IT was perhaps one of the chirpiest comments I’ve heard on morning TV for some time … okay, ever.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Channel Seven’s Sunrise host Andrew O’Keefe (did you know he was once a lawyer?) was interviewing a Melbourne academic about the latest study which showed life was unfairly skewed in favour of attractive people.
At the end of the segment, O’Keefe commented to the balding, bespectacled, bearded academic: “You’re no Japanese sunset and you seem to have done okay, so perhaps there’s hope for us all.”
It’s a fascinating issue, perhaps made even more so by Bushwhacked’s remarkable links with personal glamour: none whatsoever and isn’t that remarkable? (Apart from Mrs Whacked, of course, and it’s still got me stumped how I got away with that.)
We delved back into some old research and found perhaps the most credible study was done by Harvard University which showed that “attractive” people were paid on average three to four per cent more than un-attractive people.
Even worse, in a controlled study by 60 researchers, they found that good looking men were 36 per cent more likely to be successful in business.
The figures for women are about the same: good looking women do better in the world. To be honest, I find this proves two things – decision makers are pretty shallow and unaware of why they make decisions, and I should’ve chosen my parents with more care.
Despite all the education, training and political correctness, we still make many decisions based on gut-feeling and deep biological biases.
People who know me will know the truth is I am a short, tubby, grey-haired, one-eyed individual and in the light of all the research, it’s a wonder I can get out of bed every morning. I’m the bloke who put the “age” in “average”.
My genes, the world and everything in it are stacked up against we non-Brangelinas.
And I have a solution... aha, you knew that was coming, didn’t you?
Perhaps the only society which does not have to endure genetically inspired failure is that part of Islam, say in Afghanistan, where women wear burqas!
Those top to toe garments revealing only the eyes (and even then some are covered with a sort of net) mean the people inside can be judged purely on their word, their actions and their communications.
If I had to wear a burqa, I’d develop a big boofy hairstyle, so that on the outside I would look as tall as Andrew Gaze. AND I could even wear sunnies so you wouldn’t notice that my left eye had an apparent wild independence.
I could wear US football shoulder pads and act like Arnie Schwarzenegger, or The Rock, and I could even have one of those electronic voice modulators so that I sounded like a mellow James Earl Jones.
The only other solution to rid the world of this skin-deep discrimination is a compulsory change in our marriage and mating laws. When people applied to get hitched, they could have to undergo an attractiveness rating.
People considered 8.5 or more would be banned from teaming up with anyone else above 8. They would be required to partner a sub-5, and would get a tax break if they nobly moved in with a sub 1.5.
In that way, eventually, the whole world would be attractive-neutral. Beauty!