Chris Mooney is a freelance writer and the author of two books, 
I occasionally touch on standards of beauty and couldn't help but notice this uh, charming story:
Life can get a little lonely for bachelors in the Australian Outback mining town of Mount Isa. So the mayor has offered up a solution: recruit ugly women.Mayor John Molony found himself under attack Monday over comments he made to a local newspaper that read: "May I suggest if there are five blokes to every girl, we should find out where there are beauty-disadvantaged women and ask them to proceed to Mount Isa."
Beauty-disadvantaged women? Now in my opinion, valuing an individual's quality on appearances is a bit prehistoric. We ladies generally take offense when we're judged solely on superficial attributes, and furthermore, Mr. Molony seems to be suggesting that his male voters will settle for anything. Then again, given this unenlightened fellow was elected, maybe they will.
Quite often you will see walking down the street a lass who is not so attractive with a wide smile on her face," he continued. "Whether it is recollection of something previous or anticipation for the next evening, there is a degree of happiness."
The thing is, we 'lasses' smile for reasons beyond satisfaction with our menfolk. Will someone please fetch this mayor a Disney flick? Of course, considering his debonair invitation, it's possible hordes of available females will converge upon Mount Isa to bask in testosterone. Stranger things have happened. But it's worth noting that Mr. Molony was sworn into office in 2004 and New.com.au reports there were 994 females aged 20-24 living in town in 1996 and 819 in 2006. No, correlation does not equate with causation, but I'm wondering if readers agree that perhaps a different mayor might be more appealing to all women?
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
I don't know who should be more insulted. Resident men or women?
Posted by: Skip | August 18, 2008 1:06 PM
I'm sure that there have been more tactless applications of supply/demand pricing theory to human interaction; but they aren't exactly leaping to mind.
Posted by: phisrow | August 18, 2008 5:07 PM
Neanderthal as it may be, the fact is that appearance is correlated with success, perhaps more so than intelligence. Both height and beauty correlate with success...
So, why is it so much better to judge people on their intelligence? As if you can will yourself to be smarter. Or will yourself to have more will, for that matter.
We can say that judging people on their intelligence is ok because we are judging them on their ability, but why is that ok? Intelligence not a sure factor in people's success.
I'm not endorsing John Molony's comments, but I think we need to consider the larger picture of why some of our attributes are "ok" to praise while others are not. Since this is a blog run by two smart and attractive people perhaps you have some insight?
Posted by: Scote | August 18, 2008 10:55 PM
I can only offer a bit of a story.
The other night I was surfing around Comcast's Dating on Demand listings. The woman who had the body type I'm most attracted to didn't seem to have a single functioning brain cell in her head, and the most intelligent thing she said in her entire video profile involved bragging about her breasts. On the other hand, out of the half-dozen or so profiles I watched, the one I thought was the most likely dating material was also the one I found the least attractive of any of them -- overweight, not particularly cute, kind of a stereotypical otaku type, but still had the sort of geek-friendly personality that makes up for physical shortfalls.
Which is not to say that I think any less of Kari Byron or Danica McKellar, but it's a strong reminder that shallowness is not to a man's advantage...
Posted by: Brian X | August 19, 2008 3:18 PM