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If you could receive a pay raise worth hundreds of thousands of dollars by declaring yourself “ugly,” would you do it?

Some people would. Maybe they should; that is, maybe their looks really are costing them job opportunities, promotions, sales, trials, or a better deal on their mortgage (see this New York Times op-ed to read more). Studies over the past twenty years demonstrate that the attractively challenged have a valid argument.

Daniel S. Hamermesh is a professor of economics at the University of Texas, Austin and author of Beauty Pays. He suggests this form of prejudice deserves compensation like any other “disability.” But why is monetary compensation our reaction to hearing this information? We’re told that “ugly” people are being disadvantaged solely due to their lack of attractiveness, and our response is to say “we’re sorry, how much can we pay you to make up for it?”

We seem to have very little faith in ourselves. We’re better than this. Monetary compensation shows that we don’t think this behavior can be changed. And by behavior, I mean that of the prejudicial perpetrators of “ugly” bias—which, according to these studies, is everyone (whether we realize it or not). Compensating attraction bias would normalize the behavior that we should rather be attempting to do away with. The focus should be on acknowledging and confronting this bias, rather than ignoring it or accepting it by trying to pay it off. The Kenan Institute for Ethics’ Ruth Grant communicates the sometimes negative effects of incentives in her upcoming book Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives.

The strategy of compensating for bad behavior happens more often than not. Rather than fix the system, we go the easy route and try alleviating the symptoms of the systemic flaw.  Over the summer, I worked at a nonprofit that deals with gender bias and sexual assault. What I learned is that we tend to put all of our attention on the victim: how did they end up in this situation? But what we should really be focusing on is the root of sexual violence itself. Only when we address gender norms and their implications will we begin to see significant and sustaining change.

While bias in the workplace may seem trivial when compared to rape, similarities can be found when we look at how we approach these two issues. We need to stop excusing the behavior by attempting to lighten the burden of the victim, and instead work on addressing why these prejudices (physical appearance and sexism, respectively) exist in the first place. I refuse to dismiss the behavior by accepting that our biological make-up is inherently prejudiced. We are not animals. That would be no different than blaming the rape victim for showing too much cleavage and then claiming she was asking for it because men simply “can’t help themselves.” As humans, our behavior is not purely instinctual.

There’s no easy answer to combatting this prejudice, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Let’s set the bar higher, and start asking more of ourselves as a society.

Photo Credit: http://blogs.ocweekly.com/

A caring single mother in San Francisco is one upping the neighborhood soccer moms by injecting Botox into her 8-year-old-daughter to reduce her wrinkles (apparently, 8-year-olds get wrinkles). She is a trained beautician and from what I can tell, really wants her daughter to be a superstar.

Oh, she also waxes her daughter too to get rid of her body hair.

Personally, I was shocked at the mother’s action in the most negative way possible: What kind of values is she teaching her daughter? Everything she is doing just seems so…wrong.

But wait, nothing she is doing is technically against the law nor is it really “wrong.” The mother sincerely believes what she is doing is the best for her daughter, and judging from the article, the daughter seems to be perfectly okay with it too. Parents send children to learn instruments from the best of the best hoping that their kids can develop into world-class players, and what makes preparing her daughter well for a beauty pageant so different from that?

This reminded me of an iThink discussion we recently had on “designer babies.” Essentially, parents can choose what their kids can look like (or even go as far to select for traits like talent, intelligence, personality, and immunity) because they sincerely believe (many accurately) that this would give their children the best advantages in the world.

So what makes this particular mother’s action seem so…not right to me? The mother knows what she is doing since she is a trained beautician, and I would be lying if I say “attractiveness discrimination” doesn’t exist. All the mother is doing is trying her best to give her daughter an advantage over her competition, and don’t we all do that? I feel like this is a case of moral intuitionism where my intuition is telling me that it is wrong though I cannot seem to make a legitimate rational claim of why it is.

I still can’t help but feel bad for the little girl because I feel that she is missing out on some important things – like how looks aren’t everything and that being “waxed” doesn’t mean you are an adult. The mother, in my opinion, is reinforcing a kind of unhealthy body image that is unattainable. But what position am I in to tell her that she is educating her daughter incorrectly?

But really? Botox in 8-year-olds?

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It seems the latest group targeted by cosmetic marketers is… pre-tween girls. Just when you were starting to get used to the idea that such a term as “tween” exists (that would classify girls aged 9 – 12), there is now a new category brand of consumers, individuals who are so young the best label the marketing world could come up with for them was “pre-tween.” This month, Wal-Mart is launching its beauty cosmetics line GeoGirl targeting girls aged six to ten. The line includes blush, eyeshadow, eyeliner, mascara and lip gloss, and, according to Wal-Mart representatives aims to teach young girls how to maintain beauty care in an environmentally responsible way.

