I can’t believe it, and yet it happened: there was a debate about affirmative action for the employment of ugly people on a news program today, started by someone who feels ugly people are discriminated against in the workplace. Maybe this is a legitimate issue, and maybe it’s not, but for years and years, I’ve heard about (and seen) how many people hire unattractive support staff intentionally so as to insure the unimpeded and continued success of their marriages. Perhaps not all people do this, but some do it for sure, and I’d think that would be enough that it would all work itself out through the law of averages. But who knows, maybe not. I know that abilities and qualifications are no longer considered in hiring employees, so maybe the guy has a point. Perhaps affirmative action for ugly people is necessary, but its implementation, like with so many other well-intentioned causes, may be extremely problematical.
If there is to be affirmative action for the unattractive, or “ugly”, as this person so offensively put it on television, how is such a thing measured, and by whom? Isn’t ugliness, like beauty, a subjective thing that is almost entirely “in the eye of the beholder”? So could you have a situation where someone goes in for a job interview thinking they look really good, only to be told that they meet the ugliness requirement to qualify for their affirmative action for ugly people program? Think of the humiliation and crippling erosion of self-esteem that such a blow could cause! Then you’d get lawsuits against employers who insulted people for their looks by offering this incentive to ugly people who wrongly think well of their own looks and improperly feel good about themselves!
Then, there is the potential for serious abuse of such a system! You could have a situation where hot people sleep with the gatekeepers of the ugliness qualification department so that they will say they’re ugly so they can get better jobs, or else people will start having plastic surgery to become uglier so that they can get better jobs and make more money! And of course, since the uglier you are, the more money and perks you’d get, more and more people will be trying to deform themselves in lots of sick & twisted ways, hoping for that dream job; and if they don’t get it, they’ll be stuck as the freaks they have become by their own design. Oh the humanity! And what happens to these dedicated individuals if someone challenges the new law and it gets struck down by the Supreme Court? Then they would have done it all for nothing! But I suppose there’s always the carnival freak shows for future employment. Oh, but with the new political-correctness imposed upon society with the bullying liberal behavior police, will they kill even these jobs along with the energy sector and food sector? And where would ugly people be then?
And other problems will emerge as well, such as bosses who, in order to avoid having to pay the extra amount to unattractive employees, will try anything imaginable to convince these people that they’re actually good-looking, rather than ugly. So they’ll hire people specifically to make passes at these unattractive employees, or mandate that everyone in the company has to try to ask out and/or sleep with all the ugly employees, in the hopes that this will convince them that they’re attractive after all, and as such do not qualify for the extra money, or the better job. And so sexual harassment for ugly people will spike tremendously, subjecting them to a horrible aspect of the corporate world they have heretofore been spared from. And lawsuits over this type of sexual harassment will profligate, both from the ugly people who are receiving such unwelcome attention, and from the attractive people who used to get it, but are now upset and insulted that they’re not getting it anymore.
I suppose if this program of affirmative action for ugly people becomes law, in order to mitigate such problems, they will have to develop a set of government standards to measure ugliness. And won’t this new set of standards victimize some people through insults and derision? Then ugliness will become something very different than it is today, and rather than being an aesthetic value or response to someone’s looks, it would be a government mandated set of values twisted to suit a political agenda. Then, naturally, since it’s a liberal program, ugliness will be measured as anything that smacks of conservatism, and the whole idea of what ugliness means will be turned on its head, becoming meaningless. And it will be used specifically to target and victimize others for their own political beliefs, changing the balance of power in our society!
It’s a slippery slope that will end in our destruction, with the government deciding who we’re allowed to consider attractive and unattractive, leading to a complete government takeover of our private decision-making abilities! And it will lead to the government implanting computer chips into all of our brains to be sure we make the correct decisions on whom to consider to be good-looking, what to be allowed to think tastes good, what to consider looks appropriate, etc. And naturally, the chips will change our values completely depending upon which political party is in power, so we’ll be tree-hugging vegan hippies for four years, and then hyper-critical God bullies for the four years after that. Our entire society will be taken over by hostile computers, and all because of this push for affirmative action for unattractive people! Ah, progress!
But you know, there is an easy way to handle this situation which wouldn’t require any type of affirmative action whatsoever. How about we mandate that everyone has to, by law, interview for jobs wearing a big paper bag over their head? We could also require that everyone wear the same oversized suit for the interview, so nobody could tell if they’re fat, skinny, etc. And they could wear gloves and answer all questions by texting, so no-one could tell what race they are either. In fact, how about having it so everyone interviews wearing a haz-mat suit, or in a diving bell? That way, nobody could discriminate based upon looks, or race, or gender, or whatever other thing. And, naturally, they would have to replace their name with a randomly-generated number, so as to avoid all kinds of prejudice based upon names. I think this is the appropriate way to deal with such issues. Oh, and of course they should have to keep on wearing the haz-mat suits at the job, so nobody can discriminate against them while they’re working either!
See? I solved it!
