Legal protection for "ugly" people

[Dacien]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/op...ve-a-case.html

An interesting article in the New York Times. With all the quantifiable advantages, shown in research, of being attractive, should people deemed "ugly" be granted the same protections as minorities, the handicapped, etc.?

[Soul Hermit]

Impossible, as being ugly or beautiful is in the eye of the beholder.
But if they have a disease which deforms them, they are counted as sick.

[Joben]

"Ugly" Is opinion based. Race / Handicap / Sex / Religion is based on who that person actually is.

[Deleted]

As others have said, that would be pretty difficult to do.

It's usually a lot more difficult to call somebody objectively "ugly" than it is to objectively define, say, ethnicity.

[Lilcheeks]

LOL what this country needs is an ugly jury! That would sort em out...

[Selkhet]

While beauty is a very relative concept, and strongly linked with our personal feelings for an specific person (we tend to find more beauty in people that we like), I think that we, as a society, have a very skewed and narrow perception of what is beautiful. Thanks to the beauty industry, we are conditioned to find only one type of body and face and hair etc. as "beautiful" and the rest as "ugly" or "imperfect", with tons of evo-psych bullshit to rationalize it.

While today we say that it's "just natural" that we find a thin woman pretty and a fat woman ugly because "we evolved to be attracted by healthy partners", all you have to do is look back to the renaissance period and you will see portraits of unapologetically fat woman, cheerful in their chubbyness, for they were perceived as beautiful at that time because their fat showed they were rich and well fed. Barring some huge disfigurement, I think everyone has beauty in them. We don't need to throw political correctness at it. What we need to do is analyze what we were taught that was beautiful, and why (hint: it's so we feel ugly and buy stuff), and open our eyes for what is true beauty.

Try to see the beauty in others, instead of judging based on an unreal, inhuman, photoshopped standard and we won't need to see articles like this one.

[r3nd]

Yeah, beauty is subjective, so I really don't see how this would work.

[Dacien]

As others have said, that would be pretty difficult to do.

It's usually a lot more difficult to call somebody objectively "ugly" than it is to objectively define, say, ethnicity.

A government panel could be created to objectively qualify or disqualify people for "disattractive" status. A politically correct term would have to be found, so "disattractive" or "disadvantaged countenance" would seem ok.

---------- Post added 2011-08-29 at 10:38 AM ----------

While beauty is a very relative concept, and strongly linked with our personal feelings for an specific person (we tend to find more beauty in people that we like), I think that we, as a society, have a very skewed and narrow perception of what is beautiful. Thanks to the beauty industry, we are conditioned to find only one type of body and face and hair etc. as "beautiful" and the rest as "ugly" or "imperfect", with tons of evo-psych bullshit to rationalize it.

While today we say that it's "just natural" that we find a thin woman pretty and a fat woman ugly because "we evolved to be attracted by healthy partners", all you have to do is look back to the renaissance period and you will see portraits of unapologetically fat woman, cheerful in their chubbyness, for they were perceived as beautiful at that time because their fat showed they were rich and well fed. Barring some huge disfigurement, I think everyone has beauty in them. We don't need to throw political correctness at it. What we need to do is analyze what we were taught that was beautiful, and why (hint: it's so we feel ugly and buy stuff), and open our eyes for what is true beauty.

Try to see the beauty in others, instead of judging based on an unreal, inhuman, photoshopped standard and we won't need to see articles like this one.

But the problem seems to be that people who are defined as "ugly" make less money than their more attractive counterparts, and some see this as discriminatory behavior that needs to be addressed.

[champ3000]

Dacien.. you gotta stop pulling all of your topics from Rush Limbaugh haha.. I already heard him discuss this so much that I can't do it!

[ptwonline]

Can you imagine if this was implemented? Being a civil servant processing ugly people all day to see if they qualify for protection/benefits would be a pretty terrible job.

I wonder what's next...protection/benefits for people with bad breath?

[Deleted]

A government panel could be created to objectively qualify or disqualify people for "disattractive" status. A politically correct term would have to be found, so "disattractive" or "disadvantaged countenance" would seem ok.

The panel would still give an opinionated judgement.

Plus the concept of going before a panel to be judged on whether or not one is ugly seems rather silly and quite degrading, to be honest.

[Nathiest]

Pizza face is a skin problem that will go away in time, truly ugly people like Robert Pattinson are stuck that way forever.

[Dacien]

Dacien.. you gotta stop pulling all of your topics from Rush Limbaugh haha.. I already heard him discuss this so much that I can't do it!

=D
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[HuntersAreBoring]

the only people who think beauty is subjective are ugly.

[Stanton Biston]

Fun fact: I managed a 50 unit apartment complex for about a year, near a university, and I only allowed attractive tenants in. Someone caught on to my scheme and reported me to the Fair Housing people who came down and said I was being racist. I then showed them my files filled with pretty people from all over the world.

They tried to get me on gender, but I had some very pretty men too. I told them that there is nothing in federal or state(oregon) law to prevent it.

What's funny is that I had no issues with my tenants, either. All of them exceeded the rental qualifications and none of them trashed their apartments. Pretty people really are better people.

[Selkhet]

But the problem seems to be that people who are defined as "ugly" make less money than their more attractive counterparts, and some see this as discriminatory behavior that needs to be addressed.

How would you objectively judge uglyness? I myself had the same man tell me I'm gorgeous and that he couldn't help but kiss me in the middle of a busy street, only to say that I'm an horrid skinny nerd a few months later.

[Grizzlerr]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but most of us can figure out if somebody is attractive or not in a very general way. There are obviously certain disadvantages to being ugly, especially in other countries where its more of a fact of life and people are less sensitive to it. It's just a bad idea to offer legal protection for ugly people, let them seek it when they need/deserve it by way of sueing employers/whoever for discrimination, kinda like how it is now.

[Daieon]

I see a lot of people claiming they didn't get something because they're "ugly" and causing a lot of people a lot of grief.

[Eleraith]

Beauty and ugliness is as ever defined by the media and the majority social populus. I don't know about anyone else, but I found some pretty ugly things absolutely mesmerisingly beautiful as a child and remember being 'corrected'. We are taught the difference between beautiful and ugly things, and as such it's subjective. It's not quantifiable, like, I was born in this continent, on this day, in this house, on this street, and I have a name, and an age accurate to within one day.

I just don't think it would be quantifiable. I can agree that there are people out there that discriminate against people they believe are ugly. I am right now worrying over my appearance because I am going to apply for a job tomorrow, and I think there is a good chance I won't be hired because I usually have out of control hair, and I am a little on the unattractive side. But I don't see how you could get any kind of judicial protection in place for that kind of thing.

[Valanna]

That's truly silly. Quite hilarious too, though.