Through the Lookist Glass

When I heard the name of the latest "ism" last year, I cringed. A new buzzword usually means even more political correctness. In the past few years, particularly on college campuses, activists have staged protests to raise awareness that that elephant in the room of "lookism" was a prejudice just as malicious as sexism. Codified recently in the Oxford English Dictionary, lookism is "a prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of appearance." What it means practically-as if you didn't know-is that the pretty people get ahead while the obese, yellow-toothed, and plain old funky-looking get left behind.

Is lookism a problem? Yes, but I think we're usually more honest about it-at least to ourselves-than about trickier social issues like race and gender. Everyone will admit they often make unfair judgments based on attractiveness, even when they adamantly deny they would ever make decisions based on someone's skin color or genitalia. Look around this University. Though Columbians by-and-large aren't fashion models, you're hard-pressed to find someone genuinely unattractive. Of course, judging attractiveness is more or less impossible to measure objectively. But, criteria like scurvy and morbid obesity are easily measurable. There's a major difference between what many would call overweight unattractiveness and real obesity: one means you may not get laid and bear the brunt of the occasional snide comment, while the other means that you're stigmatized as sloth-like and incapable. Not counting the vast majority of us carrying around the freshman 15, I can count the genuinely obese people I have met on one hand, maybe two. I don't know anyone that has scurvy, let alone crooked teeth.

Did Columbians just luck out in the gene pool? I don't think so. Pointing to any one factor would be absurd to justify the general similarity of our decent skin, straight teeth, and body types. Education certainly has something to do with it. The statistics are powerful: 28 percent of Americans without a high school diploma are obese, as compared to 16 percent of those with college educations. The issue of educational disparity is undoubtedly tied to class. Unlike the vast majority of other countries in the world, the poor of America are not emaciated, but morbidly overweight. They also can't afford to shell out $5,000 on luxuries like orthodontic braces, especially because they often don't have health care. It's no coincidence that in a school that costs $40,000 a year (in cash or in loans) we don't see many people with missing teeth. As David Shipler demonstrates in his book, The Working Poor, being poor and "looking poor" is a vicious circle. Take the story of Caroline Payne, a woman who lost her teeth and has earned no more than $6.80 an hour for the past 20 years. The cycle is simple: "If she had not been poor, she would not have lost her teeth, and if she had not lost her teeth, she would not have remained poor," Shipler writes. Of course, one anecdote isn't full proof, but it illustrates something we intuitively know. It's no surprise that Wal-Mart hires the young woman with the winning smile over Caroline Payne. This is systemic lookism-in other words, favoring the beautiful person, and it's everywhere in America-even our universities.

For better or for worse, Columbia University holds diversity as one of its highest values. It strives to reflect American society in terms of gender, geography, and minority representation. Applicants must have certain SAT scores, grades, and extra-curricular activities to make the cut, but beyond that, in theory, it's supposed to be an even playing field. While we all recognize this process isn't fair, we hope that Columbia really does strive to admit its students based on their merits.

Journalists recently had a field day with a new book by sociologist Jerome Karabel called The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. The study traces the methods elite universities have used to brand themselves. Just like JP Morgan, colleges want a particular image, or brand. Because Harvard admitted the brawny blonds and used quotas to exclude the scrawny eggheads, they created The Harvard Man. As the role of the university and the ideal of the American-educated citizen changed, universities adapted their brands accordingly. Though today's archetypical Harvard student is vastly different than the chivalrous and brave Harvard Man, a distinct brand still exists.

This lookism, for lack of a better word, is real. It's different than denying a woman with bad teeth a managerial position because it's a whole lot less obvious and a whole lot harder to prove. I don't think Columbia's Admissions Department scrutinizes our "optional" photos and gives us "hotness" points, although I did weed through dozens to find the one that made me look the most fresh-faced and Ivy League. Fresh-faced = Ivy League-there you go.