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Jeff Halperin

Jeff Halperin

Tag Archives: Beauty Bias

An open letter to OISE concerning beautiful oppressors

06 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by jdhalperin in Comedy

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Beautiful people make more money, Beauty Bias, JD Halperin, OISE

Dear OISE,

I am writing in hopes you’ll show solidarity towards today’s most unacknowledged and disenfranchised group.

It’s well documented that beautiful (read: Western “beauty”) people are automatically and unwarrantedly assumed to be more talented, intelligent, reliable, and overall more capable. Through no merit of their own, just genetic lottery, studies cite that they amass an extra $200,000 over a lifetime.

While many acknowledge the existence of the beauty bias, few admit it overprivileges the beautiful, so there’s a reluctance to concede the corollary: gross people are an underprivileged group oppressed by beautiful people. I think beautiful people are carefully taught not to recognize the beauty bias, as white males are carefully taught to marginalize all non-white males (McIntosh, Peggy).

While the extent of disenfranchisement and marginalization is hard to quantify and it differs from case to case, anti-gross oppression usually correlates positively with the degree to which the gross are gaunt, hirsute, balding, asymmetrical, squat, albino, peg-legged, pock marked, hunchbacked, beady eyed, and just generally weird looking. Imagine trying to make it as a runway model with explosive acne, or try getting good tips as a bartender while a class-three goitre hangs off your neck. Yet can’t gross people show attitude while walking in a straight line, or successfully pour a beverage into a glass? Comrades, is this a meritocracy?

Please, help show solidarity with gross people around the world and demand from governments that every industry be encouraged to hire a quota of gross people. As well as, of course, recompense the $200,000 taken from them by the beautiful. The proceeds of oppression should be dispersed among the people. All are entitled to this money, so long as they can prove beyond a doubt that they are gross.

GROSS PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD, UNITE!
Works Cited
1. McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege and Male Privilege” in Race, Class and Gender, edited by M. Anderson and P. Collins. 1992 New York: Feminist Press.

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