Women perceived aesthetically challenged attest that they have a harder time with social acceptance than their more physically endowed peers. Sharing her own humiliating experiences, Sibary asserts that good looks open doors, literally and metaphorically. She writes:
I may as well put a bin bag over my head for all the impact my face has … I recently went on holiday with an old school friend to celebrate our joint 40th birthdays. She is single, blonde and very attractive. Throughout our trip, men were holding doors open for her (and then letting them swing in my face); carrying her bag, but ignoring mine; and falling over themselves to buy her drinks and apply her sun lotion.
Many women that might themselves have memories of being left on the shelf focus on forcing beauty treatments onto their baby girls. The little ones are taught to strut their stuff, and wear fake body parts, fake tan and botox if only to get ahead. Oblivious to possible psychological repercussions in future, the mothers believe that their daughters will thank them for their efforts to make them ‘stars’ before they learn the R’s. But for the moment, reality shows featuring toddlers beauty pageants owe their success to this relentless maternal drive to render advantage to their offspring at any cost.
Theorists imagine a beauty-related continuum in the social psyche, bound at the ends by two aesthetic poles – maximum unattractiveness (or ugliness) at the negative pole, and maximum attractiveness (or beauty) at the positive pole. Tietje and Cresap explain the significance of the poles:
Perhaps as a consequence of the Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest, beauty has been stereotypically associated with productivity. Matrimonial matchmakers seemingly with a finger on the social pulse, advise women to dumb down on the one hand, and on the other, to raise their attractiveness quotient in order to ensnare rich, eligible men.
Unattractive people can expect poor treatment even if they work hard at developing personality because assumptions about beauty are hard-wired into people’s brains through evolution. In social research tests conducted, men were shown pictures of beautiful women while their brain activity was monitored with MRI imaging. The results, Stossel reports, are that:
A litigious trend in the West rests on lookism, with complainants demanding measures against looks-based inequality in the workplace. Tietje and Cresap explain the serious implications of the practice:
Fact is people of a particular culture imbibe notions of beauty in collective social learning from their own earlier generations. Their subsequent evaluations are subjective associations with standards imbibed within the community. With little experience or ideation of standards outside of those racial and cultural boundaries, their beauty judgements of diversity must also be ineffective. Hence, for charges of lookism to stick, homogeneity is required for comparisons.
Consciously or unconsciously, people give much attention to the visage in interpretations of beauty and worth. Research shows that three areas of the brain are activated when people recognize or identify faces. However, the neural activities of these areas diminish when the faces are perceived alien. These signify the lack of recognition and identifications, which may indeed underlie culture clashes.
Presented with facial structures of other cultures, people not only have difficulty distinguishing one picture from another, latent prejudices may also become activated. For example, the ‘white’ community may perceive its members educated and successful, while more readily associating people of colour with lack of education and crime.
The stereotypical judgements of people extend to include the clothes they wear. A study with ambiguous faces (i.e., those not clearly categorized racially) pictured the models dressed in various types of clothing. A BBC report on the study says:
Although there are myriad instances of demeaning preferences for ‘beauty’ within every social group, cross-cultural lookism would be hard to establish. This because social diversity has not yet developed common, rational standards of looks, and social judgements and interactions based on them continues to be subjective. In one demographic fraction, beauty may be perceived in veiled women blending unobtrusively into the traditional community. Elsewhere, women in revealing attire underscoring freedom from traditions may be deemed hot and sexy. Each group may accuse the other of lookism, but their evaluative contexts differ.
Swamped with differences of race and culture, ‘beauty’ means different things to different people. The effect of globalization has been social heterogeneity, and obviously differing beauty standards for physical structures, colour and clothes remain within the diverse social groups. In a multicultural society, discrimination on looks may be indistinguishable from that of race and culture.
References for this post:
Being judged to be at the negative pole is an aesthetic variant of … stigma: an immediately recognizable abnormal trait that works subliminally to turn others away and thus break social claims. Being judged to be at the positive pole is aesthetic charisma … is perceived to be a divine gift and … “star quality.”Now, few people actually place at the poles, and most of the population occupies the middle of the imaginary line. People’s social worth then appears to be graded according to the subjective perception of the reality behind the appearance.
Perhaps as a consequence of the Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest, beauty has been stereotypically associated with productivity. Matrimonial matchmakers seemingly with a finger on the social pulse, advise women to dumb down on the one hand, and on the other, to raise their attractiveness quotient in order to ensnare rich, eligible men.
