The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law |  | Author: Deborah L. Rhode
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Seller: allnewbooks
Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 92,930
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1
ISBN: 0195372875
Dewey Decimal Number: 346.730134
EAN: 9780195372878
ASIN: 0195372875
Publication Date: May 6, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
"It hurts to be beautiful" has been a cliché for centuries. What has been far less appreciated is how much it hurts not to be beautiful. The Beauty Bias explores our cultural preoccupation with attractiveness, the costs it imposes, and the responses it demands.
Beauty may be only skin deep, but the damages associated with its absence go much deeper. Unattractive individuals are less likely to be hired and promoted, and are assumed less likely to have desirable traits, such as goodness, kindness, and honesty. Three quarters of women consider appearance important to their self image and over a third rank it as the most important factor.
Although appearance can be a significant source of pleasure, its price can also be excessive, not only in time and money, but also in physical and psychological health. Our annual global investment in appearance totals close to $200 billion. Many individuals experience stigma, discrimination, and related difficulties, such as eating disorders, depression, and risky dieting and cosmetic procedures. Women bear a vastly disproportionate share of these costs, in part because they face standards more exacting than those for men, and pay greater penalties for falling short.
The Beauty Bias explores the social, biological, market, and media forces that have contributed to appearance-related problems, as well as feminism's difficulties in confronting them. The book also reviews why it matters. Appearance-related bias infringes fundamental rights, compromises merit principles, reinforces debilitating stereotypes, and compounds the disadvantages of race, class, and gender. Yet only one state and a half dozen localities explicitly prohibit such discrimination. The Beauty Bias provides the first systematic survey of how appearance laws work in practice, and a compelling argument for extending their reach. The book offers case histories of invidious discrimination and a plausible legal and political strategy for addressing them. Our prejudices run deep, but we can do far more to promote realistic and healthy images of attractiveness, and to reduce the price of their pursuit.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Brilliant book June 17, 2010
Nancy Levit
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book is breathtakingly innovative and powerfully written. It is about using law to help remedy appearance-based discrimination--a type of discrimination that is epidemic but never addressed.
 Well argued brief for the not-quite-perfect July 30, 2010
J. Davis (San Diego, CA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Beauty Bias is a powerful attack on what the author, with some justification, considers a superficial society that values appearance, especially in women, over almost everything else. Most of us who have taken Psych 101 have heard of the halo effect, the tendency to consider attractive people smarter and kinder than less attractive people. Although she doesn't use that term, Professor Rhode shows how much harm it is causing people. My favorite example of absurdity (and sexism)was that of Sarah Palin's campaign, who spent more on her makeup expert than on her foreign policy consultant.
No free market absolutist, Rhode argues persuasively that businesses should not have the right to discriminate against someone because of their appearance. She makes a case that people discriminated against because of appearance have every much as legal and moral right to sue in court as did the civil rights movement or any other cause. The Beauty Bias is an important, well-reasoned book that should be read by anyone concerned about these issues.
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