The Moral Obligation to Date Ugly People

In which I foolishly argue against the idea that maybe, just maybe, Gal Gadot has a moral obligation to run away with me.

Dear Subscriber, this is something of a departure. But dammit I spent enough time on it, so I might as well share my thoughts with you. Perhaps this will assist those fighting at the stranger fringes of the culture war, or in the swamp of academia. -MB

In “Is it Bad to Prefer Attractive Partners?” Oxford philosopher William D’Alessandro answers the question pretty much in the affirmative. Once the ophthalmologist released me—I strained my eyes rolling them—I decided the article was an object lesson in just how taxpayer subsidies for academics can distort the peer-review industrial complex.

And I said so on social media. But maybe that was unfair.

A few smart people goaded me into addressing the substance of D’Alessandro’s arguments, and is probably good form on my part. Initially, I suggested it was a waste of time for this to have been written at all, and so a waste of time for me to critique. But eventually, I came to think I owed a substantive critique to my interlocutors and Professor D’Alessandro.

I want to apologize in advance to my fiancee, Jenny, for suggesting that Gal Gadot might just whisk me away. But then again, if the author’s philosophical chops are indeed strong enough, what else is Ms. Gadot supposed to do?

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Summary One. The argument suggests that preferring attractive partners is morally problematic and can be considered "bad" for two main reasons: unfairness and harm. The concept of unfairness is explained in deontological terms, meaning that if a trait like attractiveness is unrelated to the "desert" of the benefit (in this case, partnership), then using it as a basis for selection is unfair. The author explains the concept of harm in consequentialist terms, as well, implying that if the preference for attractiveness makes a certain group of people significantly worse off in terms of well-being, then it is harmful.

The author also discusses factors such as voluntary control over the trait, demeaning character, or prejudicial attitudes but does not consider such factors necessary for a behavior to be morally objectionable. He concludes that if a form of discrimination is both unfair and harmful, it can be regarded as bad. The author suggests that the preference for attractive partners fits these criteria and should therefore be scrutinized similarly to other forms of discrimination, like racism or sexism.

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Harm and Unfairness

Inequality of attributes is a distribution largely out of anyone’s control. This is sort of like a natural lottery argument one might find in Rawls. From this, the author claims that we each have a moral obligation to remedy such distributions due to their unfairness or tendency to do harm.

First, this looks oddly like a form of the naturalistic fallacy subtly creeping in. Instead of it’s natural, ergo it’s good an embedded premise seems to be it’s natural, ergo it’s bad. I don’t wish to ascribe any view to the author he doesn’t hold. I simply want to dispatch with any unarticulated premises or assumptions.

What, then, is the precise claim? That preference for attractive people is harmful and unfair.

Regarding harm, a failure to make someone better off is no harm at all. It is no more harmful than walking by a stranger on the streets of Manhattan and failing to share your hot dog with her. (Bun intended, not the pun.) Harm is and always will be an act that makes someone worse off. Refusal to enter into a relationship with someone cannot be construed as harm. So, if refusing to have a relationship with someone is not harmful, then this justification for the author’s case fails. 

Regarding unfairness, just because there exists some natural phenomenon some people find unpleasant, it’s not clear how it follows that everyone has a universal obligation to address the natural unpleasantness of unequal distribution. But suppose there were some obligation to address nature’s unpleasantness. That obligation could create never-ending—and thus unreasonable—demands on everyone to fix nature’s unpleasantness—forever.

Nature’s unpleasantness is unceasing. 

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Summary Two. The author delves into the issue of harm caused by preferring attractive partners in romantic relationships. It argues that less attractive individuals face significant disadvantages in their romantic and social lives, which he supports with research findings (that I didn’t bother to check). These findings indicate that less attractive people have fewer sexual and romantic partners, and experience more loneliness and life dissatisfaction.

The author also counters a common objection: having fewer romantic options doesn't necessarily mean one is worse off, as long as everyone can find at least one satisfactory partner. The author argues that this is a simplistic view; less attractive people not only have fewer choices but also find it more difficult to secure partnerships and tend to have less fulfilling interactions with potential mates.

Then, the author addresses the concern that a shift towards not prioritizing attractiveness in partnerships might lead to less satisfying relationships. He argues that this is unlikely, as tastes are malleable, and individuals often value other qualities in their partners, such as personality and shared interests. The author concludes that the harm caused by discrimination based on attractiveness is substantial and merits serious consideration.

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Relevance and Obligation

It’s interesting that—in the paper’s introduction—the author mentions attractiveness and related prejudice in other contexts, such as professional situations. In these contexts, one might make a case that prejudice based on looks is wrong, especially as a candidate possesses relevant qualifications, talents, and experience for a job or collaborative endeavor. One could make a decent case for employers or collaborators to try to see beyond characteristics irrelevant to succeeding in that collaborative endeavor. 

But in this case, the characteristic in question—attractiveness—is arguably relevant to this collaborative endeavor: a relationship. The parties might even hope that the relationship will be longer lasting, the sex will be better, the likelihood of straying reduced, and perhaps the offspring to be healthy and attractive (though the author disputes this), and other shared goals. Yes, some of these values are determined by Mother Nature. As we have said, though, that doesn’t make them objectively bad or good, though certainly it makes them subjectively bad or good. Just as people who collaborate in work settings desire relevant talent/skills match, people in relationships desire relevant attributes match. Thanks to evolution, which the author seeks to dispute, most people want to date pretty people. But there is no objective Ought to be derived from that Is.

