Unfashionable Ignored Privileges... Pretty with Two Parents

Jolie-genes and happy families to win the game of life

Are you hot or not?   In this superficial, looks-obsessed age, what would you rate your looks out of 10? If you’ve never heard the terms ‘pretty privilege’ or ‘beauty bias’ it turns out it has a bigger impact on your life’s outcomes than you might think.  Amidst all the privilege and bias conversations, this is perhaps one of the most overlooked. 

(source - instagram @fixedyouu via Vice)

According to research (e.g. here and here), physically attractive people - across sex and race -  earn 15% more than plainer-looking which is twice the gender pay gap (at 7.7%) and much higher than any individual ethnicity pay gap (near impossible to report on given patterns of immigration and the sheer variety of ethnicities who can each earn more or less than the white British average).  

We all intuitively know this privilege exists: Cute kids get more attention; hot, Kardashianish girls skip the queues and get recruited for Love Island; it’s only attractive news readers who make national anchor; generic but gorgeous social influencers win fame; the handsome or striking get more choice in the dating market…  and all of this results in more confidence which is, in itself, self-fulfilling.  Overweight candidates are less likely to be hired as they’re subconsciously considered ‘lazy’ and hiring managers inevitably take looks into consideration when recruiting external-facing hires.  And of course, there’s the mirror issue of objectification to worry about, especially for women.

What we do about it is hard to answer as I can’t imagine many would want to cite a prominent mole, large nose or eyes-too-close-together as a reason for being overlooked (although perhaps only as there’s no law protecting them - yet?). Plus the fact that there’s an impossibly sliding scale - one that many can move up and down on at different times in their lives e.g. tired/ ill or when deciding in your early 30s that you might suit a fringe.

Blind, photo-less applications and audio-only interviews are one mitigating strategy; more size-appropriate workplaces and bias-awareness training, others. First impressions are everything.  But what can we each do, if not blessed with Angelina Jolie-genes to hack it?   Well, plastic surgeons, diet-providers, gyms, stylists and speaker-coaches are all arguably tackling this through selling us opportunities to make the most of our appearance and bodies or training us in body language and first-impressions. 

I know from my own experience that whilst I’m no oil painting (seemingly turning into ‘the scream’ with each passing year), this is a personal privilege as I’m rarely considered unpleasant on the eye and know how to dress to impress, with separate wardrobes -  a professional London one (blazers, boots, nice blouses) and a suburban home one (slummy mum of 3- trainers, jeggings, hoodies) with the former evoking greater confidence and (weirdly) better articulation.  

The second ‘privilege’ is more of a hot potato - that of the two-parent privilege.  This has recently come to the fore with the publication of two fairly high profile books in the US:  ‘The Two Parent Privilege’ by Melissa Kearney and ‘Troubled- A Memoir of Foster Care, Family and Social Class’’ by Rob Henderson, a favourite antidoter. 

Both speak to the evidence that children from broken homes or in the care system *on average* (yes, that again) fare much worse and enjoy much less social mobility than those from stable, two parent families due to lower income households, less time or ‘emotional energy’ and with fewer father figures.  The evidence speaks for itself in terms of multiples-higher rates of poor physical and mental health and medicalisation, school exclusion, crime and incarceration and suicide.  But whilst stating the seeming obvious, both have proven highly provocative to the point of book-tour cancellations and protests at author appearances.  

The complaints are that they stigmatise single-parents (predominantly single mothers who have had little choice and/or bravely escaped worse family situations) and are regressive, promoting the old-fashioned stereotype of the traditional, heteronormative family in an era where we’ve moved on from such stifling conventions to embrace many more modern, diverse forms of ‘family’.

Rob Henderson’s memoir is particularly moving, detailing his childhood of neglect in the foster system into a path of drug-use and petty crime prior to enlisting in the Navy and then crossing the social-class divide against the odds to get into Yale and Cambridge. 

He recounts his experiences with affluent, 2-parented (90%+) Yale peers who assumed his (visible) male, elite-education privileges with no knowledge of his upbringing. He pushes back against their simplistic ‘luxury beliefs’ that failed to consider the impact of a troubled childhood or accept anything other than male + white (or in his case, Asian) = privilege.  In particular, he reflects on the fact that those most likely to disparage the traditional family are those who have benefited from it.  

On statistics: 

In 1960, the % of American children living with both biological parents was identical for affluent and working-class families - 95%.  By 2005, 85% of affluent families were still intact, but for working-class families the figure had plummeted to 30%.  The Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam at a 2017 hearing stated, “Rich kids and poor kids now grow up in separate Amercias… Growing up with two parents is now unusual in the working class, whilst two parent families are normal and becoming more common among the upper middle class”.  Affluent people, particularly in the 1960s, championed sexual freedom.  Loose sexual norms caught on for the rest of society.  The upper class, though, still had intact families.  Generally speaking, they experimented in college and then settled down later.  The families of the lower classes fell apart.  

He goes on, 

‘We now live in a culture where affluent, educated and well-connected people validate and affirm the behaviours, decisions and attitudes of marginalized and deprived kids that they would never accept for themselves or their own children.  And they claim to do this in the name of compassion.  It’s fine if Antonio and I skip class and ruin our futures, but it’s definitely not fine if their kids do so.  Many of the people who wield the most influence in society have isolated themselves and their children from the world I grew up in, while paying lip service to the challenges of inequality.’  

On drug-use, he comments: 

‘...drugs don’t just affect the user, they affect helpless children, too…  A well-heeled student at an elite university can experiment with cocaine and will, in all likelihood be fine.  A kid from a dysfunctional home with absentee parents will often take that first hit of meth to self-destruction..’  

Whilst my own privilege has denied me any deep exposure to such individuals, it has struck me from observing my own friendships that childhood grief is another of the most debilitating of all formative experiences and one that sits with them, silently, nowhere official on the privilege hierarchy.  The emotional scars of childhood grief are lifelong and do not discriminate by sex, race or social class. 

Such stories suffuse me with gratitude for my loving, supportive family upbringing that told me I could do and be anything; and now, for my happy, supportive marriage, my healthy body and my happy, healthy (infuriating) children.   It strikes me that an aspiring, entrepreneurial woman brought up in the care system is much more likely to identify with a successful male entrepreneur of colour with a similar background than she is with me. It’s one of the reasons I struggle so much with ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’. It’s what you can’t that connects us - upbringing, beliefs, passions and values.

The more simplistic and ‘visible-only’ the identity-disadvantage narrative, the more reductive and harmful it can be given the complexity of personal experience that cuts through every individual.  But I don’t think I’m advocating for more activism or affirmative action for those disadvantaged by either of the above privileges - nor any other factor outside of their control that might limit an individual’s prospects - as this route leads to an expansion of competitive victim culture that only dampens ambition and agency.  

What’s that, you say? I can feel another blog coming on.  

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Further reading/ listening 

• From BBC Sounds ‘Business Daily’ - Do attractive people earn more?’.  

• Rob Henderson and Melissa Kearney on the Modern Wisdom podcast