There are lots of objectionable double standards related to gender that people spend a lot of time discussing and criticizing. For example, when men have sex with lots of people, that’s widely regarded as cool and desirable, while when women do, it’s seen as far more negative. One can consistently have either a conservative view that having many sex partners is bad or a liberal view that it’s fine, but there’s no consistent view according to which having lots of casual sex is good—but only when men do it.
Feminists spend a lot of time criticizing these double standards. So do most other decent people. But there are a lot of gender-related double standards that very few people seem to have any problem with—that are seen as humorous rather than harmful. These tend to be the ones negatively geared toward men.
Of course, lots of feminists claim that they are really against those. Usually, they take a sudden interest in these double standards when someone claims that feminists seem to be blind to men’s issues. “No, we’re not blind towards men’s issues, the patriarchy harms men too,” they insist, before never discussing those ever again, except to rebut the charge that feminism ignores men.
Mikala Jamison has a spate of articles on this phenomenon. In a recent one, she described the strange attitude people have towards ugly men. For instance, a recent article discussed rodent men—celebrities who look like rodents (?????)—but are still hot (apparently??). Would anyone tolerate such an article if written about women—if an article published by the mainstream press described a female celebrity as having a face like a horse but somehow still being hot, it would be the talk of the decade, spawning endless pieces about how We Need To Talk About The Problem Of Objectification Of Women.
Apparently recently there was critical discussion of how “normalized” it is for hot women to have ugly boyfriends. Once again, no one would tolerate people criticizing it being normalized for hot guys to have ugly girlfriends. Yet when it comes to men, criticizing them for their looks is seen as perfectly appropriate and normal—and is often done by some of the people who most identify as crusaders for gender equality.
A while ago, when I had my run-in with the debate community, various critics of mine claimed, in response to me, that my face looked weird. Now, I don’t really mind, I’m not self-conscious about my beautiful face and chiseled jawline, but the double-standard was pretty crazy. If I were a woman and had written the same piece, anyone who responded by saying my face looked fucked up would be permanently shunned. Shaming men for their looks is seen as normal and harmless, shaming women for their looks is seen as wildly impermissible.
Ugly men are, by any standard, treated quite poorly. As David Brooks notes:
Research suggests they are more likely to be offered job interviews, more likely to be hired when interviewed and more likely to be promoted than less attractive individuals. They are more likely to receive loans and more likely to receive lower interest rates on those loans.
The discriminatory effects of lookism are pervasive. Attractive economists are more likely to study at high-ranked graduate programs and their papers are cited more often than papers from their less attractive peers. One study found that when unattractive criminals committed a moderate misdemeanor, their fines were about four times as large as those of attractive criminals.
Daniel Hamermesh, a leading scholar in this field, observed that an American worker who is among the bottom one-seventh in looks earns about 10 to 15 percent less a year than one in the top third. An unattractive person misses out on nearly a quarter-million dollars in earnings over a lifetime.
The overall effect of these biases is vast. One 2004 study found that more people report being discriminated against because of their looks than because of their ethnicity.
By any standard, therefore, the ugly are a marginalized group. They’re treated substantially worse because of something outside of their control. Brooks even notes that the gap between the ugly and the non-ugly in terms of income is greater than between whites and blacks. And yet despite being subject to what is, by all indications, quite severe discrimination, the plight of those who are not good-looking is mocked and ignored. It’s certainly not seen as anything like the crusade for the rights of other marginalized groups.
(Paywalling the more controversial examples for obvious reasons!)
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