The greatest privilege we never talk about: beauty
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In one of my first jobs I worked with female electrical engineer like that. It took me few years to gradually discover how good she was. She had good ideas and solved problems but we somehow forgot where the idea came after we talked it over. It somehow became team effort. After someone was boasting how they had high scores in Mensa test, she just casually mentioned that she had scored 155.
I later started a company with her. The best decision I have ever made. Imagine working with Elon Musk who is enthusiastic about chess, crocheting and mushroom picking.
I don't think the "discounting"/"stealing" was intentional... and it's not necessarily exclusive to women. "Selling yourself" is a skill that even men struggle with, especially the quiet, introverted, but definitely intellectual types.
As a stereotype, men are more aggressive, even the quiet ones. After all, there's all that extra testosterone.
I'd guess that if men are overlooked they're more likely to lash out. And also because of this, other men tend to be more careful around other men, because they know in general that other men can lash out.
Again, everything I say is based on stereotypes, your mileage may vary, etc.
To be frank, that's because in most environments a male engineer would be told it's their own fault for not trying harder to get recognized / pushing their "personal brand" more (i.e. they'd be social punished for pointing out this problem, rather than getting social justice.)
Men internalize this early in life, and so don't bother to complain about such things no matter how often it happens to them.
Women tend to have a lot of their ideas stolen anyway. Being "invisible" and unattractive at least cuts back on the sexual harassment.
Being a female engineer means she probably was making a lot more money than most women will ever make. She may have mostly made her peace with the fact that it sucks that if she were a man, she probably would have gotten more credit and so forth, but for a woman, she had a fairly good life.
There are women making good money who are just mad as hell at the injustices in their lives, but some women are more pragmatic than that. Many of them will not admit that publicly because they don't want the assholes of the world to infer that it's perfectly fine to crap all over women. After all, this woman is "happy" with it!
But their internal metric can be along the lines of "I live in a first world country. In the grand scheme of things, I overall have it pretty good. There are literally billions of people worse off than me. I am just not going to waste my time pointlessly on bellyaching over this."
I am doing so based on what I have known about the life and attitudes of a serious career woman I was quite close to and based on my own first-hand experience as a 55 year old woman who was one of the top students in my graduating class, had a corporate job for a time and other life experience.
This happened in late 90's early 2000's so things may have changed.
Everything changed soon after she joined our team. She had never seen Java code before, but she was able to guess what we were doing wrong and likely where, and she was often correct. That is when I learned common sense and imagination are more important than just plain knowledge (and fancy degrees).
This is true for men too - but different set of parameters, height being one of them.
Good looks can make one's life much easier
People do, clearly, have a bias towards whatever their standard of attractiveness is. I don't think this is really a controversial observation; it's subtle in some situations, overt in others, but it almost never disappears.
This is also enhanced by another effect the article doesn't really hit on: confidence. Once you realize people perceive you as attractive, you start to understand how this advantage tilts the world in your favor. You realize people may listen a bit more, so you speak up a bit more. You start putting yourself out there and more and more opportunities fall into your lap.
This is, as I hinted above, something that people can make a conscious effort to achieve. I've got certain genetic advantages, and I acknowledge that, but it's amazing how far simple physical fitness, careful grooming, and confidence can go.
For men who perceive themselves as unattractive, I would strongly recommend that you put forth the effort to become attractive, even if your own self-image is that you are unattractive. Your genetic predisposition may set limits and boundaries on how far you can take this effect, but if you even move the needle a little bit you can start to see gains (I'd not presume to make any such recommendation to women, because although I feel confident that attractiveness has never hurt me as a male, I do not know whether attractiveness is such a "clear win" for women).
It's unfortunate that humans are wired this way, but you might as well take advantage of it.
