For those of us concerned with social justice, we hear and speak about privilege all the time. Privilege in this sense can be defined as an unfair advantage over others because of the social value ascribed to certain characteristics that one has. We talk about white privilege, male privilege, class privilege, thin privilege, light-skinned privilege and able-bodied privilege, but one type of privilege that is largely, if not, completely overlooked is beautiful or attractive privilege.

What I’ll call “beautiful privilege” is the general advantage in life that beautiful people have over less attractive people. The reason for the beautiful privilege is that we falsely attribute value to beauty. Granted, certain things about our appearance have proven valuable throughout human evolution, however this type of evaluation of others is much less necessary at this point especially if we have no intentions of procreating with the object of our criticism, and society needs to evolve past ascribing positive characteristics to what and who is beautiful. We have a long way to go. The importance of beauty is so deeply ingrained that the mere thought of making someone feel as though they aren’t physically attractive is met with horror and defense on the part of the one whose beauty was called into question. This fervent defense against the notion of ugliness is well meaning in its attempt to make everyone feel valued, but what it implies is that there is not value where there is not physical beauty and this is not only completely untrue but detrimental.

Some people are just average looking, some are less attractive than that and some are simply ugly. I know that sounds evil, but it’s the reality of our diverse world. And that is perfectly okay. The immoral thing is not identifying when someone is unattractive; the immoral thing is to believe that their attractiveness bears any significance whatsoever. Basically, this is what society has taught: ugly=bad and beautiful=good, and if I acknowledge this person is ugly that means I am saying something bad about them and that’s wrong. That thought process is what’s wrong. Imagine if we lived in a world where everyone was just a black silhouette and no physical features other than arms, legs, head and torso were discernable, their personality, aura, and actions would determine how you felt about them, not their beauty. If life was that way being ugly would be nothing more than a fact of your life with no significance to your value as perceived by other people. Telling someone that they weren’t beautiful would be comparable to telling me that I’m not Tibetan. It would have no effect on me other than making me wonder why you’re weird.

Because we place so much importance on being beautiful, we consider beautiful people more important. Subconsciously, for most, but it’s still true. Like I said before, there is evolutionary significance to being more attracted to physically beautiful people in every way. Put simply, beauty is an indication of health, and the healthier those whom we procreated with were, the better chance our offspring had of surviving.

My argument is that, as a species that matured and developed in such an unprecedented and remarkable way, we should have long ago picked up on the triviality of physical beauty in those whom we would not have children with. We’ve done it with other things. For example, a young woman’s first period is a signal that she is physically able to become pregnant; many young women are known to begin their periods at age twelve, however if a grown man or even another twelve-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl who had started her period began trying to have a baby, Western society at least would rightly find issue with this. This is just one of many examples of us leaving behind logical primitive impulse for a higher standard of morality.

If we could find a way to do this, the beautiful privilege would cease to exist and there would be no need to constantly reassure people that they’re pretty. No hurt, crying and self-harming individuals who hate themselves because they don’t fit some useless standard of what it is to be beautiful. No mediocre individuals relying on their physical aesthetics for recognition. Basically, a more beautiful world.