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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Go ahead and admit it, the pretty rooster is the one you keep.


All That Glisters Is Gold

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: May 4, 2005

I went out once with a guy who didn't care for his mother, partly because 
he felt she was not attractive enough. My brother Martin, on the other 
hand, tells our mom how proud he was when she picked him up from grade 
school because he thought she was the prettiest mother.

And we've seen those studies showing that aesthetics is hard-wired in the 
brain - that even babies have an innate sense of beauty, choosing to gaze 
longer at lovelier faces.

So it shouldn't be surprising to learn parents have the same bias. Still, 
the headline yesterday in Science Times was jolting: "Ugly Children May Get 
Parental Short Shrift." As Nicholas Bakalar wrote: "Canadian researchers 
have made a startling assertion: parents take better care of pretty 
children than they do ugly ones."

Researchers at the University of Alberta observed that at the supermarket, 
less adorable tykes were more often allowed to engage in potentially 
dangerous activities - like standing up in the shopping cart or wandering 
off. Good-looking children, especially boys, got more attention from their 
parents and were kept closer at hand.

"When it came to buckling up, pretty and ugly children were treated in 
starkly different ways, with seat belt use increasing in direct proportion 
to attractiveness," the article said. "When a woman was in charge, 4 
percent of the homeliest children were strapped in, compared with 13.3 
percent of the most attractive children." With fathers, it was even worse, 
"with none of the least attractive children secured with seat belts, while 
12.5 percent of the prettiest children were."

Haven't these parents heard of the ugly duckling? Do they read to pretty 
kids only about pretty ducklings?

Even if you're skeptical about supermarket science, the story conjures up 
poignant images of Pugsley-looking rugrats toddling off, or flying through 
the air and crashing into the rotisserie chicken oven because they're not 
belted in.

Dr. Andrew Harrel, the research team's leader, put the findings in 
evolutionary terms: pretty children represent a premium genetic legacy, so 
get top care. "Like lots of animals," he said, "we tend to parcel out our 
resources on the basis of value."

As Marilyn Monroe explained in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes": "Don't you know 
that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn't marry a 
girl just because she's pretty, but my goodness, doesn't it help?"

A beauty bias against children seems so startling because you grow up 
thinking parents are the only ones who will give you unconditional love, 
not measure it out in coffee spoons based on your genetic luck - which, 
after all, they're responsible for.

But the world can be harsh. Surface matters more and more, and the world 
ignores Shakespeare's lesson from "The Merchant of Venice": "Gilded tombs 
do worms infold."

An analysis published last month by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 
suggests that the good-looking get more money and promotions than 
average-looking schmoes.

Quoting the economists Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle, the study notes 
that being tall, slender and attractive could be worth a "beauty premium" - 
an extra 5 percent an hour - while there is a "plainness penalty" of 9 
percent in wages (after factoring out other issues).

Researchers report that taller men are more likely to win in business and - 
except for the hapless Al Gore and John Kerry - get elected president. 
Correlating 16-year-olds' height with their later salaries shows beanstalks 
grow up to earn about $789 more a year for each extra inch of height.

In his best seller "Blink," Malcolm Gladwell did a survey of half the 
Fortune 500 C.E.O.'s, and found that (Jack Welch notwithstanding - or 
notwithsitting) the average C.E.O., at 6 feet, is about 3 inches taller 
than the average American man.

As Randy Newman sang, "Short people got no reason to live."

Research also shows that obese women get 17 percent lower wages than women 
of average weight and that dishy professors get better evaluations from 
their students.

There can be too much of a good thing. As Dan Ondrack, a professor at the 
University of Toronto, told The Toronto Star, there's a "Boopsey" effect - 
if women are too gorgeous, people assume they are airheads.

No one seems sure whether bosses discriminate against people because 
they're less attractive, or whether more attractive people develop more 
self-esteem and social finesse.

But one thing's for sure: it's hard to develop self-esteem when you're 
hurtling out of the supermarket cart toward the rotisserie oven.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/opinion/04dowd.html?