Preface

"I began working nearly twenty years ago to discover what economics has to say on the topic of physical appearance."(5)

"I was not the first to look at the relationship between beauty and economic outcomes—that’s an old topic. I was, however, the first to examine it using a nationally representative sample of adults, and to do so in the context of economic models of the determination of earnings. My subsequent work broadened this approach into a research agenda that inquired into the “Why?” of this relationship and, more generally, into the meaning of discrimination as perhaps represented by the economic roles of beauty and ugliness."(5)

[En de dank gaat weer uit naar ... zijn broer, zijn vrouw, zijn vrienden, allemaal mensen uit het intellectuele en ongetwijfeld rijke milieu.]

(8) Part I - Background to Beauty

(8) Chapter 1 - The Economics of Beauty

"Modern man is obsessed with beauty. From the day we are old enough to recognize our faces in a mirror until well after senility sets in, we are concerned with our looks. A six-year-old girl wants to have clothes like those of her “princess” dolls; a pre-teenage boy may insist on a haircut in the latest style (just as I insisted on my crew cut in 1955); twenty-somethings primp at length before a Saturday night out. Even after our looks, self-presentation, and other characteristics have landed us a mate, we still devote time and money to dyeing our hair, obtaining hair transplants, using cosmetics, obtaining pedicures and manicures, and dressing in the clothes that we spent substantial amounts of time shopping for and eventually buying. Most days we carefully select the right outfits from our wardrobes and groom ourselves thoroughly." [mijn nadruk] (8)

[We? Hier wordt enorm gegeneraliseerd. En wat vinden 'we' van dat 'feit'? ]

"We not only spend time enhancing our appearance—we spend large sums of money on it too."(9)

"People in other industrialized countries early in the twenty-first century show similar concerns for their appearance and beauty ...() It suggests the universality of concerns about beauty and its effects on human behavior." [mijn nadruk] (10)

[En daar begint de verwarring al. Is 'eruit zien' (appearance) hetzelfde als 'schoonheid' (beauty)? Is 'appearance' hetzelfde als 'looks'? Heeft al die zorg voor ons uiterlijk, voor hoe we er uit zien, wel iets met schoonheid te maken? Is aantrekkelijk gevonden willen worden hetzelfde als mooi gevonden willen worden.]

"All of these possible economic influences of beauty are direct and are at least potentially measurable. And those measurements can readily be made in monetary terms, or at least converted into monetary equivalents, so that we can obtain some feel for the size of the impacts relative to those of other economic outcomes. Because of the scarcity of beauty, its effects outside markets for labor and goods can also be studied in economic terms. Marriage is just such a market, although husbands and wives are not bought or sold in rich countries today. Yet the attributes that we bring to the marriage market affect the outcomes we obtain in that market, specifically the characteristics of the partner who we match with. Beauty is one of those attributes, so it is reasonable to assume that differences in the beauty that we bring to the marriage market will create differences in what we get out of it. We trade our looks for other things when we date and marry; but what are those other things, and how much of them do our looks enable us to acquire?" [mijn nadruk] (16)

"For that reason, the next chapter describes what we know about the determinantDo people agree, at least to some extent, on which of their fellows are good-looking and which are not? Do they share common views of human beauty?s of human beauty, a topic that has received a lot of attention from social psychologists and that underlies what economics has to say about the role of beauty."(19)

(19) Chapter 2 - In the Eye of the Beholder

"For economic purposes the questions are what characteristics make a person beautiful, and do people agree on what these characteristics are and what expressions of them constitute human beauty."(20)

"To discuss the economic effects of beauty, I want to narrow the focus as much as possible to faces." [mijn nadruk] (21)

"Even within a society, standards of facial beauty do change over time."(22)

"I am certain that there is nearly universal agreement that George Clooney is considered better-looking than almost anyone else."(23)

[Zijn onderzoek zegt niets over het feit dat zo iemand al wereldwijd bekend is vanuit de films en dat gegeven al in zijn voordeel speelt. Bovendien zijn er de media die dag in dag uit de wereld bewerken op dat punt. We moeten Clooney knap vinden, dus vinden we hem zoals iedereen knap, omdat we er bij willen horen. Dat zegt dus niets.]

