How many times have you heard someone say "Personality is everything"?. A couple times? A few times? Half a hundred times? I have heard it plenty enough, but when you think about it claiming that personality is everything is actually a very shallow statement to make.
First:
Consider that you are a "shallow" person if you judge someone of the opposite gender based purely on looks, because looks are apparently not who a person is. This is a false statement to make though because looks are a large part of a person. When someone says the name of your significant other, I guarentee you picture their physical being in your head to symbolize this person. You dont try to visualize their subconscious, rather you think of their physical body to represent them as a person. Therefore the body becomes the symbol of a person's personality. Even without thinking about it, you are interacting with a persons looks, and all those times when you are not directly interacting with a persons personality, you are interacting with their body. You could be sitting at a table across from them not talking. You are not interacting with their personality, but you are indeed looking up at their body, taking note on their physical quenes, their movements and subconsciously interacting with this persons pheromones. Looks do indeed matter for these reasons, you are always interacting with a persons physical body, even when you aren't interacting with their personality, you are still in contact with their body. The person might not care as much about beauty standards, but they certainly can't just cast aside looks entirely given how important they are. Why should they judge a person purely based on the way they act, and not on how they look when you interact with their body more then their person? Looks are half of a person, ignoring those in favor of the other half seems just as bad as the people who ignore the personality half for the looks.
Second:
Personality might be important in how you interact with a person, but you certainly should consider other factors other then how you get along with the person. For instance, you could get along with someone great, but if they are a high school drop out working at McDonalds for their life you are certainly setting yourself up for problems down the road. They say money is by far the biggest reason couples fight, and if you marry someone you get along with great, who has zero hope for the future you will have problems. Even some brothers who are as close as guys can get, fight from time to time, despite getting along great. Similarly even if you meet someone with a killer personality, if they are a deadbeat you will struggle, and it seems unwise to judge entirely based on the way a person acts, when that isn't the whole person.
Third:
What even is personality? I have pondered this question for quite some time, is it the way a person acts around the person they are interested in? Or is it the way they think? Is it their intelligence, or their sense of humor? Is it their confidence or character(respect, loyalty, responsibility, etc)? If you ask 100 people, you will get 100 different answers, because I have concluded personality is a made up term used to lump all of these different features of a person together. You can't possibly tell someone "Personality is everything" because that has almost no meaning. Thats the equivelent of a Zoologist saying "I only study bugs", which is extremely vague considering a massive percent of the animal kingdom is "bugs", plus they are missing out on all the other animals in the animal kingdom by just studying bugs. You can't tell someone "I only care about personality" because personality is so many different things. It encompasses all these facets of a person, but even then it isn't a whole person, you are looking "deep into a person" to see these traits, but you are looking past the shallows and not even bothering with them in favor of the deep. Its also just confusing in general to say personality is everything because each person has a different idea of what personality is, and what they are looking for when they say personality is everything.
Fourth:
Each person who says "personality is everything" obviously has a different idea of what personality they are looking for then someone else who says the same thing. But when asked to clarify the meaning of personality they can't describe it well, although they supposedly know what a good personality is when they see it. If you dont know what it is then how on earth can you place all your criteria for a partner on this rather vague word, if you can't describe your most important criteria, then why is it your most important?
Fifth:
One of the big issues people have with those who say "Looks are everything" is that you can't change the way you look, and its unreasonable of someone to judge another based on a factor they can't change. However personality is the exact same way. Ideally when looking for a relationship you want to look for someone with a personality that is compatible with your's, so that you dont change your personality. After all, why should you have to change yourself and how you act for someone else? You shouldn't, but then personality becomes just the same as looks in that you can't change it, and therefore it becomes unfair to judge someone based on traits they can't change. Of course you could change your personality and try to act differently, just like you COULD get plastic surgery to make yourself look better, but plastic surgery usually just looks worse...Therefore would it not be shallow, unfair, and cruel to judge someone entirely based off of a personality they developed from circumstances they mostly could not control(their upbringing, education, parents, etc).
Just a bit of food for thought, personality, whatever it is, seems to be something everyone demands be good, but not many people know what it is, and the definition of personality is so different from person to person that it really doesn't make sense. Its shallow to judge a person entirely based solely off of physical traits they mostly inherited from their parents, but not shallow to judge someone entirely based off of mental traits mostly inherited from their parents. That makes perfect sense...both are traits mostly inherited from parents from circumstances largely out of a persons control, but 1 is considered taboo if you favor, and the other is something everyone requires.
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