In dating, I've always heard two rules:
1. Be attractive 2. Don't be unattractive
What's attractive is very subjective. But what's unattractive is almost universal. Take a shower, wear antiperspirant, groom your hair, and make an effort to be in good physical shape. Men, if you're growing a beard, groom it. If not, shave it regularly. I look back at pictures of my early 20s when I shaved like once a month out of laziness, and damn I looked terrible. #BlunderYears
I've seen first-hand people that believe they've failed at #1, so they ignore #2.
However I’m not sure how useful it will be. My reflection has a way of emerging everywhere I go, like the sun piercing a dark cloudy sky, my warmth eventually finds its way into my surroundings.
And the fact that most of the responses to you are confused by it shows how ludicrous it is. And yet when someone uses that exact same reasoning in a different context people are somehow unable to see its absurdity and vehemently agree with it.
"How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves. I deserve it more. ... The injustice!" -- p.84
I wonder if this is an evolved phenomenon. Societies where punishment was harsher on the less attractive was faster to remove less fit genes than otherwise and, thus, out competed their adversaries.
(Obviously abhorrent on a human level, though.)
To think that it merely reflects your genes vastly oversimplifies it.
(I was once "beautiful." I have a genetic disorder. This is a subject I have thought a lot about over the years.)
-- Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland.
A symmetric person will likely be considered beautiful in rags (unless they’re malnourished) and a non-symmetric person can be considered beautiful with some grooming, both physical and personality wise. The Queer Eye show made this pretty popular, at least in my circles.
Beauty has more to do with culture (what do we consider good looking and what not) but there's also an objective beauty that has to do with body proportion for example
The same person can look beautiful and ugly depending on all of that.
I thought it was implicit that we're talking about natural beauty without make up perhaps.
And no, beauty does not depends the clothes you wear for example (makeup, yes I second that if is very thick can change the way a person look)
Spending money on the right things can make a large difference. Teeth, skincare, diet, haircut, clothes, time in the gym, quitting a job that would keep you in the sun too long, ...
Take this picture before after of Cristiano Ronaldo, for example:
https://elbocon.pe/resizer/0hZVESd2S5BEAOwYYdT6_FUcIEE=/980x...
https://www.besoccer.com/new/the-20-ugliest-footballers-in-t...
https://www.goal.com/en-us/news/has-cristiano-ronaldo-had-pl...
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/sydney-confi...
That's not really fair. He was like 16/17 on that first picture.
Ugly rich people either don't care or don't consider the risks worth it.
Audrey Hepburn, in her early sixties (just before her death) was stunningly beautiful. She was merely "cute" when she was in her twenties.
They fail to realize that a sizable percentage of attractive girls don’t roll out of bed a 10. They watch what they eat, they run, work out, pay special attention to clothes, makeup, hair, etc. It adds up to a couple hours each day. In the age of instagram, the bar has only risen higher.
When I see beauty now I think of the effort it takes to stay that way and silently congratulate them.
Fat shaming, thin shaming, thigh gaps, Chads and Stacys, my head hurts just thinking about it all.
Everything old is new again.
[0] Book: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691158174/be...
[1] Daily show: https://econ.video/2017/11/27/the-daily-show-ugly-people-dis...
Beauty is inherently subjective to the point of including wild contradictions such as Europeans going to great lengths to tan their skin while Asians may poison themselves with attempt to bleach their skin to make it lighter. This is not some simple scale even if there may be examples of people that are considered beautiful by many.
Modernity has made it common to be out of shape and overweight, so people who put extra effort into maintaining their health tend to be considered more beautiful than others. This means that to some extent beauty is a parameter that can be controlled. This leads to complex trade offs where beautiful people may be strongly desirable, but end up eating and exercising in a very controlled way which makes deep socialization with ordinary people awkward. Want to share lunch or a snack? Sorry, I don't snack and am not eating lunch today or most days. Want to share a drama? Sorry, I am going to the gym and expect to come back too low on time and energy for that. And so on.
