We humans like to be charitable and big-hearted, but we prefer to show our generosity toward the big-breasted or the long-legged. While normally being loath to pick up a hitchhiker, we somehow manage to overcome our caution if a beautiful blonde or a stubble-faced stud sticks out a thumb. Studies have shown that good-looking men or women who have lost a wallet with their picture inside stand a far greater chance of having it returned to them, even through the mail, than someone ugly. Now there's altruism for you.

Yes, it is pathetic to think that we would buy a pair of jeans more readily when a body-builder with six-pack abs tells us those jeans look great on our flabby love handles. But it works. People love feeling validated by sexy, hot people. They love getting compliments from them. And they love looking like them. And companies like Abercrombie are capitalizing on their customers' natural desire to put aside reason and believe that an article of clothing, a purchase, will somehow lift them into the ranks of the beautiful people.

Once this kind of behavior is accepted, it is no surprise to find that any woman who is considered to be ugly by these strict standards is doomed to an existence of insecurity and misery. She can look forward to a life of dating where the guy rarely ever calls back, unless he has just broken up with a girlfriend and wants some uncomplicated sex with a person whom he considers desperate. Why do you think that so many women go to the gym at night instead of the library? Why do they go jogging instead of to a night class? They realize that the real rewards in society come from looking great rather than having knowledge.

I recognize that society has always glorified beautiful women and held them out as models to be emulated. But the difference is that in the past beauty was so much more holistic. It encompassed not only a woman's figure, but her feminine demeanor, her heart and mind, her dignity, her poise and her grace. Beauty back then was a total statement of a woman's presence, whereas today it means her physical appearance exclusively.

Rousseau famously said, "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains." He could scarcely have imagined that one of the tyrannies to which humans would one day be subjected would be the tyranny of the beautiful people.

*This article was originally posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2005