Did you get the job because you’re pretty? – letter

You may have noticed that people are in prominent positions mostly Look well. Is it because they were received more positively and given more chances than others? Are they more trustworthy? more effective? Or is it unfair?

These are tough questions—not for those who are considered “beautiful,” of course, but for those who don’t get the job because they’re not pretty. Appearance discrimination is a real problem for both individuals and society.

NRK Books Recently, “fat people” feel discriminated against by healthcare workers. It agrees well with international research.

Search appears It also starts early. Children who are perceived as less attractive receive less attention from parents and health professionals. Teachers expect better performance from children they consider attractive.

Those who are seen as less attractive get paid less and get less prestigious jobs. They have less attractive partners and less attractive children.

If this is the look Whoever decides, it’s not fair. This is called the injustice of appearance And it can give many results other than what job you get, how much you earn and what partner you are Poetry.

Historically, people have been executed because of their appearance. It’s extreme. more common is Discrimination, bullying, stigma and prejudice. Anyway, it’s not fair to treat people differently just because of looks.

What does this do That someone is being treated unfairly because they look the way they do? One answer is gravityThat is, if you feel drawn to them. Attractiveness is often given an evolutionary explanation. We are attracted to people who are healthy, strong, and have energy.

The hard thing is that people who are healthy and strong, but who are not considered “pretty,” do not get the same attention and opportunity as “beautiful women.”

Another explanation On what makes “beautiful people” get the benefits, is that they are seen as natural. The usual is seen as safe. Therefore, it is easier to hire a person with an ordinary appearance than a deviant person.

A third explanation can be found in aesthetics, where symmetry or good proportion is preferred.

Although attraction, naturalness, and symmetry can explain why people are discriminated against based on appearance, it is hard to defend.

What then prompts the injustice of appearance?

Search appears That there are many things. Bias is a prominent factor. People who are perceived as “fat” are met differently than those who are perceived as “athletic”.

Bias is another. we’ve got One The tendency to believe that beautiful people are good and capable – despite many examples to the contrary.

But the appearance of distinction Really unfair? If less attractive people are in fact inferior, morally or professionally, it’s not wrong to give the job to the most attractive person, right?

Or if people are seen as less beautiful because they are less healthy or sicker – surely it is plausible that healthy and clean people should benefit from this? Isn’t disgust a form of self-protective mechanism?

Of course it can To be something in such arguments, but it can hardly justify all the apparent injustices we see today. Many of those who don’t get top jobs because of their looks don’t get them because of poor hygiene or poor health.

What can we do? One strategy is to nurse the ugliness. We already do this when we operate on prominent ears in children for aesthetic reasons – or in bariatric surgery. While this may be beneficial to the individual, it also reinforces the aesthetic standards that underlie the injustice of appearance. So getting sick is not a good strategy.

to create awareness about this phenomenon It might be more appropriate. Ask yourself: Would I treat this person differently if they had a different appearance? It is important to ask ourselves such questions to break the vicious cycle where the “beautiful ones” get more attention and more opportunities..

In the same way that we can “hide” the names of job applicants, we can also “blind” or anonymize their appearance. The problem is that so much of people’s identity is tied to appearance, and we rely so much on visual impressions to orient ourselves. But in principle this is possible.

In the visual age—where we manipulate appearance both digitally and analogue—appearance injustice is a growing problem. When appearance becomes more important than what one performs and who one is, we get a visual distinction. And because it happens in all of us, such distinctions in the visible become almost invisible.

test yourself:
Would you think and act differently about the person you meet if they look different? Then you contribute to seeming unfair and maybe you should start looking at people with different, “prettier” eyes.