Me (normal looking guy) and the GF (average-trending-to-pretty) at a fast food restaurant. I go up to the counter and ask for a couple extra sauce packets, only to be told they are 0.25 each.
GF goes up 1 minute later, asks for two sauce packets and is given a hand full, for free.
Take the most beautiful person you know and see them when they're sick and they rarely stay attractive.
In any case it's arguably learnable. I don't know if this example will resonate but certain cities have a culture of beauty. Tokyo is one. People dress up to go out, at least most women do. I use to think it was either (a) they were born attractive or (b) the city attracted beautiful people. But, I've changed my mind. Instead the city culture has set a standard and people, in general, feel pressure to try to adhere to it.
I know it's an anecdote but a very attractive women once told me the only difference between attractive and not is effort. We all probably know exceptions but in my experience they are fairly rare. I'm not saying everyone can be a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 but I'm confident the majority of people can be 7-8 even 9 with effort. Many of the most beautiful people I know, put them in drab clothing with no make up and try to remove your memory of their prior attractiveness and they just look like plain ordinary people.
E.g All else being equal, you're going to have a hard time finding a partner if you are 5'5 male.
Unfortunately, unattractive people will have to put in a lot more effort to succeed in life, especially with regards to dating.
Yes, being short sucks, but it sucks not being born a millionaire too. No reason to be down about it.
If you think being short sucks, try being short AND bitter.
I think this is nonsense. I'm like a 2/10 looks wise on a good day. No amount of effort is getting that number anywhere close to what people find acceptable.
I can wear the nicest clothes money can buy, I'm still going to be seen as a well dressed ugly guy.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ugly+to+handsome+transformat...
https://www.google.com/search?q=ugly+to+hot+transformations&...
I'm sure you'll rebel against my "tough love" but you can only lead a horse to water ...
It feels like Los Angeles light.
In one episode some man who was supposed to be super attractive to everyone had no idea he was so bad at everything. He passed through life because everyone let him off the hook for his beauty.
In another episode a beautiful assistant started at the studio and charmed everyone into getting her way. When Liv confronted her about it she replies that if it's fair for Liv to use the brains her genetics gave Liv than it was fair to her to use the beauty genetics gave her.
The bit with the blonde was delicious.
Or maybe it's because beauty, just like most other traits in nature, follows the normal distribution, so most of us are around 5, and very few are really ugly (or astonishingly beautiful).
A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”
Roald Dahl, "The Twits"
The accompanying illustration has stuck with me for going on 30 years now: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c9/45/2c/c9452c05e8c3e60455a3...
I have met my share of people who by rights ought to be physically attractive but are not, which also reminds me of Shelley: Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown/ And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command...
“handsome is as handsome does” is at least as old as Chaucer.
Reminds me of one of my favorite LoTR quotes, of Aragorn after first meeting him:
Merry: "How do we know this Strider is a friend of Gandalf?"
Frodo: "I think a servant of the Enemy would look fairer and feel fouler."
> Here is a list of features that are objectively beautiful, and their absence, objectively ugly. Facial and body symmetry; proportional anatomy, height (particularly among men); a full set of straight, white teeth; a full head of hair; clear, evenly-toned, taut, skin; a well-toned physique; proportional features; large eyes.
Of these, the "well-toned physique" is probably historically incorrect[1] - excess weight signified wealth and health for much of human history. Likewise, "a full head of hair" is somewhat gender-specific - super important for women, but many men can rock a bald head pretty well.
Overall, I think beauty ideals are somewhat more flexible than this article assumes. This is especially true for romantic attraction and especially in some communities.
[1] Searching for this yields a lot of spam, best I found after a few minutes: https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/07/health/body-image-history-of-...
If Rubens' women are an ideal, why aren't Picasso's?
She discussed her prior career in the military, where she spent 8 years and ultimately got pushed out by a high-ranking officer (also female) in her division for very political reasons. It wasn't just a superficial rant, she described an incredibly detailed pattern of abuse and obstruction by some of her COs.