"Unless people agree on what constitutes human beauty—unless there is at least a somewhat common standard of beauty—it cannot have any independent effect on outcomes such as earnings."(29)

"So long as there are common standards of beauty, they will affect outcomes in any market where beauty affects transactions—where it affects what is traded. That is as true for hiring workers as it is for marriage contracts. The question for analyzing the economic effects of beauty is whether the idea of common beauty standards is represented by more than just the pictorial anecdotes presented here. Do people agree, at least to some extent, on which of their fellows are good-looking and which are not? Do they share common views of human beauty?" [mijn nadruk] (29)

"What are the observers asked to rate—people standing in front of them, or pictures? Both approaches have been used, and the difference between them forms the main underlying distinction among studies of beauty. Ratings of the same person by the same observer will differ between the two methods."(32)

[Waaraan je ziet hoe betrekkelijk die onderzoeksmethode is. ]

"In the end, it is impossible to restrict ratings to be objective—the rating of beauty is inherently subjective. People will always disagree to some extent."(33)

"The tougher question is whether people agree on the beauty of a particular individual, and the extent of that agreement, if any. Without that there would be no common standards of beauty. Beauty would have no meaning in an economic context, since its diffuseness would mean it could not be scarce. And I would not be writing this book!" [mijn nadruk] (38)

"Complete disagreement about looks is an extraordinarily rare event."(41)

"There are consistent differences in how individuals rate each other’s beauty. Within the same culture some people are always harsh in rating their fellow citizens’ looks, and others are consistently more generous.(...) Men seemed to be stingier raters of the subjects’ beauty."(41-42)

"There is no unique view about beauty—no unique standard. But because people tend to view human beauty similarly, those who are generally viewed as good-looking possess a characteristic—their beauty—that appeals to most other human beings in similar ways and that ipso facto is in short supply. Human beauty is scarce."(43)

"Interviewers react more strongly to women’s looks, both positively and negatively in other interview studies too; and in studies examining photographs, women are also viewed more extremely than men."(45)

"Whether we consider looks by gender or race, we reach the same conclusion. There are no differences in averages, but the distributions of ratings of women’s looks are more dispersed than those of men’s, and of whites’ looks more than those of African Americans.
The same conclusion cannot be drawn about differences in ratings of the beauty of people of different ages. Ratings of women, and of men from studies conducted in the 1970s, demonstrate that the looks of younger people are rated on average more favorably than those of older people. Even though interviewers were explicitly instructed to adjust “for age and sex,” they couldn’t."(46)

"There is nothing unique about the differences in perceived beauty by age in our Western culture. Even in China, where the stereotype is one of great respect for older people, younger people’s beauty is rated more positively."(47)

"If beauty can pay off, why not become beautiful?The prospect of becoming better-looking is endlessly appealing to people."(50)

"For most people, the potential economic gains from the improvements in beauty were very far from justifying even the monetary cost of the procedure, much less the psychological cost—the “pain and suffering”—of undergoing any surgery."(51)

"Does this kind of spending really work? Can we make ourselves more beautiful by spending more on non-surgical methods of beauty enhancement?"(52)

"Many popular stories suggest that people believe that wardrobe, hairstyle, cosmetics, and surgery will improve their economic outlook. The evidence indicates that this is simply wrong: in the Chinese study each dollar spent on improving beauty brought back only four cents on average. Just as much of our spending on health may not increase our longevity, but may let us enjoy life more, so too it may make sense to spend on plastic surgery and better clothes. The best reason for this kind of spending is that it makes you happier. It is not a good investment if you seek only the narrow goal of economic improvement." [mijn nadruk] (53)

Conclusies samengevat op p.54-55.

(55) Part II - Beauty on the Job: - What and Why

(55) Chapter 3 - Beauty and the Worker

De vragen:

"Everybody assumes that better-looking people make more money. But why should that be? Is it even true? And if it is true, how much more do they make? Put simply, how much extra does a good-looking worker earn than an average-looking worker? How much less than an average-looking worker does a bad-looking worker make? These sound like simple questions, but they aren’t. Because beauty may be related to other characteristics that workers possess, we need to separate out the effects of beauty on income from those of other things that may be related to both beauty and income. Answers to these questions are the most widely available in the burgeoning literature in pulchronomics—the economics of beauty. We have a pretty good feel today for the general sizes of the beauty premium and the ugliness penalty.
Does beauty affect income differently for men and women? Does it affect income differently among older workers than among younger workers? How about by race or ethnicity? While I concentrate on the United States throughout most of this book, one wonders whether the impacts of beauty on incomes differ between the United States and other countries. Is there a special “hang-up” with beauty in the American labor market that produces unusually large effects on incomes compared to elsewhere? How have gains in income that result from one’s beauty changed over time? Are we outgrowing a fixation on looks, or does the effect of looks in labor markets loom even larger?" [mijn nadruk] (56-57)

Een hele reeks factoren heeft invloed op dat inkomen (zie p.63).

