
However, when he saw himself in her selfie camera, she was not prepared for the reaction he would have. People praised the way she handled the situation, but it was heartbreaking, to say the least.
Her grandfather called himself ‘ugly’ and ‘awful’ after seeing himself in her video.
“We’re literally matching right now,” the young woman says in the selfie video she’s taking next to her grandfather. The caption for the video says that her grandpa has Alzheimer’s, but he’s really sweet and funny — probably trying to say that people shouldn’t take his reaction to himself so seriously.
“Look at the colors, they match,” she explains, since they’re both wearing green shirts. “Is that me?” he asks his granddaughter, to which she replies that of course it is. He continues, saying, “Get a gun and shoot me. As ugly as I am — I ain’t that ugly, am I?”
If he does have Alzheimer’s (we can’t confirm that the caption came from her), then maybe he forgot what he looks like or hasn’t been able to keep up with his change in appearance as he aged. Either way, her mouth drops open in shock at how blunt he’s being, and how hard he’s being on his own appearance.
“No, you’re handsome. Why are you saying stuff like that?” she says in response. “Look at me,” he says, as she pans the camera to him once more. “That’s ugly.” Once again, she tells him that it isn’t ugly.
After repeating the “gun” line once more, she tells him to tell himself that he looks good. She wants him to practice some sort of positive affirmation in order for him to feel like he looks good. She wants him to feel good about himself, but he resists.
“I look awful,” he says. They do this back and forth a few times, he simply says, “I’m awful,” and she appears to lose hope that he’ll change his opinion about himself.
The truth is, the way we perceive appearances changes as we grow older.
What we find attractive changes as we grow older, and our priorities tend to shift.
Many people fear Father Time for the simple fact that our bodies will age as time moves on. Our bodies will get more wrinkly, maybe our skin will sag, or our hair will magically disappear.
Recently, it seems like the question on everyone’s mind takes us back to Lana Del Ray’s 2013 hit, "Young and Beautiful," where she sings, “Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?” The answer is — probably.
During a study published in September 2021, researchers claimed that attractiveness is not a monolithic construct. They found that older subjects who were asked to perceive someone’s attractiveness were less likely to change their answers based on the age of the face they were viewing.
This is to say that younger and middle-aged people were far more critical of older faces, claiming that they were unattractive.
A separate study from May 2021 revealed that as people grew older, the importance of appearance changed as a whole. People were less worried about how someone looked when it came to how attractive they were — personality and resources (like intelligence, education, and income).
People were saddened to see how this old man reacted to his own appearance, but our aging bodies are something that everyone will have to face and come to terms with as they grow older. The young woman was praised for trying to be supportive, so let’s just hope he was messing around instead of truly feeling that way.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.