My main takeaway was that attractive people tend to get more attention. Much of it is probably good attention, but this isn't always the case. A few days after that date, I heard about Vanessa Guillén, an Army soldier murdered by a CO after suffering from persistent sexual harassment by him[0].
0: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/06/fort-hood-soldier-va...
The other soldier mentioned in that article was the same rank, not a commanding officer (CO). In no way diminishes the seriousness of the apparent murder, of course.
It's very seductive to justify people's anxiety and envy by synthesizing a narrow difference into an perceived injustice. If a person is truly repellent or creepy, it's because they present something that triggers a sense of danger or disgust in others, which is completely relative to the individuals. Liars are usually repellent, so are predators, manipulators, often the mentally ill, when you get a waft of that aspect of who they are. You have to ask who benefits from you not trusting your instincts when it comes to being around people you may feel repulsed by.
EDIT: corrected re comment below.
He actually said it about Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal at the Oscars.
Criticizing the "privilege" of the attractive as a means to de-legitimize them personally seems to double down on this error and seduce people who have the conceit of blaming others for their own biases into further self-justification, imo.
Privilege is nothing more than a social factor to be aware of, both for the haver of privilege whose perspectives might be warped by their experiences, and for the social systems (like the justice system, mentioned in the article) who at least in theory are trying to be objective about things.
Don't take it so personally. Privilege doesn't make you a bad person, and raising awareness of it is a good thing.
Privilege is nothing but an acknowledgement that some people have advantages in life that they didn't earn. There is no possible world in which it doesn't exist, and almost by definition its holders can't usually be blamed for holding it. But we can a) take steps as a society to decrease its impact in various ways, and b) see it as a reality-check on social-darwinist or meritocratic thinking.
> In a meta analysis of the role of attractiveness in criminal sentencing, it was found that unattractive people received 120–305 percent longer sentences than attractive people.
So coming up with a way to factor physical appearance out of courtroom proceedings could dramatically improve justice system outcomes. There's nothing hand-wavy or insidious here. I really can't figure out where your hangup is, and I think I'm going to stop engaging with this conversation because it feels like a waste of time and energy.
In the single study that was based on real data there was no control for income. The impact of that should be obvious to all: richer people are generally better groomed in court and have better representation.
Funny thing is in some Asian countries having a certain form of "crooked" teeth is often seen as more attractive (in woman).
Similarly having body volume (e.g. slightly overweight) is often seen as attractive (in man). (As it convoys wealth, only wealthy people can afford to eat that much.)
Honestly most, not the large majority of people is not ugly and can have reasonable good looks if they do carry them self properly and war clean clothes, hair, etc. Sure much more can be done using makeup or similar but that costs time and money every day and is normally not necessary.
Sure people which look rally good still do have some benefit. I just mean that for many people the problem is not inborn bad looks but how they carry them self IMHO. But then beauty is very subjective so I wouldn't be surprised if many people thing differently.
Yes, you could argue that it shouldn’t be this way and people shouldn’t dwell on looks so much. But it doesn’t matter how right you are. Attraction isn’t rational. It’s emotional and instinctive.
So do yourself a favor and always try to look your best. You don’t need to care about what people think about you, but should care about what people feel towards you, because it will impact the quality of your life.
Take Elon Musk. It's amazing how his hair grew back and that's he's aged so well considering the stress he's under. Hair implants, Botox and a nip and tuck here and there will keep you looking your billionaire best.
I was oblivious to this type of thing with men until my wife started pointing it out.
It's no wonder that among the things that money can buy is happiness if plastic surgery improves your esteem and how people react to you.
Also everything is a privilege now: - being human - being alive - having two legs - having two hands - having two parents - having a computer at home - having an iphone
Because beauty is relative. Whiteness and maleness are absolute. Sexuality, once outed, is also absolute.
