We women are beseiged from a very young age by media exhortations to improve our appearance to fit the cultural norm in the beauty stakes, but how important in terms of actual measureable life opportunities is the possession of good looks?
A Queensland Mayor recently caused a stir by suggesting that as there are 5 men to every woman in his city, women who are 'beauty-disadvantaged' should consider moving to live in his town where their chances of getting a male partner would be improved.
There's some sense in this suggestion in economic terms in that scarcity value can often overcome prejudice - if you dearly want a beer and all that is on offer is what my husband calls rat pee, then by and by as your thirst increases you will be glad to get rat pee and may well pay over the market rate for it too. So if women believe that their lack of physical attractiveness is a significant factor in being unable to find a dearly desired life partner then it makes sense for them to up their chances by going where they have scarcity value.
On the other hand, 'beauty-disadvantaged' women may not be desperate enough to replace Roger the Rabbit with some man who clearly has had very limited experience of how to relate to women as people rather than as sexual outlets if the man voted in as Mayor is an example of the local type.
There is also the consideration that, as mining is the main form of employment in this particular town, any women moving there would in effect be narrowing their income opportunities to the sole expediency of wedlock and would in all likelyhood reduce the city's per capita income and increase its welfare benefit bill.
The Mayor's suggestion therefore seems based not on the best interests of his city residents but on the chauvinist notion that every man deserves and/or needs sole access to a woman. In terms of moral and practical economic principle any women who take up his suggestion would be exchanging their sexual availability for a life of economic dependancy. There's a name for that.
Female residents of this city are incandescent that their Mayor has turned women into no more than sexual objects and have responded by declaring that while in their town the odds are good the goods are decidedly odd.
A different take* on the advantage of good looks compared to the disadvantage of less conventionally good looks draws the interesting conclusion that where all other factors are taken into account - age, education, length of employment, qualifications, number of hours worked, parental education and expectations, height and weight - people of both genders who are generally rated as good looking or beautiful earn more than those rated as average, and that those rated as average earn more than those considered 'homely'. They conclude that this disparity in earnings, given that all other things are equal, is the result of 'pure prejudice' on the part of employers.
Now anti-discrimination legislation has been ennacted in several states in the USA to prevent denying employment on the basis of 'height, weight and personal appearance' and proposed elsewhere on the basis of 'facial features, build and height' (Philippines). A Vermont Supreme Court in 1992 ruled that a chambermaid's lack of upper teeth qualified as a handicap protected under Vermont's Fair Employment Protection Act and the movement to include suboptimal physical appearance as a legally protected handicap is growing apace.
As the evidence grows of the impact of physical appearance on life opportunities we may find ourselves approaching an era when being less physically attractive than the ideal type is a legally accepted handicap and covered by equal opportunities legislation across much of the world.
Given that physical appearance is primarily a matter of genetic inheritance - but that it can be 'improved' by medical procedures - how soon shall we see someone suing their parents for neglecting the proven best interests of any potential child when choosing their sexual partner or, in the UK, suing the NHS for failing to ameliorate their 'handicap'?
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