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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
An Acquaintance of mine decided, in the late 1950s, to become an officer in the U.S. Navy, until he discovered a Navy regulation stating that ugly men would not be accepted as officer candidates. Surely there is something suspicious about such a policy. Yet, in a time when people are so conscious of the many forms of discrimination — race, colour, sex, age, religion — it is somewhat surprising that little serious attention is given to the practice of what I shall call ‘aesthetic discrimination against persons’, discrimination on the basis of appearance or looks. It is true that, in recent years, some social scientists have conducted research leading them to the conclusion that human beings prefer and esteem good looking people over plain or ugly ones (a conclusion the truth of which has been known for thousands of years prior to its ‘proof’). A few of these researchers have even been willing to venture moral opinions on the subject.
1 For example: Dion, Karen, Berscheid, Ellen, and Walster, Elaine. “What is Beautiful is Good,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24 (1972), pp. 285–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Byrne, Donn, London, Oliver, and Reeves, Keith, “The Effects of Physical Attractiveness, Sex, and Attitude Similarity on Interpersonal Attraction,” Journal of Personality, 36 (1968), pp. 259–70CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Dion, Karen K., “Young Children's Stereotyping of Facial Attractiveness,” Developmental Psychology, 9 (1973), pp. 183–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krebs, Dennis and Adinolfi, Allen A., “Physical Attractiveness, Social Relations, and Personality Style,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51 (1975), pp. 245–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mills, Judson and Harvey, John, “Opinion Change as a Function of When Information about the Communicator is Received and Whether he is Attractive or Expert,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 21 (1972), pp. 52–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, Landy, David and Sigall, Harold, “Beauty is Talent: Task Evaluation as a Function of the Performer's Physical Attractiveness,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29 (1974), pp. 299–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 “The Tyranny of Looks,” Cosmopolitan, (July, 1975), p. 133, p. 137.
3 Berscheid, Ellen and Walster, Elaine, “Beauty and the Best,” Psychology Today, 5 (1972), pp. 42–46, 74Google Scholar.
4 Dobson, James, Hide or Seek (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1974), p. 19Google Scholar.
5 It is worth noting that, from a more empirical approach, even Aristotle considered good looks at least a semi-necessary condition for a life of well-being: “…there are some things the lack of which takes the lustre from happiness, as good birth, goodly children, beauty; for the man who is very ugly in appearance or ill-born or solitary and childless is not very likely to be happy.” Nicomachean Ethics, 1099b, 2–5, translated by Ross, W.D., in The, Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941), edited by McKeon, RichardGoogle Scholar. Note also Nietzsche's remark: “Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is always ready to revenge himself therefore; we others will be his victims, if only by always having to stand his ugly sight. For the sight of the ugly makes men bad and gloomy.” Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Gay Science, para. 290, from The Portable Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann (Viking Press, Inc., 1968), p. 99Google Scholar.
6 Two things should be mentioned here. First, “Everything is beautiful, in its own way,” may sound nice when set to music. But who does not realize that songs contain all sorts of blithering nonsense? Secondly, this popular song seems to be referring, not only to the physical appearances of people and things, but also to other kinds of qualities or aspects. In this study I am dealing only physical beauty and ugliness; I am not concerned with other ‘beautiful’or ‘ugly’ aspects of peoples' personalities — e.g., attitudes, life-styles, thoughts, actions, etc. I realize there are connections between the latter and the former which show up in the aesthetic responses of people to one another, but I shall ignore them here since people very often make judgments about, and respond actively to, the former alone.
7 See, for example, EECC Decision, Decision No. 70–90, Case No. 6–2–1079, August 19, 1969. It should be noted that although there may be various sorts of employment which ‘require’ beauty, or ugliness, there may also be very serious difficulties involved in deciding where to draw the line between justifiable aesthetic-employment practices and unjustifiable ones. E.g., an employer may claim that a good looking employee (e.g., receptionist) enhances his business, and so it may be. But is it completely clear that enhanced business is a sufficient reason to choose a pretty receptionist over a plain or ugly one? Is it not fairly obvious what we would most likely say if an employer refused to hire someone of a racial minority because it would hurt his business? Concerning the self-employed, of course, such problems may not arise. However, it is interesting to note that there might be a question about the ‘oldest profession in the world’. It is certainly conceivable that quite the majority of prostitutes, both male and female, are relatively good looking (I shall here ignore the connections, what ever they might be, between ‘sex-appeal’ on the one hand, and ‘beauty’ and ‘ugliness’ on the other), and that they use their good looks in their business. Are laws condemning prostitution laws which aesthetically discriminate against self-employed good looking people?
8 Of interest here is a recent study which indicates that people (students at the University of Maryland were the subjects) tend to give ugly criminals harsher penalties than beautiful criminals when the crime is attractiveness-unrelated (e.g., burglary); but they tend to assign beautiful criminals harsher penalties when the crime is attractiveness-related (e.g., swindle). (Sigall, Harold and Ostrove, Nancy, “Beautiful but Dangerous: Effects of Offender Attractiveness and Nature of the Crime on Juridic Judgment,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31 (1975), pp. 410–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar) This is another indication of how difficult it seems to be for people to consider the worth of a person apart from his/her looks. These assignments of penalties may seem strange, but they are not so strange when we realize what is being assumed. It is being assumed that somehow beautiful people are intrinsically better than ugly people. Thus, where looks are not involved in commission of the crime, the ugly criminal gets the heavier penalty because he is ugly; that is, he deserves more punishment because he simply is not as good as a better looking person. But where looks are involved in commission of the crime, the beautiful criminal receives heavier penalty because he is beautiful, and so ought to be, know, and do better.
9 Encyclopedia of Associations, Vol. III, New Associations and Projects, 9th ed. supp., No. 1, January, 1975 (Detroit: Gale Research Co.), p. 23Google Scholar.
10 I have omitted reference to other factors in beauty contests — e.g., personality, talents, etc. Since these factors are usually included, one can see how the task of the judges is all the more difficult because more complex, and why varied judgment should be expected.
11 Some movie-stars and actors make it apparently on the basis of being plain or even ugly, and good acting. This does not imply, however, that their plainness or ugliness is beautiful to viewers, no more than someone's liking a bit of pain necessarily implies that for him the pain is pleasurable. At times people may prefer pain and ugliness to pleasure and beauty. But his means neither that such preferences are ‘perverted’, nor that the distinctions between pain and pleasure, ugliness and beauty, break down.