Unattractive people can expect poor treatment even if they work hard at developing personality because assumptions about beauty are hard-wired into people’s brains through evolution. In social research tests conducted, men were shown pictures of beautiful women while their brain activity was monitored with MRI imaging. The results, Stossel reports, are that:
… the same part of the brain lights up as when a hungry person sees food, or a gambler eyes cash, or a drug addict sees a fix. Essentially, beauty and addiction trigger the same areas in the brain.Both visualization of beauty and the substances of addiction activate pathways to the brain’s reward centres. In each case, the respective individuals anticipate pleasurable experiences.
A litigious trend in the West rests on lookism, with complainants demanding measures against looks-based inequality in the workplace. Tietje and Cresap explain the serious implications of the practice:
According to recent labor-market research, attractiveness receives a premium and unattractiveness receives a penalty. For both men and women, results “suggest a 7–9-percent penalty for being in the lowest 9 percent of looks among all workers, and a 5-percent premium for being in the top 33 percent.”Now, although any form of discrimination is unjust, it seems to me that the hurdles in establishing lookism as a discriminatory process increase with social diversity.
Fact is people of a particular culture imbibe notions of beauty in collective social learning from their own earlier generations. Their subsequent evaluations are subjective associations with standards imbibed within the community. With little experience or ideation of standards outside of those racial and cultural boundaries, their beauty judgements of diversity must also be ineffective. Hence, for charges of lookism to stick, homogeneity is required for comparisons.
Consciously or unconsciously, people give much attention to the visage in interpretations of beauty and worth. Research shows that three areas of the brain are activated when people recognize or identify faces. However, the neural activities of these areas diminish when the faces are perceived alien. These signify the lack of recognition and identifications, which may indeed underlie culture clashes.
Presented with facial structures of other cultures, people not only have difficulty distinguishing one picture from another, latent prejudices may also become activated. For example, the ‘white’ community may perceive its members educated and successful, while more readily associating people of colour with lack of education and crime.
The stereotypical judgements of people extend to include the clothes they wear. A study with ambiguous faces (i.e., those not clearly categorized racially) pictured the models dressed in various types of clothing. A BBC report on the study says:
Faces were more likely to be seen as white when dressed smartly and black when in overalls … "[The results]... imply that our cultural knowledge, and what we are expecting to see stereotypically, can literately change what we do see in other people" … decisions about race or gender or age change the way we feel about people and affect the way we interact and behave towards them.Clearly, people judge by the cultural standards and attitudes they have been brought up on. For instance, the socio-religious significance of the enveloping female attire, the burqa, to the Muslim community, is lost on the Western world. Post 9/11, the dress has been stigmatized, and some governments have approved its ban, perceiving it a symbol of terrorism.
Although there are myriad instances of demeaning preferences for ‘beauty’ within every social group, cross-cultural lookism would be hard to establish. This because social diversity has not yet developed common, rational standards of looks, and social judgements and interactions based on them continues to be subjective. In one demographic fraction, beauty may be perceived in veiled women blending unobtrusively into the traditional community. Elsewhere, women in revealing attire underscoring freedom from traditions may be deemed hot and sexy. Each group may accuse the other of lookism, but their evaluative contexts differ.
Swamped with differences of race and culture, ‘beauty’ means different things to different people. The effect of globalization has been social heterogeneity, and obviously differing beauty standards for physical structures, colour and clothes remain within the diverse social groups. In a multicultural society, discrimination on looks may be indistinguishable from that of race and culture.
References for this post:
- “Clothes influence race perception” bbc.co.uk. BBC News. 28 September 2011.
- Dumas, Daisy. “’No harm was done’: Mother defends dressing daughter, three, as prostitute for Toddlers and Tiaras beauty pageant” dailymail.co.uk. Mail Online. 7th September 2011.
- Greenaway, Naomi. “Why experts say it’s harmful to tell your little girl she’s pretty” dailymail.co.uk. Mail Online. 27th July 2011.
- “How the brain recognises a face” bbc.co.uk. BBC News. 13 December 2004.
- Sibary, Shona. “How I’ve learnt to accept feeling ugly: With startling honesty, one woman describes how her looks have affected her life” dailymail.co.uk. Mail Online. 8th September 2011.
- Stossel, John. “The Ugly Truth About Beauty Like It or Not, Looks Do Matter” shortsupport.org. ABC News.com. August 23, 2011.
- Tietje, Louis and Cresap, Steven. “IS LOOKISM UNJUST? THE ETHICS OF AESTHETICS AND PUBLIC POLICY IMPLICATIONS” mises.org. JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES. JL VOLUME 19, NO. 2 (SPRING 2005): 31-50.
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