Equality for Uglies

What better symbol of exploited womanhood than the pulchritudinous office worker of jest and lore? Lustful male chauvinist bosses chase her around desks, jealous wives plot her undoing, and her alleged lack of brains is a national joke. But at least, says Washington Post Columnist William Raspberry, she has a job--which is more than can be said for her less well-endowed sisters.

According to Raspberry, discrimination against ugly women ("there's no nice way to say it") is the most persistent and pervasive form of employment discrimination. Men, he argues, face no such bias, except in the movies and in politics. Raspberry's sympathies lie not with the "mere Plain Janes, who can help themselves with a bit of paint and padding," but with the losers, the "real dogs," who supposedly would be working full time if their features were more regular. Such discrimination, he insists, is all the more insidious because no one will admit that it exists. "No personnel officer in his right mind will tell a woman, 'Sorry, lady, but you need a nose job, and your lips don't match.' " And a woman so insulted would not be likely to publicize it.

There are, of course, no statistics, vital or otherwise, to support Raspberry's conclusions. But he may be substantially correct in assuming that attractiveness is a measure of employability. The preoccupation with female beauty is one of the complaints of Women's Liberation. The problem is how to overcome this preoccupation. What luck could anyone expect to have in attempting to get ugly women to band together to protect their rights?

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