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How Can You Prove Beauty Bias in the First Place?
Sunday, June 6, 2010 
Appearances are everything in natureBeing one of the beautiful people is a burden, but that's besides the point. Proving it? Proving that there is bias because someone is attractive? How would one go about that?
If you are anything like me, you left the theater after Sex and the City 2 and thought, there ought to be a law against a looks-based culture in which the only way for 40-year-old actresses to be compensated like 40-year-old actors is to have them look and dress like the teenage daughters of 40-year-old actors. You can’t even look at Sarah Jessica Parker without longing to feed her croissants.
Meet Deborah Rhode, a Stanford law professor who proposes a legal regime in which discrimination on the basis of looks is as serious as discrimination based on gender or race. In a provocative new book, The Beauty Bias, Rhode lays out the case for an America in which appearance discrimination is no longer allowed. That means Hooters can’t fire its servers for being too heavy, as allegedly happened last month to a waitress in Michigan who says she received nothing but excellent reviews but weighed 132 pounds. And the top management at Abercrombie & Fitch couldn’t hold weekly meetings, as they allegedly did, at which photos of its sales associates were reviewed and purged for any sign of breakouts, weight gain, or unacceptable quantities of ethnicity.
Rhode is at her most persuasive when arguing that in America, discrimination against unattractive women and short men is as pernicious and widespread as bias based on race, sex, age, ethnicity, religion, and disability. Rhode cites research to prove her point: 11 percent of surveyed couples say they would abort a fetus predisposed toward obesity. College students tell surveyors they’d rather have a spouse who is an embezzler, drug user, or a shoplifter than one who is obese. The less attractive you are in America, the more likely you are to receive a longer prison sentence, a lower damage award, a lower salary, and poorer performance reviews. You are less likely to be married and more likely to be poor.
Well, allow me to be the voice of reason here. Miss Rhode is conflating obesity with being unattractive. They are not exactly the same thing. You can be rail thin and ugly as a beast, and you can be obese and still be attractive. I wouldn't put too much stock into a supporting fact that sort of wanders off onto a separate tangent. Please show me the research that shows that, when told their baby would be butt-ugly, parents said that they would elect to abort. I'm sure it's out there. It would be a little more supportive.
As to proving bias--good luck. You have to get a group of people--say a jury--to agree that so and so is attractive. Have you ever met twelve people who could agree on that? Check out a celebrity-oriented blog and look at the comments about a certain person's appearance.
Here's a very stirring discussion as to whether or not Miley Cyrus has a camel toe rear end:
Miley Cyrus decided to expose Lisbon to her underage camel toe over the weekend and you have to wonder who the hell thought this outfit was a good idea. Clearly Miley did, but she can't help the fact she grew up in the south where it's illegal to discuss anything related to the hole Jesus puts babies in. But her entire staff can't be backward-ass rednecks, can they? I mean, there had to be at least one person saying illegal moose-knuckle and blow-up doll faces don't belong on the same stage, threats of Billy Ray mullet wounds be damned.
Given the fact that the young lady is 17 doesn't really do this nonsense justice.
Here's why they are saying what they are saying:
A rather unfortunate photo of Miss Miley Cyrus
Is Miley Cyrus obese? Of course not. But there's a whole lot of "beauty bias" towards her because of her appearance. She is worth an estimated billion or or more dollars. She has her picture on nearly everything. And, in the comment thread of that post, you can find countless examples of how people react to her appearance. Some even go so far as to say they don't like how she looks.
She's trying REALLY hard to be sexy, but it's just not working. She's just not pretty, sorry. Her face is funny, especially her mouth... and she's shaped like Gollum. That said, it's crazy how a girl so young and slim can have so much cellulite in pic #7.
Oh and if that's true, I must say that Portugal is really fucked up. There's no way 14 should be legal.
Now, given all of that, how do you reasonably expect a legal system made up of juries and the blind application of the rule of law to handle a "beauty bias" case? If people can't even agree on how Miley Cyrus looks, how are they going to agree on how a bank teller or a waitress looks?
Norman Rogers | tagged Culture, Entertainment, Law, Music, News, Opinion, Society, Women | in A Man of Science, Always Keeping My Composure, American Society, Freak Show, Here's My Take, I Do Say Nice Things Sometimes, I Refute Your Bullshit, Master of the Obvious, My Brilliant Observation, Norman Rogers Email Article 