Sure, some of the people around you are going to pay more attention to you but you will not earn anything for it. No investor is going to invest on you because you are beautiful. You don't get to control your life only because you are beautiful.
It's other talents that you have and the choices you make that really helps you to construct your life. And you get more privilege when you are more successful. If someone is extremely beautiful and made a career in beauty or fashion, it's not because (s)he is beautiful. Otherwise every naturally beautiful person could make it.
1) Jonny Ive http://www.edibleapple.com/2010/04/14/back-when-jonathan-ive...
2) Thiel and Musk (check Thiel's teeth) https://i.insider.com/5dc349153afd375c04352664?width=1136&fo...
3) Bezos https://i.insider.com/596ccf31abc1c828528b4c9a?width=1136&fo...
Guess money fixes beauty :)
Amusingly, Sir Ive is an example of both: back when he was a goofy mustachioed designer he came up with beautiful designs like the iMac, and then when he spent time at the gym and getting fancy T-shirts he produced … a bunch of metal-and-glass rectangles, and disaster of an HQ.
Still might not be true, but it's less hyperbolic.
Oh for God's sake, some people are born without eyes.
> Attractive people might have a hard time coming to terms with all of this. Doing so would require relegating at least part of their achievements to something mostly unearned.
No one deserves anything. The idea falls apart as soon as we even begin to examine it. I could walk into the woods and build a hut out of mud and sticks. Did I "earn" that mud hut, or was I privileged to be born with hands? Does the fact that most people are born with hands matter? If so, how can we quantify how it matters?
At the end of the day, none of this makes any sense, and we need to come up with notions of "success" (socially speaking) and "property rights" (legally speaking) that are based on something else.
I have noticed this trend though, of reacting to justice movements by claiming it'll tear down people. Why do you believe this?
I imagine it’ll soon be transferred to talented people as well.
Soon we’ll be right where the story predicted, everyone wears handicaps to make themselves equal.
Part of the problem is that our current property regime does not distinguish between property acquired through accession [1] and property acquired through extraction.
There is this weird philosophy that all "market transactions" are equally legitimate and that market price is the correct (and only reliable) indicator of economic value. This view ignores the fact that market prices are as much a product of market structure as they are a reflection of people's preferences.
As a rule, few wealthy people extract 100% of their wealth and few earn 100%.
The wealthy that extract 98% sure try to downplay that part and try to pretend that they're among the miniscule number who earned 90+%.
Most manage to self delude themselves that vitriol against the wealthy IS vitriol against talent. Their egos demand it.
I think it should be likely obvious from my statement above, I want there to be talented people, and I really don't see a substantial movement to pull down successful people.
What are examples of things people are doing that make you think we are going in this direction?
This absurdist remark is just to point out that just because people get paid to do a job, it doesn't mean it's a job we as a society want people to have.
The only absurdist remark here is your comparison of Yacht Builders to Murderers.
Nom nom on those roasted almonds and slurp that almond milk, but keep in mind that yacht builder is having less of a negative impact on the planet.
Yes, that is exactly what I said. I made an absurdist remark ...
But your point is merely valid in a very narrow window of your own morality. I wanted you to reevaluate your perspective and think that perhaps yacht builders, or vulture capitalists, or any number of things that are considered legal, might not be good.
I'm not even trying to say that Yacht building is bad, but a system/society which has yacht builders in it could use a look.
I also think I wouldn't shed a year if Rolls Royce went out of business. There are manufacturing, design, welding jobs out there on markets that actually make sense to scale up. Some things in life you can currently buy don't provide enough value to justify them existing at all. They simply exist as a middle finger to everyone with less, propped up by the idiots that but them.
I'm not saying make anything illegal, I'm saying I judge people who support this and would encourage everyone else to do the same.
It's not absurd and stupid to display wealth, it's a function of being a social mammal. Moreover, it does contribute to society by way of employing legions.