Don’t make me laugh. It is rather absurd to suggest that the best way to teach children environmentally conscientious behavior is to buy them a particular line of cosmetics (“No need to recycle, honey, your eyeshadow is all-natural!”). One wonders if it is actually significantly “green” enough to even be discussing as a legitimate benefit to our environment. Wearing this make-up will prove you care about the environment? Talk about greenwashing. One of the major selling points for GeoGirl is its environmentally safe nature; yet to argue that GeoGirl is worth anyone’s while because it somehow instills a “green attitude” among its users is about as effective as arguing that guns would be a better idea in schools if they were biodegradable. Right.

GeoGirl certainly is a bold move towards socializing girls to base their self-worth in their appearance even earlier than they already experience; but are we really surprised? Girls today are perpetually bombarded with manipulative, negative messages from the media, their peers, and even their parents. It is more than a little nauseating that pre-pubescent girls are now considered a consumer group for cosmetics and not just, say, Johnson & Johnson baby wipes, but you can’t fairly blame Wal-Mart for causing the problem; perpetuating it, yes, but marketing is usually about cashing-in on consumer interest that already exists. Hate the game, not the player.

Wal-Mart’s launching of GeoGirl points to a larger issue in American society: paradoxically, even as we strive towards equality between men and women in schools and in the workplace, women are subjected to intense social pressure to focus most of their time and energy on their appearance. A cosmetics line geared towards eight year-olds, though in itself concerning, is part of a wider picture in which girls are encouraged to be pretty before they are encouraged to be smart or creative or happy. In many cases girls sacrifice their happiness or creativity or intelligence by spending so much time in front of the mirror. The truth is that a cosmetics line like GeoGirl is merely a symptom of the American perception of what it means to be a woman. More important than placing blame on Wal-Mart is addressing the societal forces that engender consumer interests that made it possible for GeoGirl to launch in the first place.

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Incentives for students are everywhere— awards for students with the best GPA, presents from parents for each A their kid earns, school districts paying children to take AP tests, and giving plastic surgery as a reward to those who do the best on exams. Wait, what? We have to wonder when these incentives begin to cross the line and maybe violate what we think is right or wrong. If thinkers such as Duke’s own Prof. Ruth Grant have raised issues with the first three examples, the last situation certainly seems to raise some ethical questions.

Hospitals in South Korea have tapped into the obsession of rewarding students for their achievements, and they are now offering a very unique gift: discounted eye and nose operations for students who score well on university entrance exams.

A recent Reuters MSNBC article details the phenomenon and includes anecdotes about a hospital that gives rewards to mothers of students as well by giving them free Botox injections if their child performs well and chooses to get the plastic surgeries.

So are the hospitals doing something that is inherently wrong? Maybe not. After all, the students already want the surgeries and they are not being encouraged to do anything bad. In fact, they are being told to work hard and shouldn’t there be some payoff for getting good grades, especially when the competition is as tough as it is in South Korea?

Yet, at the same time, the hospital is essentially condoning the surgeries and telling children that being able to get your eyelids lifted and nose tilted is a privilege and ultimate reward for those who dedicate themselves to their studies. Because an established institution like a hospital is providing these surgeries as a reward, some may argue that the incentive is being reinforced and thus so are adolescents’ desires to change their physical appearance. This raises questions about whether high school students should be free to make their own decisions about their body or if they are too young to know better. As Grant has noted, incentives are usually offered by people in authority—an inherently unbalanced situation.  I would argue that a teenager on his or her way to college should be able to make a choice about plastic surgery, but I am quite fearful of structures that could consciously, or unconsciously, lead people to think that the surgeries are something they should or must get. At some point, people stop thinking for themselves and the surgeries turn into a societal beauty norm (and the hospital presumably makes a lot of profit along the way).

I am alarmed by how obsessed Korean teenagers seem to be with altering their appearance—there is a long reservation list of students hoping to get the operations if their tests go well. Yet, this is not all that different from the image conscious world in which Duke students find themselves on campus. It is not uncommon for people to go to great lengths (skipping meals, taking Aderol, not sleeping) in order to succeed in a highly competitive environment and look the part while doing so. It seems that there is a growing emphasis on fitting into the beauty standards of your social environment, and there may be structural choices (incentives from the hospitals) that are further perpetuating this.

Ultimately the question is: do we really want children to be studying harder in order to change how they look when they should be striving to do well so they can benefit from the value of having an education?

Additional issues:

Also, if you are interested in reading about something closer to home, this 2005 article from Duke’s student newspaper discusses one student’s battle with an eating disorder as well as the larger issues that exist on campus with body image awareness: http://dukechronicle.com/article/groups-promote-body-image-awareness

As well as more recent thoughts on the toll that competitive culture takes on students here: http://dukechronicle.com/article/mentally-healthy-devils and in broader society: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/the-power-of-failure