Appearance Discrimination

If you thought liberals whine too much about racism and sexism and think concepts such as ableism, ageism, and sizeism are ludicrous, take a look at what is soon to be the new liberal -ism: lookism.

This article, written by career feminist Lindsay Beyerstein, is over a month old and was written shortly after the Deborahlee Lorenzana story came to light, but it is nonetheless an important look into the worldview of liberal women.

In her provocative new book,The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Law and Life, Stanford law professor Deborah Rhode argues that workers deserve legal protection against appearance-based discrimination unless their looks are directly relevant to their job performance. [...]

Considering that leftists rant about racism, sexism, heteronormativity, cisgendierism, ableism, classism, ageism, and sizism I am not surprised that some feminist law professor wants to ban "lookism."  In case anyone's curious, this is what the anti-lookist professor looks like.

It should go without saying that discrimination on the basis of appearance is unjust, especially when it comes to features individuals have little or no control over.

Actually, it should not go without saying. Only a liberal woman could write such an ignorant statement. Does she realize that, barring an odd fetish, even the most feminized, beta, herb liberal mangina still would have a much more positive reaction to a 9 model than he would an obese 2?  If discriminating on the basis of appearance is unjust, then as physical appearances tend to be very important to men when selecting a mate, most men are unjust.

She is incorrect when she claims that people have little or no control over their appearances. They can become fat if they are sedentary and eat too much. They can stay fit if they exercise and eat right. They can become muscular if they lift weights (among other things).


Aside from exercising, there are plenty of ways to change your appearance. Buying new clothing can enhance your appearance. Hair dye gives you a new hair color.  Make-up improves womens' faces (and mens' in some cultures). Fair women can tan. Dark women can use skin lightener.

Prior to feminism's triumph, women did a lot of things to improve their appearances. They took care of themselves; they wore make-up when going out; they wore skirts, dresses, and jackets; they wore feminine hats; they wore stockings; etc. It's only up until recently in Western history that women have taken to not caring about their appearances.

Also, it doesn't take that much work to avoid becoming obese. I'm a computer nerd, a member of a group not known for physical prowess, yet I exercise daily. It really is not very hard.

Rhode does a good job of spelling out why such bias is offensive to human dignity and equal opportunity. [...]

Equal opportunity sounds nice on paper, but in reality it doesn't work. Everyone is not equal. Some people are stronger, smarter, faster, smaller, larger, more dominant, or more attractive than others. No amount of liberal social engineering and legislation can change this.

The increasing prevalence of obesity in America has done nothing to curb virulent prejudice against fat people. Ironically, immobilizing obesity is protected as a disability, but discrimination based purely on cosmetic aversion to fat is totally legal.

It is perfectly legal because most people, even liberal manginas, think women who look like they could wrestle a bear and win are disgusting.

In one study, 43 percent of overweight women reported feeling stigmatized by their employers.

As they should be. If the remaining stigmas against fat were destroyed, most women in America would probably become lard buckets.  Most men would too, for that matter.

Obese women earn 12 percent less than their thinner counterparts with comparable qualifications. Obese women are more likely to live in poverty, even after controlling for other factors.

So, why shouldn't women who take care of themselves be rewarded? Obesity is largely a result of lack of self control and absence of willpower. People with no self-control are more likely to waste their money, so it is obvious that they will be more likely to end up in poverty.

Her most egregious assault on reality comes with this statement:

Rhode notes that beauty bias also exacerbates and perpetuates other kinds of discrimination. Female workers are held to more elaborate grooming standards than their male counterparts. [...]

What universe is she living in? At every level, men are held to higher grooming standards than women. Many lower-class retail/service jobs prohibit men from having long hair, whereas I've never heard of any employer prohibiting short, dykish haircuts on women.

Workplace appearance standards in general are stricter regarding men than women. Ties are often required in service industry jobs, yet they are not for women (this is not considered discrimination by the government, although it's a guarantee that the reverse would be).  Many workplaces specify attire for men, but allow women to basically wear anything except jeans.  In workplaces requring professional dress, the men will be covered from the neck down with jackets, ties, slacks, button-down shirts, close-toed shoes, and socks, while women can get away with wearing sleeveless shirts, garments that are essentially T-shirts, no jackets, skirts with bare legs, and sandals.

