Lookism: Should beautiful people get more breaks because they beautify the world?

Great Debates
1

A little while back 20/20 did a piece on lookism, the differential treatment that people get based on their looks. While it was not the first time that I’ve seen such stuff on the telly, it was one of the better done pieces that I’ve seen on it.

Basically, people who are more attractive get more breaks. This is, of course, unfair. Or is it? Attractive people make the world a nicer place to be in. When I see beautiful women, I get satisfaction from that (and I don’t mean in some prurient sense – or, at least not strictly prurient). Other isms, such as racism, would seem to be more arbitrary in that the “good” a racist receives from only being around whites, for example, really doesn’t seem to be too fundamental. However, attractive people seem to be univerally enjoyed. It’s nice to have an attractive doctor, broker, or salesperson. It’s nice to have beautiful people around. Couldn’t one argue that lookism really isn’t an ism at all, but instead it is compensation for the pleasure that attractiveness brings to us all?

To put it another way, isn’t lookism something like personalityism? People with great personalities surely have better luck than someone who is shy or socially inept, don’t they? To say that people with better personalities get unfair advantages seems disingenous. They’re more pleasant to be around, they’re easier to work with, etc. It’s not like someone creates her own personality from scratch. She really didn’t have much choice in it; her parents raised her and her environment and genetics sculpted who she is. Is that any more out of her control than her looks? Shouldn’t looks be in the same class?

So shouldn’t attractive people be compensated for being attractive? If you agree, please remit payment to
js_africanus
123 Fake St.
Rural, MI 49686

Okay, that last part was a joke.

2

In a way, I think the intitial advantages an attractive person gets can be negated if that’s all there is to them. A woman who gets a job because she had a slight advantage over other applicants because of her appearance won’t retain that edge if it turns out she’s difficult to work with or lazy.

3

No, that is the stupidest thing I ever heard. A persons compensation should be based on their ability to perform a particular job. The “good” you receive from working with attractive people is no diferent than the good you receive from working with people of the same race, sex, or background. Don’t think that hiring someone who is tall and blond is any less arbitrary than hiring people who are white.

If a persons attractiveness or personality or background help them perform a job more efficiently, then their compensation should reflect that. I do not agree with hiring people who are attractive (or white) just because it makes the hiring manager more “comfortible”.
To put it a simpler way - would you rather have an ugly doctor or Denise Richards perform open heart surgery on you?

4

I suppose you all think that looking like a cross between Sean Connery and George Clooney is a blessing, huh? You have no idea of the suffering, the hardship such a burden can be! Young women swooning in my path, pockets full of mash notes, flinging themselves in front of my car…

Its hell, let me tell you. Hell!

5

Sure, appearance, like personality, is a factor. How heavily it weighs depends on the job. Most of the time, big companies don’t expect people doing average jobs to stretch themselves. To do the job is fine, so the good-looker gets the job.

Work in any big city with big city industries (finance, stock markets, Advertising, etc, etc) and you see the effect every day. It’s huge.

Can you legislate against it like you can with, say, disability ? No.

Can you influence how employers consider applicants ? No.

6

Ahem. Where does that false dichotomy rank?

7

Wow. I was horrified by that article. Women would only date a short man if the tall men she had to choose from were criminals or child molestors? That’s crazy!

I grew up with lookism. I’m one of the “have nots”. I saw how it was when you weren’t one of the beautiful people. It sucks. I think it’s especially bad in S. California. One of my friends moved to L.A. from Seattle, and was immediately shocked by the “lookism” in L.A. (He’s a nice-looking guy as far as I’m concerned, but he’s 5’7", and some might consider his looks “average”.) He’d not been treated with that level of prejudice in Seattle, he said. I remember him taping a similar news story (as cited in the OP) on TV, because it really hit home for him.

I have another friend (a 6’3" man) who doesn’t know what I’m talking about. He says that the “lookism” prejudice I’ve witnessed is all in my imagination.

