Is She or Isn't She

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   gmwilliamsposted 8 years ago

   
   American culture and society as we well know is one based upon looks and appearance.  Those who are considered to be beautiful have doors opened for them and advantages that plainer women have to work three times as hard just to proverbially get the door ajar.  Studies have shown that beautiful women are more likely to be hired than plainer women who oftentimes have a difficult time getting hired although their qualifications may be the same or better than beautiful women.  They are also more likely to be promoted quicker and get paid more.  They also have more relationship opportunities than plainer women.   As the saying goes, beauties get kissed while uglies get dissed.  What are your thought regarding the importance of looks in American society?

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      calculus-geometryposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Based on my experiences living and traveling in many countries, opportunities for ugly or average-looking people are a lot better in the US, Canada than in other parts of the globe. East Asia and Latin America are very very looks-focused and youth-focused, particularly for women.  A well-educated, talented, but ugly woman from Korea or Colombia cannot get a media job in front of the camera in her home country, would be discriminated against for other jobs that involve meeting the public, would never advance  in politics, etc. But in the US there are average-looking women in all kinds of prominent positions.
      
      And before anyone says there are not as many ugly people in Latin America and East Asia, remember that your perception is based on highly filtered media representations of these countries.  Average and ugly people are purposely filtered out from these representations.  I have been there and can attest that overweight, ugly and average-looking people abound.  Even Sweden has a lot of homely, chubby women. 
      
      You should feel lucky to live in a diverse and accepting country like the US that doesn't exclude certain people from the public sphere to project a sanitized version of itself.

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      1. 85

         gmwilliamsposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         However, average looking and plainer women are being phased out of the media.  Executives want women who draw the audience to programs, particularly news programs and have the most mass allure to audiences, particularly male audiences.  People do not want to look at average and plain looking women, they want women who are beautiful.  Nowadays, news reporters are beautiful.  That is the name of the game.
         
         
         Plainer and average looking women are being phased out of highly visible jobs in America.  If a woman is not attractive, it is highly unlikely that she would be hired in highly visible jobs, particularly in the media/entertainment business unlike she  money and/or connections.
         

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   calculus-geometryposted 8 years ago

   I don't think the women on my local news broadcast or my local female politicians are particularly "hot,"  and some are quite old, so perhaps the trend you observe is more when you look at national media.  I still maintain that looks-based discrimination against women in the US is mild compared to other countries.
   
   In Latin America female newscasters get a lot of very obvious plastic surgery and always appear to be wearing a kilo of makeup, while their male colleagues can (and often do) have faces like elephants' butts. I've never observed a double standard quite that bad in the US, so again, count your blessings you don't live down there!

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