When next you flip open your laptop, or publicly use your phone, or dress nicely, or discuss your vacationing, consider your own words about flaunting your wealth.
Thinking collectively is what created civilized society and enabled the modern world.
I agree that consumption has created a lot of good in the world, I absolutely believe in capitalism, successful ideas need to triumph over bad ones.
I also understand that many innovations start out as extremely expensive luxury goods that are eventually commoditized. This is an important part of why I don't believe we should make excessive consumption illegal.
I know there will always be people who submit to these urges and buy fancy crap, and sometimes them doing that will help society at large more than it hurts. Some things are just objectively not helpful and are just gratuitous displays of wealth. I am happy to hear otherwise, but I just don't think that Yacht building has trickled down to a bunch of consumer goods that help the world.
High end fashion and beauty products I think reasonably belong in the same category. I think there are plenty of opportunities for more decentralized markets, local designers, that would be possible if rich people weren't buying so much mindshare and influence. And that's not to say I think the government should regulate everything, some if it just has to be individuals talking about things and changing consumption behavior.
I do not see what is objectively unhelpful about buying a yacht, or similar. Trades persons are paid, wealth is redistributed, utility and enjoyment is extracted from the product of their labour.
In all luxury consumption there is a redistribution of wealth; and _unlike_ with investment, there is no expectation to extract future wealth from the labour of others after the point of purchase.
In their own way, investors are parasites. They leverage their hoarded wealth to extract value from the labour of others.
> should get them to pay their damn taxes and fair share
what constitutes a 'fair share'? Who gets to decide?
it's easy to criticize yachts. Let's say a billionaire did something "you might like" like throw a ton of money into a basic physics project. But what if that basic physics project is looking for superluminal neutrinos? Or maybe you'd criticize that the billionaire just wanted to get their name out, which is, essentially vanity, an obviously negative character trait.
Or we could get into sketchier territory. What if the billionaire spent tons of money in "development" in an "underdeveloped country". Is that bad or good? Who gets to decide?
I mean the ironic thing is that on many metrics, buying a yacht could be the least bad thing of the three things that I have mentioned, at least the likelihood of buying a yacht actively hurting someone else is relatively low.
Finding those people is harder than the Yacht idiots, but that's why we have watchdogs for public charities and can make laws regulating what people can do with a charity.
If people are making investments not as part of a public charity, we have journalists to hopefully keep some high level accountability, but yeah youn can do bad stuff with money in a lot of ways, go figure.
Even people doing lots of good can still be seen on a spectrum, I love a lot of the work Bill Gates is doing around the world, but I think he worked really hard to fight FOSS, and I think the world is worse off in some ways for it.
I'm saying buying crazy expensive luxury goods is never a good thing, it's just a waste of resources to prop up someone's shallow ego.
But at this point the capital gains rate is absolutely in need of change. Taxing the rich is really politically popular, across the political spectrum. If someone has to pay %39 on a million dollars of earned income, the "job creators" making billions can pay something closer to that on their income too.
It is already, and the logic is something like: talent is largely a function of practice and access to education. Having the means and opportunity to practice and be properly educated is a privilege.
You can find _plenty_ of words written regarding the inherent racism, sexism, ableism et al in various hobbies due to unequal access; from GitHub hobby repos to enjoying nature through hiking and camping.
Black Lives Matter is not fighting for cops to shoot more white people to equalize the numbers, they are trying to show how it is possible in lots of similar situations to deescalate situations without killing anyone, even with violent offenders if training is good, and officers don't have a bias (explicit or subconscious) against the type of person. It is also very obvious to show that minorities are being over-policed and often harassed for just living their lives.