All I can say is that lookism exists, and in some cases, it’s fine. I mean, we all get treated a little nicer based on our looks, at once in a while. (Everyone’s tastes differ, and one person’s “average” is another person’s “very attractive”.) But if someone is truly so good looking that they get preferential treatment A LOT, and they start to rely on it, they’re setting themselves up for a grave disappointment later in life. As they age, they won’t have that fresh blush of youth, and lookists are often agists as well. And then these beautiful people who have lived well because of their looks will start to be treated just like any other mere mortal. Sucks to be them. They aren’t used to being treated like an “average” person. Boo hoo hoo. (As you can see, I have a great deal of sympathy for the person who is shocked because they can no longer skid by on their looks. :rolleyes: )

8

What’s with the anger towards good looking people? Is anyone to be despised for using their gifts to their advantage?

If I know someone who, by a combination of good genes, a nutured upbringing and an expensive education is particularly intelligent, should I resent the success that flows from their intellectual gifts? It is right to resent them for relying on their gifted intelligence, which gives them a “unfair” step-up over us mere mortals? What gives them the right to “skid by” on mere smarts, while the rest of us have to battle?

And should I be tellling them, “Ho, ho, ho, enjoy your mind while it lasts – you’ll be a dribbling fool with Alzheimer’s in a nursing home before long!”

:dubious:

9

Narrad, you misunderstood my point.

The rest of us “mere mortals” expect and don’t expect certain things in life: We don’t expect people to take one look at us and treat us with extreme deference. We don’t expect people to fall over backwards to be nice to us, to give us special perks. We go through life not expecting this. So getting old isn’t that huge of a shock, because we never “lost” that special treatment. We never got it in the first place.

The person who skids by on their looks doesn’t go through that. (And I remind you, read that carefully—I didn’t say, “the good-looking people who get treated well, but still accomplish much on their own merits”, I said SKID by on their LOOKS. Looks alone.)

My mom had a roommate in college that was extremely beautiful, and got special treatment based on her looks. When this roommate got a little older, she started to notice that this special treatment was tapering off. It dismayed her, terribly. She missed it. Now, in this particular woman’s case, she was probably a nice woman, not someone who singularly skidded by on her looks. But still, it was a shock, to not get people bending over backwards to please her.

Do I feel sorry for her? Well, not really. She had grown to expect something (and feel she was entitled to something) that was destined not to last. Had she developed some other abilities or talents that would get her attention, see, those abilities would have lasted, and she wouldn’t have lost them as she aged. But she didn’t do that. Sucks for her.

10

In my observation, not only do attractive people get breaks in situations where looks should not be logically important, I think people who are taller get seen as having certain positive traits more often than short people. I’ve had people defer to me rather than my elder sister for no apparent reason other than the fact that I am 5 inches taller.

I think this is due to deeply ingrained instincts for choosing the more obviously healthy individual. A person with irregular features, or bad skin, for example, is subconsciously perceived as less fit. Ditto for height.

I think people also tend, also subconsciously, to select for people similar to themselves. This can be extreme, as in conscious racism, but I’ve seen managers select from two people of the same ethnicity the person who more closely resembles themselves.

That said, the person who when young succeeds because he or she is physically attractive always runs the danger of not developing other attributes. This is a particular danger for young women. A middle-aged or even elderly man can often still be perceived as handsome or powerful, whereas a middle-aged or elderly woman has a much harder time. She can, if she wants to, try to hold back time with surgery, makeup, and a lot of work, but that only lasts just so long. Sometimes the young women who are less physically attractive turn into the ones with real achievement.