"Numerous studies have shown that each of these factors affects earnings. Since most or even all of them might differ systematically with an individual’s looks, to isolate the effect of looks on earnings we need to adjust earnings using data on as many of them as we can."

[Ik geloof er niet zo in dat je die factor van uiterlijk kunt isoleren. Statistische manipulaties liggen op de loer.]

"All of these effects refer to averages: They tell us that a typical good-looking male will earn 4 percent more than the typical average-looking male, and that a typical below-average-looking woman will earn 4 percent less than the typical average-looking woman. This does not mean that each good-looking male will earn 4 percent more than each average-looking male.(...) Among a randomly chosen group of male workers, or female workers, at least half of the differences in earnings are due to things that we can’t measure; and among those that we can measure, looks account for only a small fraction of the differences. Looks do matter a lot; but other things matter much more."(68)

[Waar hebben we het dan over? En hoe waar is dan de volgende uitspraak?]

"Despite that, and even though the differences are not statistically meaningful, additional analyses of these same data show that the beautiful man or woman earns more than the above-average, and the homely earn less than the plain. Extreme looks are uncommon, but they generally produce extreme effects on success in labor markets."(68)

"As in the United States, so too in most of these countries, good looks are rewarded, and bad looks are penalized, even after accounting for a large variety of other factors that affect earnings."(70)

[Dat lijkt me dus in tegenspraak met de bewering op p.68 bovenaan. ]

"There are a lot of other factors that might affect earnings and that could not be accounted for in most of these studies. One concern is that beauty may just reflect self-esteem. Perhaps people’s self-confidence manifests itself in their behavior, so that their looks are rated more highly, and their self-esteem makes them more desirable and higher-paid employees."(73)

[Zeer waarschijnlijk is dat het geval.]

"Yet another possibility is that beauty and the attractiveness of one’s personality are positively related, and that it is the general sparkle of one’s personality, not one’s beauty, that increases earnings."(74)

"It might be that the beautiful are more intelligent too, so that what we attribute to beauty is more appropriately attributable to intelligence."(74)

"Obesity lowers earnings, all else equal, and that is especially true among women."(76)

"Physiognomy and physique both affect earnings, but they are mostly independent of each other. A face on a tall or overweight body is judged about the same as the identical face on a short or thin body. Beauty is, within bounds, more or less independent of physique.(77)"

"perhaps those who dress better also earn more, so that some of the effect on earnings that we have attributed to differences in beauty stems instead from differences in dress. In several studies, earnings have also been adjusted for differences in dress"(78)

"he careful reader will note that the estimated effects on earnings are larger for male workers than for female workers. This is true in the American data, and it is also generally true in studies for other countries."(79)

"But being above-average in looks raises the likelihood that a woman works by about 5 percent compared to the average-looking woman. And the relatively small fraction of women whose looks are rated below-average are about 5 percent less likely than average-looking women to be in the labor market (and that much more likely to stay at home).(...) Being ugly causes women to do house work, because the gains to working for pay are less than they are for better-looking women."(81)

"This discussion and the evidence that supports it show that one explanation for the surprisingly larger effect of looks on men’s than on women’s earnings is that women have much more latitude than men in choosing whether or not to work for pay, and that beauty affects that choice. Part of the reason for the gender difference in the effects of beauty on earnings is that beauty alters the mix of female workers, so that the distribution of workers contains proportionately fewer below-average looking women. That is less true for men."(83)

"Having read this far, you now know that your facial disfigurement means that you are likely to be earning less over the rest of your career. And if you had been severely disfigured in childhood, your entire career would have been different—your damaged looks would affect your earnings from the time you left school until retirement."(89)

(93) Chapter 4 - Beauty in Specific Occupations

"It seems reasonable to believe that your beauty will help to determine the career choices that you make as a worker. To what extent are better-looking people choosing occupations where we think their looks might pay off more?(...) If beautiful people tend to enter certain occupations, or if bad looks lead others to enter different occupations, how does this affect the payoffs to beauty in both types of occupation? More generally, are there differences across careers in the impacts that beauty has on their practitioners’ incomes?"(94)

