Beauty At What Price?

We all love pearls. Beautiful, lustrous spheres strung on a string; an understated, yet elegant accessory to complete that polished look.

We know how they were formed. A piece of debris falls inside an oyster and it reacts by covering it with a layer of nacre. It covers it with more and more nacre and that’s how the pearl grows in size. For the oyster, perhaps a smooth, round object in its tissues would probably hurt less than a jagged one.

Until recently, pearls were hard to find. Not all oysters have them. Chances of debris getting stuck in an oyster is not very high. Then a Japanese guy came up with the idea of implanting stuff inside oysters to make them make pearls. Smart move. Now we don’t have to open up so many oysters to find a single pearl. Its price becomes more affordable, everyone wins. Humans, that is.

But imagine that you are the oyster…

Being forced open so that a piece of irritating object can be placed inside you. Left to deal with it for years before being harvested for that precious gem you were forced to produce. And what good did it do to you? You, the oyster, get sold to restaurants to be eaten with a squeeze of lemon.

What would you, the oyster, be experiencing in all those long years? You have this thing stuck inside you, and the only way you know to deal with it is to gloss it over so that it wouldn’t hurt so much. And as time goes by, it becomes a constant ache that you have learnt to live with. Instead of being an anomaly only an unfortunate few will have to endure, it becomes a mass inoculation of discomfort.

Bravo, humans. You have successfully manipulated nature to get what you want. Who cares about the oysters? They’re expendable.