Via Amanda Marcotte a few weeks ago I came across a viral video meant to show that Republican women are superhot and Democrat women are monsters. Here’s the link but it keeps being taken down so I’ve pasted an image version below (from here) just so you can get a feel for it. Also because it’s a pain in the ass to sit through the video:
There are plenty of things worthy of discussion here. For instance although it’s not used to explicitly argue that the Republican platform is better, based on what we know about human social responses that is the ultimate objective. And then there’s the fact that someone spent hours looking through video footage of Democrats to find them in the most unflattering facial positions. Some of the Democrat photos are blatantly Photoshopped in the video thereby rendering moot the supposed argument. Then there’s sample bias, blatant sexism etc etc. But that’s not what I want to focus on.
To continue the previous post’s theme, it reinforced how much our ideologies drive social judgements. Except in the video it’s much more blatant — as showed by two fascinating screenshots.
The first is of Janeane Garofalo, meant to showcase the ugliness of Democrat/liberal women. Of course you could think that since the ugly collage was such a manipulated hatchet job that the creator had to scrape the bottom of the barrel and really stretch his* idea of ugliness. But the alternative is that he genuinely finds a photo like this to be extremely repulsive — a photo I thought was pretty attractive.
I actually claim my view is not too biased here. Garofalo is an outspoken activist with whom I agree on much — yet she’s a 9/11 truther so I don’t have anything resembling respect for her politics. However, the geek-feminist-tattoo-chic look is one I find appealing. Yet those opposed to the ideas it’s associated with find it genuinely ugly.
Exhibit B is Ann Coulter, included as an example of attractive Republican/conservative women. Here, the pendulum swings the other way. Ann Coulter’s views are certainly crazy. However she also often gets a lot of ugly, sexist homo/transphobic rhetoric from critics on the left (the whole “she’s a man” trope).
Again I claim to be somewhat neutral because I think she is reasonably attractive. But of course I can’t be totally neutral. I can’t divorce my opinion of her attractiveness from my visceral dislike of her as a person. I can only speculate that if she were a liberal, the same people who abuse her now would find her attractive — and for similar reasons.
Long ago I had a theory that I couldn’t evaluate people I know on looks, because when I look at someone I will find them attractive if I like them. I think the Garofalo-Coulter two-edged sword confirms this, not only as an eccentric quirk I have but something we all get caught up in.
Also someone made a version with the parties reversed, which is bound to be instructive — here’s the link.
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