I think similarly with this issue of the leg up that attractive people have in the world, the only way we can fight it is by acknowledging it exists and trying to actively re-evaluate every decision we make about who we choose to interact with, and how much it is informed by these types of bias. This is not the same as giving the attractive people a -10 on whatever evaluation they are a part of. It is always going to be true that correcting for these types of bias will be inexact, welcome to life, but saying we just shouldn't give a shit about less attractive people is a worse outcome for all of society, and its not like author is asking for infinite effort from everyone to correct this. Talented people exist everywhere, if we don't push those of disadvantaged groups up, only some of them will "pull their bootstraps" hard enough to overcome things on their own. People need to be introspective to correct for their biases, there really isn't a way around that, we are imperfect beings quick to pass judgement.
I have a distinct memory of a part of the confirmation hearing of Sonia Sotomayor, she had written about her need to actively review her background when starting a case, to see if she might have prior experiences that would color her judgement. Republicans tried to spin this as, she acknowledged she is biased, obviously she can't be an objective judge. But she defended herself well and asserted it is effectively impossible, to just be objective without this kind of evaluation. Effectively the same argument that people correctly make about the virtual impossibility of just being "race-blind", we all have things we have experienced that color our perceptions of different people, ideas and places, we cannot ignore that fact and just go on asserting we are good objective decision makers with no special effort to account for these things.
Remember this when people go on and on about "equity". In the grave, all men are equal.
I don't fully support removing magnet schools, but you can bet that if rich families had to send their kids to the same schools as the poor kids, they'd be lobbying all day for better funding. Apportioning funding per-head from state taxes rather than property taxes would be a good first step.
Seems obvious to me that the issue isn't that private or magnet schools are high quality, but rather that public schools are low quality. Basically, the goal is still, bring people up. The "bringing down" in this case is not only temporary, it's only actually "bringing to baseline."
A bunch of rich people and state congresspeople's kids being forced to go to "shitty public schools" sounds like a great way to force the issue.
This sounds suspiciously close to "hold other peoples' children hostage until they give me what I want"
Again, if going to a public school is so bad as to be considered "holding a child hostage," the issue isn't the making-rich-kids-go-to-public-schools, it's the public schools.
it's the oldest playbook in humanity.
Masks? A government backed hotornot.com that issues beauty bonus points to improve ugly hiring outcomes?
People who are good with numbers approach financial situations from a position of privilege, surely that's an equality killer? Do we impose Financial acuity tarrifs in addition to standard taxation?
Obviously these are absurd examples but there is a point of diminishing returns and even negative outcomes in the pursuit of TOTAL equality.
Here’s a good meaningwave playlist with the full story - https://open.spotify.com/album/1zG8gwbkJIZU8Ki3fQqIUE?si=a0L...
Basically it amounts to taking audio related to self development and layering over electronic beats. I like the format and think it's a really cool way to spread ideas.
You're going to have to define very attractive. No amount of healthy lifestyle will make your breasts bigger. No amount of dressing well will make your face less ugly (short of putting a curtain in front of it).
There are hard limits to what you can do as an individual without surgery. Even with surgery, you still will run into a wall.
You see this discussion everywhere from The Guardian to Incel forums. You see activists going on about “beauty standards.”
This is often discussed.
Well, wait a few years. I was surprised so many times recently with ridiculous initiatives, and I'm sure it can get way worse than that.
I suspect it’s played a large role in dating and interviewing for jobs, though no one ever openly says “you’re projecting more confidence simply because you’re taller than average”
Many women make it clear on dating sites that they won't consider anyone below a certain height, or at least taller than they are.
So what do you think the definition of 'privilege' is?
Unless you're not intelligent either. Or don't have the socioeconomic advantages of a good education. Or are a poor athlete. And, of course, there are people who are all of these things. Being beautiful does not mean you cannot excel in other traits.
Everyone does not start equal. People's genetics and the circumstances of their birth are causes of inequality. It does not end up balanced.
Think of all the ways that people are innately privileged (or not): intelligence, height, beauty, upbringing, parental wealth, personality profile.
Any combination of the above can have a vastly greater impact on a person's life outcomes than race, gender, sexuality etc.