"Nobody is required to enter a particular occupation. We choose our occupations according to the advantages that we believe they will give us, both monetarily and in terms of the non-monetary delights that they provide. Our choice of occupations is based on our preferences for different activities and our ability to perform different kinds of work."(96)

[Ja hoor, iedereen heeft de vrije keuze. Wat een onzin. ]

"We choose our occupations based on the mix of our skills, interests, and abilities, of which looks are just one. That choice is partly based on the importance attached to these different skills and endowments by the market, and beauty is only one of the many things that are favored by the market. And it is favored differently in different occupations. For this reason we will find that the looks of workers within a particular occupation are not all nearly the same. Characteristics other than looks also determine people’s choices of occupation. We will, though, see less variation in looks within an occupation than in the workforce as a whole. On average, better-looking people will choose occupations where their looks pay off, and worse-looking people will shy away from those occupations. The evidence for attorneys in different specialties demonstrates this fact." [mijn nadruk] (101)

"We have already discussed a study of the effects of beauty on the earnings of attorneys, so let’s look at what the payoffs to beauty are in a variety of other occupations. In many cases the payoffs that have been measured are purely monetary. In others, though, the research looks at how workers’ beauty affects their chance of success, as indicated by promotions or other measures of “getting ahead.”" [mijn nadruk] (103)

"One occupation where beauty might matter a lot is prostitution. For the same service performed in the same kind of location, does a better-looking prostitute receive a higher price?" [mijn nadruk] (103)

"Taken together, the two studies demonstrate that, even within this occupation where you would think that beauty is crucial, selection into the occupation based on criteria other than looks allows differences in beauty to affect the amount that people earn." [mijn nadruk] (105)

[Ja, vrouwen kiezen er echt bewust voor om in de prostitutie te stappen, vooral ook in arme landen.]

"The risks involved are substantial, and it is possible that only those women who desperately want the income will be attracted to the occupation."(105)

[Nee, echt?]

"A similar but much less risky occupation is that of escort."(105)

"Here is an occupation where, perhaps more than anything except cinema or national television, customers are concerned about the workers’ looks. Yet even in this job there is an extra payoff to especially good-looking workers."(106)

[Ook al zo'n open deur. ]

"But do looks even matter at all to a politician’s success? This question has been examined in a number of studies."(107)

"Nonetheless, even after adjusting for party affiliation, the authors found that candidates whose looks were higher-rated obtained substantially and statistically significantly higher shares of the vote (and were thus more likely to win the election)."(109)

"In all these studies it is clear that beauty matters for politicians. Politicos are right to do what they can to look better, to hire media consultants, to use the best possible photographs, etc. The media even give the better-looking candidate more publicity, and this pays off in elections."(111)

"An early study examined the earnings of a small group of recent MBAs over the first ten years of their careers, relating their earnings to their beauty as rated from pictures taken while they were in business school. Better-looking men received higher starting salaries and experienced faster earnings growth over the decade. Among female MBAs, looks were unrelated to starting salaries, but better-looking women did see their earnings grow more rapidly (suggesting a rising effect of beauty with age)."(111)

[Dat van die verschillende startsalarissen bij mannen en vrouwen is dan toch vreemd?]

"Beauty, though, can have important effects in many occupations. And it does. It alters the choices that people make about what occupation to pursue. Despite this, within each occupation you find some people who are good-looking and some who are bad-looking; and within most occupations, the better-looking earn more. Not immensely more, but substantially and significantly more." [mijn nadruk] (121)

[Dit hangt helemaal op wat je als 'good-looking' ziet of niet. En gaan mensen nu echt uit van hun al of niet aantrekkelijke uiterlijk wanneer ze een baan kiezen? Wordt die keuze niet erg beperkt door welke opleiding je bijvoorbeeld hebt gehad? ]

(122) Chapter 5 - Beauty and the Employer

"In many occupations better-looking workers earn more than others, while bad-looking workers do worse than average. Across the entire economy, good-looking workers earn more on average than their otherwise identical but less well-endowed colleagues. A crucial puzzle is how employers of these workers can survive in a competitive market, if their workers, who are no different from others except for their looks, are paid more. How can they compete against other employers in the same industry who are willing to settle for the less expensive, uglier workers?"(123)

