Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover (?)

I read this phrase not so long ago on my friend’s Facebook’s status and did not pay any attention on it until a couple of months ago, I met a guy in a club who was at that time approaching me but then at the end became a dear friend of me and my gang. When we told him about why did we welcome him in our closed and tight group, which was because of he looks alright (come on, I can’t be too obvious by saying that he looks great here, can I?), he was like amazed but then called us shallow as he said that our group judging people by their looks from the outside.

Okay, before we talk about that, let me tell you about this phrase first. The very common English idiom "don't judge a book by its cover" is a metaphorical phrase which means "don't determine the worth of something based on its appearance". It is probably the most common expression used in English to convey vanity. The phrase first appeared in the American journal American Speech in 1944 as "you can't judge a book by its binding." In 1946 the phrase appeared in the murder mystery novel Murder in the Glass Room (by Edwin Rolfe and Lester Fuller) as "you can never tell a book by its cover." It was further popularized by the 1947 movie "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer," in which Cary Grant references the idiom anecdotally before saying the line "never judge a book by its cover." While the phrase itself may be born of the 20th century, the idea has existed much longer. In the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, the Roman author Juvenal wrote in his Satires, "Fronti nulla fides," (Satires II,8) which translates as, "Never have faith in the front.”

Back to my point, actually I was a little bit confused with the phrase. Let me explain to you guys here, why did I confuse? Here’s the thing, when it comes to judging something, for me, that means that I didn’t know anything about what I was going to judge, right? I mean, am not going to judge about something or someone that I already knew. It doesn’t call judging if we already knew about it, don’t you think so? Then yeah, when it comes to something that we didn’t know, of course we judge them by how they look from the outside, duh! Let me give you an example here, if you met a guy in a club then he was like approaching you while he was like not so much for an outlook, would you even smile to him? Would you even think of okay, I think he’s a nice guy so I’ll talk to him? Would you? I don’t think so. How do you know that he was a nice guy if you just met him at that point? How do you decide whether he worth a shot or not if you never met him before? Of course, you decide it by judging him from his appearance! Like when you saw a guy who you don’t know riding a bike recklessly with only surfing shorts on and body full of freckles, what was the first thought that came in to your mind? Exactly…OZ! How do you tell? By his appearance, definitely! And why do you think some people put false pictures of themselves on their so called social networking site’s account if they think that no one will judge them by their outlooks? Or why do you even bother checking on how do you look in the mirror before you left your house if nobody even care. That’s so human, guys! And it’s not shallow at all, well…at least for me it’s not.

Before you guys say something, let me now give you another example and this time is literally. If they said ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ then why would they even bother to put a great picture and or design when they published a book? Nobody is going to decide whether they are going to buy that book or not by the look of its cover, isn’t it? Hah! So yeah, am so sorry guys…call me shallow or whatever, but of course, as a normal human being, I do judge a book by its cover. So don’t blame us if when the guy that I mention above, asked me to meet him again the next day after we met at a club that night, I was like asked my friends’ opinion about that. And guess what did they say? Yeah, they were like…he looked alright, he dressed properly, and he smelled good, so yeah…welcome to the club! Come on guys, we can’t say that he was a great or nice guy yet, we barely knew him at that time! But now after a while, we decided to maintain our friendship with him because of he was in fact a great guy, with a look as a bonus, hah! So the point that I am trying to tell you is, do judge a book by its cover, but don’t decide whether it worth a keep or not just by its appearance.

^_^

À tous mes chers amis, merci de l'inspiration ... vous la roche de gars!