There's a lot of overlap between appearance discrimination and racism. Some have speculated that coworkers perceived Lorenzana in a more sexualized way because she's Latina. Stereotypically Anglo-European features like smooth hair, slim hips, and pert noses loom large in our prevailing beauty ideals.

Is there anything liberals dislike that is not racist?  And what is "Anglo-European"? I've never heard that word before. Is that a term referring to English people residing on the Continent?

There's a class component in beauty bias, too. A gleaming smile engineered by an orthodontist is a badge of membership in the middle class. As we all know, poverty increases the risk of obesity.

So not only is appearance discrimination racist, but it's classist, too!  It's like a discrimination doubleheader.

Also, poverty doesn't increase the risk of obesity.  Ultimately, low IQ causes both since people with low IQs are likely to have low time preferences and poor decision-making skills.  Not that I'd expect a liberal feminist to acknowledge that.

Rhode acknowledges that the law can only do so much to mitigate the effects of such deep-seated prejudices, but she argues that the enormity of the problem is no excuse for inaction. Sexism, racism and homophobia are certainly ingrained, but that doesn't mean that the law is powerless against them. As segregationists said in the era of Brown, you can't legally force people not to be bigots. On the other hand, when you discourage people from acting like bigots, tolerance can become a habit.

So because the War Against Racism has gone very well, we should extend it to battling the evils of appearance discrimination.  Fifty years ago, blacks and whites went to separate schools, lived in separate neighborhoods, and worshiped at separate churches.  Today, it's the same, if not worse since in the 1950s most blacks weren't born to single women.  A War Against Appearance Discrimination would be even more ineffective, since it would be difficult to prevent someone from having a visceral reaction upon seeing a bloated, obsese colossus or a woman who got smacked with an ugly stick.


Most people with racist views like myself are not biologically hardwired to view blacks as prone to crime or to view Asians as excelling in school (remember, even positive stereotypes are bad!).  These views come from statistical evidence and personal experience.  However, as Beyerstein notes in her article, even infants have a more positive reaction to people with attractive faces.  Appearance discrimination is part of our biology.

Even after a couple decades of brainwashing schoolchildren with "body acceptance" propaganda, it still exists.  Feminists will be unable to eradicate it from our society, no matter how much they try.  All they will do is attack another aspect of freedom of association and thrust upon us another destructive bureaucracy.


In modern America, it is unacceptable to hold women to any form of standards related to sexuality, including appearance.  Combined with the elite's veneration of equality no matter how absurd and laws against appearance discrimination are the natural consequence.

However, I think there's a more personal motive in Beyerstein's article on appearance discrimination.  She's the blond in the picture below.

America's First Lady and Russia's First Lady

When Barrack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev were meeting, Michelle Obama took Medvedev's wife, Svetlana Medvedeva, to a performance at Duke Ellington School of the Arts. Above is a picture of them at that event.

I was going to write a post regarding Michelle Obama and her "style" (which the fashionistas are undoubtedly busy fawning over), but I think I'll let the picture speak for itself.

Sword and Sandal at the White House

This is the dress that Michelle Obama wore to a yesterday's state dinner with Felipe Calderon. Larry Auster wrote about it here - be sure to read all of the comments, they are amusing.

From the dress' "fabric" (I put fabric in quotes because it looks like it's made out of plastic), the single strap (the dress probably would have looked less ugly with no straps), its sword and sandal B-movie look, and her black ghetto bitch scowl, to the fact that her cleavage appears to start at her collarbone, her entire appearance is repulsive.

I don't have a problem with women wearing cleavage-revealing dresses to formal events. Women have been wearing cleavage- or bosom-baring dresses for centuries, but in the past, they looked nice while doing so. Modern American women seem to be incapable of making such a dress look elegant, a word which few American women seem to know the meaning of. Younger women end up looking like sluts and middle-aged women end up looking ridiculous. Michelle Obama looks like the Nubian Queen in a direct-to-DVD sequel to Clash of the Titans.

Since the elite loves Michelle Obama, more women will probably attempt to copy her "fashion."

"Street Harassment" and Freedom of Speech

Libertarians often make the statement that liberals are right on civil liberties and conservatives are right on economic liberties. The truth, of course, is that conservatives are awful on economic liberties and liberals are horrible on civil liberties. To liberals, racial and gender egalitarian trumps everything, including civil rights and liberties. This is why when a black thug murders people, they call for mercy, but when wealthy white college students are accused of raping a black stripper, they get out the pitchforks and torches.

