Comes an interesting suggestion from a

college professor who’s not only a law professor, but also a law

professor at Stanford. In her new book, “The Beauty Bias,” Deborah

Rhode says that our “beauty bias is unfair,” and she ruminates on

making it illegal. She asks: If we have laws against discrimination

for race, or sex or disability, how about some consideration for

the everyday Ugly Bettys?

Should it be legal for Hooters to fire a waitress because she

weighs 132 pounds? How about 162 pounds? Should a pole or lap

dancer be legally refused re-employment (after maternity leave)

because of a significant droop in those parts of her anatomy

cherished by both her newborn and by club patrons? Or, in the

reverse of this thought, should Sarah Palin be chosen as a

candidate for vice president partly because she aroused Sen.

McCain’s interests? What if she had borne a strong resemblance to

Golda Meir?

Another professor, this one a Harvard psychologist, argues that

such beauty bias is a genetic inheritance – a survival technique

without which we would not have evolved successfully. By choosing

the strongest, tallest, most curly haired male to father their

offspring, women have made us what we are today. Nancy Etcoff, in

her “Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty,” proposes,

“If our ancestors had not possessed a radar for healthy, fertile

bodies, we’d have become biological dead ends long ago.”

To those Christians who believe in creationism, this is nonsense.

For them, God installed a beauty bias for reasons having nothing to

do with natural selection. Whether of biblical or Darwinian origin,

the fact that such prejudice does exist cannot be seriously argued.

The ozone is pregnant with facts and figures concerning the

difficulties of the less attractive. Taller men are paid more,

thinner women hired more quickly. College students would rather

have a spouse that’s an embezzler or shoplifter than one who is

obese. The less attractive, the more likely a longer prison

sentence, a lower damage award, a lower salary, or poorer

performance reviews. The unpretty are less likely to be married and

more likely to be poor.

Palin paid more to her makeup artist than to any member of her

entourage during her run for vice president. It seems quite

possible that if radio would reveal Rush Limbaugh’s sweaty

corpulence to his dittoheads, his approval rating would suffer at

least a point or two.

Professor Rhode also strikes a blow for the legal profession. In

defense of “pro-beauty” legislation, she assures the world that

“unworthy lawsuits will be weeded out by the cost and burden of

legislation,” and she cites Michigan, where 30 “looks

discrimination” suits are filed each year but only one is

litigated. If that is to be generally true, then lawyers such as

the legal eagles surrounding O.J. Simpson or Lindsay Lohan will all

become Christian Scientists. Lawyers would henceforth be beneficent

– she promises.

Aside from conscientious lawyers, there are specifics to be

considered. One man’s treasure is another man’s trash. Some like

hair to the waist, others a boyish bob. It’s one thing to specify

body mass limits that most people can agree – it is still another

to describe an overlarge nose, or upper arms sufficiently flaccid

to repel. Even body shape itself is often controversial. How do abs

compare with buns? (The most rapidly increasing U.S. cosmetic

surgery specialty in the last three years is for buttocks

reduction.)

Shankar Vedantam’s book, “The Hidden Brain,” proposes that

experience and familiarity encourage our brains to develop

unconscious bias. In this connection, having a square jaw

predisposes a military man to advancement because we unconsciously

associate square jaws with leadership. Looking, as one must several

times a week, at the tenuous jaw of Sen. Mitch McConnell, the

Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, one wonders where a military

career would have taken him.

Increasingly in the media, we associate appearance with social

status, power, and how we react to others. Vedantam cites a study

of Canadian school children that shows strong bias on face color as

early as 3 years – black with “cruel” and “ugly,” white with “good”

and “clean.”

Could the reaction to a black president and his family we are

seeing in some neighborhoods be at least partially the result of

similar conditioning?

And could it be legislated against?

Devil’s Dictionary ?definition of the week

Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s

own opinion.

Rodney Quinn, a former Maine secretary of state, lives

in Gorham. He can be reached at

rquinn@maine.rr.com.