"Cosmetics manufacturers recognize the link between their products’ sales and beauty and make special efforts to obtain unusually attractive spokeswomen. Indeed, some of the greatest beauties of the past fifty years have been seen on television, movie advertisements, and billboards as representatives of cosmetics lines. The succession of beautiful women includes such stars as Catherine Deneuve, Isabella Rossellini, Kate Winslet, and Anne Hathaway—all presumably recruited because the companies believe that customers will find them attractive, identify with them and purchase the products they endorse." [mijn nadruk] (125)

[Bedenkelijke redeneringen. Is het hun uiterlijk of is het hun bekendheid bijvoorbeeld?]

"The answer to the titular question in this section is easy: They survive because their workers’ good looks enhance their profits. The extra wages paid to the good-looking workers are more than offset by the extra revenue that the workers’ looks help to generate. This conclusion is, as noted earlier, based on one study, the only one available; but it does answer the question about survival. The problem is that it answers it too well: If good-looking workers raise profits, why aren’t firms that employ a disproportionate number of good-looking workers driving out the other firms in their product markets that choose, for whatever reason, to rely on uglier workers?"(139)

"What is the bottom-line implication for companies—should they actively seek out better-looking workers in the belief that their extra cost is more than offset by the extra revenue that their looks will help generate? More than in most discussions, the academic caveat—more research is needed—applies here. Nonetheless, the sparse evidence does tell employers that they should look for better-looking workers, since the good-lookers appear to generate more extra revenue than their extra pay costs their employers." [mijn nadruk] (144)

[Dat kun je wel zeggen, ja. Er is ontzettend veel af te dingen op alles wat hier beweerd wordt.]

(144) Chapter 6 - Lookism or Productive Beauty, and Why?

"Beauty raises earnings, in the population in general and among practitioners in particular occupations. There is no question that it benefits the beautiful; and we saw how it increases companies’ sales, and perhaps even their profits. Beauty provides extra money for those who possess it and is productive for those who hire them; but is it productive for society? How can we discuss the effects of beauty in terms that economists, attorneys, and the general public might find useful? Do they result from discrimination, and if so, who is discriminating? What does it mean for beauty to be productive? Underlying these questions is the central one: Why does beauty matter for individuals, companies, and even the economy as a whole? One possibility is lookism—pure discrimination in favor of the good-looking and against the bad-looking—that should concern every citizen."(145)

[De basisvraag is al eenzijdig: waarom draait het hier alleen om de bedrijven en de economie? Waarom heeft hij het niet over de samenleving? Wat volgt is pseudo-exact geklets. Een voorbeeld:]

"Talking about this kind of discrimination as if its source were the prejudices of employers who choose which workers to hire is just an expositional convenience. It could equally well stem instead from the prejudices of workers generally: The average worker might refuse to work next to a bad-looking co-worker and only be willing to work if compensated, in the form of a higher wage, for looking at an ugly colleague for eight hours per day. The outcome would be the same as if employers’ prejudices were responsible. Bad-looking workers would earn less than average-looking workers; and good-looking workers would command premium pay, as they make the workplace more appealing to other workers and so enable employers to hire other workers for less pay."(150)

[Dat soort pseudo-economisch gebazel waarin alles en iedereen grijs is. Alsof het zo gemakkelijk is om 'lelijk' van 'aantrekkelijk' te onderscheiden. Mensen zijn meestal 'gemiddeld'. Hoeveel opvallend mooie mannen of vrouwen zijn er? En dat iemand die bepaalde kwaliteiten heeft die nodig zijn voor een baan alleen om zijn of haar 'uiterlijk' wel of niet aangenomen wordt, ligt ook al niet zo simpel. Wat is uiterlijk? Hoe iemand zich kleedt? Tattoos? Of echt lichamelijke kenmerken? In een mannetjeswereld is dat blond en grote tieten. En als het om uiterlijk gaat wat absoluut niet relevant is voor de baan is het wel degelijk 'lookism'. Belangrijk is dan: Wat ga je er aan doen?]

