An Internet hub for moderates, centrists, and independents, with domestic and international news, analysis, original reporting, and popular features from the left, center, and right

« Lost in the Shuffle: Issues that Matter

How Long of a Night Will Tuesday Be? »

In National Politics, Ugly Women Need Not Apply

Posted by JAZZ SHAW, Assistant Editor in Politics, Science & Technology, Society.
Nov 2nd, 2008 | Comments

Do men get a free pass when it comes to physical attractiveness, while the bar is set higher for women seeking high office? This new study from Discovery seems to indicate that could be the case.

Beauty Benefits Female Candidates, Study Shows

Oct. 31, 2008 — Women running for top offices need to appear competent and attractive, according to a new study. For male candidates, seeming competent may be enough.

For male candidates, the only thing that mattered to male voters was competence, while female voters preferred men who seemed both competent and approachable.

So if you’re a woman, you need to be hot. If you’re a man you need to be “approachable.” I don’t seem to qualify for either, so I suppose I’ll just stay home and throw barbs at the lot of them.

Ads by Project Wonderful! Your ad here, right now: $0

DLS

1. It's not as bad as it used to be. But I suspect there will be a double standard forever (because of the nature of things).

2. Sometimes it works the other way, as we see with appeals to libs and Dems and emotion routinely, but this year specifically with Obama, who is the Left's pretty boy in addition to being favored for other reasons and for saying all the right things. That's marketing for you!

adelinesdad

I think you're right, but I think perhaps it has more to do with biology than discrimination. In general, men are more visually oriented when it comes to how we view members of the opposite sex. Some of that might be due to some amount of subconscious sexism (ie. our culture still sees women somewhat as objects), but my understanding is that a lot of the reason for it is biological.

And the implication of that is that this same argument can be made in other areas of life as well, such as careers. Of course it's not fair, but true. We expect employers in our society to consciously overcome whatever bias their eyes might give them (although that standard is ignored in some cases--such as sales positions), but of course we can't enforce that same standard of voters.

blog comments powered by Disqus