The Problem with Pretty summary

Whether you’ve lived a life of pretty privilege or given up looking in the mirror, societal beauty standards have played an outsized role in your life. Everything, from magazines, movies, advertising, and social media, to myths, fables, fairy tales and the entire history of art can attest to the importance of beauty across all human cultures and history. But the importance of beauty at an individual level may still shock you.

Believe it or not, beautiful babies are held more, receive more attention, and get fussed over more than their unattractive counterparts. There is a phenomenon called differential parental solicitude, which describes how parents put more energy and effort into children that they think of as more valuable. While things like talent or intelligence matter in this equation, attractiveness is at the top of the list. 

And this preference isn’t just at home. Kids considered less attractive suffer more at school, receiving more detentions or suspensions. Kids who are considered attractive suffer less bullying, and get more attention from teachers and coaches. By around the age of 11, most kids' self esteem comes from two sources: their looks and how they are doing in school. Turns out, those two things are intertwined.

But the costs of being unattractive go deeper still. Research shows that children who are not considered cute are abused more, get adopted less, and end up in the prison system far more frequently than their peers. As adults, people considered unattractive are less likely to get help when they need it and get paid less at their job. One study of yearbook photos in Wisconsin in the 1950s even found that the bottom sixth of the class in terms of conventional beauty died a full one to two years earlier than those ranked at the top. Being considered ugly, it would seem, even shortens your life.

That may be because beauty comes with the implicit assumption of goodness – something found across most global cultures and histories. Think beautiful angels and disfigured devils in centuries of art, or the hero and villain of any myth or fable. With so many examples of beauty equaling goodness, it becomes a bit like a heuristic, or a mental shortcut that kicks in without you even noticing. 

That’s why being considered attractive opens up so many prospects in the dating pool, as potential partners associate beauty with goodness, too. Attractive people stay safer during interactions with the criminal justice system because they unconsciously get the benefit of the doubt. Police assume better intentions on the part of attractive people, and are more likely to help them. 

For attractive people, this cycle of positive reinforcement and assumed good intentions makes almost everything in life go better. For their least attractive counterparts, the exact opposite is true. Those considered average looking saw neither benefit nor disadvantage. Only the most attractive, and least attractive, see this dramatic divergence in their experience. 

But precisely what is considered the ideal of beauty can change radically, for reasons that have nothing to do with looks.