"We believe that the intelligent are paid more because they produce more for their employers. But we also believe that this extra production benefits society, in the form of technological advances, more efficient organizations, and even better economic research.
Good-looking people also earn more and also create more sales for their employers. Does this mean that they are socially productive too? Yes, if you believe that society benefits because the product sold by the good-looking salesperson is somehow inherently better. No, if you think it is the same product regardless of who sells it."(155)

"Beauty matters in economic transactions because people care about the looks of those with whom they interact. Because people provide services and sell goods, their looks become part of the goods and services that customers buy. If you buy something from a bad-looking person, you are buying a product or service whose purchase makes you less happy and less willing to pay as much. Being ugly means being less productive to your employer in many jobs. Your lower productivity results from people discriminating against you—you are harmed by the prejudices of all of your fellows. Consumers’ preferences for beauty discriminatorily appear to make bad-looking people less productive in the eyes of employers. But in some of these cases beauty is socially productive—it doesn’t just raise sales, and perhaps profits; it also makes an arguably inherently better product or, more likely, an inherently better service.
So who causes the inferior treatment of bad-looking people in labor markets, the discriminatorily lower earnings that they receive, the lower productivity in the minds of their employers, and the occasional fillip to the inherent quality of what we consume? We all do." [mijn nadruk] (173)

(173) Part III - Beauty in Love, Loans, and Law

(174) Chapter 7 - Beauty in Markets for Friends, Family, and Funds

"Exchanging beauty for non-economic returns is not that much different from exchanging beauty for pay at work. But there are a few differences, mostly because, unlike a job where it is just the worker’s beauty that is being exchanged for money, here at least two parties are both exchanging their beauty with each other and exchanging beauty for their partner’s other characteristics." [mijn nadruk] (176)

[Een onzinnige benadering van relaties als een economische markt / ruilhandel vanuit de schaarste van tijd.]

"Our looks buy us friendship and economic support from our peers; and, especially for women, they buy economic support from a spouse. The difference between the genders in markets for matching with prospective marital partners is striking. Men are more concerned with women’s looks, women more concerned with other aspects of the prospective partner, including his ability to generate an income."(205)

[Open deur. ]

(205) Chapter 8 - Legal Protection for the Ugly

"But having demonstrated that there is a beauty premium, and an ugliness penalty, in so many areas of daily life, it is worth asking the question: Is it fair that some people, who happen to be born and grow up bad-looking, are disadvantaged in so many ways compared to others who are, for examples, no more intelligent, strong, or physically fit?
Most industrialized societies have instituted policies designed to protect disadvantaged citizens in a variety of areas. These include labor markets, housing markets, and access to public facilities."(206)

"One can easily imagine policies that would offer bad-looking people protections similar to those now offered to other disadvantaged citizens. Are there good arguments for providing these protections?"(207)

"The local legislation does not explicitly protect against discrimination based on looks, but it would not be a large step to add this additional group to those already covered. In a very few jurisdictions, that protection does exist."(213)

(236) Part IV - The Future of Looks

(236) Chapter 9 - Prospects for the Looks-Challenged

"Beauty pervades specific aspects of economic behavior. But does it affect how we feel about our lives generally? Will the impacts of beauty continue over the near and even the more distant future that should concern all of us? At least as important, should beauty continue to matter: Does any evolutionary basis for our continued preoccupation with people’s looks remain? What could we as a society do to lessen the negative impacts of bad looks on people’s lives? If we do nothing and if the impacts of beauty do not disappear, what can looks-challenged individuals do to help themselves?"(237)

[Welke evolutionaire basis? ]

"That unhappiness and bad looks are related is probably not surprising. What might be surprising is that the relationship is just as strong for men as for women. The discrimination against ugliness and the favoritism toward beauty that characterize modern societies are not at all a gender issue; they are an issue facing both men and women."(239)

"Taking all these considerations together, I doubt that our perceptions of human beauty will diminish in importance in our lifetimes.(...) So too with beauty: the beautiful will be advantaged, the ugly will be disadvantaged, for many years to come."(242)

"In the end, a bad-looking person will continue to face the question of how to adjust to societal discrimination in work, dating, and marriage, choice of housing, and other areas. The burden will, as it always has been, be on bad-looking people to make the most of their advantages and to minimize the impacts of the disadvantages caused by their looks."(245)

"In the end, bad looks hurt us and will continue to hurt us. Looks are fate; but so are many other things. But bad looks are not a crucial disadvantage, not something that our own actions cannot at least partly overcome, and not something whose burden should be so overwhelming as to crush our spirit."(247)