In a study published in the current issue of the American Journal of Sociology, Ellis P. Monk Jr., Michael H. Esposito and Hedwig Lee report that the earnings gap between people perceived as attractive and unattractive rivals or exceeds the earnings gap between white and Black adults. They find the attractiveness curve is especially punishing for Black women. Those who meet the socially dominant criteria for beauty see an earnings boost; those who don’t earn on average just 63 cents to the dollar of those who do. Why are we so blasé about this kind of discrimination? Maybe people think lookism is baked into human nature and there’s not much they can do about it. Maybe it’s because there’s no National Association of Ugly People lobbying for change. The economist Tyler Cowen notices that it’s often the educated coastal class that most strictly enforces norms about thinness and dress. Maybe we don’t like policing the bigotry we’re most guilty of? My general answer is that it’s very hard to buck the core values of your culture, even when you know it’s the right thing to do.