11

Yes, it is. It’s not fair to judge people based on characteristics unrelated to their abilities. I know that’s an unusually roundabout way of saying what I mean, but it’s not unfair to judge a person based on looks if she’s going to be a model. :wink:

It could be argued that it’s not fair to the good-looking person to hire said person for a job he/she isn’t qualified for, since you’re setting them up to fail, placing them in line for resentment, etc.
But more importantly, I’d disagree with the premise. Seeing attractive people is nice, but many of the attractive people I know make the world a less pleasant place. Why? Personality. Occasionally you meet attractive people so nasty they’ll use their looks manipulatively, but generally, good-looking people are mean at the same ratio as everybody else. So some of them contribute as little to the world as the rest of the unwashed masses. :wink: :wink: :wink:

12

I want to know what a “Great” personality is. I’d personally rather be around a shy person then a jerk, so I don’t agree that people who are shy do not have “Great” personalities. They just open up to fewer people.

13

What do you make of the droves of people, especially in their younger years who are dealt a serious blow by this “lookism”. Many children develop a sense of inferiority because they do not posses ideal physical traits. Is the why so many attempt to change their appearance through cosmetic surgery and quick-fix diets? There seems to be an increasing value placed on appearance that in many cases takes precedence over most other traits. Does this seem to anyone else to be the wrong direction to be going?

Wow my first post. I hope I did it right.

14

Much of beautiful people’s beauty comes from comparison to non-beautiful people. Therefore, since non-beautiful people are a main source of the pleasure you feel when viewing a beautiful person, you should give them more breaks too.

I think it evens out.

15

I don’t buy that for a minute. I don’t need to get punched in the head in order to know how good a massage feels. For that matter, I don’t have to look at a Warhol to see the beauty in a Bouguereau.

Actually, I don’t think that the empirical evidence is on your side on this one. For example, social psychologists, wondering whether attractive people would have worse personalities because they can depend on their looks or better personalities because people treat them better, have conducted experiments. One example, from an old social psych. class (I don’t recall the textbook’s title/author), was an experiment where a group of test subjects had their photos taken and were to talk to judges over the phone. There were two groups of judges, one only looked at the photos, the other only talked to the subjects over the phone. They found a strong correlation between looks and personality. IIRC that study is not unique, but I’m no where near a research library so I’m not gonna have much luck searching for it.

But even if good looking people have the same personality quality as average/ugly, they still bring pleasure, don’t they? Are you saying that an attractive server in a resturaunt (sp?) doesn’t enhance the experience? Or a beautiful person ringing up your groceries? Lookism may give them an edge, but doesn’t that pleasure deserve compensation? Suppose, for argument’s sake, that we could eliminate lookism. Attractive people still make the world a better place because they’re nice to look at. Wouldn’t you agree? I’m skeptical that you don’t like looking at human beauty. If the beautiful were not given an edge, they would still be bringing to the rest of us poor slobs real human well-being. I’m better off for looking at beautiful women than if they were replaced with non-beautiful ones! If they’re increasing the total stock of human well-being, shouldn’t they get something for it?!

Um…are you seriously going to suggest that a jerk is a person with a good personality? I’ve known some shy people with great personalities, but that’s not going to do them a damn bit of good in situations where first impressions are important. The person who can develop an instant rapport with the bureaucrat is going to do immeasurably better in life than the shy person or the jerk. At least, by the way I’d measure success they will. Haven’t you been in innumerable situations where a difference in personality is really noticeable? It seems like I have.

No, you fucked it all up. Ha! Just kidding. Welcome.

Do you really see cosmetic surgery as being bad? Physical attractiveness is a real thing that really affects human life. I don’t think it’s healthy to deny human nature and human feelings and say to the person about to go under the knife, “Well, you should just feel good about yourself.” If it was that easy, cosmetic surgery wouldn’t exist except for accident/abuse reconstruction.

16

I’m not inclined to trust empirical measurements of personality. Is your correlation saying more attractive people were nicer, or less so? If it’s the latter, I think the two things cancel each other out.

