Mirko Bagaric: Society's reluctance to admit looks count is ugly

Ugly is the best way to describe Gordon's Ramsay attack on the looks of Tracey Grimshaw, the host of the Nine Network's A Current Affair programme in Australia. Uglier still is the community reluctance to admit that looks count and that our worth is being increasingly defined by how good looking we are.

The single most important criterion regarding the way we are perceived by others is our appearance. Attractive people get better jobs, they are paid more, they have far more options when it comes to selecting a partner, they are accorded more time and respect by others and get picked on less.

The preferential treatment is the greatest in TV land, and in particular commercial TV. World-wide we are seeing a strikingly convergent trend towards only attractive people being employed as TV presenters, especially when it comes to females.

And ageing presenters almost universally get boned before they have time to organise their first botox shot. This is why there is almost a total dearth of female TV presenters on Australian TV who are a "bit hard on the eye". Now that is truly ugly.

It does explain why the number one growth industry in the Western world is beauty, from weight loss to plastic surgery. Ugly is out, beauty is not simply desirable - it is now the expectation.

We shouldn't be surprised that this is the case. Our materialistic opulence has reached a point that as a species we have overcome all of the major difficulties to our survival.

Few of us are now wanting for food, shelter, health care or security. Yet now that these things are conquered, the innate human desire to attain and strive remains. So naturally we fuss about the finer things.

The fundamental hypocrisy about looks is that we all want them, we rate others by them but it is taboo to define people by them, at least publicly.

We accept that it is fair game to criticise a person for their lack of intelligence, their poor judgment, want of courage, stupid opinions and views, lack of skill and general worthlessness, so why is Prime Minister Rudd and most of the community so riled by Ramsay's comments?

The answer is not that looks are immutable. Plastic surgery has put paid to that argument. Moreover, a person's IQ and level of insight is at least as permanent as their appearance. The strongest argument in favour of muting and vilifying the Gordon Ramsays of the world is that such comments are harmful.

Even Tracey Grimshaw's mother was apparently upset at her treatment.

Gratuitous offence is never desirable. Yet, even less desirable is the growing tendency to define others by their looks. As individuals we feel that our worth is far more complex and deep than how we happen to look.

Rebuking Ramsay for his remarks does nothing to address the real problem that as a community we are facing about our increasing obsession with superficiality.

Sure, Ramsay might now pull his head in for a while. But the ugly people will still get bullied, they will continue to miss out on jobs and have their level of self-respect and self-worth constantly chipped way by the excesses dished out to the pretty.

As a community, this is the reality that we should be openly accepting and the challenge that we should be confronting.

In the end, it might be that as a species we are incorrigibly superficial and unable to suppress our preference for the pretty. Still, it's a contemporary reality and debate that we need to have - before the hypocrisy gets too ugly. I am not sure what the answer will be, but have made my booking at the botox shop just in case!

* Professor Mirko Bagaric of Deakin University, Australia is the (dashingly handsome) author of Being Happy and Dealing with Moral Dilemmas.