Every so often, you have to wonder if these people, who have supposedly been educated so extensively and are well-read, intelligent persons, have ever read a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., entitled “Harrison Bergeron.” An excerpt:
The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of the United States Handicapper General.
And the reason I note this? Because of this op-ed in the Sunday Times (via):
Beauty is as much an issue for men as for women. While extensive research shows that women’s looks have bigger impacts in the market for mates, another large group of studies demonstrates that men’s looks have bigger impacts on the job.
Why this disparate treatment of looks in so many areas of life? It’s a matter of simple prejudice. Most of us, regardless of our professed attitudes, prefer as customers to buy from better-looking salespeople, as jurors to listen to better-looking attorneys, as voters to be led by better-looking politicians, as students to learn from better-looking professors. This is not a matter of evil employers’ refusing to hire the ugly: in our roles as workers, customers and potential lovers we are all responsible for these effects.
How could we remedy this injustice? With all the gains to being good-looking, you would think that more people would get plastic surgery or makeovers to improve their looks. Many of us do all those things, but as studies have shown, such refinements make only small differences in our beauty. All that spending may make us feel better, but it doesn’t help us much in getting a better job or a more desirable mate.
A more radical solution may be needed: why not offer legal protections to the ugly, as we do with racial, ethnic and religious minorities, women and handicapped individuals?
We actually already do offer such protections in a few places, including in some jurisdictions in California, and in the District of Columbia, where discriminatory treatment based on looks in hiring, promotions, housing and other areas is prohibited. Ugliness could be protected generally in the United States by small extensions of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Ugly people could be allowed to seek help from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other agencies in overcoming the effects of discrimination. We could even have affirmative-action programs for the ugly.
Kurt Vonnegut: Prophet. Identity politics for the less attractive now? What an outstanding new source of income for personal injury attorneys. And the author of this story? A professor of economics. He thinks it’s unfair that pretty people make more money. Hell, I think a lot of things in life are unfair. The thing is, I learned a lesson a very, very long time ago: Life is unfair. In fact, I banned the phrase “That’s not fair” from my fourth grade when I taught Hebrew school for six years. I told the children that they had one day to get over using that phrase. I explained to them that life was not fair, and that I attempted to treat them as fairly as possible, but I wasn’t perfect. Of course, the real reason I banned the phrase is because nine-year-olds use it when you tell them to do something they don’t want to do. But the lesson sank in. When something truly unfair came along, and they had a legitimate complaint, I asked them, “And what have I told you about life?” “It’s not fair,” they would sullenly chant.
They got the message. Too bad this idiot didn’t.