Speaking of collaboration, notwithstanding all the research the author uses as support, the claim that unattractive people are lonelier, more depressed, and less fulfilled in relationships seems odd to use in service of his moral reasoning. Why?

The distribution of attractive traits over a population falls into quintiles. Whatever your sexual orientation, one falls into one of five “buckets” of relative attractiveness. Before attractive people in the top quintile are obliged to have relationships with those in the bottom quintiles, surely those in the same quintiles would first be obliged to pursue relationships with each other.

In other words, those who demand, out of some perceived unfairness or harm, to have relationships with pretty people have first an obligation to date within their quintile, as presumably any moral rule that might arise from the supposed obligations of pretty people would apply to people in all quintiles. In consequentialist terms, such statistical sorting behaviors ought to resolve loneliness, depression, etc. Thus, under the author’s theory, the primary onus should be on any given person to date within her quintile, rather than expect to ‘date up,’ or to expect all the attractive people to ‘date down,’ as if looks were like wealth to be redistributed by egalitarians. An inner-quintile sorting and paring mechanism makes far more sense under the author’s framework, even if we were to count loneliness as “harm,” which we should not.

The author also tries to argue that preferences are “malleable.” And to some limited degree, they are. But we’re talking about preferences that exist in humans and have been wired in us by a million-plus years of evolutionary iteration cycles. To oblige pretty people to date ugly people out of some moral theory of this type would take us into unpleasant territory, such as lesbian women ought to have to date straight men who desire them–you know, because preferences are “malleable.”

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Summary Three. The author discusses whether it's unfair to have a preference for attractive partners. It first clarifies that "partnership" in this context refers to sexual and romantic relationships with multiple goals, such as emotional support, shared activities, and sexual satisfaction. The text argues that whether attractiveness makes one more deserving of partnership depends on what one believes makes someone "deserving" in the first place.

The author presents two views on what makes someone deserving of a partnership:

• Partnership is something everyone deserves, just by being human and being able to participate in and enjoy. Under this construal, attractiveness is irrelevant.

• One deserves a partnership to the extent that he/she would be a good partner, based on various emotional, social, and moral competencies. Under this view, attractiveness is irrelevant as it doesn't inherently make someone a better partner.

The author considers a third view that no one "deserves" partnership in a moral sense; it's an amoral choice based on personal preference. However, he argues this view is implausible, as some choice criteria, such as racial purity or virginity, are clearly unfair.

In conclusion, the author argues that based on either of the main views of "desert," attractiveness doesn't make someone more or less deserving of partnership. Therefore, a preference for attractive partners is both unfair and morally unjustifiable.

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Nature and Desert

Generally, it’s a strange thing to argue that having a preference is unfair. Preferences, rather like looks, are largely out of our control. Many are like reflexes or deep dispositions. Of course, acting on one’s preferences is another matter, so we can be charitable. Still, there are many subtle dynamics to the process of dating, pair bonding, mating, and relationships only an academic philosopher would try to abstract these processes away to such a degree. 

They are subtle, but they matter. That is, our evolved preferences are relevant.

With the above considerations, I am not arguing that it’s natural, ergo it’s good. I’m arguing it’s natural so A) to some extent out of our control and B) so long as our preferences don’t actually harm people when we act on them—as in actually making anyone worse off—the natural lottery is something each of us has to navigate and accept as a part of normal life.

The idea of “desert” with respect to human interaction strikes me as almost entirely interpersonal and related to human action, rather than connected to any natural distribution of assets. To argue that partnership is something everyone deserves, just by being human and being able to participate in and enjoy, sounds vaguely plausible. But is it a just-so story? Once the author connects this claim to the obligations of pretty people and, generally, to natural asset distributions, it loses force. What does it mean to deserve to be tall, to be brown-eyed, to be gay, to be highly intelligent but autistic?

The natural lottery doles out assets. It doesn’t make moral demands of us.

Finally, even if one accepts D’Alessandro’s premise that partnership is something everyone “deserves” just by being human and by having the capability to participate and enjoy it—AND, even if we agreed that attractiveness is wholly irrelevant to partnership’s fundamental project (I do not)—we would still have first to oblige ugly people to date each other—quintile sorting—to help more people realize their capability to participate in and enjoy partnership.

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When John Rawls sought to derive a theory of justice via some attempt to fix the natural lottery, he didn’t improve our moral reasoning. Rawls argued that since the natural lottery significantly affects our life chances, but is arbitrary from a moral standpoint, a just society should work to mitigate its influence. Similarly, egalitarians like Professor D’Alessandro appeal to the arbitrariness of how looks are distributed over populations, he concludes that a moral-but-pretty person has a duty to sacrifice some of his or her relationship prospects to improve the life prospects of unattractive people.

We’ve already suggested that within a moral architecture such as the above, unattractive people would have similar obligations, that is, if the goal is indeed partnership. In other words, it would be incumbent upon all people to ‘date laterally,’ before it would be the pretty person’s duty to ‘date down.’ But more importantly, we should question any egalitarian reasoning that seeks to derive a moral Ought from the Is of the natural lottery. Obliging people to fix nature’s arbitrariness at every turn seems like a terrible moral burden for all, and is itself arbitrary—particularly once we dispatch with the claims that pretty people partnering with pretty people is either harmful or unfair.