Is it even sensible to compensate somebody for something they didn’t do? A great big chunk of that stuff is genetic, I can’t see my way to rewarding someone for that. The advantage you get from (consensus) good looks is more dates, generally. That’s what it’s for, evolutionarily, and that’s the only reasonable compensation I can envision.
I have no problem with human beauty or a cute girl bagging my groceries, but I think that’s a far cry from making my world a better place. When I’m discussing beauty in a grand sense, I differentiate between attractiveness and beauty. One is easy to find and genetic, the other actually relates to the person in question.
I think we WAY overemphasize physical attractiveness. Why propose that we reward something that’s its own reward? Why not reward traits that are worth something, like say, personality?

17

I can’t force you to buy it, but I can’t see how it could possibly be false. Beauty is a function of many, many things, including non-beautiful things. Nobody is simply “beautiful” objectively and in every way. Whether someone is beautiful to me depends as greatly on my mood as it does upon the person. And my mood clearly can depend on non-beautiful people.

Anyway, if you won’t accept that previous argument, perhaps you’ll accept this one:
Beautiful people may deserve special breaks, but only if their net effect is positive. You say they have a positive effect of creating pleasure. I agree. However, one could easily find negative effects that they produce, such as distraction. It is unclear that the positive effects outweigh the negative ones.

But really, the entire issue boils down to what factors are appropriate for making a decision. In some cases, someone’s beauty is an appropriate factor. Sometimes it is not. It depends on the decision. If you’re choosing a romantic partner, it’s quite justifiable to use beauty as a major deciding factor. If you’re choosing the guy to unclog your toilet, you have the right to choose based on beauty, but it is not a relevant factor with regards to unclogging your toilet. If you’re hiring someone for most jobs (excluding the jobs of “supermodel” and “actor”, etc.) physical appearance is not a factor you should consider.

In short: Your personal decisions generally can be based on whatever you want. “Institutional” decisions (for lack of a better term) must be based only on what matters as the bottom line. (Which will differ based on the institution.)

18

I’m the director of a theater group, and if I have good-looking people in my shows, I have something an audience wants to come see. As an egalitarian, I reject this; as a plain-faced man, I resent it. But as a director, I can’t ignore it.

19

Note: Lookism isn’t just about conferring advantages to ‘beautiful’ (young, healthy, well-proportioned, fit, well-groomed) people; it’s also about discriminating against ‘ugly’ (old, poorly-proportioned, disabled, fat, skinny, ‘fashion disaster’) people. For example, fat people are very often judged on appearance as being less intelligent, lazy, and incompetent, although many fat people are hard-working and intelligent and quite competent at what they do.

20

That’s what I was also trying to get at, Cuckoorex: “lookism” means that the “have nots” (like me, and my 5’7" male friend) are not always treated well. My friend (originally from Seattle) had quite a culture shock by the treatment he got in L.A. He said he was sometimes looked at as if he didn’t deserve to exist, or that something was terribly wrong with him. But I thought he was a perfectly OK-looking guy.

I think that beautiful people who really buy into the “perks” they get are being set up for a fall. Because yes, they will age, and then the perks taper off. And if they haven’t developed something else of merit in their life, what do they have?

I know that a lot of people with good looks do cultivate other things in their lives. Because they have a brain in their head, and they want to use it. And often, they resent other people not seeing past the looks. I feel sympathy for these people. I don’t feel sympathy for people who feel like the world is their oyster, simply because they look fabulous.

But, as I said previously, we all sometimes get a little extra “perk” because of our appearance. For some reason, I have gotten a few good deals on car repairs, because I guess some mechanics like the way I look. Go figure. But I don’t get the perks enough to come to expect them, because I’m not that good-looking, and never will be. Most of us don’t. Those who do…well, I don’t like it when I see good-looking people expect the perks, or pout when they don’t get them. I especially don’t like “flirty” or “teases”—people who smile dazzlingly or bat their eyelashes, just to get out of a bind, or to get what they want faster. That irritates the shit out of me.