A bRANT is a rant on a blog by Bill. A weekly bRANT is one that occurs weekly. bRANTs are warranty free and are not guaranteed to be good for your health. Despite this, they may be of interest.
Our society is in a constant state of constantly changing. So many things assumed to be just fine twenty years ago are considered dangerous territory today. Things people say, for example. The 1985 Dire Straits song “Money For Nothing” has been banned from Canadian airways in 2011 by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Association. What were we thinking 25 years ago?
Physical beauty remains a huge discriminating factory. Some in Victoria may remember Woodwards Stores in BC. I do, and I remember wondering 30 years ago just how it was that every female employee in any department of the store looked like a beauty queen pageant graduate. The men were likely striking in appearance too, I just didn’t notice. Whether you lived in Rembrandt’s era or are alive today, beauty remains a well-entrenched cultural stereotype that may affect your pocketbook.
American economists have found, for example, that every inch of additional height is
associated with a nearly 2 percent increase in earnings; that employees rated beautiful tended to earn 5 percent more an hour than an average-looking person, while those rated as plain earned 9 percent less; that obesity can cause a significant drop in white women’s earnings. Thin women earn about $16,000 more in annual salary while thin men earned $8000 less. A good-looking man will make some $250,000 more in his lifetime than his less-attractive counterpart, according to economist Daniel Hamermesh. Sixty-one percent of managers (the majority of them men) said it would be an advantage for a woman to wear clothing showing off her figure at work. Asked to rank employee attributes in order of importance, meanwhile, managers placed looks above education. I have seen with my own eyes high school principals hiring virile males (jocks) over their less-endowed counterparts. One reasonable explanation is they coach. But the same principal when hiring females would clearly favour blondes. Principal and principle are two different words. Beauty-bias is part of our culture and it is a strong response, brain research suggests, that is hard to resist.
Pretty people get more attention from teachers, bosses, and mentors; even babies stare longer at good-looking faces (and we stare longer at good-looking babies). It’s a hard reality to escape.
Will things change any time soon? Unless you are Mark Knopfler, you might not believe it possible. Debrahlee Lorenzana, the 33-year-old Queens, N.Y., woman sued Citibank last month, claiming that, in pencil skirts, turtlenecks, and peep-toe stilettos, she was fired from her desk job for being “too hot.” Maybe we average folk don’t have it so bad after all.
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