Despite the fact that liberals are reputed to support freedom of speech, they really support a warped version of it (I refer to it as liberal free-dumb). They believe that freedom of speech means students can disrupt a Tom Tancredo speech or shut down an interstate to whine about budget cuts, but it does not apply whenever someone says something that offends NAMs or feminists. The recent shutdown of the AmRen conference is one example. Now an article has been written by a Huffington Post feminist arguing for legal restrictions on street harassment. For those of you who are unfamiliar with feminist buzzwords, street harassment is when say things, sometimes offensive, to a woman who is dressed sexily in public.

Holly Kearl argues that since sexual harassment is illegal in the workplace, it should be illegal in public. Of course, she fails to explain the legal basis for the illegality of sexual harassment in the workplace. Essentially, the Supreme Court ruled in the 1980s (so much for Kearl's claim that workplace sexual harassment was illegal 19 years before she was born) that sexual harassment constitutes gender discrimination, which is prohibited by the Property Rights and Freedom of Association Destruction Act of 1964 (more commonly called the Civil Rights Act). I do not have a legal background so I do not know why the courts have not struck down the Civil Rights Act as infringing on freedom of speech, but I'm guessing it has to do with the facts that 1) as mentioned above, liberals have a different definition of free speech and 2) it involves businesses, which the courts have allowed the federal government virtually unlimited reign to meddle with since the 1930s.

Anyways, she goes on to praise the Egyptian Parliament's recent passing of a law banning street harassment and suggests that the same happen here. Considering that Egypt has been ruled by the same man since 1981 under a state of emergency, if Egypt passes a law, it's probably a bad idea to pass the same law here. The idea of the federal government banning street harassment reminds me of the South Park episode Cartman's Silly Hate Crime, where Cartman (a 4th grader) throws a rock at a black kid and ends up getting arrested by the FBI and sent to prison (before being pardoned when his friends explain to the governor how hate crime laws are a "savage hypocrisy").

A federal law that banned street harassment would certainly be unconstitutional even with a strict originalist interpretation - it literally bans speech in public places simply because someone finds it offensive (of course, it would also violate the 9th and 10th Amendments, but that's another topic). SCOTUS consistently ruled in favor of an expansive view of freedom of speech. For example, it ruled in the 1970s that it is not constitutional to arrest someone for wearing a jacket reading "Fuck the Draft" into a courthouse, so I really can't see them upholding a law like this. And to enforce this law would simply expand the police state that liberals are so fond of attacking and would undoubtedly lead to the arrest of thousands of young black men. It would be amusing to see liberals' reactions when black men are disproportionately arrested under a street harassment law.

If women want to end street harassment, there's a really good way: don't dress like a slut. The fact is, when a woman wears a short skirt, high heels, and a sleeveless or strapless shirt, she is asking for attention. True, some of these "victims" are professional women dressed for the office, but many of these "professional" women wear only slightly more clothing than women going to nightclubs. Ten or fifteen years ago, professional women wore knee-length skirt-suits or dresses, closed-toed shoes, and hosiery. Now, it seems to be acceptable for "professional" women to go bare legged and wear sandals, short(er) skirts, glorified T-shirts, and even sleeveless shirts.

Yes, I realize I am being politically incorrect and "blaming the victim," but I simply do not care. If women do not want attention, then they should not do their best to attract it.

I find a lot of things that people say offensive, but I don't go around calling for laws to make them shut up. Kearl and other feminists completely miss the point of freedom of speech. The idea of freedom of speech is that people have the right to say things that offend others. If you don't like the fact that a strange man said something about your short skirt, then either insult him back, don't dress like you are trying to attract men's attention if you don't want it, or ignore him and get on with your life like an adult. Feminists wanted wanted to be treated like equals so they should act like it, instead of acting like helpless little girls. Plenty of men have been insulted or harassed by strangers in public, yet you don't see men clamoring for street harassment laws.

However, I really can't blame Kearl for want to ban street harassment. Looking at her picture, it's clear she's never been "street harassed" in her life. She's probably jealous.

EDIT: Fixed a minor error.